Tag Archives: steel

Sydney Just Opened a 42-Metre Steel Lookout Over a Former Quarry

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If you told me a 42-metre platform made of weathering steel, suspended over a former rock quarry, would be one of the most compelling pieces of public architecture right now, I’d say I believe you completely. The Southern Lookout at Hornsby Park in Sydney is exactly that. And it is worth every bit of attention it’s getting.

Designed by AJC Architects in collaboration with Clouston Associates, the structure sits on the northern edge of Sydney, overlooking the dramatic topography of Hornsby Quarry. The site itself has a remarkable backstory. For over a century, the quarry was completely inaccessible to the public. A place that had been carved out and worked, left to become something between ruin and wilderness, invisible to the city that had grown up around it. The Southern Lookout is the first completed architectural piece of a much larger 60-hectare landscape masterplan. It is, in the most literal sense, an opening.

Designer: AJC Architects

The choice of weathering steel is the first thing that makes you stop and think. Cor-Ten, as it’s commonly known, is a material that rusts deliberately. It forms a stable oxidized layer on its surface that protects the steel beneath while giving it that signature warm, amber-brown tone. It is a material that ages visibly and honestly, and for a project like this one, placed on the edge of a quarry whose story is entirely about time and transformation, it feels less like a design decision and more like a point of view.

The platform runs 42 metres through the forest canopy, anchored into the embankment and balanced on four angled columns that converge on a single central footing below. That minimalism is intentional. The architects worked specifically to keep ground disturbance on the sensitive slope to a minimum. The result is a structure that feels both bold and careful, which is a hard balance to get right, and one AJC Architects manages convincingly.

Walking it is designed to be as much of an experience as looking at it. The rhythmic sound of footsteps on the metal, the glimpses of the falling topography beneath one’s feet, the steady build of height as you move further along the platform create a physical connection to the sheer scale of the man-made canyon. Every design choice is oriented toward making you feel exactly where you are. That kind of sensory engagement is something the best public infrastructure delivers and so rarely does. Most walkways just take you somewhere. This one makes you reckon with the place itself.

The entrance is framed by steel portals and gabion stone walls, the kind of raw structural language that references the quarry’s industrial character without cosplaying it. It doesn’t try to look cute or approachable. It looks like something that belongs to the site. That restraint is refreshing at a time when so many public design projects err on the side of spectacle for its own sake.

The broader context matters here too. The Southern Lookout is the inaugural phase of an ambitious plan to open Hornsby Quarry up as a 60-hectare public park. That kind of urban regeneration project usually moves at a pace that frustrates everyone involved, so the fact that this lookout is already open, already drawing visitors, already giving people a reason to show up, feels like a meaningful start rather than a placeholder.

AJC Architects, working in collaboration with Hornsby Shire Council, has delivered something that respects the complexity of the site without over-explaining it. The architecture doesn’t lecture you about the quarry’s history. It simply places you inside it. It gives you the height, the steel, the sound, the view, and leaves you to do the thinking.

Public architecture at its best creates a relationship between a person and a place they might not have noticed otherwise. The Southern Lookout does exactly that. Sydney has always had dramatic natural geography. Now, at the edge of a former quarry, it has something that finally lets you see it.

The post Sydney Just Opened a 42-Metre Steel Lookout Over a Former Quarry first appeared on Yanko Design.

These Steel Chairs and Lamps Look Like Sitting Inside a Pergola

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Walking under a pergola or slatted canopy, sunlight breaks into stripes, and the structure feels more like a drawing in space than a solid roof. That rhythm of beams and shadows is both architectural and strangely calming, turning overhead shelter into something closer to a pattern you move through. Foln takes that outdoor language and shrinks it down into objects you can live with indoors.

Jiyun Lee’s Foln series is a family of three stainless-steel pieces: the Linear Chair, a floor lamp, and a wall lamp, all built from folded metal lines. Each element is made entirely of stainless steel, with dimensions that keep it slender and vertical. The project is less about adding another chair or lamp to the world and more about importing a structural idea into a domestic scale, treating furniture and lighting as small frameworks you inhabit or move around.

Designer: Jiyun Lee

Encountering the Linear Chair, you see a small framework first, a set of repeated uprights and crossbars that read like a fragment of pergola. Only when you get closer does the seat reveal itself as a crossing of beams, with the back continuing the same rhythm upward. It is clearly functional, but it also feels like sitting inside a drawing, surrounded by lines and the shadows they cast on the floor and wall behind you.

The floor and wall lamps extend the same language into light. The floor lamp becomes a vertical corridor where illumination travels up and down between nested frames, while the wall lamp compresses that idea into a compact cluster that hovers off the surface. In both cases, lighting is less about a glowing bulb and more about how brightness slips between the metal and onto nearby surfaces, treating the surrounding wall as part of the composition.

Foln changes as you move around it. From one angle, the lines stack and the pieces look dense, almost solid; from another, they open up and nearly disappear. The designer’s statement that shadows become architectural elements in their own right comes through when you realize the real composition includes the dark stripes on the floor and wall as much as the polished steel itself, rewriting the room with every shift in daylight.

Stainless steel, sharp geometry, and unpadded surfaces mean Foln is not chasing ergonomic softness or maximum light output. The chair will feel firm, and the lamps will behave more like ambient or accent pieces than task lights. That trade-off is intentional, prioritizing a contemplative, spatial experience over conventional comfort and placing the series closer to collectible design than everyday contract furniture you buy in bulk.

Foln reframes interiors as places where structure, light, and emptiness can be as present as color or texture. By borrowing the pergola’s rhythm and translating it into folded metal, the series turns a familiar outdoor gesture into a quiet indoor ritual. Rhythm is not only seen in the lines of steel but felt in the way light and shadow keep rewriting the room around them, turning simple objects into small, inhabitable frameworks that change how you read the space they sit in.

The post These Steel Chairs and Lamps Look Like Sitting Inside a Pergola first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Steel Loop Took 9 Years to Finally Flow in Ljubljana

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Sometimes the best things in life are worth waiting for, and in Ljubljana’s case, that meant nine years. The Water Sculpture LJ just opened in the heart of Slovenia’s capital, and honestly, it’s the kind of public art that makes you stop scrolling and actually want to see it in person.

The project was realized nine years after winning a public design competition, which gives you some perspective on how long it takes to turn a brilliant idea into something real and tangible in the middle of a bustling city. Architects Mojca Kocbek and Primož Boršič from M.KOCBEK architects and P PLUS arhitekti respectively won that competition back in 2016, and now, finally, their vision is something you can walk around, touch, and experience.

Designers: M.KOCBEK architects and P PLUS arhitekti

The sculpture itself is basically a continuous loop made from stainless steel. Think of it like a ribbon that’s been carefully twisted and bent into this organic, flowing shape. It creates a small urban “platform” whose continuous, rounded form establishes a separate, almost intimate space amid the city’s bustle. In a dense urban environment where everything feels fast and crowded, this piece carves out a little breathing room. A place where you can sit, walk through, or just pause for a minute.

What makes it really special is how it interacts with its surroundings. The architects chose stainless steel deliberately because of how it behaves in different conditions. The continuous, rounded form establishes a separate, almost intimate space amid the city’s bustle, but it’s also constantly changing based on what’s happening around it. When it’s sunny, the sculpture becomes almost mirror-like, reflecting the buildings and people passing by. On a cloudy day, it might blend into the gray sky a bit more, creating this subtle presence that feels almost meditative.

The designers weren’t just thinking about creating something pretty to look at from a distance. This is interactive public art in the truest sense. You’re meant to engage with it, whether that means walking through the loops, sitting on parts of it, or just getting close enough to see your reflection distorted in the polished steel. It’s functional and beautiful at the same time, which is harder to pull off than you might think.

What I love about projects like this is how they transform public space into something memorable. Ljubljana already has a reputation for being one of Europe’s more charming, walkable capitals, and adding thoughtful contemporary art like this just reinforces that identity. It’s not trying to shock you or make some grand statement. Instead, it’s offering a moment of calm and reflection in a busy city center. The fact that it took nine years to complete speaks to the complexity of public art projects. There’s the design phase, sure, but then you’ve got approvals, funding, engineering challenges, and coordinating with city infrastructure. Every delay probably felt frustrating for the architects, but looking at the finished piece, you can see why it was worth the wait.

If you’re planning a trip to Ljubljana or you’re already there, this is definitely worth adding to your list. It’s the kind of thing that photographs well but is genuinely better in person. You’ll want to see how the steel catches the light at different times of day, how it frames views of the surrounding architecture, and how other people interact with it. Public art is always more interesting when it’s not just a static object but something that becomes part of the daily rhythm of a place.

And for anyone working on their own creative projects, whether it’s design, architecture, or something else entirely, this sculpture is a good reminder that great work takes time. Nine years might seem like forever, but when you create something that will be part of a city’s landscape for decades to come, patience is part of the process.

The post This Steel Loop Took 9 Years to Finally Flow in Ljubljana first appeared on Yanko Design.

Minimal bent tape dispenser is made from a single piece of steel

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There’s a meme that says one of the things that you’ll never find when you need it is the tape dispenser. You may own one (or maybe even several) but the moment you actually need it, it disappears. So maybe you need something that’s permanently attached to your work space or also something that’s not so difficult to use since I’ve “destroyed” several out of frustration.

Designer: CW&T

As a stationery lover, I like those simple and minimalist items that are both highly functional but also but also well-designed pieces. The M.R Tape Dispenser is one such item that I’ll welcome on my desk. It is a multi-radius tape dispenser that can hold one or multiple rolls of tapes of different sizes. It uses tension to hold and dispense these pieces of tapes.

The dispenser is made out of just one piece of machined and bent stainless steel. The tape is then fed through an opening and then cut into a polished surface. In order to get maximum adhesion, the space where the tape is held and teared off has a mirror polished finish. The dispenser itself has a rubber bump-on pad on its base so it can grip on to your surface. You can attach it to your wall or to your desk.

It’s a pretty simple piece of stationery but because the designers thought long and hard about it, you get something that’s pretty functional. Hopefully you don’t lose it since it’s a pretty expensive piece of tape dispenser.

The post Minimal bent tape dispenser is made from a single piece of steel first appeared on Yanko Design.

Save your nails and beat the stress with this innovative wave spring key ring

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We all know that it’s a good idea to keep keys together in one place, but no one talks about how painful that can actually be. Key rings are basically a single piece of metal bent to coil in a circle, and that design hasn’t changed one bit in decades. It’s a simple design that’s meant to keep your keys secure to the point that you’ll break a sweat or break a nail when actually trying to add a key to the ring. Worse, the rings that do try to be more flexible and easy on the nails end up being less reliable instead because of their softness. Fortunately, the solution isn’t as complicated as you might think, as demonstrated by this distinctive key ring that takes its smarts from the design of aerospace equipment and cars.

Designer: MAENI

Click Here to Buy Now: $25

The common key ring is really just a flattened coil of metal, the most practical shape not just for holding a bunch of keys but also for securing them in place. In order to prevent those keys from accidentally getting loose, that coil provides no gap in between and is often quite rigid, requiring you to exert a lot of force to open one end for a key to get through, which often ends up with broken nails. Conversely, there are rings that are so thin and pliable that they get easily deformed the moment you deal with thicker keys and objects.

The simple answer to this decades-old probably is apparently to change the kind of structure used. Instead of that traditional coil spring, this key ring employs a “coiled wave spring” shape instead. This kind of spring is heavily used in heavy-duty vehicles and equipment, from aerospace to automobiles. Turns out that this same wavy shape is perfect for a more user-friendly key ring that won’t break nails or test your patience.

With this wave spring design, inserting a key is as easy as sliding it into the ring through the natural gaps made by the waves. To remove a ring, simply lift the tip without worrying about damaging your nail. The key ring is designed to be as stress-free to use as possible, removing any hurdle to keeping your keys organized and safe in a single place.

Despite its uncommon appearance, this stress-free key ring is actually lighter than a typical keyring at only 3 grams. That’s thanks to a thinner material, only 0.8mm thin, and its beautiful waveform shape. At the same time, it’s actually twice as strong with a high-tension stainless steel SUS304 body so it won’t get bent out of shape even if you insert a thick key. Whether it’s to protect your nails or to protect your sanity, this one-of-a-kind key ring will give you peace of mind knowing all your keys are in one place and that you can add or remove them easily as often as you want.

Click Here to Buy Now: $25

The post Save your nails and beat the stress with this innovative wave spring key ring first appeared on Yanko Design.