dual design | GIZMODO.cz

Inspired and derived from Chinese tea culture, Chá is a travel tea flask that brings the ritual of brewing tea at home back into making tea on the go.

Making your first cup of tea in the morning feels like a ritual. Like clockwork, the water boils, the flavor of tea leaves seep into your cup, and the tea is ready to be enjoyed while you curl up next to a window and read. Having tea on the go is a little different. When we make tea in stainless steel, thermal bottles, we can’t see how strong we’re making it and our tea-making rituals are always cut short. Chá is a travel tea flask that ties the ritual back into making tea on the go, born from a collaboration between Chinese EV maker Nio and UAL’s Central Saint Martins.

Chá is a travel tea bottle that can switch between a tea infuser and a regular thermal water bottle. Topped with a transparent lid, Chá allows each user to witness the seeping process while brewing tea to ensure their desired tea strength is achieved. With a handy rubber strap, users can even brew their tea with the bottle strapped to their backpack. The brewing process of Chá is just like filling a water bottle, but the lid of Chá features a compartment where users can place tea bags near a built-in infuser and transparent section that reveals the strength of each brew.

The built-in infuser opens with a turn of the bottle’s lid, then the user can turn Chá upside down and watch as their water darkens with tea. If users want to only drink water, then the infuser can be just as easily closed and Chá can be filled with fresh water to be used as a regular water bottle. Ergonomic and inviting by design, Chá combines style with the traditional ritual of tea making.

Explaining the brewing process, the designers behind Chá describe, “Twisting the two halves of the opaque lid against one another to form an ‘O’ or a horizontal ‘S’, opens or closes the infuser respectively. An open infuser allows the contents of its flask to infuse with each other. Enabling the infuser and flipping the flask upside down exposes the water to the tea leaves for infusion while the user can monitor for their desired thickness of the tea through the transparent lid.”

Designers: ual x Nio

By twisting the lid’s two halves, users activate the infuser.

Silicone elements provide some grip for Chá’s bottle.

A handy strap allows users to hold Chá in a variety of ways, like strapping it to a backpack.

Following several ideations, the final form of Chá envisions a subdued, yet bright blush pink stainless steel bottle with silicone elements and a transparent upper lid.

Bring and make tea on the go with Chá.

This past year has seen some pretty innovative work from home office solutions. Space-saving answers to tight office corners like desk setups that double as workout stations and retractable office cubicles that lean on a modular design to keep your living spaces decluttered only just scrape the surface of what we’ve seen thus far. Sustainable furniture design studio Ori adds a WFH apparatus called the Cloud Bed to the mix, merging an office and desk setup with a cantilevered lofted bed that descends to the floor to really hone in the mutability of working from home.

In its initial form, the Cloud Bed features a working desk and table beneath a lofted bed. Built for hospitality interiors and personal spaces, this space-saving work from home solution was designed to cover a small footprint inside the home. UL certified to ensure the bed remains lofted and close to the ceiling during working hours, the desk area folds into itself, merging with the floor as the bed descends from its raised position. While it might be tempting to hop up to the top of the bunk bed and sleep from such a high height, the Cloud Bed, Table Edition comes equipped with an internal mechanism that lowers the bed to the floor once the workday is done. With the push of a button, the mattress and wooden bed frame lower down from its elevated post in time with the desk folding inwards toward the floor. Requiring a minimum ceiling height of eight feet, six inches, the Ori Cloud Bed was designed to be integrated into smaller living spaces to make the most out of the space we have for working from home.

No one likes working in the same room we sleep in, let alone eat in. Without losing any living space, the Cloud Bed can come in either Queen or King sizes with a built-in table that sits up to five people. The Cloud Bed, Table Edition also comes outfitted with storage space, three outlets, voice and phone controls, as well as dimmable LED lights.

Designer: Ori