Hasta La Ideas

This week on Dezeen, we launched our latest editorial series, North American Design 2024, which will define the state of independent design across North America by spotlighting a different city each week.

Focusing on cities across Canada, Mexico and the United States, the series will feature a hand-picked selection of independent furniture and product designers from small studios who live and work within these cities.

It will spotlight designers who are pushing the boundaries of materials and forms and who are involved in their respective local design communities.

Dezeen US editor Ben Dreith introduced the series, which kicked off by showcasing ten studios creating unique objects in Detroit, Michigan.

In New York City, an interactive video installation connecting the city with Dublin, Ireland, was temporarily shut down this week following poor behaviour from the two cities.

The Portal, created by Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys, was to be part of design week NYCxDesign’s programming and features two circular screens that cast a 24/7 live feed between the partner cities as a “bridge to cultures from around the world”.

In other design news, sportswear brand Nike designed a lightweight multi-layered raincoat that can be reconfigured as a camping tent.

The Metamorph Poncho has a two-tone grey colour and is constructed as a water-repellent hooded cape that can be zipped up at its front. To turn it into a tent, users lay the poncho flat and insert poles into its various flaps, creating a simple tent or sunshade.

Also this week, a terracotta-tiled extension by Emil Eve Architects was named London’s best home improvement project by Don’t Move, Improve! 2024.

Named Aden Grove, the project was selected as the overall winner from a shortlist of 16 projects and was praised by the jury for its playful use of colour.

In other architecture news, British designer Thomas Heatherwick’s Humanise campaign launched a master’s degree at Loughborough University, which is set to start in autumn 2025.

Aiming to challenge conventional architecture education, the degree is hoped to foster a generation of architects who will “inspire joyful architecture”.

This week, Dezeen also featured an opinion piece by economics professor Jason Barr, in which he discussed skyscrapers being integral to the success of cities – despite their bad rap.

Popular projects this week included a skinny metal-clad apartment building in Philadelphia by ISA, a London home extension by Collective Works that blends Scandinavian and Mediterranean influences and a ferry terminal in Riga set to be completed by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Our latest lookbooks featured minimalist kitchens where materials provide the decoration and interiors featuring pyramidal ceilings that create dramatic depth.

This week on Dezeen

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Not only does this LEGO set let you slide bricks into place, it comes with a randomized brick generator, and even a scoreboard to capture your score!

A perfect tribute to one of the world’s most influential digital games (with perhaps the most riveting backstory of any game ever), this LEGO Ideas set comes from the mind of LEGO Builder ‘victorvey300’ who wanted to pay a hat-tip to Tetris on its 40th anniversary which first made its appearance in Russian game circles back in the early 80s, finally finding its way to Nintendo’s first Game Boy in 1985. The LEGO set comes in the form of a box with a lid that doubles as the game’s screen. Bricks sit in a container below, controls can be found on the bottom right, and the top right acts as a leaderboard. When all’s done, the box closes shut, ensuring that bricks don’t get lost.

Designer: victorvey300

Not to spoil the AppleTV+ movie for you, but the Tetris game has one of the most nail-biting backstories of all time. Developed by Alexey Pajitnov, a resident of the Soviet Republic in the 80s, Tetris was circulated heavily within the USSR on bootlegged floppy disks and finally made its way to an American sales representative for a gaming company. What ensued was literally Cold War espionage at its best. Henk Rogers, the American rep who discovered Tetris tried to buy the rights to the game on behalf of Nintendo, which was working on the first Game Boy handheld console. Tetris was to be a part of this revolutionary portable gaming device, but the Soviets weren’t ready to sell Tetris to any outsider without putting up a fight (all hardware and software sales outside the Union were controlled/authorized by a government agency). In the end, Pajitnov managed to escape Russia and also ended up selling the rights to Tetris, which featured on the first Game Boy, becoming the global sensation it is today. As a tribute to this story and to Alexey himself, the LEGO Ideas kit also comes with a minifigure of Pajitnov standing beside an old-school computer!

The beauty of this LEGO build lies in just how much attention to detail it has. The vault-shaped kit has Tetris graphics on the outside (with branding), and the inside is simply filled with features and details that allow as many as 6 players to actually play a full game of Tetris, complete with brick generators that tell you what the next brick should be.

Playing the game is delightfully simple. Bricks sit in a bin at the bottom, the playable area or the matrix grid is right in front with vertical channels to slide bricks down, and a treadmill-shaped panel on the bottom right lets you scroll to see what your next brick should be. Scroll with your right hand, find the corresponding brick with your left and drop it down the channel of your choice. It slides down instantly, landing in place just the way it would in a game. The only real difference is that you need to choose each brick’s orientation and position before you drop it into the channel. Pieces don’t rotate or move once they’ve been slid in.

A game of digital Tetris can go on for HOURS because every time you complete a row, it disappears, helping clear out a part of the screen for more gameplay. That feature doesn’t exist in this LEGO version, which makes for a fairly shorter game… but calculating scores is much easier, allowing you to correspond the uppermost complete row to the line on the scoreboard right beside it. You can, however, reset the entire game in a flash by hitting the red Reset button on the left side of the matrix grid and have all the bricks drop down into the bin below. The alternative would be to manually lift each brick out of the lid, which sounds a little too problematic…

The Tetris bricks are referred to as tetrominoes, and come in 7 shapes that correspond with letters of the alphabet (I, O, T, J, L, S, and Z). The bricks are color-coded to make things easier to understand (after all, we recognize colors MUCH faster than we do shapes) for all people, and the game allows as many as 6 players, with colorful studs that you can press into the scoreboard to mark your highest scores.

This LEGO kit comes from the mind of independent builder victorvey300, who put his passion for LEGO and his love for Tetris together to create this incredibly comprehensive MOC (my own creation). Victor’s submission is a part of LEGO’s Ideas forum, a community-driven site where passionate LEGO creators build their own structures and users vote for their favorite ones. With over 5000 votes, this LEGO Tetris set is cruising comfortably to hit the 10,000 vote mark, which is then followed by LEGO’s own internal team reviewing the submission before turning it into a retail set. If you want, you can vote for the LEGO Ideas Tetris set too simply by visiting the LEGO Ideas website here.

The post This Actually Playable LEGO Tetris Set Celebrates the Digital Game’s 40th Anniversary first appeared on Yanko Design.

Mercedes-Benz as an automotive icon has set the tone for the 21st century with supercars like AMG GT and the CLA concept. The German marque has pushed the limits of automotive technology, design aesthetics and luxurious comfort for purists who desire nothing but the best with the least strings attached.

Lately, we had a fancy for wild concepts like the Dresscode which is inspired by the smooth silhouettes of a classy suit and now we’ve tripped over another Mercedes-Benz supercar concept that derives inspiration from the beauty of silent luxury. This core idea is combined with the shapes of musical instruments (a Harp to be precise) to create a concept that harmonizes the pure and geometric form. Thus the namesake, Mercedes-Benz Harp!

Designer: ByeongIn Oh

The front of the concept Mercedes car is inspired by the W196R Formula-1 racing car developed for the 1954 and 1955 seasons. Of course, the front grille is not that open and is streamlined along the front seam for a more modern aesthetic look. This is combined with the asymmetric windshield panel to the rear which has a polygon and pure sculpture shape. The contrast between the contoured front and the sharp rear gives the HARP a distinct persona. It’s just like a god-like figure draped in the most beautiful costume.

The way those strings are aligned with the rear explains the asymmetric shape of the rear which when viewed from the top looks like a Harp in motion. Even the rear lights are shaped like strings which I think should trickle down to a real car coming from Mercedes Benz. Moving on to the interiors, they have two contrasting sections – a silent compartment for people who seek solitude and an open compartment for people who want to socialize.

The Mercedes-Benz Harp concept is an interesting take on silent luxury, artist forms and the pleasure of driving. And yes, I almost forgot to mention the contrasting color hues of matte silver and glossy black!

The post Mercedes-Benz supercar concept is the first automobile to have a music instrument built into its exterior first appeared on Yanko Design.

French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance has shown three collections highlighting European vernacular craft traditions at New York gallery Demisch Danant during NYCxDesign.

Duchaufour-Lawrance showed three collections under the Made In Situ collection at the downtown Manhattan gallery Demisch Danant.

Ranging from furniture lined with bark to beeswax candles where the wax becomes part of the candle, the pieces derive from Duchaufour-Lawrance’s experience in small European communities and their ecosystems, as well as the unity between craftsmanship and natural processes.

The designer travelled to each place to act as an interpreter between different vernacular traditions and between the traditions and his audience.

“My approach has been reversed,” said Duchaufour-Lawrance.

“The idea no longer creates the piece of furniture or the object, it is the practice of the artisan and his knowledge of the material, which determines or imposes it.”

“By moving from one design to another, as a designer I became more like a translator,” he continued.

Visitors entering the glass-walled entrance to the gallery first saw a collection of graphic work dedicated to the Made In Situ collection, which has been an ongoing process over the past five years, including explorations in burnt cork furniture.

The first set of objects was Chêne & Liège, a collection of chairs, shelving and lamps that showcases the process of collecting oak cork in France.

According to the designer, the oak-cork bark is an important aspect in making forests fire-resistant, but must be removed for the health of the trees.

Here, material from the trunks of burnt trees was combined with healthy bark harvested with the help of local lumberjacks, harvesters and woodworkers to showcase the range of the material in nature.

“Together, the wood salvaged from the flames and the healthy bark create furniture of a paradoxical nature that is crafted with an awareness of social and environmental issues,” said the gallery.

The next collection included panels of azulejos – Portuguese tiles – painted and shaped by the artist with the help of craftspeople in Lisbon.

Each of the panels, which are backed by wood structures reminiscent of boats, represents different points on the coastline between Brittany and Portugal to interrogate “the meaning and materialization of memories and the connection to the mighty ocean,” according to the team.

An LED light installation with undulating blue shades was showcased on the wall to further the oceanic theme of this collection.

Finally, an array of beeswax candle holders were presented in the back of the shop.

The holders were crafted in many different sizes and have forms based on the processes of smelting the designer experienced in a propeller factory in Peniche, Portugal.

Duchaufour-Lawrance then travelled across Portugal, working with beekeepers to collect different types of wax to fashion into darkly coloured candles.

The wax is meant to “solidify directly with the bronze” of the holders, and the gallery noted that one of the pieces has sold with the melted wax still intact.

The photography is by Lucas Creighton.

Made In Situ is on show at Demisch Danant from 16 May to 29 June. See the NYCxDesign 2024  guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

The post Bark-lined furniture among showcase of Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance’s work in New York appeared first on Dezeen.

Arkansas has claimed its first bikeable structure – a ramped office building in Bentonville designed by Michel Rojkind, Callaghan Horiuchi and Marlon Blackwell Architects.

Completed at the end of 2022, the 230,000-square foot (21,368-square metre) mixed-use office is known as The Ledger.

A collaboration between Mexican architect Michel Rojkind and Arkansas-based studios Callaghan Horiuchi and Marlon Blackwell Architects, the building was “designed to be community-centric”.

The Ledger – with its ziggurat-like form and its blocky neighbouring parking garage – is one of the tallest structures in Bentonville and offers a diverse range of amenities for workers and locals.

While the city is most famously known for being the birthplace of Walmart, it has dubbed itself the “mountain biking capital of the world,” prompting the design team to integrate a 12-foot (3.5-metre) wide ramp into the side of each floor.

The paved concrete pathway ramps approximately 1,900 feet (580 metres) back and forth across the building’s eastern facade.

“Blurring the lines of where the building begins and the sidewalk ends, pedestrian ramps extend up into the air, a continuous zig-zag of movement up the eastside of the building along Main Street, inviting the public up onto a series of stepping terraces, scaling the building to the surrounding context, inviting moments of refuge and prospect,” the team said.

The floor plates – composed almost entirely of open office space, empty save the structural steel columns for tenant finish out – shift north and south, forming a series of alternating covered terraces on the short ends of the rectangular levels.

In effect, the ramp and terraces create a vertical park that can be biked from the street to the uppermost outdoor balcony.

The sixth-floor terrace holds bike racks and features a wide central staircase that ascends to the open roof deck, where a thin copper-coloured screen conceals circulation and mechanical systems.

The levels are wrapped in bands of vertical glass plans, but the ramping floor plates are delineated by bands of patinated copper paneling.

“Tracing the lines of the ramp, copper cladding provides a warm tactility akin to the warm tones of the brick buildings around the historic square,” the team said.

Invisible from the street, a surprising detail emerges on the ramp. Ninety-five glass mosaics depicting insects are set into the concrete. The creations by Australian graphic artist Stefan Sagmeister crawl up the inclined path, toward an inscription on the sixth-floor terrace that reads “Now is better.”

The insects aren’t the only life forms memorialised in the structure. The concrete parking garage – screened on either end by multi-coloured copper windscreens – touts two large kinetic fish that glitter in the sunlight.

Also in Bentonville, Marlon Blackwell Architects designed a private school composed of a series of asymmetrical, angular buildings in bright reds and greens. Those colours also appear in the façade of the pediatric clinic the studio designed in nearby Rogers, Arkansas.

The photography is by Timothy Hursley.

Project credits:

Design architect: Michel Rojkind
Design architect and design manager: Callaghan Horiuchi
Design architect and architect of record: Marlon Blackwell Architects

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