Promotion: surfaces company Cosentino has collaborated with interior designer Claudia Afshar to launch Dekton Ukiyo, a collection of fluted tiles informed by contemporary Japanese design.
The Dekton Ukiyo line designed by Afshar features tiles with linear fluting that Cosentino says were created to establish depth in both outdoor and indoor spaces – from facades and cladding to kitchen worktops and sinks.
“Its textures bring distinctive depth and dimension to any space, be it residential or commercial,” said Cosentino.
Bromo is a dark grey shade, informed by metamorphic rocks
According to Cosentino, the tile collection was informed by Japanese contemporary design and aims to “celebrate the art of minimalism and embrace the present”.
“Dekton collection is designed to awaken the senses and evoke a feeling of wellness by achieving a beautiful, calm state in the space,” said Cosentino. “It embodies a rich palette of sensations, showcasing geometric yet smooth structure that creates harmonious designs both inside and outside.”
Rem has grey and brown veining with hints of gold
The tiles are made from Dekton – a material Cosentino describes as a “revolutionary and innovative ultracompact stone”.
The stone is made from a mixture of more than 20 minerals extracted from nature, using Sinterized Particle Technology (SPT), which is able to “sinter mineral particles making them bond with each other”.
According to Dekton, its press generates 30,000 tons of uniform pressure, which results in a material that has no micro-defects that cause tensions or weak points. This ensures it has “superior technical properties” such as resistance to stains, scratches, thermal shock and UV rays, according to Cosentino.
Rem has grey and brown veining with hints of gold
The Ukiyo tiles come in five colourways: Bromo, Kreta, Nacre, Umber and Rem. Bromo is a dark grey shade, informed by metamorphic rocks such as slate.
Kreta is based on the shade of cement floors and has a matte texture, while Umber has a terracotta colour that is “closely connected to nature”.
Umber has a terracotta colour that is “closely connected to nature”
Rem has grey and brown veining with hints of gold and Nacre has a “silky finish” that plays with light and shadow.
“Playing with texture is timeless, and it is so important in all materials, not just fabric,” said Afshar. “I have always been inspired by the materials found in nature and making the spaces I design as comfortable, warm and authentic as possible.”
“Ukiyo is calming yet simplistic, and the colourways and fluting are romantic, but also contemporary and masculine to achieve balance,” continued Afshar.
The collection of fluted tiles was informed by contemporary Japanese design
The tiles are designed for vertical application and come with groves set either 25 millimetres or 11 millimetres apart.
This new series was presented by Cosentino for the first time during its C-Next Designers Europe event, one of Spain’s largest interior design conventions, which gathered hundreds of international designers in Almeria.
To view more about the product, visit the brand’s website.
Partnership content
This article was written by Dezeen for Consentino as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
One of my fondest childhood memories is playing games with friends and families using an hourglass sandtimer to count down the minutes. Games like Boggle and Taboo were made all the more fun because you could see the seconds slipping by before it’s your turn and your opponents are running out of time. But when our phones became smarter, we of course turned to these digital devices to count the seconds down and the alarm blaring causes us a different kind of anxiety or joy.
Designer: Fabio Verdelli and Anna Lazzaron
There are those who would prefer to use a timer that doesn’t have any of the other distractions that a smartphone would have, like messages, notifications, calls, and even that pesky alarm tone. A device that can bridge the analog idea of an hourglass and the digital convenience of a timer is found in this product concept called Passatempo, a smart hourglass. It is able to retain the elegant design of the hourglass sand timer but this time, it is able to add a digital concept to it that makes it more elegant.
There isn’t really much of a description to it but based on the product renders, it doesn’t seem to use actual sand like in the traditional timers. It is still enclosed in a glass structure and the cone shape is still there and you can see the seconds or minutes passing by as it transfers from one cone to another. This time though you will be able to set how long it needs to “pour” through an app. You can use it to set a timer for when you’re cooking or to give you a visual idea of when it’s time for an appointment or you can use it for board games as well.
Of course the most convenient way really to set alarms and timers is on your smartwatch or smartphone. But if you want something a bit unusual or something that looks pretty elegant or just something that kind of looks analog, then the Passatempo may be something you’ll be interested in.
Some of the hesitation in seeing a doctor regularly for checkups comes from embarrassment and fear, often because of people who are physically present during the consultation. The recent pandemic has made virtual consultations popular, but you still have to visit a clinic or hospital to actually perform tests like blood work or biometric scans. With today’s technologies, however, that shouldn’t even be necessary, at least for the most basic tests and diagnostics. Putting that theory into practice, this forward-looking cubical room combines advanced tools and everyone’s favorite special sauce, AI, to offer a “self-serve” clinic that can be set up almost anywhere so that people can have easier and less stressful access to healthcare.
We’re all advised to get regular checkups, especially when we start to feel something’s amiss. Unfortunately, access to healthcare services isn’t always easy or convenient. Clinics might be far away or doctors might have very long waiting times. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just walk into a room, use a few gadgets and gizmos, receive a quick diagnosis of your health, and maybe even get a legit prescription, all without even having to even physically meet with the physician? That’s the kind of quick and stress-free experience that the Forward CarePod is promising as the world’s first “AI Doctor’s Office.”
CarePod puts you in the driver’s seat of your health, almost literally considering the comfy chair inside the single-person room. You walk inside, answer a few tests to determine the kind of clinical test that needs to be done, and you use the provided tools to perform those tests, like drawing blood, swabbing your throat, taking your blood pressure, and the like. These are frontline clinical diagnostics that most nurses and doctors perform but can now also be done by yourself with the right tools, which means there will be no doctors or nurses inside CarePods. At least not human ones.
Of course, it isn’t enough to just get your diagnostic results. You’ll need a professional to interpret those results for you, which is also the job of physicians. With the CarePod system, however, that diagnosis is made by a proprietary AI that has learned from clinical expertise and the latest medical research. In addition to providing a diagnosis, that AI also formulates care plans called “Health Apps” that will guide the patient with programs and advice to address various diseases and disorders, including diabetes, hypertension, and even depression. CarePod doesn’t eliminate human doctors from the equation completely, as they are still needed for writing prescriptions or more in-depth consultations.
Impressive as all these technologies may sound, the most important aspect of CarePod is probably the fact that it can be installed almost anywhere. It is already being deployed in malls, gyms, and offices, places where clinical services are often unavailable, but it’s not hard to imagine these rooms being installed in every street corner in the future. This would give people access to healthcare that would otherwise be out of reach, which increases their chances of living healthier and longer lives.
All three Decor range designs feature the same four types of marble – bright white Calacatta Meraviglia and Calacatta Bernini, grey Silver Majestic and dark Black Origin.
The range combines the natural appearance of marble with precision-cut geometry
The brand worked with Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) on the first pattern – named Diamond Decor – which comprises a series of small, intricately shaped geometric tiles laid in a complex sequence reminiscent of the facets of a cut diamond.
“The collaboration with Atlas Concorde led to a project in which ZHA blends a classic mosaic with a disruptive element,” said Paolo Zilli, associate director of ZHA. “Like an inclusion in a diamond, the insertion of a foreign body into a crystalline structure lends an unexpected dynamism to the strict repetition of the rigid geometric structure.”
Three patterns are included in the collection
Two further patterns are also available – Hexagon Mosaic revolves around the central shape of a hexagon and can be combined with the Diamond pattern to create a more complex arrangement, while Grid Mosaic has a composition dominated by staggered vertical lines.
The tiles come in a selection of surface finishes, including textural Hammered, a finish that recalls traditional marble processing methods, and Velvetech, which gives the tiles a soft, velvety texture.
Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen’s huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.
Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.
Inventor Simone Giertz is back at it, this time tackling a space problem. The bedroom in Giertz’s apartment is too small for a wardrobe or clothing rack, so she invented a way to hang clothes in half the depth:
Giertz reveals it took 124 prototypes to get the design right, and shows you her process:
At press time, Coat Hingers had landed roughly $250K on Kickstarter, with 26 days left to pledge.
Just because you’re trying to design a retro interpretation of an old design doesn’t mean you have to copy the original inch for inch. In fact, it might even be illegal in some cases to be an exact replica of the product you’re trying to pay homage to. It’s definitely a good opportunity to address the flaws of the past or to implement designs that were intended but couldn’t be implemented because of the limitations or tastes of ages past. It wouldn’t make sense, for example, for a modern recreation of the Game Boy Color to display the extremely limited palette of the original in this day and age. Fortunately, Analogue had the sense to equip its retro gaming handheld with modern capabilities while staying faithful to the original’s essence. So faithful that it, in fact, even tried to recreate the playful colors of the Game Boy Color while also expanding that selection with almost all the colors of the rainbow and then some.
Even by yesteryear’s standards, the Game Boy Color’s chunky design clearly earmarked it as a toy for kids. Those kids, however, have now grown up, and many of them want to relive those fun-filled days but probably with something that doesn’t look like it was plucked out of a time capsule. The Analogue Pocket is an attempt to feed this hunger while also making the design and the heritage accessible to a lot more people. Its more modern and sleeker aesthetic easily appeals to gamers of all ages but still exudes that charm that made the GBC an icon. Still, the retro handheld seemed to be missing one particular element that would really set it apart from other Game Boy Color recreations.
That missing piece of the puzzle was delivered by the “Classic” edition of the Analogue Pocket, which basically gives the device a colorful paint job. The very first GBC was a rather boring and very industrial gray, but the market eventually exploded in a variety of colors, including a transparent one. The Analogue Pocket Classic brings back not just one or two or five of these but offers no less than eight hues. That’s on top of the plain black, white, transparent, and glow-in-the-dark editions that came out in the past.
The full palette includes Indigo, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Pink, Orange, and Silver, all of which Analogue boasts have been color-matched to the original models. It might just be a change of hue, but it immediately gives the Pocket a vibrant character befitting of a gaming device. With these accurate colors and the overall design of the handheld, there is very little doubt that this retro revival truly captures the spirit of the Game Boy Color as faithfully as it can without tripping over legal landmines.
The story doesn’t end on a high note, unfortunately, with all variants of the Analogue Pocket now declared to be completely sold out. That’s true for this colorful yet limited run of the “Classic” edition as well as the original models. It’s uncertain if these will ever return to shelves, and collectors will have to stay on their toes while waiting for hopeful news in the coming days.
The artistic allure of Bentonville, Arkansas is often anchored in the architectural gravity of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, as well as its renowned permanent collection and temporary exhibitions (like the engrossing retrospective Annie Leibovitz at Work, or the wondrous outdoor Listening Forest by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer). While Crystal Bridges is reason enough to visit Bentonville, it’s not the only pioneering art institution in town. In fact, its 63,000-square-foot sibling, The Momentary, reopened this past weekend after a design refresh following an initial launch in February 2020. Once a Kraft cheese factory, the sprawling multidisciplinary space has transformed into a warm, welcoming cultural hub for art, music, food and drink. Its centerpiece from now until April 2024 is the free, immersive exhibition Enduring Amazon: Life and Afterlife in the Rainforest, featuring attention grabbing contributions from five contemporary artists.
Image by Tom McFetridge for Crystal Bridges
Enduring Amazon utilizes art as a vehicle to direct attention toward one of our greatest environmental emergencies: the declining state of the Amazon rainforest. The informative, often emotional exhibit pairs wildly diverse, equally powerful pieces from David Brooks, Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris, Richard Mosse, and Ben Frost, to a resounding, sensorial effect. The overall impact is spectacular and sweeping—even though each artist delves into the subject matter in their own voice, through their own craft. This is thanks to impeccable curation by Joseph Thompson, The Momentary’s curator at large, and Elise Raborg, the organizer of the exhibition and curatorial associate.
Environmental photographer Richard Mosse. Image by Tom McFetridge for Crystal Bridges
Though the exhibition features moments requiring careful contemplation, the beauty (or, in some cases, the eccentricity) of each work acts as a reprieve. “Even as you witness the tumult and the devastation,” Thompson says, “you see it through imagery that is unrelentingly beautiful and detailed and sharply observed. These installations ask us to look closely and listen closely.”
Richard Mosse, Senador José Porfirio, Parà, 2021. Digital C-print. Courtesy of the artist, and Collection of Pamela and Richard Kramlich
The work of Mosse, a critically acclaimed environmental photographer and filmmaker, sets the introductory tone. Stylistically enhanced large-scale images depict beauty and tragedy. Mosse’s enhancements are not only aesthetic in nature, but a code to unlocking information. “Richard toes the line of art and science as a documentary photographer,” Raborg says. “These photographs were created by incessantly layering imagery from GSI, geographic information systems, and drone photography of ultra-wide wavelengths to reveal colors and conditions that are not visible to the human eye. “
Richard Mosse, Aldeia Enawene-nawe, Mata Grosso, 2020. Digital C-print. Courtesy of the artist, Altman Siegal, San Francisco, and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Red represents forest degradation. Milky tones in a river denote pollution. “This is a false color palette,” Mosse says. “This is how scientists see the forest. The types of cameras are called multi-spectral cameras. They have numerous bands—18 or more—while our eyes only have three: red, green and blue. They are narrow bands of spectral reflectance of the environment. When you combine them using GSI technologies, and you apply red, green and blue, you start to see invisible things—aspects of deforestation, the release of gases, the amount of evaporation. A lot of these maps show us instances of various fronts of deforestation, illegal logging, industrialized mining, an aluminum refinery. There’s artisanal gold mining. Cattle farming accounts for 80% of deforestation. It’s for cheap beef in fast food. They are all interwoven, these environmental crimes.” Mosse spent years in the Amazon capturing the images himself and then imbuing them with coded data.
Environmental photographer Richard Mosse. Image by Tom McFetridge for Crystal Bridges
Mosse couples his photographic pieces with one utterly magnetizing 74-minute film, Broken Spectre, presented on a 70-foot-long, multi-screen panoramic display. Mosse shifts between tight shots that teem with and celebrate colorful life to black-and-white scenes of dire large-scale destruction. The film includes an impassioned plea from an Indigenous woman for help—for the violence enacted upon the Amazon to stop, for viewers with resource to do something. As the film ends, its resonance remains.
“We spent about four or five years in the field, trying to understand the processes that are unfolding across the Amazon,” Mosse says. “It’s world’s largest tropical rainforest; it spans nine countries. How do you find a lens wide enough to convey that? The processes themselves are so abstract—climate change, global warming—you can’t see it with the human eye. I asked myself ‘how do we take a picture of that?’ Photography is so concrete.” Mosse found a way to make something intangible burrow into human consciousness.
David Brooks with his installation Lonely Loricariidae. Image by Tom McFetridge for Crystal Bridges
David Brooks’ Lonely Loricariidae conceptual installation takes a very different approach. “It’s composed of a set of stadium bleachers with fish tanks on them,” he says. “In the fish tanks are living fish from a large family called Loricariidae, specifically from the Amazon.” Brooks has been working since 2005 with conservation biologists throughout various river systems in the Amazon that are being threatened—areas where hydroelectric dams are being built, where there are artisanal gold mine operations or fossil fuel extraction.
David Brooks with his installation Lonely Loricariidae. Image by Tom McFetridge for Crystal Bridges
“One of the way conservationists can set aside or move NGO dollars is if they can taxonomically describe what is in the river. You cannot just say it is biodiverse. You have to describe each new species,” he says. “What you have in these fish tanks are fish that are unknown to science. They are not yet described because it is a family of fish that’s so incredibly biodiverse it really challenges science itself.” In the installation, Brooks provides a phylogenic tree of all the species that have been described by science so far, and a much longer list of what’s for sale in the aquarium market for undescribed species.”
“What we have done here is work with biologists to select fish from that aquarium trade, ones that are specifically unknown to science,” he says. “A minimum of two of these will be described in the next four months as part of the artwork. This is to instigate a crossflow of art and the actual taxonomic describing of the fish.”
Composer and sound designer Ben Frost. Image by Tom McFetridge for Crystal Bridges
Composer and sound designer Ben Frost‘s artistic contributions to Enduring Amazon are both the subtlest and most bombastic. Twisting for 65 feet skyward, Frost’s first-ever sculpture almost appears to be a sonic skeleton connected to The Momentary itself. “It’s a reinterpreted line array of speakers,” Frost says. “It’s 22 channels of audio and it has a score. The soundtrack is entirely synthesized—from a range of influences which are inevitably drawn from nature, these elemental forces that we are meddling with that are looking for a way to exist, and still existing in spite of us. I want you to have this feeling that this new organism, this reimagined nature, is connected to the world around us. It does not exist in a vacuum.”
Image by Tom McFetridge for Crystal Bridges
Invisibility was the impetus behind the piece. “I work with sound,” Frost says. “The puts me in close connect with a hidden ecosystem of sound technology. When you are looking at a stage, right in front of you there’s something called a line array, which is a string of speakers hung in a perfect row on either side. They are designed with an inherent invisibility. For me, this invisibility is something that I find interesting. These speakers themselves are inevitably constructed from a lot of the extracted materials that Richard speaks to in his work—paper, steel, copper. A lot of these elements are right in front of us and all around us. They’re strangely ignored. I am interested in reclaiming that invisibility but also trying to find a new way to interpret that and bring nature back into the raw material that’s at the heart of it.”
Composer and sound designer Ben Frost in front of Broken Spectre. Image by Tom McFetridge for Crystal Bridges
Frost is the connective tissue throughout the exhibition. In addition to his spiraling tower, he composed a score to accompany Brooks’ installation, as well as the enchanting, hopeful and layered animation by Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris. “I also worked closely with Richard and cinematographer Trevor Tweeten on the creation of Broken Spectre, both as a composer and as a sound recordist in the field,” Frost says. In the way that a musical composition influences the emotional aptitude of a movie, Frost’s sonic ecosystem for Enduring Amazon is both comforting and antagonizing, provocative and inspiring. Oftentimes, sounds overlap from different spaces at The Momentary and create their own artistic dialogue—as one would imagine occurs in the natural soundscapes of the Amazon.
Enduring Amazon expresses the curatorial capabilities of The Momentary, but the institution is more than one expansive exhibition. Programming ranges from a year-round series of culinary events to outdoor concerts and activations, and enveloping spaces include an Onyx Coffee Bar lobby (complete with a new Beeple digital artwork) and Tower Bar, with vistas stretching beyond Bentonville. As with Crystal Bridges, The Momentary is conveniently located, easily accessible and well worth the visit.
High-rise buildings seem to be the trending design in architecture, but some visionaries plan to take that to the extreme. Concepts and even actual construction of buildings seem to defy logic and physics in order to create a striking skyline that will be remembered for centuries. With their riches and resources, countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia seem to be in a race to erect towering structures that will provide not only shelter but also the ultimate luxury, unlocking vistas that would be unimaginable by current standards. The latest dream to be revealed would take root on the Gulf of Aqaba in northwestern Saudi Arabia, where not just one or even two but three towers will rise like sharp needles that pierce the heavens to offer a lavish escape from the stresses of the future.
The Gulf of Aqaba, which forms one of the northern tips of the Red Sea, paints quite a dramatic picture because of the marriage of two geographical extremes: a coastal strip and a desert plain. Erecting skyscrapers would mar this picturesque scenery, but having just two creates an even more striking effect, like alien obelisks rising from the sands to act as portals to other worlds. It is perhaps not by coincidence that NEOM describes the Epicon as a gateway to the future, particularly the future of hotel and resort tourism for the region.
The main structure of the hotel concept is two asymmetrical towers, one 275 meters (902 feet) in height, the other only 225 meters (739 feet). The 41 key hotel and luxury residences comprise 14 suites and apartments and the two towers are connected by an elevated platform with exposed structural beams. In fact, the entire design of the Epicon towers has this industrial aesthetic from a distance, enhancing the mystique of the structure and creating a distinctive skyline that easily promotes the resort by itself.
This key motif is also employed in the Epicon resort that lines up the coastal shore, featuring 120 rooms and 45 residential beach villas. The single tower mirrors the twin hotel skyscrapers on a smaller scale, creating a play on perspective that serves to magnify the imposing presence of the twin towers. The distance between these two amenities generates an atmosphere of adventure and travel when going from one location to the other as if journeying between different worlds connected by a common vision and culture.
This otherworldly theme is especially evident at night when those structural beams are illuminated to create a visual not unlike futuristic towers from science fiction. It’s designed to invoke feelings of awe, wonder, and curiosity, inviting people from all walks of life to lose themselves in a luxurious experience away from the mind-numbing routines of daily life. The resort and hotel may be envisioned to offer first-class experiences and world-class service when it finally opens its doors, but Epicon’s design alone already entices visitors with epic moments of luxury, peace, and inspiration.
From Brooklyn’s Paperfinger calligraphy studio, you can select one of several hand-lettered return address styles that get turned into a rubber stamp, which you can use with any color ink to create a personal imprint for all of your correspondence (or that of your thankful friend). Orders take approximately three weeks.
Dezeen Showroom: architect and designer Umut Yamac has created a lighting collection made from tightly strung threads for Barcelona-based brand Vibia.
The Array collection of subtle pendant lights from Vibia marks the first collaboration between the brand and British designer Yamac.
Array is made from a series of fine threads strung tightly between two aluminium rings
Described by the brand as “an exploration of thread and its potential to create lightweight and dynamic sculptures of light”, Array is composed of fine threads pulled taut between two aluminium rings.
A soft light source is concealed within the lower ring, creating a gradient effect as it washes upwards along the textured threads.
The collection includes both conical and cylindrical versions
“Solid, yet translucent, the layered lines of cord influence the visitor’s perception of volume, weight and depth to create a new spatial experience,” said Vibia.
“The layering effect creates an interference pattern, or moire, which produces the illusion of movement with the shifting gaze of the viewer, the threads seeming to vibrate as the light passes through.”
Three different colours are available
Conical and cylindrical versions of the product are available, which can be combined to form a lighting installation.
It is manufactured in three different sizes, with the largest 124 centimetres in diameter and nearly two metres tall.
Contrasting with the matte black rings, the threads come in either warm terra red, sober green or neutral beige.
Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen’s huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.
Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.
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