Young Serbian architect and 3D artist Milan Stevanović created these convincingly photo-realistic renderings of an imaginary Scandinavian interior furnished with favourite design pieces he found on the internet.
Stevanović, who says he has “a soft spot for Scandinavian architecture and lifestyle,” created the images in his spare time, using 3ds Max to model the furniture and cloth simulations created in Marvelous Designer.
Creating an all-white interior with a Scandinavian theme, he experimented with different lighting setups and moods to see how they would affect the space and materials.
“Most of the furniture pieces caught my attention while browsing different design websites, and in my personal opinion are great examples of a fresh new furniture design,” Stevanović told Dezeen. “My intent was to create clean and bright interior design, and group all of these furniture pieces together.”
Pieces in the room include the Haluz rocking chair by Czech designer Tomáš Vacek and the Slap cabinet by Italian studio Whatwelike To Design, which Stevanović “modified a little bit so it fits better to my needs.”
Stevanović designed the pallett-based sofa himself and added three coffee tables: Vitra’s Eames Occasional Table LTR, by the rocking chair, the Rolf Benz 8480 coffee table by the sofa and Normann Copenhagen Tablo table.
“As for the wood/wire floor lamp, I stumbled on it on the internet, but unfortunately I couldn’t find the name of the designer,” says Stevanović, who has added an artwork by his brother, Jovan Stevanović, leading against the wall in the left corner of the room.
Furniture was modelled with simple poly-modelling techniques, Stevanović says, using the Cloth modifier for sofa and the MassFX modifier for the Haluz rocking chair.
“It is a fantasy,” Stevanović said of the project. “Most of [the items] I modelled from scratch; others, like books, tulips and that kind of stuff I find online. Some of them are free some of them you can buy.”
Dutch Design Week 2013: from synthetic biology to 3D printing, technologies that could signal the future of fashion are demonstrated in garments and accessories at an exhibition in Eindhoven (+ slideshow).
Object 12-1 by Matija Čop
For the Modebelofte 2013 Future Fashions exhibition, Eindhoven fashion store You Are Here and Amsterdam agency Glamcult Studio collaborated to select young fashion designers who have worked with technologists, to create experimental new materials or recycle old ones.
Design by Rianne Suk
“We tried to make it about technology and innovation, as well as handcraft,” curator Ellen Albers of You Are Here told Dezeen.
The range of projects on display was curated to show how different technologies can be applied to fashion design and textiles, plus adapted for other applications.
Designs by Sadie Williams (left), Jef Montes (centre) and Ana Rajcevic
“[The exhibition is] an examination of what these new techniques can do for us, and how can we bring designers and companies together so that they can use the techniques for other kinds of things,” said Albers.
Items on displays are split into two groups, one on each floor of a dilapidated former fire commander’s house.
Design by Jef Montes
The ground floor contains pieces categorised as Revolutionary Innovations, which were created using processes such as 3D printing, laser cutting and moulding techniques.
On the first floor, the Hyper Crafts section displays exaggerated uses of traditional techniques such as pleating, knitting, embroidery and woodworking.
Barkfur, a synthetically-created biomaterial, is used by Danish designer Laerke Hooge Andersen to suggest how we could grow clothing directly onto the body in the future.
Dutch Design Week 2013: Dutch artist Arne Hendriks proposes shrinking the human population to an average height of 50 centimetres as a way to reduce the amount of food and natural resources we consume.
The Incredible Shrinking Man is a speculative project devised by Arne Hendriks in response to the current trend for a taller population, which he claims is no longer “a desired result in an age of increasing scarcity”.
Hendriks, himself almost two metres tall, accepts that the increased height of the global population is the result of better food, medicine, hygiene and living circumstances, but argues that being taller today represents “a burden, on ourselves and on the planet.” He therefore presents a range of conceptual ways to reverse the trend.
“At 50 centimetres we’d only need about 2-5 percent of the resources we need now,” Hendriks points out. “If the 20th century was all about growth, perhaps the 21st century is about downsizing.”
Lactose intolerance celebration in Beijing
His proposals for obtaining the “theoretical goal” of a universal height of 50 centimetres include elixirs that support slower growth and genetic growth experiments with zebrafish. Hendriks also organised a party in Beijing celebrating lactose intolerance, as the inability to digest milk contributes to slower growth.
Despite potential disadvantages, such as a brain size that “wouldn’t be much bigger than a walnut”, Hendriks claims that the height reduction would allow the entire global population to fit in the world’s six largest urban centres, leaving the rest of the planet free for agriculture. Only renewable energy would be needed and “one chicken will feed a hundred”.
The Disproportionate Restaurant
Initiatives undertaken as part of The Incredible Shrinking Man project include investigative workshops, exhibitions and the creation of a Disproportionate Restaurant that serves portions tailored to the 50-centimetre-tall customer of the future.
The project won the Future Concepts category at last week’s Dutch Design Awards, where the selection committee said: “It is performed with so much zest that you can only take the idea seriously.”
It’s been a long established trend that people become taller. As a direct result we need more resources, more food, more energy and more space. The body has become a materialization of our obsession with growth. But what if we tried to turn this around? What if we use our increasing knowledge of the human body to shrink? If the 20th century was all about growth, perhaps the 21st century is about downsizing. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
The Incredible Shrinking Man is a speculative research project that investigates what it would take to downsize the human species to better fit the Earth. At first this seems like a preposterous idea, but certainly not more preposterous than the irrational appreciation of the fact that we continue to increase in size. We’ve long surpassed the limits of the healthy. At The Incredible Shrinking Man the greenhouse effect isn’t about CO2, it’s about people growing beyond natural limits because of their sheltered lives, much like plants in greenhouses. What happens when circumstances change? Auxologists like Robert Fogel and John Komlos continue to point out that global increased body height is the result of better food, better hygiene, better medicine and better living circumstances. And although increased height may indeed be the result of such improvements, height itself is not healthy and the question is if it is still a desired result in an age of increasing scarcity.
If your height increases by 20%, your body grows proportionally in all directions (1.2 x 1.2 x 1.2 = 1.73). That means your weight actually increases by 73%. All that extra weight needs extra food, extra water, extra energy. From an evolutionary perspective being taller at some point in history undoubtedly represented an advantage. In this day and age however it’s a burden, on ourselves and on the planet. That’s why The Incredible Shrinking Man proposes to shrink the human species to 50cm. Again, this seems radical, but perhaps less so if you consider that the shortest person alive today, Chandra Bahadur Dangi from Nepal, is only a little over 54 centimeters tall. Thus 50cm is our theoretical goal, so as to make sure we map all known possibilities, and a little beyond. At 50cm we’d only need about 2% to 5% of the resources we need now, and although it is an extreme goal it’s also familiar because most babies are born this size.
Obviously there are many challenges in achieving an average universal human height of 50cm. For example, our brain size wouldn’t be much bigger than a walnut. One of the researchers for The Incredible Shrinking Man, Don Platt, is collecting evidence that brain cells could be much smaller without losing their function. It might even make us smarter since the distance an impulse has to travel is shorter. Other things are more difficult to control. How threatening would your cat become and what kinds of problems would large insects pose? What about the weather? Hail storms would become extremely dangerous. But we’re human. If anything, we’ve an established track record with proving our ingenuity in overcoming even the most difficult challenges. Also fear is a very unrewarding impulse if you’re trying to achieve new visions for mankind so at The Incredible Shrinking Man we like to think more of the adventures and new possibilities such a radical new idea would facilitate.
One of the most rewarding results of our shrinking would be the overwhelming and sustainable abundance of the natural and cultured environment. We would in fact shrink into a world of abundance. Renewable energy produced today would be more than enough to satisfy our demands. One tomato will make a decent soup and one chicken will feed a hundred. Redesigning the already built environment would take all of our imagination and inventiveness. Up to 95% of the cities could be recycled, condensed, ‘re-wilded’, or just left as a cultural and material resource for future generations. The Incredible Shrinking Man calculated that at 50cm the entire world population would be able to live in the six largest agglomerations, Tokyo, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Delhi and New York/Newark – leaving the rest of the world empty, or turned into agricultural lands. This redistribution of the human race would ask us to think of our relationship with the planet in ways unimaginable before.
The thing is that the Incredible Shrinking Man is actually working on a cultural paradigm shift. Away from our obsession with growth, towards an appreciation of smaller and less. It’s both pro-active and a way of coming to terms with a change in reality. This is as much about investigating the actual possibilities as it is about redesigning our desires, our needs and our biological and cultural make-up. We need to re-educate ourselves. Within The Incredible Shrinking Man we run into manifestations, projects and products that can help the research transform itself into the actual change it pursues.
This can be the development of an elixir to support slow growth rates while reducing the chance of cancer, it can be a celebration of lactose intolerance, or a letter to the Congolese government to protect the 135cm Mbuti pygmees from genetic extinction. It can be genetic growth experiments with zebrafish, or shrink experience machines to get a sense of what it would be like to be smaller. The most important thing is that we start rethinking and embrace the possibilities of the small because like the famous economic thinker Ernst Schumacher said: “Small is beautiful”.
The first houses a cool, dry climate for Mediterranean flowers, while the second encloses a cool, moist climate for tropical plants and encompasses a 30-metre man-made waterfall.
Aerial view of the Flower Dome. Photograph by Craig Sheppard
Interior of the Flower Dome. Photograph by Darren Soh
To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Cooled Conservatories” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers. Read our privacy policy here.
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Waterfall in the Cloud Forest
Competition closes 21 November 2013. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeen Mail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
Here are some further details from ORO Editions:
In 2012 Wilkinson Eyre Architects won World Building of the Year at the World Architecture Festival for one of the most ambitious cultural projects of recent years – the cooled conservatories at Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay. More recently, the project has won a RIBA International Award and the prestigious Lubetkin Prize. The conservatories are the key built element within the gardens, which were masterplanned by a British-led team following an international design competition in 2006. One of the defining projects of this dynamic world city, Gardens by the Bay sets out to reinforce a vision of Singapore as a “City in a Garden”, bringing species from some of the world’s most vulnerable climate zones to the Marina Bay waterfront. A major tourist destination, the site has attracted over 3 million visitors in its first year of opening.
Interior view of the Cloud Forest. Photograph by Craig Sheppard
The extraordinary conservatories cover an area in excess of 20,000 square meters and are among the largest climate-controlled glasshouses in the world, comprising a 1.28-hectare cool, dry biome (the Flower Dome) and a 0.73-hectare cool, moist biome (the Cloud Forest). Together they represent a uniquely collaborative approach to design, bringing together scientific and design disciplines to meet the challenge of creating cool growing conditions in a building typology more frequently used to produce a warm environment for plants.
Aerial view of the gardens at dusk. Photograph by Robert Such
Supernature tells Wilkinson Eyre’s story of the design, describing in detail the challenges of delivering this highly technical and culturally significant project, and following the team through the early conceptual design stages and construction process to the project’s final completion. It also includes an architectural critique of the building and essays placing the project in the context of Wilkinson Eyre’s wider portfolio.
“We cannot categorically say we have recovered the component parts for a 3D gun,” said the police, after Dezeen readers and technology websites raised doubts over the claims.
“I have worked with 3D-printers for several years, and I actually have that exact same printer, that’s why I recognised the parts,” said Dezeen reader Thor Henrik Bruun.
3D-printed “gun clip” found by Greater Manchester Police (top) compared to a Makerbot Thingiverse filament spool holder
Bruun added: “I don’t have proof that these parts aren’t for nefarious uses, but using existing upgrade-parts for making a gun instead of making or printing bespoke parts seems to defeat the purpose of using a 3D-printer.”
3D printed “trigger” found by Greater Manchester Police compared to a Makerbot Replicator 2 extruder alternative
On Twitter @RARA_London tweeted Dezeen commenting: “It’s a spool holder and a drive block, (modified parts of the machine itself) for anyone interested”.
Bruun said other members of the 3D printing community were making a similar point on Facebook. “I had a look on the GMP Facebook page also, and the top comment is (was) someone else linking to similar parts,” said Bruun.
Greater Manchester Police issued a statement earlier today titled “Component parts for UK’s first 3D gun seized,” describing how they had seized a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer and printed components they suspected of being gun parts.
In a new statement issued this afternoon, assistant chief constable Steve Heywood said: “We need to be absolutely clear that at that this stage, we cannot categorically say we have recovered the component parts for a 3D gun.
“What we have seized are items that need further forensic testing by national ballistics experts to establish whether they can be used in the construction of a genuine, viable firearm.
“We will also be conducting a thorough analysis of computers we have recovered to establish any evidence of a blueprint on how to construct such a weapon.
“Clearly the fact we have seized a 3D printer and have intelligence about the possible production of a weapon using this technology is of concern. It prudent we establish exactly what these parts can be used for and whether they pose any threat.
“What this has also done is open up a wider debate about the emerging threat these next generation of weapons might pose.
“The worrying thing is for me is that these printers can be used to make certain components of guns, while others can be legitimately ordered over the Internet without arousing suspicion. When put together, this could allow a person to construct a firearm in their own home.
“Thanks to Challenger, which is the biggest ever multi-agency response to organised crime in Greater Manchester’s history, we now have even greater resources to combat any emerging threats posed by organised criminal gangs, which may include the production of these weapons.Under Challenger we will a multi-agency action plan for every single organised crime group in Manchester and we will target these networks from every possible angle, hitting them where it hurts.”
Zaha Hadid’s competition-winning design for the new 80,000-seat stadium was approved by the Japanese government six months ago, but sports minister Hakubun Shimomura has now backtracked on the decision, telling parliament that that 300 billion yen (£1.8 billion) is “too massive a budget” for the construction.
“We need to rethink this to scale it down,” he said. “Urban planning must meet people’s needs.”
In a statement last week Maki, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1993, said: “The problems I see with the planned stadium all relate to the issue of scale.”
Fujimoto had also voiced his objections to the size, commenting via Twitter: “We are NOT against Zaha. We just think the basic requirement of the competition was too big for the surroundings.”
The Iraqi-born British architect saw off competition from 10 other finalists, including Japanese architects SANAA, Toyo Ito and Azusa Sekkei. The judging panel included Tadao Ando, who commented: “The entry’s dynamic and futuristic design embodies the messages Japan would like to convey to the rest of the world.”
Set to replace the existing Kasumigaoka National Stadium, the new building will be located alongside Kenzo Tange’s iconic 1964 Olympic stadium in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park.
Zaha Hadid Architects previously designed the Aquatics Centre for the London Olympics in 2012.
News: police have seized parts of a suspected 3D-printed gun during a raid on a property in Greater Manchester, England.
In what is thought to be the first such discovery, Greater Manchester Police officers found a plastic trigger (top image) and clip capable of holding bullets, which they believe had been 3D-printed using a MakerBot Replicator 2 that was also discovered at the property.
Suspected 3D-printed gun clip found by Greater Manchester police. Top: 3D-printed trigger
If verified, the discovery “demonstrates that organised crime groups are acquiring technology that can be bought on the high street to produce the next generation of weapons,” said detective inspector Chris Mossop of the city’s organised crime unit.
“This is a really significant discovery for Greater Manchester Police,” said Mossop. “In theory, the technology essentially allows offenders to produce their own guns in the privacy of their own home, which they can then supply to the criminal gangs who are causing such misery in our communities. Because they are also plastic and can avoid X-ray detection, it makes them easy to conceal and smuggle.”
Forensic experts are analysing whether the parts found could be used to make a working weapon, but Greater Manchester Police already believe this is the first discovery of 3D-printed gun parts in the UK.
“There’s been a lot of technocratic optimism around 3D printing, particularly in the design world,” senior V&A curator Kieran Long told Dezeen in an interview about the acquisition. “I don’t believe everyone should be carrying guns and that’s not what we’re advocating here. What we are saying is this is possible and we might have to do something about it if we don’t want these things to happen.”
“These could be the next generation of firearms and a lot more work needs to be done to understand the technology and the scale of the problem,” said Mossop. “If what we have seized today can, as we suspect, be used to make a genuine firearm then today will be an important milestone in the fight against this next generation of homemade weapons.”
The Nola series by Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn of Studio Drift comprises tinted glass bell-jars fitted into circular cork bases, with a ring of LEDs in a contrasting colour under the rim of each glass piece.
The colours mix as the brightly coloured light passes through the pastel glass and further combinations can be created by clustering several pieces together to layer up the different hues.
“Nola started as an experiment, playing with the endless possibilities combining colour and light in a spacial context,” Gordijn told Dezeen. “It became a landscape of light captured in glass bells.”
“By mixing and interconnecting multiple bells and placing them in overlapping compositions a complex spectacle of light emerges,” she added.
The lamps will go into production with new Dutch design label Buhtiq 31 in four different colours and four sizes, and each one comes with a dimmer switch.
The prototypes are on show for the first time as part of Eat Drink Design during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, which continues until Sunday.
Architect Shigeru Ban has constructed another building using cardboard tubes – this time a cabin for hikers in a Japanese national park.
Located off the southern coast of Japan on Yakushima Island, Yakushima Takatsuka Lodge sits on a steep woodland slope within the Kirishima-Yaku National Park.
Like many of Shigeru Ban’s buildings, the walls of the hut are made from rolls of recycled paper that have been reinforced with glue. The tubes slot into the gaps between the wooden framework, creating a weather-resistant facade that will be easy to repair.
“Paper tubes can be easily replaced if damaged overtime within the harsh environment of the mountains,” say the designers.
The cabin sits over the foundations of a demolished older structure and it offers a two-storey hideaway that can be used by anyone trekking through the park.
Light filters through the walls via gaps between the tubes, while a wooden door slides open to provide access and a first-floor mezzanine leads out to a small balcony. A sharply inclined roof helps to drain rainwater.
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