Most floor lamps are designed with modern home interiors in mind, whether they come in minimalist forms or industrial aesthetics. Even those with more organic curves and shapes offset that with metallic materials or finishes that still make them look at home in the majority of modern interior designs available today.
Of course, those aren’t the only options, and this strange-looking floor lamp puts a different spin on nature-inspired design. Made from clay but shaped like tree trunks, these lamps put an almost otherworldly vibe to a space as if you stepped into a parallel world with alien colors and unusual shapes.
Designers: Ana Milena Hernández Palacios, Christophe Penasse (Masquespacio)
Lamps don’t just give light; they can also change the ambiance of a space. With the right design combined with a themed interior, a living room can become a cinema, a spa, or even a jungle. Some have designs intended to fade into the background, while others capture your attention, imagination, and envy. While most lamps are made from a combination of metal, plastic, and sometimes glass, those are definitely not the only options available.
It might be named after a flower, but the Ceramic Blossom floor lamps stand tall like trees. In fact, if you’re familiar with the grooves on the trunk of a palm tree, you might even mistake these lamps for one, except for the fact that they come in colors other than earthy tones, giving them an alien vibe. The lighting part itself is enclosed in a white dome, adding to that otherworldly aura.
The lamp isn’t made from wood either and is constructed using a combination of traditional and modern techniques. The core of the “trunk” is 3D printed from clay, while the petal-like protrusions are carefully made by hand. These are assembled together before they’re fired to give it a glazed finish. The body is made in segments rather than as a whole and then simply stacked together.
The Ceramic Blossom lamp can definitely stand on its own, becoming a point of interest in any room motif. That said, it is perhaps best used in an interior with nature-inspired design and indoor plants, especially large, leafy plants. This gives an image of walking into a fantasy world, capturing your imagination and perhaps even inspiring your mind.
Dubbed the CRANE WASP, this 3D printer is also known as “the infinity 3D printer”. The impressive printer utilizes locally sourced clay, mud, or cement to 3D-print affordable homes. The printer even uses agricultural waste as aggregate to build homes. Currently, this system is being employed to construct some much-needed housing in Colombia.
Designer: United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) recently purchased a Crane WASP to build affordable and effective homes in Colombia. The homes are built using local soil and resources. The printer is priced at around US$180,000, which is no small amount. Currently, more than a quarter of Columbian households are suffering from a lack of decent housing – an estimated 3.7 million. Two of three families who do have homes aren’t in great condition either, since the dwellings are subpar and need structural improvements. By utilizing locally sourced soil, the UN won’t need to bring in expensive materials from other lands. This tactic is bringing down costs significantly.
The Crane WASP ( World’s Advanced Saving Project) draws inspiration from the Mason Wasp – a little yet hard-working insect that uses mud to make its own nests. The UNDP intends to install the printers in challenging terrains, where it is difficult to set up expensive and conventional equipment. This equipment would have limited access as well. The Crane WASP is complemented by the local soil, and both work excellently to build homes for the impoverished or homeless.
Although bricks are commonly associated with exterior construction, they find versatile applications indoors and in landscape design. Their aesthetic appeal, versatility, and cost-effectiveness make them a standout choice for interior and exterior design. From structural elements to decorative features, bricks transcend their traditional role, offering aesthetic and functional benefits. Here are some modern applications of bricks in the realm of architectural, interiors, and landscape design.
Inspired by the intricate structure of beehives, Mutina, a pioneering ceramics company collaborating with top designers, introduced the Hives collection. Designed by Konstantin Grcic, these hexagonal terracotta bricks redefine traditional brick-building, offering infinite configurations for interior furnishings and architectural projects. Each brick, resembling two merged hexagons, facilitates dynamic versatility; vertically, they create semi-open structures with open cavities, while horizontally, they form undulating facades for columns and counters. Crafted in 13×22.5x7cm size, the Hives bricks combine functionality with durability, boasting impressive thermal and acoustic properties. Utilizing artisanal extrusion techniques, each brick is unique, maintaining an organic structure and a soothing orange glow, exemplifying Mutina’s commitment to innovative and sustainable ceramic design.
Crafted by OA-Lab, the ‘Alley House’ in Seoul, South Korea, innovatively incorporates greenery into its brick facade. Utilizing a stretcher bond pattern, the lower floor features uniquely designed bricks serving as planters. These protruding bricks create shelves for planting, enhancing the building’s exterior with a vertical garden. Their concrete composition ensures durability and containment for plants, while their density on the ground level facilitates easy watering. Ideal for smaller plants, they add a charming touch of green against the building’s white and red color scheme.
This innovative Wall House design by CTA Creative Architects in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, employs hole-punctured bricks to enhance indoor air quality and promote natural ventilation and illumination. Salvaged from nearby building sites, these bricks are strategically punctuated to allow fresh air and light into the living spaces. The irregular arrangement of burnt and blackened bricks adds texture and depth to the exterior, while tiered steps mimic the brick pattern, creating a visually striking entrance. Surrounding greenery improves air quality and contrasts beautifully with the brick tones. Large windows and a glass roof maximize natural light, enhancing the spaciousness of the interior. Simple materials like exposed-aggregate concrete and dark wood complement the design, while a stylish black-metal staircase adds functionality and aesthetic appeal.
At London’s historic Royal Albert Wharf, repurposed bricks have been used to design the unique round bench FLOAT. Blending seamlessly into its maritime surroundings, it resembles a decorative element while offering seating. Crafted from traditional handmade clay bricks stacked in a brick-like design, it evokes the dockside architecture. The curved shape mimics the wharf’s edge, inviting visitors to sit and enjoy the view. Despite its unconventional material and rounded form, FLOAT adds an intriguing touch to the wharf’s ambiance.
The Fjord House is a stunning architectural marvel by Studio Olafur Eliasson. Crafted with rustic bricks, this innovative design seamlessly merges tradition with modernity. Its curved walls evoke a sense of fluidity and dynamism, creating a captivating presence in any environment. The timeless charm and contemporary allure of the Fjord House, are a true testament to the fusion of art and architecture.
Toy Storey, a sustainable circular dwelling by Wallmakers India, headed by Vinu Daniel, creatively incorporates 6,200 discarded toys into its walls, transforming them into unique decorations. Beyond construction, architecture expresses cultural, social, and environmental concerns, as demonstrated in this groundbreaking project nestled in Kerala’s landscapes. It’s more than a home; it’s a tribute to nostalgia, childhood, and eco-awareness. Through repurposing toys as structural elements and decorative features, Toy Storey prompts reflection on consumption habits, while its design seamlessly blends with its surroundings. The interiors foster community living with individual privacy, featuring translucent screens, a central courtyard, and innovative ventilation. Toy Storey challenges norms, advocating sustainability and creativity by giving discarded items new meaning.
Spanish firm Agora Arquitectura transformed a neglected brick structure near Barcelona into the ‘House on a Brick Base’, initially home to a tool shed and a small red-brick building. The latter was refurbished and extended, integrating two perpendicular brick walls supporting the timber dwelling. External brick staircases and a perimeter wall were added. Sustainable materials like prefabricated cross-laminated timber and whitewashed cork were used. Co-founder Joan Casals Pañella described the project as an homage to traditional building methods. The studio fully renovated the brick building and expanded it across the terrain. Co-founder Joan Casals Pañella characterized the project as a tribute to traditional construction techniques, integrating two perpendicular brick walls into the structure to support the timber dwelling above. Additionally, a perimeter wall of perforated brick and exterior brick staircases were seamlessly incorporated to link various levels of the building within the sloping landscape.
Prestige University, designed by Sanjay Puri Architects in Indore, India, embodies a fusion of organic architecture and sustainable building practices. Featuring staggered green terraces ascending towards a 20-meter apex, the design optimizes natural resources and climate. Inspired by traditional Indian architecture, the structure leverages the local environment for energy efficiency. The terraces allow fractured sunlight and ventilation, while a 20-meter tall brick screen mitigates heat absorption, particularly on the east, west, and south sides. The ground level accommodates administrative offices, an auditorium, and a cafeteria, with first-floor library rooms connected by an internal bridge reminiscent of Colosseum tunnels. Multi-tiered brick terraces offer recreational spaces, with facilities including a library, cafeteria, and seminar halls nestled beneath.
In this minimalist interior design, a brick wall demarcates the open-plan kitchen from the rest of the space. The L-shaped kitchen island transforms into a breakfast counter with tall chairs. It becomes the focal point of the open-plan home while a drop ceiling further reinforces the position of the kitchen island.
By subtle variations in elevation or intricate arrangements, one can craft diverse 3D patterns. This approach adds visual interest and imbues the space with an organic texture and ambiance to the interiors and exteriors.
Seeking inspiration from Greenland’s indigenous culture, this translucent public installation is crafted from glass bricks. The Qaammat Fjeld Pavilion, designed by Konstantin Ikonomidis, nestles between two fjords in Sarfannguit, Greenland. Traditional building methods were used by Ikonomidis to anchor the structure to rocky terrain, forming two semi-circular structures atop horizontal bars. Collaborating with Wonderglass, glass bricks reflect the surrounding landscape, offering changing vistas as seasons evolve, while also casting crystalline shadows and light displays with the sun’s movement.
ByFusion’s initiative, reminiscent of Wall-E’s garbage cubes, introduces ByBlock, an eco-friendly construction material crafted from repurposed plastic and nonrecyclables. Through steam compression, these materials are transformed into versatile forms suitable for basic structures like fences or terraces. ByBlocks, produced with the patented Blockers technology, eliminates the need for cleaning or sorting, offering a sustainable solution to waste reduction. This innovation not only repurposes plastic waste but also holds potential for diverse construction applications, facilitating global environmental cleanup efforts.
Inspired by the designs of Jacques Monneraud, YouTuber Mia Mueller decided to put her skills to the test, making pottery that mimics the delicate, craft-like feel of corrugated cardboard. While Monneraud’s pieces look fantastic (and probably feel just as incredible to hold), Mueller’s approach actually guides us through the process, helping regular-folk understand the nuances of building clay pieces that look like cardboard. Mueller’s YouTube channel, Pottery To The People, is absolute gold for terracotta/ceramic enthusiasts, and although a lot of her content is centric to traditional use of the potter’s wheel, this particular project took a less conventional approach, but yielded results that look genuinely fantastic! Watch the video above to see how she did it, or just scroll to read more.
Mueller’s attempt at cardboard pottery is a part of her ‘steal like an artist’ video series, where she mimics the styles of pottery artists online. Monneraud’s designs have taken the internet by storm over the last few weeks and it only made sense for Mueller to give it a shot too, to see how easy it was, and whether the resulting pieces were, in fact, functional as pottery goods.
Choosing the right clay was perhaps the most crucial starting step. Different clays take on different hues after firing, so ensuring you’re left with the right cardboard-like color at the end of the firing process is key to nailing that illusion. Mueller used an Indian clay, known for its perfect cardboard-like brown hue.
Once selecting and softening the clay, she took to the potter’s wheel, throwing and shaping the clay in a fairly geometric style. Paper doesn’t bend in complex curves, so Mueller ensured most of her designs had straight lines and sharp edges. Ridges were then ‘stamped’ with the corrugated design, and details like grips, handles, and spouts were given a ridged design using a set of specialized roller-pins with ridges on them.
A few keys to nailing the aesthetic were ensuring the clay dries out significantly before stamping details onto them. Paper isn’t seamless either, so each paper part had to have a distinct start and end, which meant not blending in the edge lines. Even when joining multiple parts together, it’s instinctive to blend them in, making sure the joint is strong. However, cardboard doesn’t ‘blend’ either, so edges where different parts joined had to be left unblended, allowing the edge-line to show. Sure, this results in a fairly weak end-product, but then again, this entire endeavor is an aesthetic-driven one, not a functionality-driven one. The resulting pots are great for looking at, maybe even using as bouquet holders, but aren’t meant for holding water or any liquid. Since they’re unglazed, they’re still incredibly porous and will absorb water too, which means it’s best left displayed on a shelf as a statement piece rather than being put to use.
They say everything in nature has a purpose for existing, even if their existence is a nuisance to us humans. Scavengers, for example, are nature’s janitors and recyclers, putting dead things to good use. Even termites, whose presence is often a death sentence for homes and structures, are important to the ecosystem, and they can apparently serve as artful inspiration as well. Maybe not the termites themselves but the complex tunnels they create inside their mounds. These patterns are actually meant to facilitate airflow, which makes it the perfect reference for a man-made cooling solution that brings natural design and technology together to create a more sustainable solution to hot temperatures.
There has been some interest in alternative cooling solutions, especially those that don’t consume too much electricity or none at all. Traditional techniques, particularly evaporative cooling that makes use of clay pots or pipes, have gained a lot of traction, especially because they can become decorative pieces inside modern homes. That said, the old methods don’t exactly scale well to today’s climate, room sizes, and needs, so designers have to think a bit outside the box to come up with a better solution to fit modern needs.
TerraMound looks to termites for one part of the solution, particularly how their shapes exemplify high surface-area-to-volume ratios, meaning how much surface area there is in a compact space. Surface area is one of two critical elements in an evaporative cooler, and that is made possible by utilizing complex geometric patterns that look like artistic versions of termite mounds. Such a design would be impossible to do en masse by hand, which is where 3D printing comes in and where the project’s uniqueness really shines.
The other critical element to this type of cooling solution is porosity, which is why clay is the preferred material for this kind of cooler. Clay is also not a typical 3D printing material, which is what makes this ceramic cooler design even more special. This method can eventually be extended to large-scale 3D printing technologies, allowing the quick and easy production of facade panels, walls, and other structures that not only look beautiful but can also help improve airflow in buildings.
As a cooler, TerraMound isn’t completely passive, as it has a fan at the bottom to draw air upwards. A planter sits on top as a source of water that trickles down the desktop cooling tower, utilizing the absorbent properties of the terracotta clay to help the evaporation process. It also acts as a distinctive and beautiful piece of table decoration, one that you wouldn’t have guessed was inspired by something we humans consider to be pests.
There are people that love to pit technology against art or craftsmanship but those of us who know better know that the two can actually complement each other. There are products and designers out there who seek to fuse the two together and even bring innovation and improvements to the two worlds. One such product is a speaker that uses natural materials and is created by traditional craftspeople.
Designer: Mapu
The Mapu Speakers is a line of speakers that are made from natural materials like clay, wood, cork, and wool and handcrafted by traditional craftsmen in Chile and Portugal The goal is to create a new generation of craftspeople, “building a bridge between ancestral knowledge and technology”. Aside from having quality speakers so you can listen to your music, audiobooks, and podcasts, you also get a piece of art that you can display in your space.
The wooden cones and caps that are in the center of the driveractually optimize the high frequencies so you get a “vivid, spatial, and engaging sound”. The wool is used for the internal acoustic insulation while the leather and cork are also ideal for insulation due to their high tensile strength and heat resistance. The spherical shape of the vessel also adds to the sound quality that you get so you know that it’s not just beautiful but you get a pretty good speaker.
The Mapu Speakers are also 80% biodegradable so that’s another bonus for those who are looking for something pretty different for their speakers. The Mapuguaquén is already sold out on their website but the Mapu Preto and the Mapu Soenga, available in mono and stereo versions. The vessel-like shapes of the speaker line make it pretty attractive even if you don’t know yet the handicraft story behind it.
