Tag Archives: homes

The Forest Came First. The House Came Second. That Was Always the Plan.

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Most architects are handed a site and told to make something of it. Luiz Volpato was handed a forest and told not to ruin it. House 17-JB, completed in 2022 within the Jardins do Batel condominium in Curitiba, southern Brazil, grew out of a deeply personal brief: a client of Italian descent, a self-professed architecture enthusiast, wanted to find not just land, but the ‘right’ land.

Together with the office, they eventually settled on a plot defined by two non-negotiable conditions — a protected native forest and a dramatically steep topography. Those constraints didn’t limit the project. They became it.

Designer: Luiz Volpato Architects

With occupation restricted to just 30% of the 2,300 square metre plot, and that footprint concentrated along the front portion of the land, the design team was forced to think vertically. The solution was elegant: four overlapping volumes, two elevated and two semi-underground, stacked in direct response to the terrain’s fall and the density of vegetation surrounding the site. The result is a 1,113 square metre home that feels both monumental and discreet, as if the building grew from the hillside rather than being placed on top of it.

Architecturally, the project sits at the intersection of modernism and brutalism, drawing on structural clarity, constructive rationality, and an honest approach to material selection. The material palette tells its own story: moss green upholstery, warm timber millwork, and stone surfaces work together to blur the boundary between inside and out. Natural textures sit alongside smooth finishes, creating an interior that reads as fluid and quiet rather than loud or performative.

On the upper floors, the intimate volume houses the suites and a family living area, with balconies positioned precisely at the height of the tree canopy. Living among the treetops rather than looking up at them is a subtle but powerful distinction, one that shapes the daily experience of the house in ways that no floor plan can fully capture.

The project has since gained international recognition, featured in Edra Magazine No. 5, launched in Milan. It is a fitting acknowledgment for what is, at its core, a study in restraint. Luiz Volpato and his team, alongside project coordinator Pablo Quintela, never tried to compete with the forest. They listened to it instead. House 17-JB is a reminder that the best architecture doesn’t impose a vision on a site. It finds the vision that was already there, waiting to be built.

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This Vase Has a Glass Lattice That Lets Stems Find Their Own Angle

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Flower arranging gets credit for being meditative and creative, but for most people, it’s actually a bit of a guessing game. Stems slide around, flowers lean in unexpected directions, and what started as a simple bouquet ends up looking haphazard, no matter how much you fiddle. Most vases don’t help much; they hold the water, hold the stems, and leave the rest up to you.

That’s the problem that Rila, a 2026 vase by London- and Düsseldorf-based studio nikola & florian, quietly tries to solve. Rather than leaving every stem to fend for itself, the design adds structure that guides flowers into place without forcing them into any fixed arrangement. The idea isn’t to make flower arranging feel like a chore but to let it happen almost on its own.

Designer: Nikola Gaytandjiev and Florian Neubacher (nikola & florian)

The vase consists of two separate pieces: a frosted glass vessel that holds water, and a clear glass structure that sits right inside. The structure has a net-like form, with arched glass rods that gently space and guide each stem as it passes through, without locking anything into place. The two pieces lift apart, which makes the whole thing simple to clean.

Both parts are made from borosilicate glass, chosen for its strength and optical clarity. What makes the pairing interesting is the contrast between them: the frosted vessel has a soft, muted look and a slightly tactile surface, while the clear structure above lets light pass straight through. That interplay of opacity and transparency gives the object a quiet visual richness that most flower holders don’t have.

In practice, using Rila feels less like a task and more like something you’ll stop thinking about. Drop a few stems through the lattice, and each one finds the angle it naturally wants. You don’t end up with a perfectly symmetrical arrangement, and that’s kind of the point. The flowers get room to look like themselves, with the structure providing just enough order.

Rila comes in a handful of colorways, with matching tones running through both the frosted vessel and the clear structure. Blue, green, amber, and white are among the available options, each creating a slightly different mood without changing the fundamental character of the piece. The frosted base absorbs and deepens whatever color it carries, while the transparent structure stays open and light, keeping things airy.

What makes Rila particularly easy to live with is that it earns its place in a room even on days when there aren’t any flowers in it. The frosted vessel and clear glass structure together form an object with enough sculptural character to hold attention on its own. You’d place it on a side table the same way you’d display any other piece you genuinely liked.

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The ‘Keurig’ of Ice Pops: Coolwill’s Automatic Popsicle Maker Delivers Fresh Frozen Pops in 30 Minutes

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Nobody plans for the heat. You turn on the air conditioner the moment you feel warm, not four hours before, and yet the homemade popsicle has always demanded exactly that kind of advance thinking. Fill the mold, find the freezer space, commit to checking back the next morning. For a treat that exists purely to cool you down on impulse, that overnight ritual has always sat in strange contrast to why you wanted one in the first place. Coolwill, a Hong Kong startup preparing a Kickstarter launch, seems to have built their entire pitch around this exact tension.

The machine runs on a real compressor and direct-cooling system, producing a finished, demolded ice pop in roughly 30 minutes, with no freezer space required and no pre-freezing involved. Six smart preset modes handle everything from fruity popsicles to creamy sorbet-style treats, with the machine managing cooling, freezing, and demolding entirely on its own. Three interchangeable mold types keep the output varied without any extra effort. The touchscreen keeps operation to a single tap, and the compact form factor is designed to fit even small kitchen countertops.

Designer:  Coolwill

Click Here to Sign Up for Pre-Order

Bypassing the household freezer entirely is the technical decision that makes the 30-minute claim credible rather than aspirational. Powered by a real compressor and direct-cooling system, the machine freezes juice, yogurt, or smoothies into solid pops in just 30 minutes, operating independently without pre-freezing bowls or clearing space in the freezer. Traditional mold-based popsicle making is entirely dependent on your freezer’s ambient conditions, which vary by load, door frequency, and room temperature, and Coolwill’s compressor bypasses all of that variability by chilling and freezing the contents directly. The brand claims intelligent insulation keeps pops fresh after the freeze cycle completes, which matters on a countertop in a warm kitchen in a way it simply wouldn’t inside a sealed freezer compartment. The prelaunch materials make a point of distinguishing this from cold-plate-based systems, framing the compressor as the category differentiator.

Six preset modes sit on the touchscreen, and the names visible on the display, Popsicle, Ice Cream, Spiked, Chocolate, Sorbet, and Mini, suggest the programs are calibrated around ingredient categories rather than simple time variations. Each mode automates the full sequence, and each is tuned for a different texture profile, from the cleaner icy bite of a fruit pop to the denser body of something creamy or chocolate-based. That distinction matters because dairy-forward and juice-based mixtures respond differently to the same freezing duration and rate. Having the machine make those calibrations automatically, without user input, is a meaningful layer of automation that moves the appliance beyond a glorified cold-timer. The process closes with the machine cooling, freezing, and demolding automatically, delivering a finished ice pop in about 30 minutes.

The three mold formats, classic popsicles, standard ice cubes, and cute cat paw shapes, cover a deliberately broad range of output types. The everyday utility of ice cubes and standard pops anchors the machine as a practical appliance, while the cat paw format leans into a novelty visual language that has proven durable in the food and beverage space. The stated ingredient range spans fresh juice, yogurt, smoothies, or any mixture, so the output can be as health-focused or as indulgent as the user decides. Families can make healthy, additive-free popsicles for kids, health enthusiasts can control every ingredient from fruit to protein, and party hosts can turn out custom shapes and flavors in 30 minutes. That breadth of use case, packed into a single compact appliance, makes a reasonable argument for a permanent countertop spot rather than a seasonal one.

Click Here to Sign Up for Pre-Order

The post The ‘Keurig’ of Ice Pops: Coolwill’s Automatic Popsicle Maker Delivers Fresh Frozen Pops in 30 Minutes first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Tiny Home Has No Wheels and That’s Exactly the Point

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Craft House’s latest model arrives without wheels and makes no apology for it. The obsession with portability is slowly giving way to something more intentional, and the Lukas makes a strong case for planting roots.

The Lukas is not towable. It has no wheels, and it arrives at its destination by truck. For anyone dreaming of nomadic living, that might sound like a dealbreaker. But step inside, and the trade becomes immediately clear. What Lukas gives up in mobility, it returns in space, comfort, and a roomy interior that genuinely feels like a proper apartment.

Designer: Craft House

At 10 meters long and 3.5 meters wide, the Lukas sits in an interesting middle ground. It is compact enough to earn the tiny home label with a straight face, yet generous enough to sleep four people comfortably. That is no small feat for a structure of this scale, and Craft House pulls it off without compromising the refined design language that has come to define the brand across its previous models.

The exterior reads clean and considered. Engineered wood and standing seam aluminum make up the cladding, a material pairing that signals permanence without heaviness. It shares visual DNA with earlier Craft House models like the Katrin, though the Lukas carries a quieter confidence that comes from not needing to justify its footprint.

Inside, light does a lot of the work. Generous glazing runs throughout, and multiple skylights flood the space with natural brightness that makes the interior feel larger than its dimensions suggest. The kitchen is a genuine highlight, offering real cabinetry and a breakfast bar for two. This is not a kitchenette tucked into a corner. It is a proper cooking space built for everyday use, and it shows that Craft House understands what people actually need when they downsize.

Like other models in the Craft House lineup, the Lukas is built to order, which means buyers can shape it to their needs. An outdoor terrace is available as an optional extra, and those wanting full independence from the grid can opt for a complete off-grid package, making it viable as a permanent, fully independent residence in almost any location.

Pricing starts at roughly $88,000 USD. For a structure of this quality, finish, and livability, that number is competitive. Delivery timelines are not publicly listed at this time, so those seriously interested are encouraged to reach out to Craft House directly to discuss lead times and configuration options. The Lukas will not suit everyone. But for those willing to let go of the fantasy of endless movement, it offers something arguably more valuable: a small home that actually feels like one.

The post This Tiny Home Has No Wheels and That’s Exactly the Point first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Urban Gable Park Is What Happens When a Tiny Home Builder Stops Making Compromises

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There’s a version of tiny home living that asks you to give things up…headroom, counter space, the dignity of a real kitchen. The Urban Gable Park by Tru Form Tiny isn’t that version. This is a single-level park model that leans fully into comfort, using its generous footprint to deliver something closer to a well-designed apartment than a life lived sideways.

The numbers tell part of the story. At 30 ft long and 11 ft wide, the Urban Gable Park goes significantly beyond the standard 8.5 ft width found in most tiny homes on wheels. That extra width isn’t just a spec, it changes how the interior feels. Rooms breathe. The bedroom has real headroom. The living area fits an actual sofa without everything feeling like a puzzle. The trade-off is a permit requirement for towing on public roads, but given that this is a park model built to stay put, that’s rarely a concern.

Designer: Tru Form Tiny

The design language throughout is clean and considered. The kitchen is fully equipped with maple slab cabinets, an induction cooktop, a full-size fridge, and a dishwasher, all tucked into a striking limewash alcove. It’s the kind of kitchen that makes cooking feel intentional rather than improvised. The bathroom holds its own too. A concrete vessel sink, terrazzo tile floors, and matte black fixtures run throughout, alongside a walk-in shower and a stacked washer/dryer. These aren’t budget compromises dressed up to look good. They’re material choices made by people who know what they’re doing.

The layout is built for two. The bedroom features deck access, offering a private outdoor connection that’s rare at this scale. A full-light black fiberglass entry door anchors the exterior alongside the home’s gable roofline; simple, architectural, and confident. A covered porch rounds out the outdoor living space, giving the Urban Gable Park a residential quality that most park models simply don’t reach.

Built on a quad-axle trailer, the Urban Gable Park is currently available starting at $174,000. For a home this refined and this livable, that figure starts to make a certain kind of sense. Tru Form Tiny, now celebrating its 10th year as a builder, has always understood that downsizing shouldn’t mean downgrading. The Urban Gable Park is the clearest proof of that philosophy yet.

The post The Urban Gable Park Is What Happens When a Tiny Home Builder Stops Making Compromises first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Knoll Is a Tiny House That Finally Refuses to Think Small

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Tiny house living has always asked one thing of its converts: sacrifice. Less square footage, less storage, less room to breathe. The Knoll, the latest model from Backcountry Tiny Homes, pushes back on that idea — and does so with a lot of personality. Built on a triple-axle gooseneck (raised) trailer, the Knoll stretches 38 feet long and 10 feet wide, giving it 390 square feet of total living space.

That extra foot and a half of width over standard tiny homes makes a real difference inside — the layout feels less like a camper van and more like a proper apartment. It’s wide enough to sleep between one and five people, which makes it a genuine option for couples or small families who want to downsize without completely giving up comfort. The trade-off is that its width requires a permit to tow on public roads — a logistical consideration, but one most buyers seem willing to accept.

Designer: Backcountry Tiny Homes

The exterior sets the tone early. A two-tone mix of metal and board and batten siding sits beneath a metal roof, giving the Knoll a sharp, modern look that reads more mountain cabin than mobile home. Inside, the design team leaned into color — boldly. The home’s interior philosophy is captured in a quote right on the Backcountry website: *”Color does not add a pleasant quality to design — it reinforces it.”* That commitment shows in every room, with rich, layered tones that make the space feel intentional rather than improvised.

The floor plan is where things get genuinely clever. The main level handles the kitchen and living area, while the full-height gooseneck loft above serves as the primary bedroom — a queen-size bed, a desk, and a chair for working from home. From there, storage-integrated steps lead to a second, lower-ceilinged library loft, fitted with a long bookcase and a single sleeper sofa. It’s a rare thing in tiny living — a dedicated reading nook. The home also includes washer and dryer hookups, making it a fully functional permanent residence rather than a glorified weekend retreat.

All configurations come NOAH certified. Pricing runs $162,950 for the fully furnished turnkey version, $155,250 for the unfurnished option (which still includes the kitchen and bathroom), and $81,475 for the shell build for those who want to finish the interior themselves. The Knoll doesn’t try to hide what it is. It’s a small home — but it’s a real one, built for people who want to live smaller without feeling like they settled.

The post The Knoll Is a Tiny House That Finally Refuses to Think Small first appeared on Yanko Design.

Recycled Paper Turned Into a Japanese Zen Garden for Your Walls

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Most acoustic panels exist as a necessary evil. You know the type: thick foam squares in aggressive wedge shapes, usually in black or grey, installed in a recording studio or conference room with zero consideration for how the space actually looks. They do their job. They do it without any grace. And for years, that was the trade-off we accepted without question.

LIBGRAPHY’s REBORN PULP acoustic panel doesn’t accept that trade-off. The Japanese design studio has been quietly building a case for what acoustic treatment can look like when the people behind it actually care about both problems at once, and the more you learn about this piece, the more you understand why it’s been turning heads.

Designer: LIBGRAPHY

The material story alone is worth paying attention to. REBORN PULP is made entirely from 100% recycled paper pulp, with no plastics and no synthetic adhesives. It is fully biodegradable. In a category where polyester fiber and foam are the default, a panel that begins its life as discarded paper and can return to the earth when it’s done is a genuinely radical proposition. The name “Reborn” isn’t just branding. It’s a philosophy the whole product is built around.

What makes the engineering here quietly impressive is the dual-layer construction. The outer shell is molded pulp, giving the panel its form and texture, while the interior is packed with loose pulp fiber. That combination works together to absorb sound across a wide frequency range, which is the part that matters most if you’re actually trying to fix a room’s acoustics. Getting a material to absorb sound consistently across low, mid, and high frequencies is not a trivial engineering challenge, and the dual-layer approach suggests LIBGRAPHY took that technical problem seriously before worrying about how the final product would photograph. A lot of design-forward acoustic products look pretty and perform modestly. This one appears to take both seriously.

Then there’s the aesthetic angle, which is where I think the design conversation gets most interesting. LIBGRAPHY drew inspiration from Karesansui, the traditional Japanese dry landscape garden. If you’ve ever stood in front of one of those carefully raked sand gardens and felt an inexplicable sense of calm wash over you, you already understand the logic. The surface of the REBORN PULP panel carries that same quiet, rhythmic quality. Ridges and textures that reference raked sand, rendered in recycled paper. It’s an unusual and genuinely poetic translation.

The color palette reinforces this. The panel is available in shades drawn from traditional Japanese color naming: natural, pale grey, celadon, and indigo. These aren’t colors chosen because they’re trendy. They’re colors with cultural weight, and they communicate a kind of restraint that a lot of contemporary design products desperately try to fake.

I’ll admit I have a soft spot for design that refuses to treat function and beauty as separate departments. We’ve spent decades watching sustainability get squeezed into products as an afterthought, announced via small text on the packaging while the object itself looks like it came out of the same mold as everything else. REBORN PULP doesn’t do that. The recycled material is the design. The environmental commitment is legible in the texture, the color, the form. You can see it.

That last point matters more than it might seem. The conversation around sustainable design has a credibility problem right now. Too many products wear their eco-credentials as a badge without earning them through actual material and process decisions. REBORN PULP earns it. The sustainability isn’t a layer added on top. It’s the whole premise, and the design thinking follows from there rather than working around it.

Whether REBORN PULP finds its way into homes, offices, or commercial spaces beyond Japan remains to be seen. But as a piece of thinking, it’s the kind of design that makes the field feel purposeful again. Old paper, turned into something that quiets a room and looks like a zen garden doing it. That’s not a bad outcome for something that was headed for the recycling bin.

The post Recycled Paper Turned Into a Japanese Zen Garden for Your Walls first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Nova Scotia Home Floats Above the Land on Steel Legs and Changes Nothing Beneath It

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There’s a certain restraint in the decision to let a building hover. Not every architect earns that move. Along the rugged Atlantic coastline of Nova Scotia, Canadian studio Omar Gandhi Architects has completed the East River Residence — a home that doesn’t so much sit on the landscape as suspend itself above it, perched on slender steel columns that let the rocky terrain breathe freely underneath.

The project was conceived for a couple relocating from Montreal, trading city life for something quieter, more grounded, more defined by the presence of the Atlantic. On the first visit to the site, the architects followed the coastline inward through a dense stand of forest, arriving at a soft valley held between two steep, rocky inclines. That natural bowl — rather than being fought or filled — became the entire logic of the building.

Designer: Omar Gandhi Architects

The result is a home that reads like a bridge. It spans the depression between two embankments, and the terrain flows underneath it the way water would. Hidden from the shore by thick forest, the only way to encounter it is to go inland, walk along the coast, and let it reveal itself gradually — which feels entirely intentional. This isn’t a house that announces itself. It listens.

The roofline is where the architecture gets genuinely expressive. The gable follows the rhythm of the land below it — rising over the rocky outcrops, dipping low at the main living space to pull in southern light and create a sense of interior intimacy, then lifting again at the yoga studio to expand the room toward the sky. Each shift in section corresponds to a shift in how the space feels, and how the view outside changes with it.

Materially, the home stays close to its coastal context. The palette is dark and restrained — chosen to disappear into the treeline rather than compete with it. Steel, wood, and shadow do most of the talking. The structure was built by Blueprint Construction with structural engineering by Design Point, and the technical execution of suspending a full residence above challenging terrain is considered as the architecture itself.

Photographed by Felix Michaud, the images capture something that most architecture photography misses: the feeling of a building that genuinely belongs where it is. The East River Residence isn’t trying to conquer its site. It’s floating above it, quietly, letting the land remain exactly what it was — which, as architectural philosophies go, is a rare and admirable one.

The post This Nova Scotia Home Floats Above the Land on Steel Legs and Changes Nothing Beneath It first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Nova Scotia Home Floats Above the Land on Steel Legs and Changes Nothing Beneath It

Posted on by

There’s a certain restraint in the decision to let a building hover. Not every architect earns that move. Along the rugged Atlantic coastline of Nova Scotia, Canadian studio Omar Gandhi Architects has completed the East River Residence — a home that doesn’t so much sit on the landscape as suspend itself above it, perched on slender steel columns that let the rocky terrain breathe freely underneath.

The project was conceived for a couple relocating from Montreal, trading city life for something quieter, more grounded, more defined by the presence of the Atlantic. On the first visit to the site, the architects followed the coastline inward through a dense stand of forest, arriving at a soft valley held between two steep, rocky inclines. That natural bowl — rather than being fought or filled — became the entire logic of the building.

Designer: Omar Gandhi Architects

The result is a home that reads like a bridge. It spans the depression between two embankments, and the terrain flows underneath it the way water would. Hidden from the shore by thick forest, the only way to encounter it is to go inland, walk along the coast, and let it reveal itself gradually — which feels entirely intentional. This isn’t a house that announces itself. It listens.

The roofline is where the architecture gets genuinely expressive. The gable follows the rhythm of the land below it — rising over the rocky outcrops, dipping low at the main living space to pull in southern light and create a sense of interior intimacy, then lifting again at the yoga studio to expand the room toward the sky. Each shift in section corresponds to a shift in how the space feels, and how the view outside changes with it.

Materially, the home stays close to its coastal context. The palette is dark and restrained — chosen to disappear into the treeline rather than compete with it. Steel, wood, and shadow do most of the talking. The structure was built by Blueprint Construction with structural engineering by Design Point, and the technical execution of suspending a full residence above challenging terrain is considered as the architecture itself.

Photographed by Felix Michaud, the images capture something that most architecture photography misses: the feeling of a building that genuinely belongs where it is. The East River Residence isn’t trying to conquer its site. It’s floating above it, quietly, letting the land remain exactly what it was — which, as architectural philosophies go, is a rare and admirable one.

The post This Nova Scotia Home Floats Above the Land on Steel Legs and Changes Nothing Beneath It first appeared on Yanko Design.

Joseph Joseph finally solves the grossest part of mopping

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Most people mop their floors, thinking they’re getting them clean. The uncomfortable truth, though, is that the moment you dunk the mop head back into the bucket, you’re no longer cleaning with fresh water. You’re spreading a diluted mix of soap and grime across the same surface you just wiped down. It’s a problem as old as the mop itself, and nobody has done much about it.

Joseph Joseph spent four years trying to solve it. The result is the UltraClean Microfibre Floor Mop Cleaning System, a complete rethink of what mopping should actually achieve. The goal was to design something that genuinely removes dirt rather than just diluting it and spreading it around. The solution required a patented mechanism and six prototypes before the team arrived at a final design.

Designer: Joseph Joseph

At the heart of the design is SprayClean technology, a patented mechanism built into the bucket’s slot. Each time you insert the mop head, a built-in scraper squeezes the dirty water into a sealed collection chamber while six nozzles spray fresh water onto the pad. The mop comes out clean and damp, not soaked, which means your floors dry faster, too.

The bucket is divided into two completely separate chambers. The upper reservoir holds up to 1.4 litres of clean water, enough to cover up to 70 m² on a single fill. That’s most of a typical home in one go. The bottom chamber is translucent, so you can watch the dirty water accumulate as you clean, which is simultaneously gross and oddly satisfying.

The mop head is designed with the same care. It rotates to access tight corners and lies flat to get under furniture, where dust and grime tend to hide. The telescopic handle adjusts to suit whoever’s doing the cleaning. The microfibre pad is machine-washable, and the system comes with three of them, so you’re not stuck waiting for one to dry between rooms.

For large open-plan spaces with a mix of hard flooring and tiles, the UltraClean removes the need to stop and change the water halfway through, a chore that most people skip anyway. And for kitchens, where floors tend to accumulate grease and food residue, mopping with genuinely fresh water each pass makes a noticeable difference in how clean the floor actually feels underfoot.

The UltraClean Microfibre Floor Mop Cleaning System retails for $90. It took four years and six prototypes to get here, which, given how long the classic mop and bucket pairing has gone essentially unchanged, seems like a reasonable investment. Cofounder Antony Joseph calls this the product’s delight factor, and given how satisfying it is to actually clean your floors properly, it’s hard to argue.

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