This House Splits Into Three Pieces So It Can Stay Hidden in Its Own Forest

Posted on by

The Curious House in Zagreb doesn’t try to win you over immediately, and that’s exactly the point. Designed by Croatian studio FORVM arhitektura, it’s a family residence perched on a steep hillside, slightly pulled back from the main road and swallowed by dense urban vegetation — orchards, spruces, pines, cedars. The house doesn’t announce itself. It settles in.

Rather than drop a single mass onto the slope, FORVM broke the program into three distinct elements, each responding to a different register of the site. It’s a compositional decision that reads as both pragmatic and poetic, dissolving the usual tension between building and terrain into something more like a conversation. The topography shapes the architecture. The architecture shapes how you live inside it.

Designer: FORVM

The ground floor is fully glazed — a deliberate move to keep the resident in constant dialogue with the world outside. Green cascades past the glass. The tree canopies filter sunlight and block sightlines, doing the work that walls might otherwise do. Privacy here isn’t enforced by opacity; it’s offered by nature. The forest earns its place as an active participant in the spatial experience, not just a backdrop.

The upper floor shifts register. Where the ground level opens up, the upper volume turns more inward, more considered. Roof windows cut directly to the sky, and through them, tree silhouettes remind you again that you’re inside a forest. The building keeps finding ways to return you to the landscape — not through grand gestures, but through quiet architectural moves that accumulate into something genuinely atmospheric.

From the outside, the Curious House plays a different game. Its smooth, reflective surfaces don’t reveal the interior so much as they absorb the green world around it. You expect transparency; instead, you get a mirror. The observer looks for signs of life within the envelope and finds it harder than the glazing might suggest. It’s a house that hides in plain sight.

Designed by Dinko Uglešić, Ina Vlahović, and Marijana Rančić, and photographed by Bosnic+Dorotic, the Curious House exemplifies a strain of European residential architecture that takes landscape seriously — not as an amenity to be framed, but as a logic to be followed. FORVM, founded in 1991 by Ante Uglešić, has long worked within the specifics of Croatian terrain and climate, and that attentiveness shows here in every decision, from the fragmented massing to the calibrated relationship between glass and canopy.

The post This House Splits Into Three Pieces So It Can Stay Hidden in Its Own Forest first appeared on Yanko Design.

Retroid Pocket Duo makes dual-screen gaming feel fresh again with its modern clamshell design

Posted on by

There is something immediately satisfying about a handheld that refuses to make two screens behave like one. Retroid’s new Pocket Duo takes that idea and builds it into a modern clamshell, giving Nintendo DS and 3DS-style gaming a form factor that feels considerably more natural than squeezing both displays onto a single screen.

The Pocket Duo puts a 5.5-inch 16:9 OLED display above a smaller 4.5-inch 4:3 OLED screen, with both running at 120Hz. Rather than treating the second display as an afterthought, Retroid has designed the handheld around the way dual-screen games were originally meant to be played. The company has already demonstrated 3DS titles running at 4x resolution, along with DS games through melonDS.

Designer: Retroid

Under the hood, the Duo has Qualcomm’s Dragonwing Q-7790 – an IoT-focused chip based on the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 – mated to Adreno 722 graphics. Active cooling helps keep the hardware running under load, while a 6,000mAh battery handles power. The device runs Android 16 and weighs 350g, with a 180-degree free-stop hinge allowing the two displays to be positioned at different angles. Retroid has also paid attention to the physical controls. The thumbsticks sit symmetrically in recessed positions, while the ABXY buttons use tactile clicks. The shoulder buttons are stacked, giving the Duo a layout that is intended to feel like a proper gaming handheld rather than a phone with an extra screen attached.

The Pocket Duo Lite takes the same dual-screen concept and makes some straightforward changes to bring the price down. Its upper display remains 5.5 inches, but switches from OLED to a 60Hz IPS LCD, while the lower screen is slightly smaller at 4.2 inches. Both displays retain their respective 16:9 and 4:3 formats. The Lite also steps down to Qualcomm’s Dragonwing QCS6125 processor with Adreno 610 graphics and runs Android 15.

The handheld uses in-line shoulder triggers instead of the stacked controls found on the regular Duo. Despite those compromises, it retains the 180-degree free-stop hinge, symmetrical recessed thumbsticks, active cooling and a 6,000mAh battery. There are two Lite configurations: 4GB RAM with 64GB storage and 6GB RAM with 128GB storage. It comes in Black, GC, 16Bit, Ice Blue and Clear Purple, matching the colour choices of the standard model.

For anyone who grew up with dual-screen handhelds, the Pocket Duo is an intriguing modern interpretation of a familiar idea. Instead of mere recreation of the classic era, Retroid is giving the format a faster display and contemporary hardware. The Lite, however, makes the same unusual design considerably easier to justify.

The pricing also makes the Lite particularly compelling. The 4GB/64GB version starts at $135 during pre-orders and will retail for $149, while the standard Pocket Duo is priced at $250 during pre-orders and $270 at retail. There is no official release date, though.

The post Retroid Pocket Duo makes dual-screen gaming feel fresh again with its modern clamshell design first appeared on Yanko Design.

Retroid Pocket Duo makes dual-screen gaming feel fresh again with its modern clamshell design

Posted on by

There is something immediately satisfying about a handheld that refuses to make two screens behave like one. Retroid’s new Pocket Duo takes that idea and builds it into a modern clamshell, giving Nintendo DS and 3DS-style gaming a form factor that feels considerably more natural than squeezing both displays onto a single screen.

The Pocket Duo puts a 5.5-inch 16:9 OLED display above a smaller 4.5-inch 4:3 OLED screen, with both running at 120Hz. Rather than treating the second display as an afterthought, Retroid has designed the handheld around the way dual-screen games were originally meant to be played. The company has already demonstrated 3DS titles running at 4x resolution, along with DS games through melonDS.

Designer: Retroid

Under the hood, the Duo has Qualcomm’s Dragonwing Q-7790 – an IoT-focused chip based on the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 – mated to Adreno 722 graphics. Active cooling helps keep the hardware running under load, while a 6,000mAh battery handles power. The device runs Android 16 and weighs 350g, with a 180-degree free-stop hinge allowing the two displays to be positioned at different angles. Retroid has also paid attention to the physical controls. The thumbsticks sit symmetrically in recessed positions, while the ABXY buttons use tactile clicks. The shoulder buttons are stacked, giving the Duo a layout that is intended to feel like a proper gaming handheld rather than a phone with an extra screen attached.

The Pocket Duo Lite takes the same dual-screen concept and makes some straightforward changes to bring the price down. Its upper display remains 5.5 inches, but switches from OLED to a 60Hz IPS LCD, while the lower screen is slightly smaller at 4.2 inches. Both displays retain their respective 16:9 and 4:3 formats. The Lite also steps down to Qualcomm’s Dragonwing QCS6125 processor with Adreno 610 graphics and runs Android 15.

The handheld uses in-line shoulder triggers instead of the stacked controls found on the regular Duo. Despite those compromises, it retains the 180-degree free-stop hinge, symmetrical recessed thumbsticks, active cooling and a 6,000mAh battery. There are two Lite configurations: 4GB RAM with 64GB storage and 6GB RAM with 128GB storage. It comes in Black, GC, 16Bit, Ice Blue and Clear Purple, matching the colour choices of the standard model.

For anyone who grew up with dual-screen handhelds, the Pocket Duo is an intriguing modern interpretation of a familiar idea. Instead of mere recreation of the classic era, Retroid is giving the format a faster display and contemporary hardware. The Lite, however, makes the same unusual design considerably easier to justify.

The pricing also makes the Lite particularly compelling. The 4GB/64GB version starts at $135 during pre-orders and will retail for $149, while the standard Pocket Duo is priced at $250 during pre-orders and $270 at retail. There is no official release date, though.

The post Retroid Pocket Duo makes dual-screen gaming feel fresh again with its modern clamshell design first appeared on Yanko Design.

Retroid Pocket Duo makes dual-screen gaming feel fresh again with its modern clamshell design

Posted on by

There is something immediately satisfying about a handheld that refuses to make two screens behave like one. Retroid’s new Pocket Duo takes that idea and builds it into a modern clamshell, giving Nintendo DS and 3DS-style gaming a form factor that feels considerably more natural than squeezing both displays onto a single screen.

The Pocket Duo puts a 5.5-inch 16:9 OLED display above a smaller 4.5-inch 4:3 OLED screen, with both running at 120Hz. Rather than treating the second display as an afterthought, Retroid has designed the handheld around the way dual-screen games were originally meant to be played. The company has already demonstrated 3DS titles running at 4x resolution, along with DS games through melonDS.

Designer: Retroid

Under the hood, the Duo has Qualcomm’s Dragonwing Q-7790 – an IoT-focused chip based on the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 – mated to Adreno 722 graphics. Active cooling helps keep the hardware running under load, while a 6,000mAh battery handles power. The device runs Android 16 and weighs 350g, with a 180-degree free-stop hinge allowing the two displays to be positioned at different angles. Retroid has also paid attention to the physical controls. The thumbsticks sit symmetrically in recessed positions, while the ABXY buttons use tactile clicks. The shoulder buttons are stacked, giving the Duo a layout that is intended to feel like a proper gaming handheld rather than a phone with an extra screen attached.

The Pocket Duo Lite takes the same dual-screen concept and makes some straightforward changes to bring the price down. Its upper display remains 5.5 inches, but switches from OLED to a 60Hz IPS LCD, while the lower screen is slightly smaller at 4.2 inches. Both displays retain their respective 16:9 and 4:3 formats. The Lite also steps down to Qualcomm’s Dragonwing QCS6125 processor with Adreno 610 graphics and runs Android 15.

The handheld uses in-line shoulder triggers instead of the stacked controls found on the regular Duo. Despite those compromises, it retains the 180-degree free-stop hinge, symmetrical recessed thumbsticks, active cooling and a 6,000mAh battery. There are two Lite configurations: 4GB RAM with 64GB storage and 6GB RAM with 128GB storage. It comes in Black, GC, 16Bit, Ice Blue and Clear Purple, matching the colour choices of the standard model.

For anyone who grew up with dual-screen handhelds, the Pocket Duo is an intriguing modern interpretation of a familiar idea. Instead of mere recreation of the classic era, Retroid is giving the format a faster display and contemporary hardware. The Lite, however, makes the same unusual design considerably easier to justify.

The pricing also makes the Lite particularly compelling. The 4GB/64GB version starts at $135 during pre-orders and will retail for $149, while the standard Pocket Duo is priced at $250 during pre-orders and $270 at retail. There is no official release date, though.

The post Retroid Pocket Duo makes dual-screen gaming feel fresh again with its modern clamshell design first appeared on Yanko Design.