Dezeen Showroom: designer Tianning Zhao highlights the beauty of both light and shadow in this portable and versatile lamp, which can be used indoors and outdoors.
The Astral table lamp has a petite form, with a domed white diffuser atop a smoky translucent body.
The Astral lamp is small and portable
The lamp emits a warm glow that Zhao said is meant to evoke the feeling of a candle – enhancing rather than drowning out the evening’s atmosphere.
“Astral creates a serene lit environment which helps people appreciate the beauty of both light and shadows at night,” said Tianning Zhao.
The lamp emits a cosy, warm glow
“In the absence of daylight, foliage and bodies of water capture subtly reflected light,” he continued. “I enjoy this soft and quiet light in the evening which feels as if its illumination is growing from the darkness”
The Astral lamp is made of polyethylene plastic and lit by two LED rings. It is portable and can be charged wirelessly.
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Outdoor lamps are a dime a dozen, but the vast majority of them come in rather serious and rugged designs. That’s unsurprising considering how most people will probably want a reliable light source that doesn’t require much fuss or fiddling to set up. That, however, doesn’t mean there’s no more room for a pinch of frivolity and whimsy, especially if you’re more interested in adding some luminous accents over actually illuminating your campsite or backyard. That’s the kind of experience that this toy-like lantern is offering, adding an element of fun to outdoor nighttime activities with a simple twist.
Designer: iu Llong (for Havnby)
Camping lanterns, or any lamp designed for outdoor use for that matter, are often rugged and simple to operate. The last thing you want to bother with in the dark of night is fighting with your advanced but complicated lighting solution. Sometimes what you need, however, isn’t just light but entertainment and enjoyment, which the Twist Camping Lantern delivers by turning its function into a more engaging physical activity, almost like a game or a toy.
Inspired by the “gashapon” Japanese vending machines that dispense random capsule-encased toys, this lantern employs a twisting mechanism to not only turn on its light but also change the mood. It’s made of two truncated cones joined at their bases, and each half controls a different aspect of the lighting. Turning one side controls the brightness of the light while the opposite side affects the temperature of the light, from cool white to warm red. Since there are no distinct levels or markers, changing these settings involves a bit of discovery and uncertainty, adding to the excitement that the experience provides.
The capsule-shaped lamp also has another unique element: its hanging clip. The clip can not only hang from hooks or cables but even from poles, as a self-locking mechanism makes it stay in place. This clip is actually also made of two halves magnetically joined at the end, providing an easy way to attach those poles without having to slide the lantern from the top or bottom.
The Twist Camping Lantern’s light might admittedly be too low to illuminate the whole campsite at night, so it’s more of a mood setter than an all-in-one light source. In some cases, however, it might just be enough for the activity, like reading inside a tent or having a backyard party. Its design and mechanism, simple as they might sound, significantly change the image of the lantern from one of utility to one of enjoyment, inviting users to have a little fun underneath the starry skies.
A collection celebrating the first collaboration between Levi’s and McLaren Racing, it’s designed with vintage vibes, colors and details. This one style for all denim racing suit is our favorite piece in the collection. Featuring an easy, straight leg cut, drop crotch, patches and printed art it’s an easy wear around the house or a day at the track.
Located alongside a river in Dien Phuong, the workshop was constructed to complement Terra Cotta Studio, a cuboid brick structure designed by the studio in 2016 for artist Le Huc Da.
Tropical Space has added a workshop space to a pottery studio in Vietnam
For its expansion, Tropical Space added a cluster of new structures to the rural site: a cylindrical brick wrapped around an existing, traditional kiln and a series of workshop spaces linked by a route for tourists.
Perforated brick walls provide shade and allow fresh air to circulate through these spaces, while open shelving around its edges creates areas for work to be displayed to visitors.
A series of new structures are wrapped with perforated brick
“The building becomes an ‘organic’ part of the workshop’s daily activities and the surrounding environment,” explained Tropical Space.
“The experiential area for visitors is at the outer side, along the long brick wall. This space connects to the Terra Cotta Studio by an outdoor walkway.”
“This is where people can try to ‘touch the clay’, create their own souvenir, and listen to stories told by the craftsmen,” it added.
A cylindrical brick structure contains a kiln
The kiln itself is housed within a cylindrical brick form at the centre of the workshops, topped by a skylight and chimney.
Surrounding the central kiln is a “folded” rectilinear volume containing the workshop spaces, topped by sloping metal roofs.
A long, open-air corridor cuts through the centre of the workshop buildings and connects with a courtyard-like space around the edge of the kiln, which has been paved with what the studio describes as “failed products and leftovers”.
“The round wall embraces the old kiln, creates a simple block and fits neatly within the flat walls,” said the studio.
“Inside, the architectural space opens opportunities to highlight activities that have never been fully seen before,” it added.
Workshop spaces wrap around the centralised kiln
While the workshops are completely open around the edge of the site, facing inwards a series of low, narrow openings provide a layering of views through the central space.
“Once people sit down, viewing through the brick walls’ low openings at the eye level expands the vision towards different corners of the terra cotta workshop,” described the practice.
“That connection even extends beyond the scope of the project to the surrounding landscape, the garden, Terra Cotta Studio and bamboo bushes next to the river,” it added.
As monocultures continue to spread sameness throughout the human and natural world, Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter set out ways that designers can ensure they maintain creative diversity.
Intentional or not, the modern era has been, in many ways, a quest for sameness: globalised markets, monoculture crops, standardised protocols.
We need some sameness. It’s efficient, it puts food on the table, helps people coordinate and helps ideas spread. Standards can be useful. It’s convenient that within countries and regions the shape of power outlets is the same, and then glaringly annoying when you bring an electronic device overseas and need to find an adaptor.
Monoculture is popping up everywhere
But sameness also spreads trouble, and at an alarming pace. In the last 300 years, biodiversity has plummeted and we’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction of species in the last 500 million years. Cultural diversity has nosedived alongside and a language goes extinct every few weeks.
And “ideadiversity” – a new word we made up to capture flexibility of thought – may be at an all-time low as present-day politics and policies cement us into binary choices and media becomes a copy-paste perpetuation of borrowed memes and knee-jerk reactions.
As our cultures become reduced to fit into a global context, the diversity of our designs suffer too. We become stuck between runaway design – where immediate utility is valued above long-term wisdom – and a monoculture of design – where the simplicity of sameness allows you to speak to an audience of all through the broad and bland.
As much as increasing monoculture (in all ways) is an outcome of globalisation, an overarching design goal for the present and future has to be to preserve diversity while working across it. Superficially, monoculture is popping up everywhere in mimicked trends like Instagrammable faux flower photo walls and white subway tile splash guards at restaurants around the globe.
Part of this is the growing influence of algorithms in curating our experiences rather than humans with unique sensibilities and tastes. In his book Filterworld, Kyle Chayka calls these fast moving trends that are dictated by algorithms “cultural flattening”.
Monocultures lack diversity, and that’s the very thing we need to retain if we are to allow for design to flourish. Places that contain a lot of biodiversity tend to also be places with a lot of cultural and language diversity.
To design differently, we need to cultivate different ways to think
Cultural diversity is like biodiversity for the imagination. It promotes possibility and cultivates creativity and care. It gives our designs greater life; they become surprising, innovative and as diverse as the communities they develop within.
To design differently, we need to cultivate different ways to think. We call the nimble switching across ways of thinking and doing “shapeshifting”. To shapeshift requires pushing the fringes of our disciplines and experience and exploring where they overlap with others. This breeds possibility, and we need as much possibility as we can get.
Here are some ways to shapeshift your design work.
One: shapeshift your imagination. Metaphors impact how we think and how we act. Metaphors also help shift your thinking. In fact, metaphors mould our thinking even when we’re not thinking about them. For example, you may not think about the direction “up” when you talk about being in “high spirits”, but it’s there.
When envisioning how your next idea should work, try on a few different metaphors. It’s as simple as just layering one idea on top of another to see how it feels and what it reveals, then trying something else. You can do it when you’re facing a decision, trying to look at a problem in a new way, or trying to break some old habit. The key is to shift from one metaphor to another to expose what you might be missing (rather than getting hung up on any given one).
Two: mimic to shift. Analogous research (also called analogous inspiration) is the act of observing one situation to learn about another. Analogous inspiration does everything a good metaphor is supposed to – namely, changing how you see the world by highlighting some things and downplaying others.
Legend has it that the Apple Genius Bar was inspired by Apple designers chatting up concierges at fine hotels
The trick is to find one aspect of your current situation that needs some attention and think of another circumstance that could give you a different way to think about just that bit. Then go check it out.
The most famous versions of analogous inspiration tend to come from high-end product design. Legend has it that the Apple Genius Bar was inspired by Apple designers chatting up concierges at fine hotels. Analogous inspiration is a way to unlock new opportunities.
Three: the right (thinking) tool for the job. One major problem in how we create is using the wrong thinking tool at the wrong time. People shapeshift into kinds of thinking styles, but two fundamentals stand out in the ways we try to make sense of things: serial and spatial thinking.
Serial thinking is linear and relies on cause-and-effect chains like stories, arguments and logic. Spatial thinking is focused on comparison, like maps, diagrams, sketches and visual arrangements.
None is better or worse or more or less true. But sometimes we get tangled up in cause and effect when we should really be searching for similarity. Other times we’re noticing dazzling patterns when we really need to tell the story of why they matter.
The way we make sense of things sets our course. As you approach anything you are trying to understand, start with what you think you need to reveal. Then try some mental shapeshifting and see what sticks.
In a world of staggering sameness and twitchy, fast moving cultural flows, tactics that leave room to morph, change and pave our own ways can help us flourish. We need all kinds of diversity – cultural diversity, biodiversity and ideadiversity – to stay resilient. This mental flexibility and interconnected diversity, rather than all-consuming monoculture or rampant disconnection, can make sure design remains a door to many possibilities.
Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter are the creative and academic directors, respectively, at the Stanford d.school. They are co-authors of Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future (Ten Speed Press, 2024).
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Lisbon-based studio SIA Arquitectura has completed Casa da Encosta n Grândola, Portugal, which has a series of lime-rendered volumes wrapped around a central courtyard.
Encompassing a main home and four smaller, near-identical guesthouses, Casa da Encosta draws on traditional architecture of the region – with the studio opting for “ancient” materials such as wood and lime render.
SIA Arquitectura has completed a home with lime-rendered walls in Portugal
“The design was inspired by the traditional architecture of this coastal region of Portugal, which is closely tied to basic local materials and techniques,” studio co-founder Ana Cravinho told Dezeen.
“We studied the scale of these buildings and drew inspiration from their often delicate and fragile nature, while being highly responsive to the territory and the people.”
The residence is comprised of a series of volumes
To increase the home’s privacy, SIA Arquitectura organised the volumes at the site’s outer edge, surrounding a centralised garden, to act as a “protective wall”.
The main home, which sits at the raised end of the sloping site, is composed of two parallel volumes bridged together by a central, perpendicular volume that contains a spacious living area with large, sliding doors that open up to the garden.
A living space leads out to the adjacent garden
A pitched wooden roof tops the central space and extends to shelter a portion of the two adjacent volumes, as well as shade an external patio.
In one of the adjacent volumes, two en-suite bedrooms are similarly lined with large openings that look out to a private courtyard space enclosed by lime-rendered walls, while the other volume hosts additional living, kitchen and storage space.
In keeping with the main house, the four smaller guest homes are each encased by a main external wall and divided internally by a central unit and wall that demarcates the living, bedroom and bathroom spaces. Shaded courtyards flank each of these four volumes.
A restricted material palette is used throughout the interior spaces, with wooden features and black accents contrasting the lime-rendered walls, and glazed tiles repeated across the wet spaces.
Small courtyards flank the home’s bedrooms
“We aimed to have a consistent materiality throughout to blur the boundaries between indoors and outdoors,” Cravinho said.
“Also we wanted to echo the sandy landscape typical of this area and create a seamless connection between the house and the land.”
Wooden features and black accents contrast the lime-rendered walls
SIA Arquitectura is an architecture studio based in Lisbon, Portugal, established in 2007 by Cravinho, Ines Cordovil and Sofia Pinto Basto.
British studio RSHP has received planning consent to build cylindrical housing blocks within Victorian gas holders at the Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks in London.
RSHP‘s plans to redevelop the gasworks will include refurbishing the Grade II-listed gas holder frames, which date back to the 1870s, and building residential buildings within and around them.
RSHP has received planning consent to redevelop the Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks site in London
The redevelopment, which was approved by the London Borough of Newham’s Strategic Development Committee, will reopen the site the the public after being inaccessible for 150 years.
“RSHP’s design for the 23-acre Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks site, home of the biggest collection of Victorian gas holders anywhere in the world, unlocks one of the most technically complex regeneration areas in the Lower Lea Valley,” said the studio.
Cylindrical housing will be built within the Victorian gas holders
“The experience of being close to these majestic structures, inaccessible for so long and which sit centre-stage within this unique mixed-use development, will now be available to all,” added RSHP associate partner Andy Bryce.
“The proposal will create a lasting and meaningful legacy for Londoners that extends far beyond the site.”
Taller residential towers will be built on the edges of the Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks site
Two building typologies will be built on the brownfield site. Seven gas holder buildings rising from four to 10 storeys tall will be located inside each of the existing gas holder frames.
Six slimmer cylindrical buildings, ranging from 15 to 33 storeys tall, will also be built at the edges of the site.
The 13 residential buildings will have faceted exteriors decorated with vertical strips of colour.
“Form, height and material characteristics of the proposed buildings within the gas holders take their cues from the frames themselves, preserving their memorable image, silhouetted against the sky as icons of an industrial past,” said the studio
The Grade II-listed gas holders will be preserved and refurbished
A water feature will be added to the centre of the site, set within the footprint of a former gas holder that was destroyed during world war two.
One of the gas holders’ substructures will be relocated next to the water feature and used as a community hub, aiming to provide additional public space that is connected to a park by pedestrian and cycle paths.
The substructure of one of the gas holders will be reused as a community hub
“The proposal will create a new neighbourhood for east London within a unique urban composition, sited within an extensive riverside park,” said RSHP senior director Graham Stirk.
“The project creates a fantastic place for people to live and work, as well as a new leisure destination for all.”
Construction is planned to commence in 2025, following the finalisation of a Section 106 planning agreement.
Architect: RSHP Development manager: St William Homes Structural engineer: Ramboll Mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer: Ramboll Landscape architect: Gillespies Community consultation: Iceni Planning consultants: Quod Heritage and townscape: Montagu Evans
“We believe in innovation and the poetic power of architecture, to influence and change the way people live, while striking a balance between the man-made and nature,” the studio told Dezeen.
Open Architecture won Architect of the Year at Dezeen Awards China 2023. The judges remarked that the studio “has consistently produced architecture that is radical and poetic but also functional. Its daring work strikes a rare balance between the man-made and the natural, with often spectacular results.”
Li Hu and Huang Wenjing among Dezeen Awards China 2024 judges.
The early entry deadline for Dezeen Awards China 2024 is 16 July. Register your details and submit your projects by then to save 20 per cent on your entry fee.
Read on to find Open Architecture’s views on the five projects that best reflect their work.
“This project is a sanctuary for art and the body hidden beneath the coastal dunes. The cavernous spaces and the works within are softly and subtly lit.
“The museum’s design is simple and pure, attempting to return to the most primitive and timeless spatial form. A series of cell-like continuous spaces form the gallery’s exhibition halls, like caves created by excavation.
“The location of the gallery underneath the dunes is both a respect for nature and a form of protection. Its presence guarantees the preservation of the dunes’ fragile ecosystem that has been built up over the centuries.”
“Tank Shanghai aims to integrate the city, landscape and art, providing an open and inclusive 60,000 square metres public space.
“A group of abandoned aviation fuel tanks that once served Shanghai Longhua Airport were revitalised over a six-year period into a comprehensive art centre.
“The project defines a new era of urban art institutions, integrating parks and art exhibitions, landscapes and architectural spaces and industrial heritage and innovation.”
“Located about two hours drive from Beijing, the Valley Concert Hall is like a boulder from the distant past that has landed in a valley overlooking the Great Wall.
“The building consists of a semi-outdoor concert hall, several viewing platforms facing the valley, an outdoor stage facing the grassy slopes and a small number of indoor spaces such as musicians’ studios.
“These studios are used for a variety of professional performances including chamber music and dance, as well as for solo contemplation and community gatherings.
“This is a building sculpted from the inside out by sound. We hope that people can see the shape of sound or hear the sound of silence.”
“The multi-functional cultural and sports centre is the centrepiece of Shanfeng Bilingual School, providing the most important public space for the campus.
“The project includes theatres, exhibition spaces, a library, gymnasium, dance and fitness classrooms, swimming pools and a cafe among other functions.
“The spaces in between the five volumes that compose the project create four gardens dedicated to the seasons, bringing nature into the daily life of the space.
“Acting as an interface between the campus and the city, it also shares cultural facilities with the surrounding community.”
“The Sun Tower is a unique cultural centre positioned by the sun’s trajectory, reconnecting people with nature and the universe.
“The position and movement of the sun at the spring equinox, fall equinox, summer solstice and winter solstice is skillfully captured by the building. The building becomes the stage for a spectacle of light and shadow.
“Here people experience the power of nature, the meaning of time and the wonder of the universe.
“We hope to create a unique work of dual-purpose: an art installation that directs people’s attention to time, seasons and natural phenomena on the one hand, and a useful public landmark on the other.
“It is a lighthouse of the soul that combines reverence for nature with contemporary cultural activities.”
Dezeen Awards China 2024 is open for entries. Find out about all of this year’s categories and log in or create an account to start your entries. Enter before 16 July to benefit from our discounted early entry prices.
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Dezeen Awards China 2024 in partnership with Bentley
Dezeen Awards China is the first regional edition of Dezeen Awards which celebrates the best architecture, interiors and design in China. The annual awards programme is in partnership with Bentley as part of a wider collaboration to inspire, support and champion design excellence and showcase innovation that creates a better and more sustainable world. This ambition complements Bentley’s architecture and design business initiatives, including the Bentley Home range of furnishings and real estate projects around the world.
We’re in a unique period of innovation where we’ve discovered AI, but we’re seeing how good it is at some things, and how bad it is at others. For starters, AI is great at proofreading – it’s terrible at coming up with life advice. It’s great at understanding objects and subjects in a video – it’s terrible at making videos of its own. It makes sense to leverage the good parts of AI, rather than fumble with the bad ones – and that’s something the folks at OBSBOT have capitalized on. Their latest Tiny 2 4K webcam uses AI in all sorts of ways to enhance what a webcam does. It understands voice commands and will capture video accordingly. It can automatically follow a subject, zooming in on them when necessary, and zoom out when multiple subjects enter the frame. When you can’t give voice commands (maybe you’re in the middle of a presentation), hand gestures help the Tiny 2 understand how to compose a shot. You can use it to track subjects, or even focus on body parts like hands while writing or making art, or feet during dance practices. A dedicated whiteboard mode lets the Tiny 2 hone in on a board during presentations, and if you want to broadcast your workspace while on call, Desk Mode lets you get a perfect top view of your work. If all that wasn’t enough, the OBSBOT Tiny 2 also packs a massive 1/1.5″ CMOS sensor capable of delivering 4K, with ISO switching for day and night settings, HDR for great contrast, and all-pixel auto-focus for accurate focusing and blurring even in low light settings. It might look like a webcam, but it’s a 4K action camera mounted on a gimbal with AI chops.
Designer: OBSBOT
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The Tiny 2 builds on the success of the OBSBOT Tiny, which launched in 2019. Visually, it retains the same gimbal-mounted template that was such a smash hit 5 years ago… but on the hardware and software front, the Tiny 2 comes with some impressive upgrades, making it perfect for office presentations, streaming, podcasting, vlogging, gaming, basic content creation or just being able to livestream – something that’s been gaining popularity over the years. It becomes tricky (and sometimes expensive) to splurge on an entire professional recording setup, with multiple devices, wires, etc… but that’s where the Tiny 2 is such a powerhouse. Although it parades around as a webcam, the 1/1.5″ CMOS sensor inside the Tiny 2 measures roughly 5x larger than the sensors found on most webcams. A bigger sensor means more light, better clarity, clearer videos in low-light, and the ability to shoot higher definition. The Tiny 2 outputs 4K video, which on its own is impressive for a webcam, but also has a few extra tricks up its sleeve.
AI Tracking with Auto Zoom
Unparalleled 4K Video: Combining the 1/1.5’’ CMOS and OBSBOT camera calibration technology, OBSBOT Tiny 2 brings sharper detail, a higher dynamic range, and more natural color, as they are seen in the natural world.
The webcam comes with two native ISOs, allowing it to quickly switch between different lighting conditions. While almost every other webcam adjusts its image by manipulating exposure, the Tiny 2 relies on dual native ISOs to help it adjust in day and night settings. This effectively means much more accurate color capture without overexposed burn spots in bright scenarios and noisy images in low-light settings. The two ISO settings effectively mean the webcam can capture two photos together at the same time – a feature that allows the Tiny 2 to produce sharp HDR video that’s comparable to the kind seen on flagship smartphones… but in real-time, and without any motion blur. Speaking of blur, the Tiny 2 also gets OBSBOT’s All-Pixel Auto Focus feature, which works most faster than cameras that use phase detection to hone in on subjects. It relies on every single pixel on its 50MP sensor to focus on subjects, working 4x faster even in low-light settings.
Control the OBSBOT Tiny 2 with just your voice, even if your hand is full.
That, however, is just half of what the Tiny 2 can boast of. While the original OBSBOT Tiny did come with AI tracking and gesture control, the new webcam on the block adds voice commands to the mix too. All AI features get major enhancements thanks to OBSBOT’s proprietary deep neural learning network algorithm. This means better subject recognition (with the ability to track you as you move around and even zoom in on you to compose a better frame), and advanced gesture recognition. You can now zoom in 4X with a simple hand gesture, or move your hands closer or further to have the camera zoom in or out, sort of like a movie director. If your hands are occupied, voice commands let you tell the Tiny 2 to track or untrack you, zoom in or out, or go to predetermined positions. You can now even tell the Tiny 2 to go to sleep or wake up through a simple voice command. Dual omnidirectional microphones allow the Tiny 2 to capture clear audio from anywhere, whether you’re sitting in front of it while streaming, or presenting to it from a few feet away.
Desk Mode
The Tiny 2’s neural learning allows it to track hands too, or even track body parts for unique choreographic styles. A Desk Mode lets you point your camera down at your desk and automatically have it keystone the video for a top-view shot. A companion remote controller lets you micro-adjust the Tiny 2, and even has a Whiteboard Mode, allowing the webcam to focus on a whiteboard in the room, cropping everything out for perfect presentations. Without the remote control, the webcam does have the ability to move around on its own, thanks to a 2-axis gimbal system. You can even manually adjust the Tiny 2’s frame with your hands, or face it downwards when you want it to go to sleep for your own privacy.
A lot of other power features remain the same (because why fix something that isn’t broken), like the presence of various mounts that let you attach your webcam to a monitor, a tripod, or even a ceiling mount. The Tiny 2’s angle can easily be adjusted, and for social content creators, you can record in 4K in portrait mode too – something that other webcams could only dream of. A companion desktop application known as the OBSBOT Center lets you adjust a myriad of settings like focus and AFK or Away From Keyboard protocols. There’s a ‘Beauty Mode’ too, just in case you’re having a bad skin day, and virtual backgrounds you can choose from. The app even lets you set hot keys and shortcuts that you can either map onto your keyboard, or onto an Elgato Stream Deck for that professional-grade setup.
All this advancement puts the OBSBOT Tiny 2 in a category of its own. The $329 price tag may seem high for the webcam category, but then again, it’s vastly better than your average $50 webcam, and it’s also fairly cheaper than most 4K action cameras that professionals tend to use for recording/live-streaming… plus where else could you get advanced AI-powered tracking, gesture-recognition, and voice command control? Besides, grab the Tiny 2 on Prime Day and you’ll get yourself a 10% discount – $296. Deal activates on July 16th! No matter your requirements or your budget, the OBSBOT Tiny 2 ticks all the right boxes.
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Bangladesh, a country where up to 80% of the land is classified as floodplain, faces significant challenges with flooding, impacting its population of around 170 million. In response to this critical issue, Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, in collaboration with engineers AKT II, has created the Khudi Bari—a simple, low-cost, and highly functional tiny house designed to offer a safe and affordable home adaptable to the country’s challenging conditions.
The Khudi Bari, meaning “small house” in Bengali, stands out for its innovative and practical design. Raised above the ground and accessed via a ladder, this tiny house is not built on wheels but is designed to be easily assembled, dismantled, and relocated without the need for specialist tools. This feature is particularly crucial for Bangladeshi residents who need to quickly move to higher ground to escape encroaching floodwaters.
The construction of this house prioritizes sustainability and local resource utilization. The primary building material is bamboo, complemented by prefabricated recycled aluminum nodes that allow for easy assembly. The walls and roof can be sourced locally and crafted from materials such as polycarbonate and metal. This approach not only reduces costs but also supports local economies.
The interior of the Khudi Bari ranges from 64 sq ft (5.95 sq m) to 144 sq ft (13.4 sq m), consisting of a single, versatile room. This space can be adapted to meet the needs of its occupants, with the area beneath the raised house available for additional living space if necessary. Despite its simplicity, the Khudi Bari provides a dignified living environment for those in need.
The Khudi Bari is not just a conceptual design, it has been put into real-world use. Over 100 units have already been deployed throughout Bangladesh, significantly improving the living conditions for vulnerable populations. The project has been carried out in collaboration with relief organizations and community groups, demonstrating a successful model of community-driven, sustainable architecture.
One of the units is currently showcased at the Vitra Campus in Germany, an exhibition space run by the renowned furniture maker Vitra, known for featuring exceptional architectural designs. This international exposure highlights the global relevance and innovative nature of the Khudi Bari project.
While the exact cost of each unit is not specified, initial prototypes were produced for around £300 (approximately US$380). Efforts are ongoing to further reduce this cost, making the Khudi Bari even more accessible to those in need. This initiative is part of a broader trend in architecture aimed at addressing the impacts of climate change, with similar projects like the Floating Bamboo House and Blooming Bamboo House also contributing to sustainable and resilient housing solutions.
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