Tag Archives: Installations

This floating bubble visualization by Carlo Ratti emphasizes forestry by showing how much carbon dioxide each tree absorbs

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Escaping city sidewalks and standstill traffic for a botanical garden’s grassy lawn lined with rows of trees, butterfly gardens, and flower bushes seems like a deal most of us would be willing to make. While they offer a nice respite from the bustle of city life, trips to the botanical garden also make for insightful learning experiences. In the Brera Botanical Garden, in Milan, energy company Eni and international design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati have introduced Natural Capital, one of the largest data visualizations ever produced to showcase the importance of trees for a sustainable world.

With sights set on being one of the largest data visualizations in the world, Natural Capital demonstrates how trees store carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, driving home the importance of forest protection. Extending over Milan’s 500-square-meter garden, Natural Capital showcases plots of floating bubbles that project the amount of carbon dioxide their corresponding trees can capture and store during their life cycle. Walking through Brera Botanical Garden, guests will be met with three-dimensional graphics that showcase the key role that forests play in providing living things with healthy air to breathe, hinting at the symbiotic relationship between trees and humans. Bringing the point full circle, guests will be greeted at Brera Botanical Garden’s entrance by a stationary, giant sphere that illustrates the average amount of carbon dioxide produced by the human body per year.

Speaking on the contrast between the trees’ floating bubbles and the park’s giant stationary sphere, the designers say that it “illuminates the fundamental role that plants play in guaranteeing the planet’s health and limiting global warming. The comparison allows visitors to understand the symbiosis between humans and nature: the former produces carbon dioxide, the latter stores it.” Continuing their collaboration in exploring new circular economy and sustainability paradigms, CRA and Eni remain committed to protecting and conserving forests through decarbonization projects that aim for a more sustainable world.

Designer: Eni x Carlo Ratti Associati

Floating near their corresponding tree or shrub, each bubble will display the plant’s scientific name, age, and amount of carbon dioxide it will store during its lifetime.

Walking through Brera Botanical Garden, guests will learn about the symbiotic relationship between humans’ need for oxygen and trees’ ability to produce it through storing carbon dioxide.

Designers behind Natural Capital note that “Natural Capital aims to experiment with a new design medium, turning data visualization into a tangible, spatial experience, bringing the natural and the artificial worlds a little bit closer together.”

How Michelangelo’s Statue of David helped inspire one of the most beautiful, home-friendly speaker designs ever

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Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

The fact that fabric is now considered an industrial design material can be directly attributed to Google. When the company first designed smart speakers for homes, it deliberately looked to interior decor for inspiration. In came soft forms, fabric clads, leather trims, and home-friendly color palettes. Google’s smart home products played a pivotal role in reinventing how home appliances are designed to fit into their domestic surroundings rather than look like gadgets, and it’s something the Torso Speaker embraces so incredibly well with its statuesque design that draws inspiration from marble sculptures from the Greco-Roman times. The speaker’s bust-shape is a rather literal interpretation of turning gadgets into home-friendly decor, but there’s something immensely poetic about how it draws a balance between the two! By drawing from the beauty and perfection of marble sculptures, the speaker echoes those very attributes too – elegance, beauty, perfection.

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

What the Torso does is quite literally show us that we’re in a Renaissance period of smart home-appliance design. Speakers are being made to blend into surroundings, with them sometimes looking like lamps, furniture, or even as IKEA’s demonstrated, photo-frames. Designer Yang Dong Wook created the Torso speaker in the image of Michelangelo’s bust of David, bringing its nuanced classical qualities into product design. Created as a part of Samsung’s Design Membership Program, the Torso speaker explores the relationship between interiors and gadgets (sort of the same way Samsung’s Serif TV did). The speaker looks remarkably like an abstract bust you’d proudly place on your mantelpiece, displaying for all your guests to see. It adopts the same shapes, contours, and tilts as the Bust of David, with the slanted shoulders and the slightly angled head, resulting in an incredibly expressive form.

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

The speaker’s built to scale and serves a highly elevated decorative purpose in its surroundings. Its neck acts as a vessel, allowing you to use the speaker as a vase or a place to hang your ornaments, and that gray finish gives it a pristine marble-like appearance too.

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

While the upper part of the Torso serves as a vase-like container, its collar area comes outfitted with the speakers, sitting under a fabric clad. The speakers fire forwards (because of how the Torso has a very definite front profile), while passive radiator channels in the bottom create a reverberating bass.

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

The controls for the speaker are located on the shoulder of the bust. A power button on the left lets you switch the Torso on or off, and a Bluetooth button on the right lets you connect a device. The shoulder-bridge sports a touch-sensitive volume slider, so increasing or decreasing the volume becomes an incredibly interactive, almost sensual experience, as you drag your fingertip down the Torso’s shoulder. Talk about a product having sex appeal!!

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

The Torso speaker does a few things pretty adeptly. For designers and companies, it shows how inspiration can be found practically anywhere. For a consumer, it unlocks an absolutely new category of products that redefine tech and home decor completely, combining the timeless beauty of Greco-Roman sculptures with a contemporary, functional product… but most importantly, for the vast design movement, it shows how a design can have a timeless quality to it, by borrowing from something that’s truly iconic, classical, and evergreen in its allure!

Designer: Yang Dong Wook

Torso Speaker inspired by Michelangelo Statue of David

This public horticultural pod cultivates plants and multi-generational relationships through the act of gardening!

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The act of gardening provides many proven physical and mental health benefits that alone make cultivating your own garden worth it. Taking it one step further, community gardens carry the same benefits and then some. Interacting with members of your own community while growing plant life, crops, and flowers not only makes fresh food available for all of those who help cultivate it but also brings people closer together in the process. Enrich Group, a team of designers with Virginia Tech University, created their own community greenhouse to help forge human connections and bridge generational gaps within the community.

Gardening promotes many physical and mental health benefits, including an increase in physical activity, relaxation, and access to fresh food. Enrich Group aimed to combine physical activity and mental relaxation with an environment that cultivates multi-generational relationships with their community greenhouse. Following a year of social isolation, Enrich Group built their own community greenhouse because they believe age is nothing but a number and doesn’t change each aging individual’s desire to connect and build meaningful relationships within their own community. Cultivating genuine relationships between people from different generations through the act of gardening is the “embodiment of purposeful living,” notes Enrich Group, ensuring that “we all have the chance to grow, together.”

The greenhouse’s interior is designed to feel similar to traditional meeting spaces, with an island or table in its center that contains the garden’s main communal herb garden. The main island is also multi-tiered to optimize the greenhouse’s interior space. Hanging plant fixtures form an outer ring above the island’s main communal herb plot. In addition to the plants’ tub, gardening spaces around the pod’s perimeter feature health monitors for each plant, sliding storage bins with open handles for easy accessibility, as well as a general working space. The greenhouse appears as an approachable, modern, and public hub with glass-coated acrylic panels, aluminum ribbing, and a wooden entryway.

Designer: Enrich Group

Enrich Group’s community garden, called Enrich features an exterior design close enough to traditional greenhouses to fit any outdoor space.

Inside, community members can develop interpersonal relationships as well as grow crops.

Enrich wears an approachable design, inviting community members to come inside and tend to the garden.

Around the perimeter of the gardening hub, plant pots and tubs can be found alongside workspaces and sliding drawers.

In the center of each pod, a communal herb plot creates more space for gardening.

Before tending to your own plot, Enrich provides a preliminary survey that reveals what type of gardener you are.

The location of your garden can be chosen according to your community of residence.

Gardeners can also select what types of crops they’d prefer to grow.

At its core, Enrich operates as a social hub for multi-generational relationships to thrive.

This modular terrace system transforms your balcony into a multifunctional living space!

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Modular garden systems are ideal for small city apartments. Big or small, modular designs allow us to dismantle and augment our gardens according to the size of the garden our living spaces allow. Recently, with home gardening surging in popularity due to the pandemic, we’ve seen some pretty original indoor and outdoor garden systems. Adding their modular terrace garden system to the mix, Unopiù recently debuted Urbn Balcony.

Designed to interpret city living through a new lens, Urbn Balcony enacts a modular installment system to make the most out of small outdoor spaces. While Urbn Balcony is not strictly a garden system, the terrace unit configures wooden ladders, aluminum shelves, and steel clotheslines (among other components) together that can transform drab terraces into lively outdoor gardens and housework spaces. The multifunctional appeal of Urbn Balcony was recognized by German Design Awards for its sophisticated appearance and overall optimization of outdoor terrace spaces. The wooden ladders assume a refined look through their iroko wood construction, a type of wood especially used for outdoor spaces due to its dense and durable quality.

The components of Urbn Balcony include flower boxes, pots, cupboards, shelves, worktops, clotheslines, screens, and shades, in addition to the system’s wide array of wooden ladders that come in varying widths and heights. Each accessory and wooden ladder can be configured either against walls or mounted on ceilings, from where users can fill the space with blooming gardens, attach clotheslines with laundry, or even outfit the shelves and drawers with books and other typically ‘indoor’ products to transform the terrace into a multifunctional outdoor living and reading space.

Designer: Unopiù

Iroko wood constructs the wooden ladders of Urbn Balcony for a dense and durable build designed for outdoor conditions.

Shelf and drawer accessories outfit Urbn Balcony’s iroko ladders with spaces that users can stock with potted plants and greenery.

Modular by design, Urbn Balcony’s components can be tightly configured to present a seamless display.

The accessories that come with Urbn Balcony turn terraces into multifunctional outdoor living spaces.

Gardens can bloom from Urbn Balcony’s iroko ladders to transform drab balconies into lush green alcoves.

The drawers and shelves can be outfitted with accessories that help turn users’ previous terraces into versatile living spaces.

Michelin debuts inflatable sail system to decarbonize the global maritime industry, providing freight ships with clean wind energy!

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Michelin Group, the multinational French tire manufacturing company, has its tread pointed towards becoming a leader in sustainable mobility. Veering away from tire manufacturing, Michelin is making strides on the ocean. Revealing a sustainability project aimed at the high seas, the global tire manufacturing group presented WISAMO, a wind-powered Wing Sail Mobility project, during this month’s Movin’ On global sustainability summit.

In a collaboration between Michelin R&D and a couple of Swiss inventors, WISAMO was designed in part as a contribution to their long-term goal of cutting global maritime transport emissions by more than half by 2050, Michelin’s WISAMO project provides inflatable sails to increase efficiency across all kinds of freight and cargo ships. The Wing Sail Mobility project was conceived to decarbonize the maritime industry at large, prompting Michelin to construct a wind sail system that fits most commercial cargo ships by enacting a plug-and-socket installment system.

Designed as a supplementary power source for freight and cargo ships, the inflatable sails would work in addition to the ships’ engines, propelling the ships forward with help from harnessed wind energy. WISAMO is an automated, retractable, and inflatable wind sail system that folds over the ship’s deck when not in use. The sails’ foldable design allows cargo and freight to pass under bridges or sail through storms without the worry of damage to the actual sails. Relying on a telescopic folding system, WISAMO’s sails unfurl via an automated system that uses an air compressor for inflation.

Offering his own technical and experiential knowledge, world-renowned french sailor Michel Desjoyeaux collaborated with the team at Michelin to help develop WISAMO. During its debut at the 2021 ‘Movin’ On’ global sustainability summit, Desjoyeaux cited the project’s environmental charge, “the advantage of wind propulsion is that wind energy is clean, free, universal, and totally non-controversial. It offers a very promising avenue to improving the environmental impact of merchant ships.”

Designer: Michelin Group

Relying on a retractable and inflatable sail system, WISAMO can be installed on most commercial cargo ships.

WISAMO was designed to hybridize freight ships, propelling their engine-driven speed further with wind power.

The inflatable sail systems can fit on most merchant and leisure ships.

With the insight gained from experienced French sailor Michel Desjoyeaux, Michelin built WISAMO to garner optimal wind energy.

WISAMO retracts over the ship’s deck when not in use.

The telescopic folding design allows ships to still sail beneath bridges and through storms.

The automated folding system works with an air compression unit that’s activated with the push of a button.

Wood becomes fluid using the DIY wood-carving technique in this sculpture. Watch the video!

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People usually see a beautiful piece of material, an artist sees the unleashed potential it holds. That is what I believe designer Dan Nguyen’s motto must be every time he looks at the material of his choice – the humble block wood and turns it into fluid and soft piece of art.

Ironic by design, the San Diego based artist takes this hard material and transforms them into massive wood sculptures that hold soft ripples and folds. Nuge’s process begins with sketching out the ripples that are followed by wood cutting and then smoothing it out, till you have this flowing expanse of wood that immediately provides visual calmness to your interiors. To hear it in Nuge’s own words, “The art that I create today, in essence, is a rebellion to my architectural background. I create organic forms out of wood that is in stark contrast to the hard lines and rigid nature of architecture. My work is about flow, energy, and human connection. It is because of these elements that I have a heavy emphasis for creating everything by hand.”

Art is an extension of the artist’s imagination and their dedication to bringing that design to life. “In a world where technology is integrated into every part of our lives feeding us instant gratification, there is a beauty to being able to produce something heartfelt with my hands. This method requires enormous patience but also allows me to revisit my work daily. I massage the surface into place in a way that could not be experienced behind a computer screen. The energy can be felt when my soul is poured into my work.” And it is this energy+soothing presence you feel when you watch Nuge at work!

Designer: Dan Nguyen for L&G projects contemporary art

Kinetic chandelier “blossoms” open like a pine-cone to fill your room with beams of light

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Chandeliers, unlike lamps, serve an important dual purpose. Their job isn’t just to fill a room with light, it’s to form a mesmeric illuminated art-piece often located in the center of a hall for people to admire. The Core chandelier by Hsin Lee does it pretty well, with a design inspired by the appearance and the ‘maturing’ of a pine cone. Multiple copper leaves on the Core chandelier are connected to a central mechanism that gets the chandelier to open up, filling the room with soft beams of light that dance around as the Core opens and shuts. The shimmering copper leaves create their own shimmering reflections too, turning the chandelier into an instant attraction that is difficult to take your eyes off of.

The Core currently sits in Kawabata Intcraft, an 84-year-old Japanese-style art club. It hangs on a high ceiling directly above the spiral staircase, prompting the viewer to look at it as they climb up. Its gradual opening and closing action also brings the space to life, making it look as if it’s breathing.

The kinetic sculpture relies on multiple moving parts assembled together. Designed to be just about as intricate as an umbrella, the Core’s insides sit within its copper shell, and aren’t immediately visible to the viewer. They work almost in the background as the copper petals sit around them like an exoskeleton, and the moving petals cast a kaleidoscope of light beams and fragments, keeping the eye occupied. Core is made out of 87 unique brass pieces, relying heavily on precise mechanical engineering. Each part is detailed crafted in collaboration with a self-made CNC machine to bring the experience to life.

“The purpose of this project is to study the relationship between artistic sculpture and historical building”, says designer Hsin Lee. After learning that instead of demolishing the 84-year old Kawabata Intcraft building (which was previously a police station), it was in fact, being preserved as an art club, Lee “hoped to bring it back to life in an artistic way. The concept and name Core was born accordingly, in the shape of a pine cone to resembles eternity”.

The Core kinetic chandelier is a Bronze Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Hsin Lee

This sustainable underground fridge keeps food chilled naturally, no electricity needed!

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Our traditional designs deserve more merit than we give them – one of the best examples of that is the Groundfridge, a modern-day version of the cellar. Cellars have been used across the ages to store food or even act like underground safe house in case of natural disasters. Groundfridge takes that design one step further by adding fresh food refrigeration to the game.

The trick used by Groundfridge is by utilizing the natural insulating capacity of the ground and the cooler night air temperatures. The balance of this design allows you to store your vegetables, fruits, cheese, and even wine throughout the year. Ventilating this project uses a fan with a timer that replenishes the cool air during the night. Too hot for comfort? An additional cooler can be used to power it during the hottest summer days. “The Groundfridge is dug in and covered with the excavated soil from its new location. This covering layer of soil is about 1 meter thick and has sufficient insulating properties for the core temperature within the Groundfridge to barely vary. Furthermore, your Groundfridge is fitted with a ventilator.”

The best part of all, you can transport Groundfridge easily wherever you go and requires no permits to place it! I can see this system become a sustainable alternative in family housing societies that are trying to adopt a more eco-friendly style of living. Either way, this design is literally a great opportunity to live the chill life, electricity free!

Designer: Floris Schoonderbeek

Click Here to Buy Now!





LEGO’s newest launches showcase why LEGO is not just a children’s toy!

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LEGO’s iconic journey is one for the storybooks. This humble brick has gone from being a children’s toy to a collectible and a tool for the imagination of the masses – kids and adults alike. Here are our favorite LEGO designs that showcase how the design has evolved from being just a children’s toy.

Using over 100,000 LEGO pieces, designer Ekow Nimako imagines the Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE a Ghanaian metropolis 1000 years in the future. This artwork is the centerpiece for his exhibition titled Building Black Civilizations and showcases details like nothing you have ever seen before, almost reminiscent of the Game of Thrones title sequence. This amazing piece of work was also acquired by the Aga Khan Museum!

The fight for diversity is universal but it gets a true acknowledgment of being a part of our society when we can normalize the acceptance of human diversity. This is why the LEGO diversity set is a such a beautiful gesture – to help our children accept and understand that humans are all different. And there is no need to differentiate between people but to rather accept them as what they are.

Globe’s are passe. At least they are with LEGO’s latest member of their Art Collection line. The set includes a whopping 11,695 pieces and can be hung up on your wall once you finish this tremendous project!

With 590 pieces (including 6 faux Infinity Stones), this meticulously detailed LEGO Infinity Gauntlet definitely adds a Marvel-ous touch to your room (I had to make that joke. You know it). While LEGO’s Infinity Gauntlet doesn’t give you any sufficient superpowers, it’s definitely one of the most interesting pieces of pop-culture decor you can have in your room. Made from golden LEGO bricks, the gauntlet’s solid (which means you can’t wear it) and is slightly smaller than you’d expect… but LEGO makes up for it by incorporating movable joints into the fingers, which means the gauntlet can technically ‘snap’ its fingers.

Who needs friends when you have the LEGO FRIENDS set?! Unleash hours of playtime with all the nostalgia of binge-watching our favorite sitcom and relieving the iconic moments – could I be more excited!

Designed to help adults relax and recharge as they transform a blank canvas (or in this case, small interlinking base plates) using LEGO tiles. Each set can be reimagined in a number of different ways to express the personality of each different builder and to make it easy and simple for pop culture lovers to refresh the LEGO Art piece on display in their house. Being a hardcore IronMan fan (genius, philanthropist, playboy, billionaire – what more can we ask for!), that’s one of the first sets I would be working on.

Priced at $200, the sneakers feature transparent plastic slots on each side instead of Adidas’s famous stripes! These slots have been shaped after two-by-six LEGO plates, which basically means you can slide in three two-by-two LEGO bricks into the slots! The shoes do come along with a collection of bricks in classic primary colors, which you can fit into the slots. However, you can also add in any bricks that you may already have at home! Honestly, it feels like playtime with shoes, and I’m loving the idea of it.

Nick Crocco built the beloved VW Bus, but instead of wheels, he gave the classic automobile – legs! The cute little red and white structure reminds me of a Transformer. This is one Transformer I wouldn’t mind watching on the big screen!

The LEGO botanical collection features a beautiful and soothing Bonsai Tree! Start your own little LEGO garden, with this quintessential Japanese bonsai and its pretty cherry blossoms.

LEGO just approved of turning the Starry Night into a production-ready set. The idea for the product came from LEGO Ideas, a playground where LEGO enthusiasts upload their creations, and LEGO fans vote on designs that they want to see willed into existence. The Starry Night rendition comes from Truman Cheng, a Master Builder who goes by the username legotruman.

The Botanical Collection Flower Bouquet is the perfect flower arrangement for your living space. Created wholly from LEGO blocks, the beautiful bouquet consists of a myriad variety of colorful and gushing flowers, from roses to sunflowers. Place them in your living room, and brighten it up, without the constant worry of having to water them!

A design studio planted 1200 trees that will grow into a forest at the end of Venice Architecture Biennale

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Danish design studio EFFEKT has planted seeds for 1200 trees at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 which will grow into a mini forest during the six-month exhibition where architects from across the world come to showcase their work. The coolest part is that these live in a grow table that will be remote-controlled from Denmark. This forest surrounds seven of EFFEKT’s projects and forms a fictional landscape of living trees. “Our installation in Venice showcases a series of ideas, concepts, strategies, and designs for living and building, for producing, consuming, and revitalizing the ecosystems we are part of and depend upon,” said EFFEKT on their unique way to leave their footprints behind while reducing their carbon footprint!

The installation is called ‘Ego to Eco’ and it is shaped as a physical representation of a natural ecosystem backed by research and sprinkled with design projects made by EFFEKT over the last few years. The team says projects like these can offer potential solutions to the challenge how we design ecosystems. It investigates new ideas for living and building, for producing, consuming, and revitalizing the ecosystems we are part of and depend upon – a community that stands on the pillars of architecture and natural balance.

The architectural prototypes were selected to spark curiosity in the visitors and promote discussion regarding new, resource-efficient ways of living and building. The seven projects seek to explore how we can design future communities rooted in the principles of nature. By asking the right questions and collaborating across sectors on projects such as these, EFFEKT strives to bridge the gap between cities and natural ecosystems for the mutual benefit of both human and non-human life.

The presented projects include the forest tower, responding to the question: “can architecture help people reconnect with nature? And the nature village, responding to the question: ‘can real estate development enable ecological restoration? Everyone on this planet is all part of the same ecosystem — and by thinking and acting accordingly we believe we can find the answer to urgent questions,” says EFFEKT.

The recirculating irrigation technology pumps water and nutrients to the roots of the plants through an ebb-and-flow grow table, with excess water drained and collected in a tank below. Pressure, humidity, and temperature sensors are connected to a controller box, that enables real-time monitoring and operation of the system, offering optimal growing conditions for the plants. The one-year-old trees of Pinus Sylvestris, Picea Abies, Pinus Sitchensisa, and Larix Eurolepis will grow over the course of six months and will be planted at the end of the exhibition as a part of the firm’s ‘nature village’.

Designer: EFFEKT