Monthly Archives: August 2026

Roca’s New Bathtub and Basin Turn Recycled PET Bottles Into Sculptural Bathroom Design

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The plastic bottles in your recycling bin have a surprisingly glamorous potential future. Roca’s Stonex material comes from recycled PET resin, and the expanded Ohtake collection is probably the most design-forward version of that material the brand has produced yet. The new bathtub is compact, inspired by Japanese Ofuro soaking culture, and built in Stonex that is warm to the touch and resistant to the kind of wear and discoloration that makes bathroom surfaces look rough after a few years. From recycling bin to Red Dot winner. That’s a reasonable arc.

Rodrigo Ohtake designed the expansion, pulling forward a collection his father, the legendary Brazilian architect Ruy Ohtake, built with Roca. The two new basins came out of hand-sculpted clay models, which explains why they carry the shape of a calla lily rather than the usual flat-plane geometry bathroom design defaults to when nobody’s paying close attention. The bathtub accessories, a side shelf and an entry step that pulls double duty as a stool, arrive in soy resin. Roca built the whole expansion around the idea that sustainable material choices and strong design can be the same choice, resolved at the same time. Looking at the finished pieces, that idea lands.

Designer: Rodrigo Ohtake for Roca

The two basins cover different ground despite sharing the same botanical reference. One reads as a shallow, elongated vessel, almost like a leaf mid-curl, with edges that lift just enough to feel deliberate. The other is deeper and rounder, with walls that rise more confidently from the counter surface. Both began as physical clay models rather than digital geometry, which is where those specific curves came from, and both land in a finish range that goes well past the usual white-and-off-white defaults: matt black, onyx, coffee, beige, and a terracotta that is available in Brazil and on request everywhere else. That terracotta option is the one worth tracking down.

The Stonex bathtub is where the Ofuro influence lands most visibly. Ofuro baths are traditionally compact and steep-sided, built for soaking upright in hot water rather than reclining across the full length of a Western tub, and the whole point is immersion rather than rinsing. Rodrigo’s version holds that compact discipline and adds an integrated seat that makes the cocoon feeling more literal. The soy resin step and shelf arrive as standard, so the full ritual setup is sorted from the start. Stonex retains ambient heat on contact rather than pulling it away, which is a material detail that matters considerably more than it sounds.

Rodrigo took over the studio his father founded after Ruy Ohtake died in 2021, and the two practices formally merged into OHTAKE in 2022. Ruy built over 420 projects in Brazil across five decades, with a design philosophy that ran consistently on organic forms and curves drawn from the natural world. Rodrigo’s grandmother, Tomie Ohtake, was a celebrated Japanese-Brazilian abstract artist whose visual instincts filtered into the family’s work long before any of this became a bathroom collection. That three-generation lineage between Japanese heritage, Brazilian modernism, and contemporary sustainable design practice sits quietly behind every decision in this expansion. Rodrigo has said he tries to look to the future rather than the past, which is probably the right instinct when the past is that substantial.

The full collection is available through Roca globally, with basin finishes running from matt black and onyx to coffee, beige, and white. The iF Design Award and Red Dot both went to the new basin and bathtub in 2025, alongside Best in Show at Expo Revestir in Brazil. Those are the right awards for this kind of work: they measure execution as much as intent. For a collection that started on a workbench with clay and ended up in recycled resin and soy, the pieces carry almost none of the burden of either that origin story or the family legacy behind them. They just look like they belong.

The post Roca’s New Bathtub and Basin Turn Recycled PET Bottles Into Sculptural Bathroom Design first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Adidas Sneaker That Takes 24 Hours to Print and Seconds to Want

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Footwear has always been a quiet conversation between technology and design. But every so often, a shoe comes along that forces the conversation out loud. Adidas’ Climacool Laced is that shoe for this season, and whether or not you’re a sneakerhead, it deserves your attention.

The Climacool story started in 2024, when Adidas introduced the original Climacool as a single-piece 3D-printed shoe built around one ambitious idea: a shoe “made like nothing, feels like nothing, looks like nothing.” Bold claim. Bolder execution. The original concept was all about a lattice structure that could mold to the foot while letting air move freely around it, a complete departure from how sneakers are traditionally assembled. For the FW26 season, Adidas evolved that vision with the Climacool Laced, and the update is both practical and surprisingly elegant.

Designer: Adidas

The key addition, as the name makes clear, is laces. That might sound minor, but it’s actually a thoughtful design decision. The original Climacool’s slip-on format was a statement in itself, but laces open the shoe up to more foot shapes, more wearers, and more moments. It’s the kind of iteration that shows a brand actually listening rather than just launching. The lace-up construction is also paired with updated traction and that signature ghost stripe detail, rendered in monochromatic white or contrasting black depending on the colorway.

The construction process is still the headline. Each pair of Climacool Laced shoes is built using Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) 3D printing, a process that takes approximately 24 hours per shoe. DLS is not your average desktop 3D printer situation. It’s an advanced additive manufacturing technique that uses UV light to cure liquid resin layer by layer, producing structures with far more precision and flexibility than traditional methods. The result is the Climacool’s defining characteristic: a fully 3D-printed lattice upper that reads almost like a woven textile but behaves more like an engineering diagram.

That lattice is functional. Adidas engineered it to allow 360° airflow, with strategically placed mesh ventilation zones that keep feet cool during movement. The shoe also includes arch support and integrated heel pillows, features that might get lost in all the tech conversation but matter enormously for everyday wearability. This is not a shoe designed to live in a display case, even if it could pull off that assignment very convincingly.

Visually, the Climacool Laced occupies an interesting space. It’s undeniably futuristic but somehow not alienating. The all-white or off-white colorway with contrasting black laces has a restraint to it that most tech-forward shoes abandon in favor of maximalism. It looks like something designed by someone who trusts the material to do the talking. A pink colorway has also surfaced, which adds a playful dimension and signals that Adidas is leaning into a broader audience rather than keeping this in the realm of experimental footwear for the few.

The campaign behind the shoe features Kahleah Copper and Jalen Williams, both known for their off-court style, which positions the Climacool Laced firmly in lifestyle territory rather than performance. That framing matters. Adidas is making a clear argument that 3D-printed construction isn’t a niche technology story. It’s a mainstream design choice. And with the original Climacool retailing at $140, they’re pricing it to be worn, not collected.

My take? The Climacool Laced feels like proof that fashion and manufacturing are finally having a productive conversation. Too often, 3D-printed shoes land as concepts that never quite cross the threshold into something you’d actually reach for in the morning. The Climacool Laced crosses it. The lace addition alone takes it from art object to wardrobe player, and the 24-hour production process behind each pair gives it a quiet sense of craft that fast fashion simply can’t replicate.

We’re at a point where the most interesting footwear design isn’t happening on a sketch pad. It’s happening in a digital file, cured by light, one layer at a time. The Climacool Laced makes that shift feel not just inevitable, but genuinely exciting.

The post The Adidas Sneaker That Takes 24 Hours to Print and Seconds to Want first appeared on Yanko Design.

Your Entire Steam Library Now Fits in a Game Boy-Sized Handheld

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The Steam Deck modding community has taken Valve’s handheld gaming PC to some unexpected places. Modders have swapped in more RAM, loaded the hardware with terabytes of storage, and reshaped it in ways Valve never intended. Most of those efforts stay close to the original form factor, tweaking what’s already there without fundamentally changing what the device looks like or how compact it is.

The SteamBoy goes much further. Someone took the actual working internals of a Steam Deck LCD, pulled them out of the original shell, and rebuilt everything inside a 3D-printed chassis roughly the size of an original Game Boy. The form factor shifts from the Steam Deck’s wide, horizontal layout to a tall, vertical one, running entirely on genuine Steam Deck hardware without any custom-made components.

Designer: PhyFawkes

The parts at the heart of the build include the Steam Deck’s motherboard, battery, speakers, and all of the original button hardware. Getting these into a much smaller enclosure without custom-designed circuit boards is the notable achievement here. No bespoke PCBs were needed for the core assembly, which means everything is essentially the same Steam Deck hardware, just rearranged to fit a dramatically different shell.

The display is where things get more involved. Rather than reusing the original Steam Deck screen, the planned replacement is a 1200×1080 AMOLED panel at 90 Hz, originally made for VR headsets. Making it work requires a custom adapter PCB between the panel and the motherboard, which is still in progress. In the meantime, the current demo routes output through a television rather than displaying on the device itself.

What the demo does confirm is that the hardware runs. Plug it into a display and the Steam Deck’s full library is available, complete with its familiar interface, game compatibility, and controls. The face buttons, D-pad, and thumbsticks carry over from the original hardware, giving it the full input range of a Steam Deck inside a body that fits the silhouette and spirit of a Game Boy.

The tighter enclosure does come with trade-offs. Cramming full Steam Deck internals into a chassis this compact raises real concerns about thermal management, since the original design already runs warm under load. The shell is noticeably thicker than a vintage Game Boy as a result, a reasonable concession given what’s packed inside. Cooling and battery longevity under sustained use remain open questions for the build to address.

The SteamBoy is still a work in progress, somewhere between a proof of concept and a finished handheld. The screen situation alone involves a custom PCB that hasn’t been built yet, and getting it to a polished state requires further refinement of the enclosure and its internal arrangement. A teardown video documenting how everything fits together has since followed the original reveal, showing that the assembly is at least replicable.

There’s something telling about why a project like this resonates with people beyond the usual modding community. The Steam Deck is already a capable handheld gaming PC, but the idea of that same power in a Game Boy-sized body carries a different kind of appeal. It’s the same feeling that made the Game Boy endure for decades, distilled into something that can run a modern PC library.

The post Your Entire Steam Library Now Fits in a Game Boy-Sized Handheld first appeared on Yanko Design.