Tag Archives: A’ Design Gold

This shellfish-inspired luxury hotel blends perfectly onto the coastline of this tropical beach

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Inspired by shellfish, the Nudibranch hotel comes with an instantly recognizable shell-like facade and has ‘tentacles’ that stretch out in different directions, creating a piece of architecture that looks absolutely stunning from any angle.

The hotel gets its name from the Nudibranch, a species of soft-bodied gastropod mollusks known for shedding their shells after their larval stage. The animals are often known for their incredible design characterized by vibrant colors and hypnotic patterns (often an indication of an animal being toxic), and the hotel follows that trend too, with its grand design comprising a glass facade and lawn-covered public spaces.

The hotel’s glass ‘shell’ forms its most recognizable element. The two shells act as the hotel’s main buildings, with coastal views for each. The rest of the hotel’s ‘body’ surrounds these two shells, forming lawns and pathways above the sandy coast of the beach, guiding you to the hotel’s several amenities, from its restaurants and bars to the spa, swimming pools, and finally back to your room at the hotel. The animal-inspired building comes with signature tentacles too, that sort of form the entrances and exit roads, cutting through the wilderness to let you arrive at or check out of your destination.

The Nudibranch Hotel is a Gold Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: SpActrum

This tiny pre-fab home can easily be relocated to any destination for that ultimate nomadic lifestyle

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Designed so that you can have a cabin in the woods, a house on the lake, or a property on the beach whenever you want, the Time Holiday is a mobile home that’s focused on what designer Chester Goh calls ‘futuristic sustainability… or basically architecture that’s nomadic, so you don’t need to build multiple homes.

While the term ‘futuristic sustainability’ definitely sounds like jargon, the idea of a mobile home really makes sense from an ecological and economical standpoint. The mobile home belongs solely to you and isn’t bound by a location. It gives you the freedom to constantly relocate, finding a suitable spot to park yourself and live in, so you’re not stuck in expensive cities, compartmentalized in tiny overpriced rental apartments, or heavily affected by natural calamities affecting your neighborhood.

Saving on total costs and unnecessary construction waste, these modular pods/villas come prefabricated and do not require any foundation. They’re built to be stable, spacious, and structurally sound, and can easily be lifted up and shifted anywhere on the planet without any limitations to terrains and topography. “Wanting to wake up to the morning of serene blue sea, lush green grassland, or a majestic golden dessert in a modular pod that is closely connected to nature has been the driving inspiration to this project”, says designer Chester Goh

The outer structure is fabricated from a single curved sheet of fiberglass, designed to withstand various topographies and climates. The front and side, however, constitute full-frame floor-to-ceiling double-layer laminated glass panels that provide extravagant 360-degree unobstructed views of the outdoors, while helping insulate the interiors. The entire structure is designed to telescopically expand/contract, allowing the house to assume a compact form in transit, and extend outwards to create larger spaces and an extra guest room. There’s even access to a terrace on the top, because what’s the point of shifting your home to a scenic spot if you can’t really absorb the area’s beauty from the roof of your mobile home? Glass of sangria not included!

The Time Holiday Mobile Home is a Gold Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Chester Goh

The award-winning Memoria Chair uses fabric in a radical new way by magically suspending it in place

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Looking like a piece of cloth draped on a chair (without the chair), the MEMORIA is a groundbreaking, avant-garde chair proposal based on brutalist design principles, that uses a concrete fabric to realize its unique, gravity-defying design. The material, generally referred to as Concrete Canvas, is a flexible fabric impregnated with concrete, which hardens when hydrated and forms a thin, durable, waterproof, and fire-resistant layer. The prototyping technique ensures each chair is unique in the way the chair looks and the fabric folds, along with a bespoke brutalist concrete texture on its surface.

“By creating an aura that evokes mystery, questionability, and reflection on the object beyond its pure functionality, Memoria plays with the senses, confusing at first the user and, in turn, showing different interpretations, narratives and stories depending on the circumstance and context of the user”, says designer Sergio Sesmero.

The use of Concrete Canvas is rather unusual in furniture and can generally be spotted in civil constructions due to its high durability, resistance, and sustainability. The production of the chair first starts with a 3D-printed mold made from recyclable bio-degradable PLA filament. The Concrete Canvas is then laid on the base frame and hardens over a period of 24 hours. After the canvas has set, a final round of epoxy coating is applied to the chair, allowing it to fill in any pores and air gaps in the canvas. The result is an incredibly unique and expressive chair that can last for as long as 50 years!

The Memoria Chair is a Gold Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021, and a winner in the Emerging Furniture Design of the Year category at the SIT Furniture Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Sergio Sesmero

This modular camper design brings you closer to nature with sustainable travel and 360-degree windows!

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As a society, we are steadily leaning further and further into the world of sustainable traveling.  Especially following the years spent in quarantine, each and every one of us are itching to get back to nature. In addition to travelers, designers are getting on board too and coming up with sustainable travel solutions. As part of their commitment to environmental design, CE-ST, a young design studio, created Time Holiday Mobile Home, an A’Design Award-winning modular mobile home the size of a shipping container that can be transported to any terrain.

Whether our sustainability commitment means more camping trips and less flying, or packing up the house into an electric RV camper and living off the grid for a while, people are finding unique ways to travel with respect for the environment. Outfitted with solar panels, naturally ventilated windows, and built with recycled tiles, Time Holiday Mobile Home was designed to leave a reduced ecological footprint when traveling. Without the need for a foundation, Time Holiday can be stationed anywhere across the globe, atop varying terrains and topographies. Time Holiday’s flexibility for traveling allows for multiple pods to be stationed in one location, forming a sort of cluster or system of campers.

Built on a modular scheme, Time Holiday’s fiberglass roof, the modular pod’s exterior frame, is prefabricated in the studio’s factory before being transported to the campsite to be assembled there. Through a drawer, or pull-out method, the interior space of Time Holiday campers can be expanded or reduced, nearly doubling or halving the pod’s size. Inside Time Holiday, campers enjoy unobstructed, 360° views of the outdoors through the camper’s full-frame floor-to-ceiling double-layer laminated, insulating glass windows. Highlighted during the camper’s construction process and overall sustainability, bringing guests closer to nature was a top priority when designing Time Holiday.

Designer: CE-ST

Time Holiday’s exterior frame is constructed from a single piece of curved fiberglass in a factory to later attach to the pod onsite.

Due to Time Holiday’s flexibility with traveling, clusters of Time Holiday campers can be situated in one location.

Whether you see yourself catching early morning waves or sunsets over the pines, Time Holiday can take you there.

Inside, through a pull-out, drawer method, an extension can be added to Time Holiday to increase the interior space.

This multifunctional side table transforms into a chair and make the most of tiny living!

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Living in tight city corners is a finicky job– you have to make the most of your space, no matter how small. Studio apartments and tiny living spaces can make it feel difficult to have control over the space because delineating different rooms without overcrowding the place can feel impossible. In designing a chair specifically built for small living spaces in the city, NG Architects created Spring, a multifunctional table that blooms into a chair with a backrest at the push of a button.

Spring comprises a cylindrical shape that increases or decreases in height according to its desired function. At its lowest height of 500mm, Spring serves as a simple side table with a natural wood top. Then, by simply pressing the table down, Spring’s built-in compression springs are activated and morph the side table into a chair with a backrest. By following the same pushing tactic, the Spring chair can reach its maximum height of 900mm, transforming into a table that can work as a centerpiece for a small studio space. While the main building material used to construct Spring is oak wood, the furniture’s compression springs are made from aluminum, while natural and white paint colors coat the sides and top of Spring.

Named after the Spring season, the chair’s transformation is reminiscent of a flower blooming. The clever use of built-in compression springs gives double credence to the chair’s name and provides the chair with multifunctionality without having to take up more space. Designed specifically for tiny living spaces, Spring uses modern building practices and classic design principles to create simple, yet multifunctional pieces of furniture that open up to meet your space where it’s already at.

Designer: NG Architects

Inspired by a flower bud, NG Architects built Spring for practical purposes in small living spaces, creating more functionality while not overcrowding the space.

Five aluminum springs hold a clamp lever that morphs Spring into its different forms when activated.