Tag Archives: Pandemic Response

Every one of these WFH furniture pieces includes a secret feature to keep your work and life separate

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Every piece of Taku Yahara’s line of WFH furniture reveals a dual function or hidden compartment that’s designed to keep work and life balanced.

When working from home, the conditions have to be prime. Whether you’re working from the patio or the kitchen, the mood has to be just right. It’s no surprise most of us went straight to the drawing boards to transform our bedrooms into hybrid working spaces after WFH orders went into place. Helping move the process along, Taku Yahara designed a line of versatile pieces of office furniture to keep our working and living spaces separate, making WFH that much more comfortable.

When designing his line of WFH furniture, Yahara looked first to versatility. Equipping most of his pieces of furniture with dual features and hidden compartments, Yahara wanted to ensure work and life could remain balanced even when working from home. The Mobility Desk, for example, is a portable desk that can transform into an inconspicuous storage basin when the workday is finished.

In its initial form, the Mobility Desk is a narrow wooden storage bin and then transforms into a drop-front desk for working. Keeping the design work to a minimum, the Mobility Desk is stripped down to its barest form to emphasize its accessibility. Then, Yahara conceptualized a router box with convenience at the forefront of his design.

Since finding good WiFi is the number one priority when working from home, Yahara developed the router box at an appropriate height to ensure open access throughout the day, from anywhere in the house.

For work-on-the-go, Yahara designed a desk work bag that functions as a carrying case for all of our office supplies as well as a storage bin for the desk. Rigid by design, the desk work bag can be carried with little to no fuss and then remain in place on the desk. Finally, an extended drawer can turn any table into a working desk. Softened with a leather top, the extended drawer reveals an additional storage bin for office supplies.

Designer: Taku Yahara

The desk work bag can remain in place on top of the actual desk or hang from a table edge with accessory hooks. 

With an integrated secret drawer, the extended desk functions as a working space and storage basin.

The post Every one of these WFH furniture pieces includes a secret feature to keep your work and life separate first appeared on Yanko Design.

This futuristic Polestar automotive design is the solution to every modern nomad’s wanderlust!

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Polestar is a futuristic, luxury travel concept designed out of the modern nomad’s need for unrestricted traveling and socializing.

While COVID-19 is still making its rounds, from the pandemic, we’ve learned that time spent in nature and connecting with other humans are priorities of everyday life. Holed up in our tiny apartments, all we want is to kick down the door and run to the nearest lakeshore or mountaintop.

With travel restrictions making it near impossible to come and go as we please, designers have worked on solutions for autonomous travel. 21-year-old designer Kang Sik Park conceptualized an aerial automobile that can also float on water to bring groups of people to faraway places where they can take in nature and enjoy a futuristic concept of vacation.

Dubbed Polestar, Kang Sik Park envisioned their futuristic automobile dressed in an optic white aluminum-like facade, which is accented with strips of sleek black metal for a refined touch. Symmetrical on all sides, the exterior of Polestar is used to represent connectivity and the coming together of humans for a shared interest.

Hover blades slide out from the vehicle’s roof to lift Polestar off the ground into the air. Additionally, Park equipped Polestar with progressive technology such as GPS and facial recognition to help modernize the airborne vehicle.

Inside, the same sleek look is maintained and can transform into a warmer, golden-hour-soaked ambiance to appeal to each user’s changing tastes. The Polestar is outfitted with contemporary amenities that are sure to please the modern traveler, such as rotating lounge chairs, food and drink services, as well as panoramic windows to provide plenty of views of the natural world.

Designer: Kang Sik Park

The post This futuristic Polestar automotive design is the solution to every modern nomad’s wanderlust! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This dominos-inspired skyscraper could become Africa’s second-tallest tower at 70-stories high!

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If brought to fruition, the Zanzibar Domino Commerical Tower will become Africa’s second-tallest building and a landmark tourist destination to help stimulate the country’s economy and tourism industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen some crushing setbacks on the tourism industry, in particular for countries that rely on it for their economic output. In response, architects have churned out some of their most daring and inspired plans, from apartment skyscrapers to floating museums, all with the hope of luring in tourists from across the world. Architecture and interiors firm xCassia unveiled its plans for Zanzibar Domino Commerical Tower, a dominos-inspired skyscraper slated for Zanzibar, an autonomous archipelago off the coast of East Africa, to become the second tallest building at 70-stories high in Africa and help stimulate Zanzibar’s local tourism industry.

If the building’s plans ever come to fruition, the multipurpose skyscraper will cover a sweeping 370,000 square meters and be composed of 360 scalloped slates with an observation deck at its highest point. One day, the tower is designed to function as a landmark tourist destination. xCassia initially developed the dominos-inspired tower for different sites in Vietnam and Saudi Arabia, but a recent contract was signed by Tanzanian AICL Group and Edinburgh Crowland Management for xCassia to begin progress on the skyscraper in Zanzibar.

The tower itself will be host to a 560-unit resident complex and five to six-star hotel and spa facilities. Covering 20-hectares on a 4km-long plot of land, the larger site will give rise to the largest resort in East and Central Africa, and will see a golf course, wedding chapel, and marina for yachts and cruise ships on the island’s private islet.

Jean-Paul Cassia, founder and design director of xCassia, described the tower’s initial inspiration, “First sketched in Paris in 2009, after my late father, two sons, and I played a round of dominos–I dreamed of building this project for over a decade. Between its innate mathematical order and geometries found in nature, its pure lines and proportions that evoke growth, progress, and freedom, it had all the bearings of an icon anyone could remember and draw on a paper napkin. All it lacked was the right visionary investor and site to make it come true.”

During the signing ceremony between AICL Group, Edinburgh Crowland Management, and xCassia, CEO of Crowland Management Ltd Dr. Emmanuel Umoh mentioned, “The building which will be called Zanzibar Domino Commercial Tower is expected to be one of the international iconic features, facilitating tourism, culture, and business opportunities.”

Designer: xCassia

This sanitizing coat rack is a pandemic-era design that will be a part of the restaurant’s new normal

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Whether it be to the grocery store or the library, when I leave the house nowadays, you won’t catch me without my hand sanitizer. No matter how little room I have in my pockets, I won’t leave the house without it. However, most stores are installing hand sanitizing stations in their storefronts in order to encourage sanitary browsing. Typically these stations come in the form of an old, previously discarded working desk with a handwritten note taped on the front that reads a friendly, health code reminder to use the available hand sanitizer before entering the store’s sales floor.

Retail establishments were quick to install their own hand sanitizing stations to their storefronts, but for some, the makeshift health posts end up looking less than sanitary and more like worn-down gatekeepers whose only purpose is to enforce clean shopping. Mexico City-based NOS Design understood how design plays a major role in making this essential health precaution feel a little more inviting, so they teamed up with Trusty Tower to design a sanitizing coat rack that fuses functionality with necessity and looks more familiar and less like an unfortunate sign of the times. Their sanitizing coat rack based on a conventional, average-sized metal tube that’s bent at its top so that bottles of hand sanitizers can be placed at an angle. Just below the metal tube’s bend, a short rod insert holds the hand sanitizer in place, allowing the bottle to be pumped at an angle by pressing the coat rack’s top lid.

Additionally, NOS Design attached four hooks for different items like outerwear, purses, or some trendy mask cases. I know when I enter the stores that require hand sanitizing before browsing, it usually takes a minute for me to set all that I’m carrying down before I can sanitize, and even afterward, gathering all my belongings takes more time than necessary. NOS Design cuts that time in half by assembling a means to sanitize and providing an easy hanging spot for all of your belongings at the same time. Hopefully, since responsible shopping in the age of COVID-19 is so important, with designs like this one, sanitizing your hands won’t feel like such a hassle before you can resume regular (pre-Corona) programming (shopping).

Designer: NOS Design x Trendy Tower

MIT’s Pandemic Response Design Challenge winner is a mask that actively scans the air for germs

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A winner of the MIT Pandemic Response CoLab #ReimagineMask Challenge, the Social Mask doesn’t just stop microparticles and microorganisms from entering your respiratory system… it alerts you of their presence too.

The mask comes with a transparent design, which seems fitting since it focuses on data transparency too. The mask sports a 3D-printed frame that houses filters along with a biosensor that actively monitors the air you breathe. Air quality metrics are sent to your phone, capturing not just pollution levels but the presence of germs too. The sensor detects the presence of air-borne pathogens, alerting you if there’s something hazardous in the air. Data transparency goes both ways too, with a temperature sensor built into the cheek-area of the polycarbonate frame, allowing people around you to know your own body temperature… a feature that lets others know if you’re healthy or feeling feverish.

The Social Mask flips the contact-tracing argument by just tracing the air instead. More than just filtering the air you breathe of contaminants, the Social Mask lets you know if they’re there in the first place, and works to create a map of the places you visit, actively giving you stats of what the air was like when you were there. Pretty neat, eh?!

Designer: Burzo Ciprian