Tag Archives: pod

London’s Coolest Capsule Hotel Proves Budget and Beautiful Aren’t Opposites

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London has a new answer to affordable city-centre stays — and it looks nothing like the hostels that came before it. SODA, the London-based architecture studio, has transformed a former backpacker hostel near Oxford Street into Otherwander Soho, a high-density capsule hotel built around 566 sleeping pods the brand calls “nests.” The result is something closer to a boutique hotel than a budget bed, a place that takes the Japanese capsule typology and reframes it for a generation that refuses to choose between cost and quality.

The building itself carries history. Otherwander occupies a pair of early 20th-century structures close to Oxford Street, and SODA’s approach respects that lineage without being precious about it. The facade references the neighbourhood’s material vernacular — hand-laid arched brick details and corbelled window reveals draw from the surrounding Soho streetscape — while the interiors do not attempt to play it safe. Vibrantly coloured social spaces, curved lines, and warm strip lighting push back against the beige neutrality that defines most budget accommodation. A colourful staircase threads the floors together, giving the building a sense of vertical life.

Designer: SODA

SODA director Ryan Holland was clear about the brief from the start. “The aim was to provide affordable, high-density accommodation without compromising the guest experience,” he told Dezeen. The target guest is Gen Z and younger independent travellers — people who are design-literate, location-driven, and unwilling to trade aesthetics for a lower room rate. Each nest is private and soundproofed, with the entire guest journey — check-in, room control, checkout — managed through a phone. It’s a frictionless model designed for people who already live this way.

What SODA gets right here is the balance between compression and comfort. The pods are compact by necessity, but the shared spaces are generous in feeling — designed to do the social heavy lifting that a private nest cannot. It’s a deliberate split: retreat into the pod, expand into the communal. The vibrancy of the common areas makes the smallness of the sleeping space feel intentional rather than compromised.

Capsule hotels have existed at the fringes of Western hospitality for years, mostly as novelty or last resort. Otherwander Soho changes the conversation. Located at 92 Dean Street, it plants itself at the centre of one of London’s most culturally loaded postcodes and dares you to think of it as anything less than a destination. SODA hasn’t just renovated a hostel — they’ve made the case that density and design aren’t opposites.

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Ebicos Happy Dreamer collapsible pod turns your van into a camper without modifications

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It’s not necessary to go about converting the entire innards of a van to achieve camping convenience. You can just clean out the cabin to make space for an electric camper pod, and it will do the rest. Instantly transforming your ride into a fully-fledged camping rig, you can pull out from the back at a campsite and live freely.

The concept of camper pods got a new dimension and meaning at the recently concluded Düsseldorf Caravan Salon. First, we were floored by the versatility and convenience of the Cubivan Camping System, and now our minds are blown away by the simplicity and portable design of the new Ebicos Happy Dreamer. The latter is not as elaborate (with a pop-up roof et al) like the Cubivan’s system, yet is a small and useful addition to tailgate camping in a van.

Designer: Ebicos

As its marketing jingle on the website reads, the Happy Deamer is a tiny, collapsible camper pod that “transforms your everyday vehicle into an adventure vehicle in minutes. No tools required. No modifications needed,” the company notes. Each of these modules, which deploys and retracts with a single push of a button, is manufactured in the company’s workshop in Saxony, Germany, and comes with the features of a full conversion, “but without the full conversion.”

When not onboard your van, the Happy Dreamer – made using polypropylene honeycomb panels and aluminum honeycomb flooring – can collapse down to measure 47- x 51- x 11 inches, so a couple of people can easily carry it off (for storage) and onto the van back for camping. It weighs almost 60 kg and could be purchased with a wheeled trolley, making it just ideal for a solo van camper.

When you want to install the camper pod, you can install it using the three walls and roof secured through rails and latches. The cube shaped pod, then can slide on the rails in and out of the van tailgate. When pulled out at camp, the pod rests stably on its drop-down legs (hitting the ground) and provides campers with king-size bed space to sleep from inside the van out to the pod. For further security and living convenience, the tailgate can be secured to the Happy Dreamer’s roof by a cord, while the space between the pod and the van interior is filled with fabric insulation to seal out weather and insects.

The Happy Dreamer is designed to be a versatile pod, ensuring compatibility with a range of midsize and small cargo and passenger vans. Even though the pod itself comes raw and only provides a place to sleep. The company says it will offer add-ons for a functional slide-out kitchen. The pod will start at €6,250 (approximately $8,500).

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This Tiny Red Shelter in the Alps Blurs Art and Architecture

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Picture this: a bright red pod perched at 2,300 meters in the Italian Alps, measuring just 4 by 2 meters, designed to shelter nine climbers in an emergency while also serving as a cultural outpost for a contemporary art gallery. If that sounds like a wild concept, well, that’s because it is.

The Aldo Frattini Bivouac, designed by the research and design studio EX., is part of something called “Thinking Like a Mountain,” a biennial program organized by GAMeC (Bergamo’s Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art) that explores the relationship between art, landscape, and ecology. But unlike your typical art project, this one involves helicopters, emergency shelter protocols, and a whole lot of mountain weather.

Designer: EX. (photos by Tomaso Clavarino)

Located along the Alta Via delle Orobie Bergamasche in Val Seriana, the structure replaces a decaying asbestos shed that was no longer safe for climbers. The design team, led by Andrea Cassi and Michele Versaci, approached this project with a humility that’s refreshing in contemporary architecture. They weren’t trying to create some iconic landmark that screams “look at me” from across the valley.

Instead, the bivouac takes its visual cues from classic alpine tents, those temporary shelters that early mountaineers relied on during their high-altitude adventures. The exterior is wrapped in a lightweight fabric skin made by Ferrino, a Turin-based company known for mountaineering equipment. This rippling, shimmering material gives the structure a sense of impermanence, almost like it’s acknowledging its own fragility against the backdrop of ancient mountains.

The construction process was its own kind of adventure. Because the site sits at such a high altitude and is accessible only to experienced climbers, traditional building methods were out of the question. The solution? Prefabricate the entire thing in three parts, weighing about 2,000 kilograms total, and have a helicopter drop it into place during a brief weather window before snowstorms rolled in. It’s the kind of logistical puzzle that makes you appreciate the careful planning behind what looks like a simple structure.

Inside, natural cork lining provides both thermal and acoustic insulation, creating a surprisingly cozy refuge against harsh alpine conditions. The space is engineered to accommodate up to nine people through a carefully choreographed arrangement of beds that unfold from the walls when needed. Most of the time, it might sit empty or shelter just one or two climbers. But in emergency situations, every inch of that compact interior becomes crucial.

What makes this project fascinating is its dual identity. Yes, it’s a functioning emergency shelter that serves a vital practical purpose for alpinists. But it’s also an extension of GAMeC’s cultural reach into the alpine environment. The gallery isn’t trying to stage exhibitions up there or host events. Instead, the bivouac serves as what they call an “observatory,” a place for gathering data, images, and environmental monitoring that helps create connections between Bergamo’s urban context and the mountainous terrain to the north.

This approach represents a kind of anti-artwashing, if you will. Rather than imposing bold artistic statements onto a landscape, the project tries to listen to and learn from the culture of the Alps. The architecture becomes a medium for presence and observation rather than display, a subtle but significant shift in how we think about bringing art and design into remote natural spaces.

The red fabric exterior is deliberately vulnerable looking. It flutters in the wind, showing creases and movement rather than presenting some pristine, unchanging surface. EX. describes it as “embracing fragility as an aesthetic,” a rejection of the idea that mountain architecture needs to be sleek and immaculate. In a way, that fabric skin becomes a kind of truth-telling, acknowledging that all human structures in the mountains are provisional and temporary when measured against geological time.

Supported by Fondazione Cariplo and Fondazione della Comunità Bergamasca, the Aldo Frattini Bivouac might just be one of the smallest buildings you’ll read about this year, but it punches well above its weight in terms of ambition and thoughtfulness. It’s a reminder that good design isn’t always about scale or spectacle. Sometimes it’s about finding elegant solutions to complex problems while respecting the environment you’re working in, even when that environment is barely accessible and completely unforgiving.

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Futuristic-looking chair concept immerses you in a world of sound

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People are now becoming more aware of how poor-quality audio can ruin an otherwise impressive movie or game, but we can only do so much when we’re trying to experience these activities at home. Headphones and earbuds try to use smart algorithms to recreate the effects of 360-degree surround sound, but that’s only an approximation at best. You can also deck your TV room with the latest in Hi-Fi audio equipment but also lose some privacy in the process. There’s almost no middle ground, at least if you think of conventional solutions. This odd spherical chair is one such unconventional solution that tries to offer the best of both worlds to plunge you into your own personal listening space.

Designer: Swift Creatives Studio

The problem with ordinary home speakers and earbuds is that they often just blast sound in a single direction, either from our front or our sides. The way we naturally hear, however, is to take in all the audio waves around us, Which is why surround sound systems put multiple speakers around the room to emulate that effect, but at the expense of everyone within hearing range knowing what you’re doing. It would be nice if you could just sit inside a bubble and have the 360-degree listening experience without sacrificing your privacy, which is exactly what the XEO POD is promising.

Looking like a hollow polygonal sphere with its front chopped off, the pod-like chair actually hides as many as 20 speaker cones underneath the textile surface that lines the interior of the futuristic-looking furniture. It’s like having a mini surround sound system, one that’s confined to your immediate personal space to prevent sound from leaking out and bothering others. There’s a retractable overhead camera that can track your head’s movement and adjust the delivery of the sound instantly, giving the illusion of being in the middle of the scene whichever way you look.

The XEO POD isn’t just made for listening, though; it’s also made to make that activity as comfortable as it can be. Despite the hard, spaceship-like exterior, the upholstered interior offers comfort and style, regardless of the way you sit. A few extras also take the experience to whole new levels, like a swivel arm mount for a 42-inch TV and a side table with a built-in cup holder and wireless charging.

As a chair, the XEO POD isn’t limited to just one position either. You can sit upright while playing games or recline comfortably when watching a film. The pod will support you and make you forget about your surroundings, fully immersing you in the audiovisual experience in front of your very eyes and ears.

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