Author Archives: Ida Torres

Zeugma Finally Proved Medical Equipment Doesn’t Have to Be Ugly

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Most medical devices look the way they do because nobody thought to question it. Functionality became the default justification for every cold edge, every sterile tube, every claustrophobic chamber that makes people anxious before a single session begins. HPO TECH, a Turkish engineering company with a philosophy that’s equal parts clinical and aesthetic, looked at the hyperbaric oxygen chamber and decided the whole category needed a rethink.

The result is Zeugma, a monoplace hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) chamber that, frankly, looks like it belongs on a luxury wellness campus rather than in a hospital corridor. It operates at 2.0 to 2.4 ATA pressure, delivers medical-grade oxygen through a BIBS (Built-In Breathing System) mask regulated by the rhythm of your own breath, and features an air cooler for temperature stability during sessions. All very technical, all very necessary. But what makes it worth talking about is that it was designed to feel like stepping into a space capsule.

Designer: HPO TECH

That comparison comes directly from the people using it. Tolga Kabak, CTO and co-founder of HPO TECH, has noted that most first-time users describe the experience as feeling like they’re inside something from a sci-fi film rather than a medical facility. That isn’t an accident. The entire chamber was built around the idea that how a patient feels during treatment is just as important as the treatment itself.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, for those less familiar, involves breathing concentrated oxygen at higher-than-normal atmospheric pressure. It has been used clinically for decades in wound healing, decompression sickness, and tissue recovery, but it has recently migrated into the wellness and performance space in a significant way. Biohackers, elite athletes, and longevity obsessives have adopted it as part of broader optimization routines. Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur famous for spending millions trying to slow his biological aging, conducted a closely monitored 60-session HBOT experiment using the Zeugma, tracking biomarkers from telomere length to brain function and inflammation. That kind of high-profile attention has pushed HBOT into the cultural conversation, and with it comes a new audience that expects the experience to match the aspiration.

HPO TECH clearly understood this shift. The Zeugma’s most immediately striking feature is its panoramic observation windows, unusually large by industry standards. The clear acrylic panels are not decorative. Claustrophobia is one of the most documented barriers to consistent hyperbaric therapy, and the design addresses it by prioritizing openness over enclosure. You can see out. The outside world doesn’t disappear. The interior is softly lined with ergonomic seating and reclining configurations, and the whole system is managed through an external control panel that lets operators monitor and adjust pressure without disturbing the session. It’s a closed environment that doesn’t feel closed.

The company is based in Istanbul and operates at what it describes as the intersection of diving technology, aerospace-grade engineering, and clinical science. HPO TECH builds with military and medical-grade materials, holds international certifications, and counts hospitals, sports recovery centers, and professional athletic teams among its clients. The same chamber that sits in a clinical setting also ended up at the center of one of biohacking’s most-watched longevity experiments. That’s a fairly unusual range for a single piece of equipment, and it says a lot about how well the design travels across contexts.

Earlier this year, HPO TECH introduced the Zeugma Panorama, a two-seat version that takes the visibility concept even further with six panoramic acrylic windows, including large side panels, a rear window, and a door window. It is genuinely striking. If the original Zeugma looks like a solo spacecraft, the Panorama looks like something you would find in a boutique hotel in 2045.

Whether HBOT becomes a mainstream wellness ritual or remains a specialized therapy, the Zeugma has already made its point. Medical design does not have to default to intimidation and sterility. People heal better when they feel comfortable, calm, and respected by the space around them. That is not a radical idea, but somehow it still feels like one whenever a designer actually commits to it.

The post Zeugma Finally Proved Medical Equipment Doesn’t Have to Be Ugly first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Furniture That Grows Like a Fractal

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If you’ve ever watched a fern unfurl or zoomed into the edge of a snowflake, you already understand fractals, even if you’ve never called them that. They’re the patterns nature repeats at every scale, small details that echo the whole. Xubai Li took that idea and built furniture out of it, and the result is one of the more quietly radical pieces of design I’ve come across in a while.

The Fractal System is a set of modular, nestable plywood objects that can function as stools, shelves, or stands, depending entirely on how you choose to arrange them. Each piece is non-directional, meaning there’s no designated top, bottom, or front. You can rotate them, stack them, slot them together, or spread them across a room. The configuration changes, and with it, so does the furniture’s entire personality. A tight cluster becomes a sculptural display unit. A single piece on its own reads as a clean, minimal stool. A sprawling arrangement along a wall becomes something that looks closer to an art installation than anything you’d find at a typical furniture store.

Designer: Xubai Li

Li, who holds an MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, was a featured designer at ICFF, and the Fractal System has since earned Silver recognition at both the NY Product Design Awards and the MUSE Design Awards. That’s the kind of trajectory that usually signals a designer to watch, not just a one-off project.

The design’s real appeal, to my eye, isn’t purely aesthetic, though the warm blond plywood with its exposed laminate layers is exactly the kind of material choice that ages well. It’s the philosophy underneath it. Most furniture is prescriptive. It tells you where to sit, where to put your coffee, how to organize your books. The Fractal System does the opposite. It hands you a set of components and essentially says, figure it out. That level of user agency is still surprisingly rare in furniture design, where modularity often comes dressed up in rigid systems and complicated instructions.

The fractal reference isn’t just a clever name, either. Fractals are defined by self-similarity, where the same pattern recurs regardless of scale. Li applies that principle structurally: the more units you add, the more the configuration begins to mirror the logic of a single unit, just expanded. You can see it clearly in the diagrammatic sketches, where each arrangement reads like a variation on the same underlying grammar. It’s rigorous without feeling academic, which is a genuinely difficult balance to strike.

I also think the timing matters. Right now, the design conversation is heavily focused on adaptability. Smaller living spaces, changing households, a collective skepticism toward buying things that only do one thing. The Fractal System fits into that shift without pandering to it. Li wasn’t designing for trends; the work clearly came from a place of genuine conceptual inquiry. The fact that it also happens to answer a real practical need is almost incidental, and that’s often the sign of the best kind of design.

From a collector’s standpoint, this is the sort of piece that rewards attention over time. It doesn’t announce itself loudly. Photographed in a corner with morning light and a ceramic mug balanced on one of the platforms, it looks like the kind of thing someone discovered in a Kyoto studio decades ago. Grouped tightly in a gallery setting, it reads as contemporary sculpture. That range of registers is genuinely hard to manufacture.

Xubai Li’s Fractal System is one of those designs that quietly shifts how you think about the objects around you. Not because it makes a statement, but because it asks a question: why does a piece of furniture only ever have to be one thing? I don’t have a neat answer to that. But I’m glad someone built the question into plywood and let the rest of us sit with it.

The post The Furniture That Grows Like a Fractal first appeared on Yanko Design.

KitKat’s New Wrapper Actually Kills Your Phone Signal Completely

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We’re already a third into 2026, and one “trend” that seems to be sticking is that this is the year when people intentionally go offline or analog to take a break from our increasingly digital lives. Hobbies like journaling, knitting, scrapbooking, baking, and board games have become a regular part of people’s personal schedules. More often than not, when we do these things, we keep our phones, or at least the internet, away. Some, though, may need more “drastic” measures just to make their phones quiet for a few hours every day.

KitKat Panama, in collaboration with creative agency Ogilvy Colombia, is taking the brand’s iconic “Take a Break” slogan to a whole new level with a special concept called Break Mode. Instead of people just eating a KitKat as a way to take a break, they turned the chocolate’s packaging into an actual Faraday cage. Basically, once you put your phone into the empty packaging, all signals (calls, 4G/5G connectivity, Bluetooth, and GPS) are entirely and effectively blocked, turning your world offline and analog, at least until you take your phone out again.

Designer: KitKat Panama

How they did it was by adding multiple layers to the special packaging. The copper layer is the primary conductive material, while the polyester layers give it structural integrity. The polypropylene outer coating provides durability and everyday usability, while the precision-engineered sealing mechanism ensures that your signals are truly blocked.

This kind of technology was once reserved for medical labs and data centers but can now be found in this iconic red KitKat package (well, at least if you’re in Panama). There’s also a sustainability angle to it, as the packaging’s materials have an approximate one-year lifespan and can eventually be separated for responsible recycling.

The ritual that KitKat envisions is quite intentional: unwrap your KitKat fingers, slide your phone into the empty packaging, and fully immerse yourself in the moment. Your digital world goes quiet, and your break truly begins. It feels almost ceremonial in the best way. Kim Waigel, Marketing Director for Nestlé in Central America, summed it up well: “Break Mode goes beyond simply saying ‘Take a Break’; it empowers individuals with the physical tool to genuinely achieve it.”

The concept was introduced at some of Panama’s most high-traffic venues, including a major technology expo, a concert event, and even a university campus, bringing the experience directly to the people who arguably need a digital detox the most.

Now, before you start planning your offline hours around a KitKat wrapper, it’s worth noting that Break Mode’s commercial viability is still under evaluation. So it isn’t something you can grab off a shelf at your nearest convenience store, at least not yet. But honestly, the fact that this concept even exists feels like a sign of the times. In an era where we’ve normalized doom-scrolling and round-the-clock connectivity, simply putting your phone away has become a radical act. And leave it to a chocolate brand to make that feel like something worth celebrating.

Whether or not Break Mode ever makes it to mass market, it’s already doing its job, sparking a conversation about what it truly means to take a break in 2026. Because sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do for yourself isn’t downloading another wellness app. It’s slipping your phone into a KitKat wrapper and letting the silence do the rest.

The post KitKat’s New Wrapper Actually Kills Your Phone Signal Completely first appeared on Yanko Design.

Iran’s Mirror Pavilion Turns a 400-Year-Old Craft Into the Future

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If you’ve ever been inside an Iranian shrine or palace, you already know the feeling. The moment you step into a space lined with mirror mosaic, you lose your sense of where the ceiling ends and the air begins. Fragments of light scatter in every direction, bouncing off thousands of hand-cut pieces of glass in a way that feels more like stepping into a living kaleidoscope than standing inside a building. That experience, rooted in a craft called Ayeneh-Kari, has shaped Persian architecture for centuries. Now, a studio called Ehsani Sharafeh Associates is doing something genuinely exciting: they’re rebuilding that feeling from scratch, using algorithms.

The Mirror Pavilion, located in Mashhad, Iran, sits inside a former industrial hall. That setup alone creates a tension worth paying attention to. The pavilion is a cubic structure inserted within the existing hypostyle framework, self-supporting and deliberately contrasting with its surroundings. From the base, the space feels restrained. But look up, and the whole thing shifts.

Designer: Ehsani Sharafeh Associates

The ceiling is where the real conversation happens. Rather than replicating a traditional vault, the team designed a three-dimensional sinusoidal surface formed by merging four pyramidal geometries. It’s a mouthful to describe, but the visual effect is anything but clinical. Hundreds of fragmented mirrors are arranged across this undulating surface through computational processes, catching light and redistributing it in ways that feel almost alive. Add stained glass into the mix, and the space starts producing color shifts that no static installation ever could.

Ayeneh-Kari became prominent during the Safavid period in the 16th and 17th centuries, when trade routes brought large Venetian mirrors to the Persian court. Many of them arrived cracked or broken from the long journey. Rather than discarding the damaged pieces, Iranian craftsmen cut them into smaller fragments and reassembled them into intricate decorative mosaics. Out of something broken came something extraordinary, and that origin story feels deeply embedded in what mirrors have meant to Persian design ever since. The craft was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2025, a recognition that feels both overdue and timely given projects like this one.

Ehsani Sharafeh Associates isn’t just borrowing the aesthetic of Ayeneh-Kari and wrapping it around a contemporary shell. The team, made up of Nasrin Sharafeh, Ali Ehsani, and Milad GholamiFard, is using computational design methods to genuinely reconsider how traditional Iranian spatial principles behave in a new context. The algorithmic approach isn’t a shortcut. It’s what allows the complex geometry and patterned arrangements of the ceiling to exist at the scale and precision they do, while still feeling like a faithful extension of a much older sensibility.

That balance is harder to pull off than it looks. A lot of design that claims to honor tradition ends up either being too faithful and feeling like a replica, or too abstract and losing the thread entirely. The Mirror Pavilion manages to land somewhere in the middle, where the history is legible but the result is clearly contemporary. You can feel the ancestry of the space without it ever feeling like a museum piece.

What also stands out is the decision to place this inside an industrial hall. The contrast between the raw, utilitarian structure of the existing space and the luminous, almost otherworldly quality of the pavilion isn’t accidental. It makes both things more interesting. The industrial hall gives the mirrors context. The mirrors give the hall something to reach for.

In Persian culture, mirrors and water have long represented purity, clarity, and illumination. Reflective interiors amplified natural light and reinforced ideas about enlightenment and divine presence, which is why mirror work appears so frequently in shrines and sacred spaces. The Mirror Pavilion carries that weight without announcing it, which might be the most impressive thing about it. Some buildings describe an idea. This one embodies it.

The post Iran’s Mirror Pavilion Turns a 400-Year-Old Craft Into the Future first appeared on Yanko Design.

Adidas Made a Marathon Shoe That Weighs Less Than an Apple

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Pick up an apple from your kitchen counter. Now imagine a pair of running shoes weighing less than that single piece of fruit. That’s the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, and it’s not a concept shoe or a lab curiosity. It just debuted at the 2026 London Marathon, worn by Sabastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha, who became the first athletes in history to break the sub-two-hour marathon barrier.

The Evo 3 weighs in at just 97 grams in a UK size 8.5, making it the first sub-100-gram racing shoe Adidas has ever produced. For context, the shoe’s box weighs more than the shoe inside it. That’s the kind of engineering achievement that sounds like a flex until you understand how much it actually matters at race pace.

Designer: adidas

The secret is a new construction called ENERGYRIM, a carbon-integrated design that completely rethinks how a supershoe is built. Rather than simply layering carbon plates into foam, Adidas redesigned the relationship between the two, allowing them to work in concert rather than independently. The result is a shoe that’s 30% lighter than its predecessor, with 11% greater forefoot energy return and a 1.6% improvement in running economy. To put those numbers in context: at the marathon level, a 1.6% improvement in running economy isn’t marginal. It’s the kind of number that separates a podium from a personal best.

The foam itself is the other major story here. Adidas developed a new generation of Lightstrike Pro Evo compound that is 50% lighter than the version used in the Evo 2. That’s not a small iteration. It’s a material science leap that took three years and over a dozen tested prototypes, refined in labs in Herzogenaurach and tested at altitude training camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Elsewhere on the shoe, the outsole ditches the liquid rubber coating from the previous model in favor of strategically placed Continental rubber, a welcome upgrade for anyone who isn’t a professional sprinter running on perfectly dry asphalt. It’s a small change that makes the shoe meaningfully more accessible without compromising the weight equation in any significant way.

From a design standpoint, the Evo 3 is striking in the way extreme performance gear tends to be: lean, almost aggressive, with a silhouette that looks sculpted rather than constructed. The toebox is narrow, almost spike-like, which is clearly a functional decision rather than an aesthetic one. The fit prioritizes containment over comfort, and that feels like the right philosophy for a race day shoe that is not designed for casual wear. You wear shoes like this to run the fastest race of your life. The trade-offs are understood, and most serious runners will make them without hesitation.

The price is USD 500, with an initial limited release on April 27, 2026, and a wider launch expected in fall 2026. That price tag will raise eyebrows. But it helps to remember that the Adizero Evo franchise has already seen athletes break three world records and win over 30 major road races since 2023, including six World Marathon Major wins and an Olympic record time. The shoe’s pedigree isn’t marketing copy. It’s a documented track record.

What makes the Evo 3 genuinely interesting beyond the running community is what it represents as a design object. It sits at the intersection of sports science, materials engineering, and product design in a way that very few consumer products ever manage. The obsession with weight reduction, the carbon geometry experiments, the altitude testing: these are the ingredients of something closer to aerospace thinking than traditional footwear development. When the research process looks more like aircraft engineering than sneaker design, the result tends to look and perform like nothing that came before it.

Whether you run marathons or not, there’s a certain pleasure in watching a brand push against what seemed like a physical limit and actually break through. Adidas didn’t just shave a few grams off an existing shoe. They asked what a marathon shoe could look like if weight were treated as a fundamental design constraint rather than just another spec to optimize. The answer is 97 grams. And somehow, impossibly, it still performs better than everything that came before it.

The post Adidas Made a Marathon Shoe That Weighs Less Than an Apple first appeared on Yanko Design.

Adidas Made a Marathon Shoe That Weighs Less Than an Apple

Posted on by

Pick up an apple from your kitchen counter. Now imagine a pair of running shoes weighing less than that single piece of fruit. That’s the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, and it’s not a concept shoe or a lab curiosity. It just debuted at the 2026 London Marathon, worn by Sabastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha, who became the first athletes in history to break the sub-two-hour marathon barrier.

The Evo 3 weighs in at just 97 grams in a UK size 8.5, making it the first sub-100-gram racing shoe Adidas has ever produced. For context, the shoe’s box weighs more than the shoe inside it. That’s the kind of engineering achievement that sounds like a flex until you understand how much it actually matters at race pace.

Designer: adidas

The secret is a new construction called ENERGYRIM, a carbon-integrated design that completely rethinks how a supershoe is built. Rather than simply layering carbon plates into foam, Adidas redesigned the relationship between the two, allowing them to work in concert rather than independently. The result is a shoe that’s 30% lighter than its predecessor, with 11% greater forefoot energy return and a 1.6% improvement in running economy. To put those numbers in context: at the marathon level, a 1.6% improvement in running economy isn’t marginal. It’s the kind of number that separates a podium from a personal best.

The foam itself is the other major story here. Adidas developed a new generation of Lightstrike Pro Evo compound that is 50% lighter than the version used in the Evo 2. That’s not a small iteration. It’s a material science leap that took three years and over a dozen tested prototypes, refined in labs in Herzogenaurach and tested at altitude training camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Elsewhere on the shoe, the outsole ditches the liquid rubber coating from the previous model in favor of strategically placed Continental rubber, a welcome upgrade for anyone who isn’t a professional sprinter running on perfectly dry asphalt. It’s a small change that makes the shoe meaningfully more accessible without compromising the weight equation in any significant way.

From a design standpoint, the Evo 3 is striking in the way extreme performance gear tends to be: lean, almost aggressive, with a silhouette that looks sculpted rather than constructed. The toebox is narrow, almost spike-like, which is clearly a functional decision rather than an aesthetic one. The fit prioritizes containment over comfort, and that feels like the right philosophy for a race day shoe that is not designed for casual wear. You wear shoes like this to run the fastest race of your life. The trade-offs are understood, and most serious runners will make them without hesitation.

The price is USD 500, with an initial limited release on April 27, 2026, and a wider launch expected in fall 2026. That price tag will raise eyebrows. But it helps to remember that the Adizero Evo franchise has already seen athletes break three world records and win over 30 major road races since 2023, including six World Marathon Major wins and an Olympic record time. The shoe’s pedigree isn’t marketing copy. It’s a documented track record.

What makes the Evo 3 genuinely interesting beyond the running community is what it represents as a design object. It sits at the intersection of sports science, materials engineering, and product design in a way that very few consumer products ever manage. The obsession with weight reduction, the carbon geometry experiments, the altitude testing: these are the ingredients of something closer to aerospace thinking than traditional footwear development. When the research process looks more like aircraft engineering than sneaker design, the result tends to look and perform like nothing that came before it.

Whether you run marathons or not, there’s a certain pleasure in watching a brand push against what seemed like a physical limit and actually break through. Adidas didn’t just shave a few grams off an existing shoe. They asked what a marathon shoe could look like if weight were treated as a fundamental design constraint rather than just another spec to optimize. The answer is 97 grams. And somehow, impossibly, it still performs better than everything that came before it.

The post Adidas Made a Marathon Shoe That Weighs Less Than an Apple first appeared on Yanko Design.

Leave It to a Jewelry House to Make the Most Beautiful Candle

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When Cadar showed up at Salone del Mobile this April, it did not bring jewelry. It brought candles. And not the kind you grab in a gift shop because they smell nice. These are hand-blown Murano glass spheres in colors so saturated and glossy they look less like home objects and more like something you might find in a collector’s vitrine. The moment you see them on a table, you want to pick one up. That instinct tells you everything about how well this design is working.

The form is deceptively simple. Each Circle of Light vessel is a sphere, composed of two to three separate hand-blown glass parts that stack and lock together into one seamless orb. The bottom is a wide, bowl-shaped candle vessel. A middle section can be added for a taller configuration, and the top is a smooth dome that caps the whole thing off. When assembled, the seam between pieces is visible but refined, almost like a deliberate detail rather than a structural necessity. When pulled apart, each piece becomes its own open candle vessel, low and round, sitting flat on a surface with quiet confidence.

Designer: Cadar Designs

The colors are where this collection makes its boldest statement. Cadar and Venini did not play it safe. There is a deep cobalt blue paired with emerald green. A ruby red domed over a rich burgundy base. A warm amber sitting beneath a charcoal gray cap. A dusty lavender paired with a smoky brown. The combinations read like color theory exercises carried out by someone with very good instincts and zero fear. Looking at a table full of them, the effect is almost planetary. Each sphere feels like its own small world, and together they create something closer to a color installation than a product display.

That display at the Venini booth reinforced the point. The booth itself was organized as a full-spectrum rainbow wall, with each color column housing its corresponding spheres on glass shelves. It was theatrical in the best way, the kind of presentation that makes you understand what a product is about before anyone explains it to you. The candles did not need signage. The visual language was that clear.

The glass itself deserves attention. Venini has been making Murano glass for 105 years, and you feel that history in the material. The surface has a depth to it that paint or glaze simply cannot replicate. Some of the dome tops carry a subtle engraved motif, a geometric pattern consistent with Cadar’s jewelry aesthetic, which grounds the collection in the brand’s visual identity without announcing itself loudly. The finish across all pieces is high-gloss and lacquered-looking, which amplifies the color and gives each sphere an almost liquid quality in certain light. Picked up and turned in your hands, the glass has real weight.

Cadar, founded in 2015 by designer Michal Kadar, built its reputation on 18k gold jewelry defined by bold minimalism and fluid movement. Michal’s background is in fashion, and it shows in the way her pieces are conceived with the body in mind, with proportion and balance as non-negotiable starting points. That same sensibility applies here. The sphere is not an arbitrary choice. It is a form Cadar has returned to repeatedly, and in translating it from fine metal to hand-blown glass, the design team found a material that responds to light in an entirely different, arguably more democratic way. Gold catches light and keeps it. Glass catches light and gives it back.

The fragrances, composed by master perfumer Alberto Morillas, are tied to Cadar’s existing jewelry collections: Light, Water, and Bloom. The idea that a scent corresponds to a visual collection is not new, but it works here because the objects themselves feel like they carry a mood. You would choose your sphere the way you choose what to wear, based on color, on scale, on what kind of atmosphere you are trying to create.

The collection is available for pre-order at the Cadar flagship boutique in New York’s Meatpacking District and online at cadar.com. It is the kind of thing you put on a shelf and look at before you even light it. And that, ultimately, is the whole point.

The post Leave It to a Jewelry House to Make the Most Beautiful Candle first appeared on Yanko Design.

G-Shock Just Dropped a Coca-Cola Watch for Its 140th Anniversary

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There are some things that you know are fundamentally bad for you, but you can’t resist consuming them. Coke (the soft drink) is one such commodity, and especially during the summer season, it has become more of a necessity than an indulgence. The brand itself has been around for 140 years and has built itself into something that virtually everyone recognizes, from its logos and visual cues to its timeless ad campaigns. It has become a cultural artifact for well over a century, transcending beverage culture to become one of the most iconic brands in history.

To celebrate this milestone, Coca-Cola has partnered with another recognizable global brand, G-Shock, to create a limited-edition collaboration. The GA-2100CC-3A is the first-ever Coca-Cola watch built on the analog-digital GA-2100 base, which has its own massive cult following in the watch community. Enthusiasts affectionately nicknamed the GA-2100 the “CasiOak,” a nod to its resemblance to the luxury Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, making it one of the most talked-about G-Shock models of the modern era.

Designer: G-Shock x Coca-Cola

You would think that a Coca-Cola collaboration would have red and white splashed all over, but G-Shock took a more refined, classic approach. Instead of leaning into the brand’s signature bold palette, the design focuses on a translucent green bio-based resin that is directly reminiscent of Coca-Cola’s iconic vintage contour glass bottle. You do get minimalist splashes of red throughout the design, as it is of course the color most associated with the brand, but it’s tasteful rather than overwhelming. Instead of just slapping the logo on this wearable, you get smart design easter eggs that will delight the most die-hard of Coke fans.

Both the bezel and band come in the aforementioned translucent green, with the dial receiving Coca-Cola-toned hues as well as printed graphics evoking the iconic bubbles from the soft drink’s fizz. At the 9 o’clock position, the date indicator hand is shaped like the brand’s beloved fluted glass bottle. That same bottle motif is carried over into the band loop as well, keeping the design cohesive and intentional. Flip the watch over and you’ll find the case back engraved with a bottle cap-inspired design, a subtle but brilliant finishing touch. The entire watch also arrives in exclusive special-edition packaging specifically created to commemorate the brand’s 140th anniversary, making it a complete collector’s package from the moment you open the box.

It’s also worth noting that the use of bio-based resin is not just a stylistic choice. It reflects a growing commitment to more sustainable materials in watchmaking. The GA-2100 series adopted bio-based resin in 2024, and it carries forward seamlessly into this collaboration, giving the watch a modern, eco-conscious edge that feels right at home in 2026.

In terms of technical specifications, you still get all the great hallmarks of the GA-2100 base, which has made it one of the more popular G-Shock models. It is shock resistant as well as water resistant for up to 200 meters. It comes equipped with the usual functions including a timer, stopwatch, and Double LED light, with an approximate battery life of 3 years. The case measures 48.5 × 45.4 × 11.8 mm and weighs in at 51g, slim and lightweight for a G-Shock, which has always been a big part of the GA-2100’s appeal.

The GA-2100CC-3A is priced at ¥27,500 JPY (approximately $175 USD) and is set to release in May 2026 via the Casio webstore. Given that this is a limited-edition piece tied to a once-in-a-generation anniversary, it’s the kind of watch that won’t sit on shelves for long.

Whether you’re a G-Shock collector, a Coca-Cola memorabilia enthusiast, or simply someone who appreciates thoughtful design collaborations, the GA-2100CC-3A checks every box. It’s nostalgic yet modern, playful yet polished, and honestly, much like the drink it celebrates, it’s the kind of thing you didn’t know you needed until it’s right in front of you.

The post G-Shock Just Dropped a Coca-Cola Watch for Its 140th Anniversary first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Bike Saddle 3D-Printed and Hand-Stitched in France

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Most conversations about technology and craft follow the same script. Technology is fast, scalable, cold. Craft is slow, precious, warm. The two might share a showroom floor or a mood board, but they rarely share a philosophy. Mahdi Naïm’s AERIS bicycle saddle disagrees with that entire premise, and the disagreement is worth paying attention to.

AERIS is not a bicycle saddle that happens to look interesting. It is a bicycle saddle built around a single, demanding question: what if 3D printing and traditional craft weren’t layered on top of each other, but designed together from the very first sketch? That shift in thinking, from assembly to co-authorship, is what separates AERIS from the dozen other “tech meets heritage” products that surface at design fairs every season.

Designer: Mahdi Naim

The structure is built on a lattice produced through high-precision photopolymerization, specifically SLA and DLP printing, in high-performance elastomer resin. The geometry is not decorative. It is functional in the most literal sense: the lattice density changes across three zones of the saddle, denser where firm support is needed under an aerodynamic riding position, progressively softer through the transition zone, and open at the perineal relief zone to minimize pressure. No foam. No padding added to compensate for poor design thinking. The structure itself is the comfort system.

That kind of discipline is rare, and I say that as someone who has watched a lot of product design lean on material additions to solve problems that should have been solved earlier. Foam is easy. Getting the geometry right from the start is not. It takes conviction to design without a fallback.

The second layer, and I do mean the second design logic rather than a second material slapped on afterward, is where a French master saddler comes in. Full-grain vegetable-tanned leather, hand-stitched. The studio is clear that this is not an aesthetic decision. The leather works mechanically with the resin, distributing pressure and shear forces in ways that neither foam nor synthetic materials can match at equivalent weight. The interface between the two materials was designed during the modelling phase, not decided once the print came out of the machine.

This is the part I keep coming back to. The leather isn’t a finish. It isn’t branding. It is the second structural argument in the same conversation, and the conversation started before any material was touched. That level of intentionality is genuinely unusual, even among products that wear the word “craft” proudly on their labels.

Mahdi Naïm himself is worth knowing, if you don’t already. He is an industrial designer, a Grand Maître Artisan, and a German Design Award laureate who runs his studio between Lyon and Casablanca. His practice sits at the intersection of French engineering and Moroccan craftsmanship, and AERIS reads like a project that could only come from someone fluent in both languages. The saddle doesn’t feel like a technology demonstration with craft applied on top, or a heritage object with a 3D-printed frame underneath. It feels like one object, made by two disciplines that had to agree on every decision before anything was built.

AERIS is still in active development and moving toward small-series production. The studio is in conversation with industrial partners in additive manufacturing and premium cycling. That means this isn’t a concept in the gallery-piece sense, displayed under glass and admired from a distance. It is a product that intends to be ridden.

Whether you cycle or not, whether you follow product design closely or just occasionally land on something that makes you stop scrolling, AERIS is the kind of object that rewards a second look. Not because it is visually striking, though it is, but because the thinking behind it is genuinely coherent. The lattice, the leather, the hand-stitching, the parametric modelling: none of it is decoration. All of it is argument. That is harder to pull off than it looks, and considerably rarer than the design world likes to admit.

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Bang & Olufsen Just Taught Stone to Sing at Milan 2026

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Every year, Milan Design Week raises the question of what design is actually for. Not in the abstract, philosophical sense that gets debated in panel discussions nobody remembers, but in the most immediate, physical way: you walk into a space, and either you feel it or you don’t. The Bang & Olufsen and Antolini installation this year, From Quarry to Garden: The Shape of Beautiful Sound, is the kind of experience that makes you feel it before you can even explain why.

The collaboration between Bang & Olufsen, the Danish audio luxury brand founded in 1925, and Antolini, the Verona-based natural stone company with 70 years of history, is one of those pairings that sounds unlikely on paper but makes complete sense once you see it. Both brands are obsessed with material. Both are deeply committed to the idea that an object should not only perform but move you. Putting them in the same room, or rather the same garden, was probably inevitable.

Designers: Antolini® with Bang & Olufsen

The installation, hosted at Antolini’s MilanoDuomo Stoneroom, centers on the preview of Beosound Haven, Bang & Olufsen’s forthcoming landscape speaker. It’s a sphere of precision-engineered aluminium that sits on a stone plinth, surrounded by living greenery, water lilies floating on a reflective table, and the kind of deliberate quiet that makes you lean in. Droplets fall onto the water surface and send out ripples, which is either a very beautiful metaphor for sound or just a very beautiful moment. I’m not sure it matters which.

The primary stone throughout the space is Antolini’s Taj Mahal quartzite in a matt finish, chosen for its soft, almost luminous tonality. It reads as both ancient and contemporary at once, exactly the kind of visual tension that great design installations live on. The stone doesn’t compete with the speaker; it contextualizes it. Beosound Haven looks like it belongs there, among the moss and the hydrangeas, in a way that speakers almost never manage to look like they belong anywhere outdoors.

That, to me, is the most interesting design question this collaboration raises: can sound be architectural? Not metaphorically, but literally, the way a wall or a window or a threshold is architectural? Bang & Olufsen’s Senior Director of Design, Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre, speaks about sound as “an architectural language,” one that interacts with materials and forms atmosphere. It’s the kind of language that’s usually associated with interiors, with rooms and ceilings and acoustic panels. Translating it outdoors, into the open air, into a garden or a terrace, is a genuinely new proposition. And one worth taking seriously.

The collaboration also extends to a limited series of Beolab 18 speakers reinterpreted in Antolini stones: Amazonite, Retro Black Petrified Wood, Patagonia Original, Dalmata, Cipollino GreyWave, and Taj Mahal, each piece defined by the specific character of its material. No two are identical, which is exactly how it should be when you’re working with stone. Stone isn’t uniform and it was never meant to be. That unpredictability is part of the point.

This is the second chapter of the Bang & Olufsen and Antolini partnership, building on work introduced in 2025. It feels more confident this time around, more willing to make a statement. Carlo Alberto Antolini describes the result as “a dialogue between the elements,” and that framing feels right. It’s not a speaker placed in a garden. It’s a conversation between nature and craft, between sound and surface, between something ancient and something very, very deliberate.

Milan Design Week produces a lot of installations that photograph well and feel thin in person. This one seems to work differently, designed to be experienced with the body, not just processed with the eyes. The sound moves through the space. The stone holds light. The water catches everything. Whether you’re drawn in by the audio, the aesthetics, or simply the spectacle of a garden growing inside a Milan stoneroom, you’re likely to leave thinking about what it means to really listen to a space rather than just look at it.

The post Bang & Olufsen Just Taught Stone to Sing at Milan 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.