Danish practice Henning Larsen Architects has unveiled its plans for a mass-timber university building on the Faroe Islands that draws on historic Faroese settlements and ancient North Atlantic island vernacular.
Designed as a new campus for the University of the Faroe Islands, the 8,000-square-metre development will be located in Torshavn, the capital city of the Faroe Islands, and comprise a series of mass-timber, gabled-roof volumes.
Henning Larsen has designed a new building for the University of the Faroe Islands
The campus will be organised around a set of existing school and education buildings and will largely follow a similar gabled form to those surrounding it, in order to create the look of a cluster of houses.
It will be constructed from glued laminated timber (glulam) and cross-laminated timber (CLT) and topped with a turfed roof that allows the campus to blend into the Torshavn landscape while tying it to the surrounding turf-topped buildings.
Renders show the building with gabled forms
The collection of buildings is to be intentionally placed in order to create natural shelter at various points around the campus, which draws on ancient construction methods that have been used across Faroese settlements to protect buildings from the North Atlantic weather conditions.
“Our vision draws inspiration from historic Faroese construction methods and the mass timber buildings of the past, while offering the University of the Faroe Islands a modern campus that blends seamlessly into the landscape and its varied context,” said Henning Larsen partner and design director Ósbjørn Jacobsen.
Through this placement, Henning Larsen explained that the campus is able to benefit from an additional 150 days of “comfortable” outdoor usage.
“Using wind and sun simulations, we have positioned the building volume so it is protected from the elements,” Henning Larsen director of sustainability and innovation Jakob Strømann-Andersen said.
It will be constructed from mass timber
“We are transforming some existing parts of a parking lot into a new green community space, sheltered from the strong northwestern winds dominating Torshavn,” continued Strømann-Andersen.
“In this way, we add 150 days to the comfortable outdoor season and create the best possible conditions for outdoor life in one of the harshest campus locations in the world.”
The building will use ancient construction techniques
The building’s interior will be organised around an indoor courtyard that will form the heart of the campus. From the courtyard, the campus’ plan will loosely follow the topography of the site with a central street fitted with amphitheatre-style steps designed to mimic the profile of adjacent grassy mounds.
Instead of a traditional floor system, mezzanine levels and gabled interior volumes will be suspended throughout the building and designed to overlook the interior courtyard and street, which allows for the full height of the building to be used in many of its shared and communal spaces.
Expanses of glazing will line the exterior walls of the building to further establish a connection with the outdoors. Where there is no glazing, the studio said many of the building’s facades will incorporate modular, self-sustaining biophilic systems.
Henning Larsen’s design for the new building at the University of the Faroe Islands was selected as the winning proposal in a competition that saw entries from BIG and Cobe as well as a number of local architecture studios.
The studio also recently announced its plans for a wood and concrete ferry terminal on the Faroe Islands that references traditional Viking boats. In 2022 the studio designed a mass-timber structure for the Volvo experience centre.
As part of our AItopia series exploring how AI will impact architecture and design, Dezeen examines whether the technology will end up taking architects’ jobs.
Four years on, following the emergence of several generative-AI models such as Midjourney and ChatGPT, Errazuriz is writing a book about AI’s impact on society and told Dezeen his opinion has not changed.
“It’s an enormous issue that we need to try and deal with,” he said. “People always say, ‘but isn’t AI just another tool?’ Right now it looks like a tool, but the tool is getting really good, really fast – and the purpose of this tool is to think for itself.”
He claims that well-known architects who mocked his warnings in 2019 have recently conceded privately that he was right.
Architecture at high risk of automation
Investment bank Goldman Sachs made headlines in March with its prediction that AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million jobs globally across all industries. The researchers estimated that 37 per cent of architecture and engineering work tasks “could be automated by AI”, placing it among the most-exposed industries.
“I have been around long enough to see multiple waves of technological change in the industry and this argument happens every single time,” Bernstein told Dezeen.
“It happened during CAD [computer-aided design], it happened during BIM [building information modelling], and now it’s happening with AI,” he added. “We somehow always seem to survive these things.”
Bernstein argues that even the best AIs are still nowhere near the competence of a qualified architect.
“I happen to think that what we do as architects is pretty complicated,” he said. “At it’s best, it’s about managing a complex, multi-variable problem and making a series of ambiguous judgements that require trade-offs, and I don’t believe we will get to a model that can do even 10 per cent of that in the foreseeable future.”
“If we’re not even at the point where a car can drive itself, I think we’re a long way from the point where an algorithm can be a professional architect,” he continued.
“Our current traditional methodology will radically change”
The possible emergence of artificial general intelligence in the future – a hotly debated topic – would likely upend all intellectual industries and much of our current society.
For now, most people’s idea of AI architecture is likely the dreamlike, eerily real-looking visualisations created with text-to-image models such as Midjourney. However, AI tools created specifically for use in architecture and design are beginning to enter the market.
Combined, the most advanced of these can generate massing images, floor plans, cost analyses, material specifications and technical drawings – though none can yet do it all.
In a recent interview with Dezeen, the co-founder and CEO of one of the leading systems, LookX, dismissed the idea that it could replace architects.
Instead, Wanyu He argued, AI “will liberate us from repetition and allow us to concentrate on things with added value to society”.
Midjourney has been used to create visualisations of architecture projects, such as this image by Zaha Hadid Architects
In particular, he claims it will dramatically speed up the feasibility-testing process, freeing up time to spend on the more creatively rewarding aspects of architecture.
Few have spent more time experimenting with AI-architecture tools than Harvard Graduate School of Design research associate and ArchiTAG co-founder George Guida. He agrees that the technology will not replace architects anytime soon.
“Our current traditional methodology will radically change, but not be substituted,” said Guida. “I do think that architects still will need to stay at the centre of being the driver within that process.”
“So I think productivity will increase – let’s say we’ll have more time and space to design. I think that the role of the architect will simply have to evolve, but it won’t be replaced,” he continued.
“It will give smaller firms a stronger edge”
But even if AI is not capable of usurping the human architect outright, could architecture jobs still be lost as the technology is adopted?
“I do think there are large swathes of the work that are potentially automatable by AI,” said Bernstein. “So the question is what happens to that additional capacity. Do we use it to do our jobs better, or do we eliminate some of those jobs?”
While both believe that AI could eventually be used by developers to design the simplest, most generic projects in-house, Bernstein and Guida are optimistic that the technology presents an opportunity for architecture studios to command higher fees.
“If I can say to a client that I’m using this tech to do a better job, then maybe I can charge more for my time,” said Bernstein.
That could give smaller studios that are quick to adopt AI a chance to compete with bigger firms, argues Guida.
“Increasing productivity gives a great opportunity for emerging practices to bring a competitive edge,” he said. “So in the short term it won’t remove jobs – if anything, it will give smaller firms a stronger edge.”
But Errazuriz remains unconvinced. He thinks the major impact will be at bigger firms, where, he points out, only a small handful of employed architects spend a significant portion of their time on creative work.
He argues the idea that AI will enable all these architects to remain in their jobs and simply spend more time exploring their imaginations is “wishful thinking”.
“What will most probably happen is that you just start reducing the size of those architecture studios,” he said. “Depending on how really good this software gets, in the worst-case scenario they would continue to decrease enormously over a 10-year period.”
An alternative outcome is that the productivity gains afforded by AI could lead to studios – and therefore their employees – taking on more projects at once.
Architecture critic Kate Wagner has argued this was the main upshot of CAD, lengthening working hours despite similar hopes in the technology’s early days that it could free up time for creativity.
Bernstein hopes that the adoption of AI in architecture won’t see history repeat itself.
“It’s true that CAD didn’t enhance the value proposition of architecture, but it was happening alongside a period of buildings getting much more complex and the design and construction industry getting riskier,” said Bernstein.
Similar concerns about computers taking architects jobs were raised during the emergence of CAD. Photo courtesy of Evergreen System
“So architects were drawing more defensively, and CAD made doing that easier. Now, as we are starting to leverage data about buildings to much greater effect, there is a potential value proposition there.”
Saudi-based architect Reem Mosleh, who has made a name for herself as a leading voice on AI design, agrees that other factors will influence how the technology ends up impacting the architecture profession.
For instance, she believes it could reduce overtime in combination with a wider cultural shift away from working long hours.
“After Covid, people’s priorities in life have changed drastically,” she said. “So I really hope that with AI we could actually have this opportunity to live with better balance.”
“You can’t run away from it”
Regardless of their opinion on the threat that AI poses to jobs, everyone Dezeen spoke to agreed that architects should be proactively getting to grips with the technology.
“If I were a young practitioner I would be playing with this stuff so I understand it, and if I were a practice I would be giving practitioners time to try it out,” said Bernstein.
“You can’t run away from it, you need to run towards it,” said Errazuriz. “Otherwise you’ll be like those people that refuse to have a cell phone. You need to stay up-to-date, checking the latest things that come out and incorporating it into the flow or your team or your own work.”
“For now, we’re the ones giving the prompts,” he added. “And so we need to sort of dig deep into our own creativity, into our storytelling, into why we’re doing something.”
Mosleh is hopeful that any disruption to architecture jobs will be outweighed by new opportunities opened up by AI.
“Architects who decide not to go beyond their normal practice will definitely be at risk,” she said. “If you don’t evolve you get replaced, it’s nature.”
“But at the same time I’m sure that those who are seizing the moment, and taking the opportunity will actually have better jobs and more opportunities.”
This article is part of Dezeen’s AItopia series, which explores the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on design, architecture and humanity, both now and in the future.
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The From the Underground tiles are made using two waste materials produced either from the construction or operation of the tube: London clay and iron oxide-rich dust.
London clay is the soil on which most of the city is built and which is excavated during tunnel boring, while iron oxide dust is created by train wheels as they grind against steel tracks every day.
The From the Underground tiles are made from waste London clay
Miller‘s clay tiles are cast in an art nouveau design that was already utilised in some of the network’s older stations. Originally designed by Leslie Green, the architect behind many of the stations, the tile moulds were loaned by the manufacturer H&E Smith.
The spark for the project came when Miller was sitting on the Central line, listening to the loud screeching as the train hurtled through one of the oldest sections of the railway.
Curious about the byproduct of all that friction, he began his research and eventually found a study that identified the main component of the dust as iron oxide — a chemical compound that Miller, a practiced ceramicist, knew could be used to pigment glaze.
The dust is visible as a black substance on the train tracks and other nearby areas.
Iron oxide produced by the operation of train tracks was used to pigment the glaze
Obtaining the dust, however, proved tricky. Without a collaborator at Transport for London (TfL) – the local government body that runs the network – he had to collect it himself, going from station to station with a vacuum cleaner.
“I didn’t vacuum the actual tracks, because that was maybe a little bit too risky,” Miller told Dezeen. “But I vacuumed the grooves on the platform right before you step onto or off the train. A lot of dust had collected in there.”
The dust was mixed with contaminants such as dirt and human hair, but the designer embraced the slight imperfections that this brought to the glaze.
The clay and glazes required extensive testing to achieve the right look
The idea to use London clay, meanwhile, arose through conversations Miller had with a geologist, who gave him a contact who worked on tunneling projects in London and could provide waste-borehole samples full of the clay.
The challenge with using the clay, Miller says, is that it took a lot of processing and testing to get it to a stage where it could be used to make objects.
The processing involved drying out the clay, crushing it, reconstituting it with water and then filtering out the non-clay particles before mixing it together again and testing how it behaved when fired in the kiln.
“Working with wild clays is rewarding,” Miller said. “Usually in ceramics, you don’t really get access to this process. And it’s quite nice to be almost filling in all the gaps along the route of the creation of something.”
Miller says he undertook the From the Underground project to reflect upon how materials are used in the built environment, often with an “opaqueness” around their provenance. For tiles, the materials are typically virgin resources obtained through open-pit mining.
“The whole crux of this project was seeing how the underground, which is this very uncommon place for resource extraction, could be used for resource extraction,” he said.
Designer Jeffrey Miller hopes his tiles might be used in tube stations one day
“I actually didn’t think when I started that it would be something that could be scaled up until I started working on it and realised the scale of the materials that are involved,” he continued. “For the clay, you’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of metric tonnes for an excavation of usable material.”
“For the iron oxide, there’s 400 kilometres of track along the Underground and it gets covered in this black stuff that they have to dispose of quite regularly.”
Miller, who completed the project as part of his masters in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins, is hoping to work with TfL to see his tiles actually used in the London Underground one day.
By using the Leslie Green-designed mould, he has created a product that could theoretically be used to replace broken tiles in station restorations.
AI may not be here to replace us but it’s definitely here to make lives easier. Meet PLAUD NOTE, the world’s first ChatGPT-powered recording device that captures audio files, transcribes them, summarizes them, and gives you your entire recording in key actionable takeaways. Just press a button and PLAUD NOTE records audio, just like a regular recorder… but once you’re done, its GPT-powered processor also converts audio notes into text as well as summarizes it for you. The best part? PLAUD NOTE comes with MagSafe, letting it snap to your iPhone (or even Android phone with the help of a MagSafe ring sticker) and giving you the power to record and transcribe your phone calls, meetings, and lengthy voice notes… all with the simple press of a button!
The smartphone is responsible for the death of a lot of device categories. Radios, cameras, pagers, walkmans, and even the humble dictaphone. For those who remember, the dictaphone was a highly important accessory for journalists, students, or writers looking to record interviews, lectures, or just ideas. The recorder app pretty much ended the dictaphone’s product journey, but to be honest, there’s a lot your phone’s native recording app still can’t do.
Recording Made Easy in Any Situation – PLAUD NOTE effortlessly captures premium recordings of meetings, iPhone calls, and voice memos wherever you go.
Revolutionize Efficiency with ChatGPT-Integrated App – With the PLAUD AI services in the dedicated app, recordings are smartly transcribed into precise texts, and instantly summarized into meeting notes, mind maps, to-do lists, and more.
In comes PLAUD NOTE – a dictaphone resurrected with the power of AI. Designed as a sleek hardware device that can either be used standalone or as a smartphone accessory, the PLAUD NOTE doesn’t just record audio for you. It cancels noise, highlights voices, and turns speech into text using artificial intelligence. Powered by ChatGPT, the PLAUD AI can transcribe your recordings in 57 different languages, as well as summarize the text into key bullet points. Want to take things further, the bullet points can also be turned into a mind-map and shared with other people via email or apps like Slack.
At just 0.117 inches thick, the PLAUD NOTE is an impressively slim gadget that can either be used handheld or snapped to your iPhone using its MagSafe case. The aluminum-alloy construction gives the PLAUD NOTE its cutting-edge aesthetic, while 64GB of internal storage and a 30-hour sustainable record time keeps you productive through all your long meetings, brainstorming sessions, lectures, and client pitches.
One Press, Instantly Record – Give it one press, and PLAUD NOTE instantly starts recording with premium audio.
To use your PLAUD NOTE, all you need to do is press the record button on its top right corner. The device instantly begins recording audio, isolating voices, and canceling all unnecessary background noise. Pair the PLAUD NOTE with its dedicated app on your phone, and your recording is waiting there, transcribed for you in real time. A single switch on the PLAUD NOTE lets you toggle between its two modes – as a standard recording device, as well as a call recorder. When the latter mode is activated, the PLAUD NOTE’s built-in Vibration Conduction Sensor (VCS) kicks in, clearly picking up the audio from your phone as well as the sound of your own voice.
Clean Precise Audio with AI Noise Canceling – Two high-end Knowles Sisonic mics deliver DVD-quality sound up to 1536 kbps. The SVE Call Solution reduces noise by 25+ dB and preserves high-frequency details for a better listening experience.
The PLAUD NOTE’s slim design hides some seriously innovative technology under its hood. It isn’t merely a recording device slapped to the back of your phone. Underneath the aluminum hood lies the PLAUD NOTE’s array of microphones – two MEMS microphones for recording voices as well as recording external noise for cancellation, and one VCS for picking up the audio from your phone when you’re on call. An embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) provides 64GB of on-board storage, letting you store up to 480 hours worth of recording on your PLAUD NOTE device, and a built-in 400mAh battery gives your PLAUD NOTE 30 hours of recording time, with the ability to charge using a proprietary magnetic contact-point charger. The PLAUD NOTE comes with WiFi and BLE capabilities too, working in tandem with your smartphone’s app to store and play recordings or view transcriptions while ensuring your data is encrypted at all times.
The PLAUD NOTE starts at a discounted $99 and comes in three colors – an anodized black, a classic silver, and a suave rose gold, with colored MagSafe cases to match. It pairs with the PLAUD app (available on both Android and iOS), which lets you access your locally stored recordings on demand, and even gives you 10,000 minutes of free cloud storage for 3 years. The PLAUD AI features, however, are paid since they rely on OpenAI’s paid API keys. Users get a 1-month free trial of PLAUD AI, which includes transcription in 57 languages, along with summarization features. Following the trial, you can grab a 1-year subscription to PLAUD AI for a discounted $39, which is less than half the annual price of ChatGPT Plus, and a whole lot cheaper than hiring an assistant to take notes, transcribe meetings, and record events and calls!
If you flip your plastic bottle of Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Dasani over and look at the bottom, chances are you’ll see a triangle with the number ‘1’ inside it. This number corresponds with the recyclability code of PET or PolyEthylene Terephthalate, the plastic commonly used in bottles, jars, clear containers, and other food-holding devices. PET is known for its clear nature and food-safe properties, but it’s also the easiest to recycle plastic that’s commonly available… a feature the Polyformer uses to its advantage.
The Polyformer is a clever appliance that turns your waste plastic bottle into a clear 3D printing filament. It’s a cheap, compact, and open-source machine that cuts the bottle into a thin ribbon that gets melted and extruded into a filament. The filament is then wound around a spool, which can then be used by other 3D printers to print objects. The best part? A majority of the Polyformer’s design is made entirely from 3D printed parts too, acting like the perfect proof of concept!
Designed by Reiten Cheng, a student at the ArtCenter College of Design in California, the Polyformer is a simple product that anyone can build on their own with a few store-bought parts and a 3D printer. “The modular architecture allows users to easily swap out parts and modify the machine to their liking,” Cheng says. “The unique vertical L shape allows the users to interact easily with the machine and also minimizes the amount of space that the machine takes.”
The Polyformer starts by stripping standard PET bottles into a uniform ribbon. Once the bottle’s been stripped away, the ribbon gets fed into a repurposed hot-end that uses a brass nozzle to extrude the melted plastic into a 1.75mm filament. The filament is then directed to the motorized spool, which rotates and collects it to be used later.
The entire product uses off-the-shelf parts and 3D-printed components. In fact, Cheng even open-sourced the Polyformer so that you can build your own. The files are available on the Polyformer GitHub page along with a detailed guide on how to assemble the device. Cheng’s website also mentions where you can buy off-the-shelf components like the aluminum heat block and the brass nozzle for the extrusion.
The Polyformer makes a unique pitch to help reduce plastic waste by practically giving plastic bottles a new life. This cradle-to-cradle approach is pretty much reinforced by the Polyformer itself, which Reiten printed out using 3D filament from recycled bottles, giving the entire appliance a beautiful translucent finish.
The Polyformer also went on to win multiple design awards like the James Dyson Award, the Core77 Award, and even secured 3rd place for the Hackaday Prize.
Electric camper vans are a need of the hour as the adventure industry inclines toward a sustainable and efficient way of living a nomadic life. While discerning adventurers and industry leaders rely on a Mercedes Sprinter or a Ford Transit to build their campers, here is a guy doing it effortlessly by building an electric camper from scratch, spending the least possible to fuel his passion.
This DIY electric camper is created around a wooden bed with its tank trails (for the rear wheels) being the standout aspect. We have over time seen some incredible DIY campers, which look more refined; the micro electric camper by YouTuber Quiet Nerd stands out as a worthy electric camper anyone with basic DIY skills can build at home.
Completed as an electric camper we wouldn’t expect, it was created in under four days. An interesting exemplification of electric power mobility, this is billed as an off-roading camper, but with its ground clearance and fragile structure, I’m not sure of that claim!
To test the camper, the builder however took it over a levelled-up jungle trail to relax and camp within overnight. And for camping convenience, the camper is covered with a greenhouse – trampoline overlay to shade from the sun – and has a camp kitchen and some storage options within.
Powered by an electric motor, the camper has lawn mower wheels on the front and tank treads attached to the rear axle, which is connected via a chain to the motor. The camper’s 24V motor runs off a 12V battery – connected to a boost converter to double the voltage – and is steered using an installed go-kart steering kit. The camper is finished with LED lights on the front and rear, and it can run 2.5 hours on a single charge.
A house that incorporates a ruin and a home clad in crushed TVs are among the four buildings on this year’s shortlist for RIAS‘ Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland award.
Two university buildings – Campus Central at the University of Stirling and Laidlaw Music Centre at the University of St Andrews – are also vying for the title of Scotland’s best building for 2023.
Hundred Acre Wood has been shortlisted for RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland. Photo by Gilbert McCarragher
It aims to “showcase the exceptional talent of architects working in Scotland today” by finding the best new building in the country.
Another house on the list is Cuddymoss. Photo by David Barbour
One of the two houses shortlisted for the 2023 edition is Hundred Acre Wood, a large grey house designed by London-based studio Denizen Works overlooking Loch Awe in Argyll.
One of its most striking features is its exterior, which is finished with recycled and crushed TV screens to offer a low-maintenance, pebbledash-like finish.
The other house on the list is located in rural Ayrshire. Named Cuddymoss, it incorporates a stone ruin.
Architect Ann Nisbet Studio complemented this existing structure with a timber-clad extension that echoes its form and is hoped to blend in with the site as it greys over time.
Campus Central is one of the two university buildings on the shortlist. Photo by Paul Zanre
Campus Central by the studio PagePark is one of the two university buildings on the list. Located at the University of Stirling, it marries a new build with a revamped 1970s building, aiming to improve circulation at the campus and provide a welcoming entrance area.
The final building on the 2023 shortlist is Laidlaw Music Centre, which architecture studio Flanagan Lawrence created at the University of St Andrews. It contains a series of rehearsal spaces for professional and student musicians, as well as the local community.
Among its standout elements is the recital hall, which is the first of its kind to feature a fully mechanised floor and a reverberation chamber to enhance acoustics.
Chair of the jury for 2023 and RSHP senior partner Tracy Meller described selecting the shortlist as a “tough job”.
“Whether unlocking a tricky urban challenge or doing justice to a remarkable rural setting, each has a superb relationship with its context,” she explained. “Their clients’ briefs could not be more different, and yet each building demonstrates exceptional imagination, skill and flair.”
Laidlaw Music Centre is also vying for the prize. Photo by Paul Zanre
Each year, the shortlist is drawn from the winners of the 2023 RIAS Awards, which were announced in June. The winner will be announced on 30 November and receive a £10,000 cash prize.
Alongside chair Meller, this year’s jury consisted of RIAS president Chris Stewart and architecture editor at Wallpaper* Ellie Stathaki.
The minute you sit and dissect our world and how much of it relies on an innate visual understanding of things, is the minute you realize how unfriendly the world is for the visually impaired. Credit cards don’t come with braille markings, and QR codes are innately visual, and require cameras that are controlled visually too… So how would blind people make payments or receive money from friends or family? Technology seldom designs itself for the minority, which is why devices like Shimmer really make a difference. A winner of the iF Design Award, Shimmer is a neck-worn contactless payment terminal that allows visually impaired people to make and accept payments. The device comes with a braille keyboard, an easy-to-activate and user-friendly camera, and a screen that displays a QR code to facilitate accepting payments.
Designer: Hefei LCFC Information Technology
A purpose-built device made especially for the visually impaired, the Shimmer sits around its user’s neck, letting them spend or receive money without needing traditional solutions that aren’t accessible to them. The device comes with a handy design that features a braille keypad on one end, and a screen on the other. A parting line running along the middle allows you to separate the upper and lower halves to reveal a camera too. The camera helps scan QR codes and make payments, while the display shows a QR code of its own while receiving payments. The braille keypad also has a built-in fingerprint scanner to help authenticate payments too, making it easy and secure to use.
“Mobile payment is very popular in Asia, but the current most common method of using a smartphone is not friendly to the blind as it requires screen reading software, which is cumbersome to operate and potentially exposes private data,” say the designers at Hefei LCFC Information Technology. The Shimmer helps these people keep up with the technological requirements of urban life in today’s world, because online payments need to be overwhelmingly inclusive.
The Shimmer makes some really clever design decisions to help the visually impaired stay up-to-date with current technology. For starters, it comes with a beautifully sleek design and a metallic finish that lends the wearer a keen sense of style. The handheld unit of the Shimmer is easy to use, with a braille keyboard and fingerprint sensor that’s virtually foolproof, and a hideaway camera that adds another layer of security. The Shimmer’s band straps around your neck and comes with built-in earphones too, allowing the user to get audio confirmations of payments made or received!
The Shimmer is a Winner of the iF Design Award for the year 2022.
If you remember this gem of a videogame from back in 2015, you’ll be glad to know that the Kerbal Space Program now has its own dedicated LEGO set. While the game was an incredibly detailed space program simulator, its respective LEGO set is just as intricately made, complete with an entire space shuttle that has separating modules, afterburners, satellite dishes, solar panels, a lander, and two Kerbal astronauts with their own flag. The Kerbal Space Program LEGO set was pitched by master-builder Sam67c on LEGO’s Ideas forum (its forum for fan-made creations) and has since cruised past its 10,000 vote threshold. LEGO’s internal team is now in the process of reviewing the submission, following which it will be converted into a retail box set for anyone to buy!
Sam67c’s MOC (My Own Creation) is a highly detailed build that allows you to create your own spaceship and modules, or build out the standard ship from the videogame with the Mk1-3 Cockpit that fits two kerbals inside. For people looking to go all-out, a schematic below shows exactly how detailed the space shuttle is, with multiple modules connecting to one another using 4×4 or 6×6 circular plates. “Engines, fuel tanks, batteries and cockpits all connect vertically, while solar panels and RCS tanks use clips positioned around the circumference of major parts,” says Sam67c.
Probably one of the most intricate builds we’ve seen on the LEGO Ideas forum, this MOC mirrors the detailed nature of the KSP game. The sandbox-style space flight simulation video game allowed players to detail their own space program and design spaceships while taking into account factors such as gravity, aerodynamics, and fuel consumption when designing and piloting their spacecraft. The main objective of the game was to successfully complete various missions and explore the Kerbal planetary system.
The Kerbal Space Program video game gained a dedicated cult following due to its realistic physics, challenging gameplay, and open-ended nature. The game offered a unique blend of creativity, strategy, and problem-solving, as players would have to overcome the challenges of space travel and exploration. It’s said that many NASA engineers also played the game to run experiments in ways that their more unforgiving real-world environment wouldn’t allow them to do!
With the Kerbal Space Program LEGO build, the game now enters into the realms of physical reality, letting builders and enthusiasts actually take a more hands-on approach to spaceship construction. The official review from LEGO’s internal team begins in September, and hopefully, we can expect the box set to ‘launch’ on shelves either at the end of this year or early next year!
Belgian interior designer Kim Mupungilaï has created a series of furniture and decor items for an exhibition in New York City using digital and traditional techniques to explore ideas of identity and appropriation.
The exhibition, called HUE/AM/I-HUE/I/AM, features chairs, tables and bureaus constructed from a mix of wood, stone and fibre elements, presented at Superhouse Vitrine in Lower Manhattan.
It is the first full collection of furniture from Mupungilaï, who said a trip to New York City in 2018 prompted thinking about the forms and ideas of identity behind the work.
Kim Mupungilaï has created a series of furniture items for an exhibition at Superhouse Vitrine
“I just started thinking about my own cultural landscape and background and upbringing and wanted to dig deeper,” Mupungilaï told Dezeen.
“And that kind of prompted the idea of merging or exploring my two heritages,” she continued.
“I’m half Belgian, half Congolese, and I grew up in Belgium, so I never really knew a lot about my Congolese side.”
The collection features a mix of Congolese materials
This exploration included a deep dive into the artisanal forms and materials commonly used in the African nation, especially “currency tools” a type of tool or weapon used for a variety of symbolic and practical purposes.
These formed the “base of abstract forms” that Mupungilaï then converted into the furniture in the collection.
Pieces were designed on 3D-modelling software and then made by hand
The result is a diverse mix of sculptural pieces, all with a striking mix of materials, from a sloping wooden arm that branches off the bureau and terminates in a ballpoint embedded in a stone foot to a textile derived from the banana leaf, which stretches of the seat of a wooden bench.
Teak wood, the banana, the shape of stones and the rattan are all references to what she says are unique material resources of the region.
A textile made from banana plant fibre was used
To create the sculptural forms, Mupungilaï tests out the designs first in 3D modelling programs and then has the pieces hand constructed by fabricators abroad.
The mix of the functional and sculptural makes sense both in terms of Mupungilaï’s influences as well as within the specific scene in New York around Superhouse Vitrine, a space in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown. It consists of a single glass-lined room at the centre of the second floor of a shopping mall.
Founder Stephen Markos’ said that he wants to showcase what he considers art with functionality.
Superhouse Vitrine features functional art in a small glass room
“People always talk about the border between art and design,” Markos told Dezeen. “I don’t really even think it fits on the border,” he continued, referencing the totality of designers he shows at the gallery.
“I think it really skews more toward the side of art than design. I’ve been really focused on functionality so here’s where design comes in. It’s really interesting when a work of art when you can sit on a work of art.”
The conceptual nature of Mupungilaï’s work was also an important factor in its presentation. Since the release of some of the early pieces from the collection, such as the room divider, the designer said she has been asked often about ideas of influence and appropriation and that her work represents a place of departure for conversations around these complex topics.
“I think for a lot of people, it’s hard to understand to draw a line when – does something become cultural appropriation?” Mupungilaï explained.
“I mean, you can be inspired by culture, but when you start literally extracting things from a culture without crediting or acknowledging their arts, their culture or traditions, it becomes cultural appropriation, so there’s a very fine line,” she continued.
“I feel like it happens so often in design, but it’s not spoken about at all, or very, very rarely.”
Mupungilaï said the collection has opened up conversations about identity and appropriation
HUE/AM/I-HUE/I/AM is on show at Superhouse Vitrine from 28 June to 19 August 2023. For more exhibitions, events and talk in architecture and design, visit Dezeen Events Guide.
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