Tag Archives: biophilic design

Wall-Clock inspired by a Pile Of Leaves tells time but also a Nature-inspired Visual Story

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“Foglie” is the Italian word for leaves, and Tobias Sartori makes no effort to obscure the reference. His Foglie Wall Clock is built from dozens of hand-carved pine leaves, each shaped with a carved central ridge that mimics a real leaf’s midrib, arranged into a pointed, flame-like cluster that functions as the clock face. Branch-carved hands in a contrasting darker finish sweep the hours from a movement housed at the center. The result sits between decorative object and wall art, and it does so with enough material confidence to hold that ground convincingly.

Sartori first worked with leaf forms in a jewelry project, carving wooden pendants for necklaces, and the motif followed him home. A beech hedge outside and a botanical wallpaper inside reinforced the idea, together suggesting that an entire clock could operate in the same visual vocabulary. Several layout sketches followed before two strong candidates emerged. The chosen design is the one where every individual carved leaf echoes the overall silhouette of the piece, creating a quality that feels grown from the inside out.

Designer: Tobias Sartori

The final piece has a remarkable sense of depth and texture, a direct result of its meticulous construction. Because each pine leaf is an individual component, hand-carved and set at a slightly different angle and height, the clock creates a dynamic topography of light and shadow that shifts throughout the day. This layered arrangement gives the object a living quality, changing its character as the sun moves across the room.

The choice of pine, with its warm and expressive grain, gives the clock an approachable, organic feel that invites a closer look. The darker, more delicate hands provide just enough contrast to ensure legibility without overpowering the woodwork. It is a quiet object that reveals its handmade complexity gradually, rewarding careful observation with subtle details that a mass-produced item could never replicate.

Sartori’s process sketches reveal another, more traditional round variant that he ultimately set aside, a decision that proved critical to the design’s integrity. The circular concept, while pleasant, felt more like leaves applied to a conventional clock shape. The final, elongated form, however, feels like a clock that grew directly from the leaves themselves. This distinction is the core of its success. By housing a simple, reliable clock movement within a form that feels completely natural, Sartori allows the artistry of the woodwork to remain the main story. The Foglie clock successfully integrates function into a form that feels elemental and intentional, as if a gust of wind had gathered the leaves on the wall in a moment of perfect, fleeting composition.

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Biophilic smart humidifier concept also functions as a plant pot

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It isn’t just outdoors that air quality can be a problem. The recent years have made us acutely aware that even indoors, the air we breathe isn’t always in its best state. Even disregarding pollutants, the air inside our houses or rooms can be bereft of moisture, leading not only to discomfort but also respiratory issues. That’s why not only air purifiers but also humidifiers have become so popular of late, though most of their designs leave a lot to be desired. Fortunately, there seems to be a wave of creativity washing over this market, producing designs that blend better into living spaces or push the boundaries of what an appliance can do, like this minimalist humidifier concept that also gives a home to nature’s own purifiers: plants.

Designer: NOI Creative Design Studio

There’s a reason why interior designers always recommend placing plants in living areas, and not just because they look good. They have the natural ability to clean the air around us, purifying and releasing just the right amount of moisture. Of course, just a few plants can no longer handle our poor air quality by themselves, and they’ll definitely need a little help to ensure the quality of life of the humans they’re living with. That’s the core concept of the ACQUAIR design, a smart humidifier and air purifier that tries to combine technology and nature in an aesthetic design.

ACQUAIR is actually two products in one, a smart humidifier and a pot for a single-stem plant. These two parts share the same water tank that both nourishes the plant and sprays moisturized mist to meet the required humidity in the air. The latter is determined using sensors, intelligently adjusting the mist depending on the temperature and amount of humidity already present. There’s very little human intervention needed other than refilling the tank once in a while.

With this system, both the plant and the smart appliance can work together to ensure the comfort and health of the people living inside the space. The small plant can utilize its own natural abilities to purify the air while also living on the same water used to humidify the air. It also serves an aesthetic value, displaying a symbol of life and health in a simple yet elegant pot. Unfortunately, the concept doesn’t go deep enough to detail the device’s features for helping keep the plant alive beyond just water. It definitely has room for improvement, like utilizing sensors to also monitor the health of the plant itself.

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Sculptural wall lamps bring an otherworldly aura inspired by sunflowers

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A lot of designs these days take their cue from nature, perhaps the greatest designer that ever existed. Some simply use natural forms as their starting point while others imitate them almost completely. Yet there are also others who try to interpret organic shapes in a different way, resulting in a design that is both familiar yet almost alien. This wall lighting, for example, takes inspiration from the tiny disk flowers inside a beautiful sunflower, but the play of light and shadows gives it an almost hypnotic appearance, whether the lamp is actually on or not.

Designer: Rollo Bryant

It’s probably not common knowledge, but the flower that most people “see” when looking at a sunflower is actually a flower head that’s made up of a bunch of tiny flowers called disk florets. It’s a rather unique arrangement that becomes even more enchanting when you learn about it, giving the sunflower an otherworldly character. That’s the kind of character that the Aureole collection of wall-mounted lighting tries to embody, not just in its appearance but also in the material used to create its mesmerizing form.

The lamps use quartz sand for its main body, a material that’s often used for moulds that are then used to create other objects. In Aureole, however, the sand is the final product instead, and its production pushes the envelope of both what the material can be used for as well as the 3D printing technology employed for creating the complex structures of the lamp’s shape.

That shape is almost like a maze of intersecting curves or an array of raised bits swirling around the center, trying to recreate the appearance of those disk florets without being too literal. They only suggest the general shape of the sunflower head but still leave plenty of room for artistic interpretation. Closer inspection reveals a more intricate network of lines and curves, almost like the structures that bees and ants leave behind in their hives and homes. While completely natural in inspiration, it almost gives the lamp an alien-like vibe as well.

Once the light shines from beneath an opaque black disc in the center, the wall-mounting lighting takes on a completely different personality, ethereal and mesmerizing. Thanks to those complex 3D structures, the light casts shadows in unique and intricate ways, creating an eerie atmosphere that seems to lock your eyes in a swirling spiral of yellow and black contrasts. Because the light is coming from behind the disc, there is also an element of mystery to the aesthetic, as if watching a solar eclipse corona burst into a dizzying pattern. Either way, the Aureole wall lamps definitely captivate people’s minds and imagination, a true conversation starter in any setting.

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