Breathtaking residential building in Mexico comes with its own vertical forest and solar panels on its terrace

Living The Noom’s design is everything you want from a building – an unusually beautiful organic structure, covered with a lush tone of green brought about by the vertical forests running along its surface, and running almost entirely on renewable energy.

Designed by Mexico-based Sanzpont Arquitectura, ‘Living In The Noom’ puts you in the lap of nature and luxury. Its sanctuary-esque design focuses on three broad pillars – Wellness, Sustainability, and Flexibility. The community features multiple 4-storeyed houses with a uniquely alluring triangular shape, characterized by vertical bamboo channels and a vertical forest growing on the outer facade of the building. Finally, the structure culminates in a terrace on the fifth floor that has solar panels for harvesting energy, and an urban garden where the residents can grow their own food.

A winner of multiple architecture awards, the Noom project focuses on creating a community for people that focuses on their individual needs. This meant visualizing the entire project as something multi-faceted, rather than a building made of boxes that simply ‘contained’ their occupants. Aside from giving Noom’s residents a stellar home to live in, the project even comes with amenities like greenery (70% of the project’s area is covered in nature – the buildings occupy just 30% of the overall space), as well as rejuvenation centers, meditation areas, parks, pools, workshop-centers for art, and even the organic garden for healthy eating.

The project integrates bioclimatic and sustainable strategies such as rainwater harvesting, wastewater separation, wetland for greywater treatment, biodigesters, compost area, and more notably the vertical forest on the outside of each building, which aside from providing a touch of greenery, also filters/purifies the air coming through into the house, and helps reduce the temperature of homes – a phenomenon more commonly known as the Heat Island Effect.

The overall Noom community comprises 3 buildings of 5 stories each. The apartments on each floor are 120 and 60 square meters, having 1, 2, or 3 bedrooms. The unique layout allows each room to have access to ample indirect sunlight. The design of the house also promotes natural ventilation to renew the indoor air and ensure an optimal level of comfort. The architects at Sanzpont say that their unique layout helps reduce energy consumption (lights and air conditioning) by as much as 85%. For the rest, solar panels on the roof and a high-efficiency LED artificial lighting system helps power the buildings at night.

‘Living In The Noom’ is a Platinum Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designers: Sanzpont Arquitectura and Pedrajo Mas Pedrajo Arquitectos

Inspired by a waterfall, this award-winning Taiwanese bamboo chair makes wood look as fluid as water

With a name that perfectly describes the chair’s visual style, the Lattice Chair is an interesting single-arm chair made from interwoven strips of wood. Designed for comfort as well as for that interesting aesthetic, the chair comes with a single armrest, allowing you to sit with complete postural flexibility. Its cushion is made from high-quality Taiwanese bamboo strips, known for their excellent toughness. The result is a chair that weighs a mere 4 kilos, but can take up to 120 kilos of weight.

The Lattice Chair’s design is inspired by a waterfall, something that becomes very evident with how its cascading design looks like multiple streams of downward-flowing water. Made from a Taiwan-specific Moso bamboo, the chair comes crafted using unique bending and forming methods that are specific to the bamboo and to Taiwan’s culture.

The Lattice Chair is a Platinum Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021, and also secured a winning position at the SIT Furniture Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Chen Kuan-Cheng

A close-up of the woven strips of wood shows how remarkably perfect the thick bamboo wood strips are. The weft and warp use a combination of Taiwanese Moso Bamboo and Beechwood to create a criss-cross contrast of different-colored woods that are finally finished with a coat of natural wood wax oil.

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This height-adjustable desk works across the ages – from school to work life!

McKinsey’s research on the impact of work from home post covid says, “To determine how extensively remote work might persist after the pandemic, we analyzed its potential across more than 2,000 tasks used in some 800 occupations in the eight focus countries. Considering only remote work that can be done without a loss of productivity, we find that about 20 to 25 percent of the workforces in advanced economies could work from home between three and five days a week.” Based on this report, online teaching will remain the norm ever since the pandemic hit our lives, and the trend seems to carry on. Keeping this in mind, designer Lei Wang has created an ergonomic study desk that grows with the child – fitting perfectly in the set of requirements for different phases of life. The adjustable desk looks inspired by the AT-ST (All-Terrain Scout) Walker, with its walking stance emulated in the desk’s legs.

Lei has christened the ergonomic work table as Venus Study Desk, and the furniture piece is good enough for early school days and up to University level studies. The free height adjustment system and a unique desk tilting mechanism allow the desk to grow with your child. The cool-looking desk employs turbo worm technology to actuate the free height adjustment function of the table. So, the user can precisely adjust the height according to the requirement without even moving a muscle. Similarly, the tabletop tilt can be changed just with a light pull – courtesy of the gas spring adjustment.

Under the tabletop, there is a drawer to keep all the essentials in an organized fashion. The back of the tabletop sports a multifunctional desktop box that holds a wireless charging module to keep the devices juiced. The intuitive design of the Venus desk has ample space to hide all the cables from plain sight, which is a tremendous advantage for ones with a multi-monitor setup and other peripherals. In totality, the desk is ideal for kids, students, and even professionals who fancy customizable aesthetics – definitely, an excellent investment to up your productivity for years to come.

Designer: Lei Wang