Tag Archives: wooden design

This sustainable cabin glows like a candle & was built using cross-laminated timber!

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It is my first day back at work after a long weekend that I spent cabin hunting to alleviate my urge to travel. I found this sustainable wooden one called Kynttilä by Ortraum Architects which is Finnish for ‘candle’ – makes sense because it instantly gave me the warm cozy cabin vibes! Kynttilä’s linear shape with its triangular roof is pretty much like a geometric candle adaption in itself.

The cabin is built on Lake Saimaa and is right on the border of lush woods and endless serene water. The prefabricated cabin only takes one day to be assembled. Helsinki-based architecture firm constructed Kynttilä from cross-laminated timber (CLT) with the exteriors featuring larch board cladding. CLT is a wonderfully eco-friendly construction material that offers high strength and structural simplicity for cost-effective buildings. It has a much lighter environmental footprint than concrete or steel. CLT is also quicker to install, reduces construction waste on-site, improves thermal performance, with light handling duties making it better for health and safety, and is versatile enough to be molded according to different designs.

Kynttilä has a 15-square-meter floor space which is optimized for a short stay. It includes built-in furniture like the bed that is fitted on one glazed end and a ladder that leads up to a bunk bed above the door. The sweeping glass windows add openness to the small space and give a cooling visual contrast to the otherwise warm wooden aesthetic. Eaves overhang at both ends of the cabin to provide a sheltered, raised platform for sitting on or storage while also protecting the woodpile kept beneath.

“The space is strongly linked to nature, as the large window creates direct and intimate contact and communication with the surroundings. In the night time, like a candle, Kynttilä shines as a warm light on the lakeshore,” said Ortraum Architects. When you turn on the lamp at dusk, the cabin truly does glow like a candle in the untouched forest and that is why the team planned the most low-impact construction process they could to preserve the stillness of the environment. It is exactly the kind of off-the-grid spot we could all use to recuperate from 2020.

Designer: Ortraum Architects

These foldable, modular furniture designs are the space-saving solution every home needs!

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I have ordered the white plastic chairs off of IKEA and Amazon and while they look great in the patio, it’s only going to last a couple of months because it can’t withstand weather changes, kids, or dogs. And you can’t keep those indoors – they just look ODD. We finally have an alternative to it – wooden foldable chairs with an upgraded minimal aesthetic and a longer life! Even though they might look visually similar to the IKEA ones at first glance, these wooden chairs actually work with indoor settings too unlike the usual patio seating. They are classier and can be used in any room/interior setting.

The first wooden chair has strings that form the seat and the backrest, it may make you doubtful of comfort but the strings act like fabric and contour around your body for maximum comfort. The string tension also makes sure that you are well supported. The second chair is like a classic window transformed into a chair with one swivel motion. Because it is a smooth, singular vertical plank when closed, it is easier to stack/store. Another favorite from this furniture range is the fold-out table with storage, it is ideal for small urban apartments or for a kid-friendly room to keep things tidy and packed away. Speaking of kids’ rooms, there is another piece which is a shelf with a chalkboard panel that transforms into a small bed – this is a wonderful way to encourage children to own and take care of their space in a playful manner. Now when it comes to adults, we all know there is never enough storage so instead of shoving plastic or cardboard boxes under our beds, there is a simple box frame that has multiple drawers and when closed it seamlessly turns into a base for your mattress. It keeps things neat and reduces the storage bins you have to buy.

I have always had a personal library, but having lived in crowded cities like Manhattan, you have to choose between a bookshelf and a table to eat your food. I wish I had this ladder-shelf table piece at the time, it saves space and ‘serves’ food as well as food for thought! Given our population growth and the crowding up of cities, millennials will need these furniture designs to add fun and functional element to their home. Afterall, wooden furniture is timeless and one can never go wrong with these minimal multifunctional pieces.

Designer: Jon 117 SP

This DIY tiny wooden cabin comes with a Scandinavian aesthetic and a flatpack design!

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Do you love DIYs? Me too! But let’s think big. Okay, a little bigger but not more than a tiny house. Now, what if I told you that you can build your own tiny cabin DIY style? Perfect 2020 project! A Hungarian company called Hello Wood has designed a tiny minimalist cabin that you can assemble yourself for creative space solutions or just an escape from your living room.

The prefabricated cabins start at $10,200 and have been crafted in a way that anyone can put it together, it is truly the ultimate DIY project. With the tiny home market ‘growing’ rapidly, the Kabinka cabin is positioned to be like IKEA furniture – easy to assemble with an aesthetic that is loved by most. The Kabinka cabin comes in four sizes that range between 129 and 215 square feet. It is a tiny cabin but it has high ceilings – over 12 feet high actually – that bring a sense of spaciousness and luxury to the otherwise simple structure. The ceiling space is well optimized to give the cabin a loft-like setup that can be used as storage space or a cozy reading nook.

Another cool thing about Kabinka is that it is a flatpack design! You can also customize it to suit your needs – it can be a private backyard workstation or a mini weekend holiday home without the heavy price tag (since you assemble it, it brings down the costs!). The assembly can take between 1-3 days and the designers say all you need is “a good bunch of helpers, basic tools and enthusiasm” to build Kabinka. The basic layout can easily fit a couch, a tea kitchen, and a stove but Hello Wood allows you to add any of these extras – landscaping, loft bed, bathroom, extra windows, glass wall, furniture, and more. While the base model isn’t suited to year-round living, with the right additions it can be easily transformed into a permanent tiny home.

“Our design-build projects are developed with people in mind. We work primarily with wood to create installations that invite participation, benefit local causes, and best serve our clients’ needs. Creating a quality space was the focus of the design process. Spatial quality isn’t necessarily characterized by big size, rather deliberate complexity. Each and every millimeter counts but we believe that for those who share this level of consciousness it is not a challenge but joy to spend their time in a minimalist home.” says the team. In my opinion, we all need to flee this urban lifestyle and get our own tiny homes so we can WFH with views for days!

Designer: Hello Wood

This Japanese wooden electric scooter is designed to solve mobility issues!

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Did you ever imagine an electric scooter made out of wood? I didn’t but it feels like something Geppetto would make if he was in 2020! Lucky for us we don’t have to wait for the master skills of our favorite fable characters, Japanese designer Mikiya Kobayashi has designed a conceptual wooden electric scooter that is especially aimed at those with mobility issues like the often forgotten elderly demographic.

The electric vehicle is called ILY-Ai and it actually can be counted as a trike because it has three wheels – two large ones in the front and a balancing one in the rear end. ILY-Ai is carved from solid timber and is a complete aesthetic contrast to the usual sleek, matte, futuristic electric scooters you see. The concept is developed in collaboration with Aisin’s technology as they are one of the leaders in the world of mobility and they are also well known in Japan for manufacturing automotive parts as well as lifestyle, wellness, energy-related products. Another crucial collaborator is Karimoku, Japan’s leading wooden manufacturers that helped in picking the right kind of wood so that ILY-Ai worked for indoor and outdoor spaces comfortably.

Wood adds a warm and cozy element to the design, Kobayashi has retained the natural timber’s aesthetic for an organic shape/feel. The combination of chestnut wood and aluminum match elevates the design and gives it a user-friendly touch while smoothly hiding the latest mobility technology. One important feature that was included for the elderly and for anyone with mobility issues trying to be independent is the safety sensor that automatically stops the scooter when it detects obstacles. Karimoku lends its years of wood-related study to ensure the design is as functional as its form with the clean curves and padded leather seat for comfort. This wooden scooter almost looks like our most nostalgic childhood toy comes alive with a better purpose to serve us in our adult life!

Designer: Mikiya Kobayashi

This minimal wooden stubby chair brings the original park bench home!

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Do you remember when park benches were actually just stubs of chopped trees or creatively placed wooden logs? I remember my mom could tell I had been to the park because my clothes smelled like wood and grass, and that is exactly what this beautiful stubby chair reminds me of! This chair is an amazing display of nostalgia and minimalism through furniture design.

The designer wanted to incorporate our inherent ways of interacting with nature into a chair. Stubby chair was inspired by these environmental settings that combined the love for interiors with an element from the exterior world. Nature is the best designer (for the most part!) so observing nature gives the designer a lot of clues and points of directions where they should pay attention so it fits seamlessly into our lives. “Over time, you settle down with some household items, borrowed from nature. At the same time, you understand that the world is changing and you are changing with it,” she says describing the simplistic design which can age with time.

It is about looking at a familiar object through a different lens. Stubby chair brings back that attention to the details and functions of a sturdy chair. What would be a wooden chair would now be considered outdated so the incorporation of the metal pipes shows the same wooden chair in a modern light. “Do not be attached to the place and time. Do not endow the item with any particular style because of its deposit and burden it with the historical era in which the item was created,” says the designer on the product’s evergreen design along with the philosophy behind it.

Designer: Nissa Kinzhalina

This A-shaped wooden studio is built using the Bahareque method and Ecuador’s local resources!

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I wish I was an architect so like David Guambo I could also build myself a cozy, wooden studio! The architecture student made Kusy Kawsay, a small hut-like housing that rests on stilts in hilly rural Ecuador with a straw roof and wood framing. Kusy Kawsay means ‘passionate life’ in Kichwa (a dialect of Quechua, a language used in the Andean region), and the tiny house reflects it wonderfully.

Guambo studies architecture at Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica (UTI) in Ambato, Ecuador and like most students, he just wanted a space for him to do projects while listening to loud music – that is how this tiny studio was born! To build his dream focus pod, he worked under the guidance of Al Borde, a local architecture studio that successfully completed the renovation of a deteriorated 18th-century house (!) in Ecuador. The main purpose was to be able to play loud music without disturbing the neighbors so Guambo used a traditional construction method known as ‘Bahareque’, a building system that involves weaving sticks and mud to construct compact walls, to make it sound-proof. Even though the exterior reflects the traditional design technique, the full glass window gives it a modern touch.

The hut has a gabled roof that has been layered with grassy straw. The walls pack dried mud tightly between wood framing to make it sturdy. One of the most beautiful features is the whimsical triangular window in the front of the studio that allows plenty of sunlight in while giving you a view of the natural landscape. The crisscrossing wood beams turn it into a studio on stilts and there are cut-up wood logs form several rows of bench seating underneath the unit where passerby can sit in the shade for rest. The interiors are simple yet warm, the roof structure is exposed and the floors are covered with wooden planks. It is furnished with a minimal wooden desk that is aptly placed in front of the large window along with a chair, the set is crafted from leftover logs.

“I’m making a study room, with wood, with straw, and everyone made fun of me because I am constructing with a traditional system. This is because we don’t value what we have, they prefer to do foreign things, thinking that they will save money. But what I believe they don’t know is that you can reinterpret with the things we already have, to do new things, you have to change the mentality of people with this project that I’ve done,” says the resourceful, wise, young designer and we agree – good design doesn’t have to be expensive or hi-tech!

Designer: David Guambo

Wooden Architectural Designs that show why wood, as a material, will always be in trend!

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Wood has been the material of choice for construction across centuries. From a simple abode to even a sustainable football stadium, wooden designs are back to rule the future. The reason for it is simple, wood ages beautifully – anything built with wood will retain the character of your house. From the floorboards to the roof, each of this wooden house designs showcase this material in a spectacular way that will meet your style- be it modern or traditional!

Persimmon Hills Architect, a Japanese architectural studio has designed this timber Kannondō, or main hall to the Buddhist Houshouin temple for the once prosperous town of Sugito. The studio hopes to revive this local community that has thinned out due to the population moving out to the bigger cities. The revived Houshouin Kannondō feels airy, spiritual, modern yet accessible., encouraging the community interaction and lift their spirits.

The Yomogidai house in Nagoya, Japan designed by Tomoaki Uno architects holds a long and narrow construction with a blind street facade, with it’s windowless design making it stand out in the crowd. To allow for natural lighting, the back of the house holds a complete window with a gable roof to provide a sheltered roof.

These cabins hover almost five meters above the ground, keeping the cabins free from the snow-covered slopes while being surrounded by trees to maintain the privacy of each cabin. Built by Minnesota-based HGA Architects and Engineers, the designers say “The concept for the cabins riffs on the idea of a tree house, but instead makes them accessible to all by building ‘houses in the trees’ that can be entered from a bridge at the crest of the hill, along adjacent ski and hiking trails,” The studio used red cedar wood to create the design, “Dark cedar shingles on the exterior blend seamlessly with the beauty of the pine forest while the interior is stained naturally to create an immersive warm environment,” said the firm.

Cantilevering off the edge of the mountain slope, this restaurant designed by architects Peter Pichler Architecture and Pavol Mikolajcak, the Oberholz Mountain Hut restaurant for the Oberholz ski resort is set on a small mound, giving sweeping views of the ski slopes! The structure splits into three volumes that face off into different angles of the hillside.

Stacking up 61 tree trunks, John Pawson creates a space of rest and contemplation on a cycle route in southwest Germany. Named the Wooden Chapel, Pawson said “The client wanted to provide sanctuary or contemplation space.” Using trunks of Douglas fir with minimal cutting or enhancement of design, Pawson explains, “It’s just trunks of Douglas fir stacked on top of each other, there’s a minimum of cuts, so everything is solid.”

The world’s first wooden football stadium is being built by Zaha Hadid Architects in Gloucestershire, England for football club Forest Green Rovers. The aim of the design is to be the greenest football stadium by being powered by sustainable energy sources. The 5000-seat timber stadium includes an all-weather pitch and included a different landscaping strategy to mitigate worries that the stadium design did not sufficiently make up for the loss of green fields it will be built on.

Antony Gibbons presents an combination of geometric designs to create this house named ‘Kuroi Ki’, which literally translates to ‘black wood’. This dark wooden exterior is derived from the use of clad charred wood finish for this dwelling. The angular structure is organized around a patio space that allows for a private space protected by the tall structures on each side.

Bangkok-based firm Department of Architecture Co. incorporates a façade of wood and polycarbonate shingles, laid out like fish scales that shimmer in the daylight. ‘Although working with the traditional shingle system, the uninterrupted translucency surface is achieved by a special detail design using translucent studs and special transparent screws,’ the studio explains. ‘The façade is glittering in the sun as the light touches different material grains, from the solid wood shingles to the different translucency levels of the polycarbonate shingles.’

‘We wanted to build a house with the same consideration and attention to detail we put into our furniture and lighting,’ explains Tom Raffield. ‘Designing objects for other people to put in their home is an incredible privilege, we’d never design anything that we wouldn’t have in our own home, but we’d never had a chance to design for our own space before.’ This two-storey dwelling in rural England has been wrapped with stream-bent wood which is what Raffield’s company is known for – using a pioneering form of steam-bending to create hand-shaped items of furniture and sculptural works of art.

Tomoaki Uno Architects is back with the Ogimachi House, a pared-back and therapeutic home.The sky-lit dwelling in Nagoya was commissioned by a young client for his mother, who required a private and calming space to help her recover from an illness. Tomoaki Uno Architects’ design is deliberately simple, and built almost entirely from wood in recognition of the material’s physical and psychological benefits. The house is constructed without any windows, and instead relies on 37 skylights for natural light to create an environment of healing. “One of the most important considerations in this home is how it relates to private and social,” added Uno.

Studiobase Architects features a sustainable design that focuses on nature in this restaurant located in Taichung, Taiwan. The restaurant is located in front of a discarded train station mainly used for timber transportation, uses this as an inspiration that is replicated throughout the design.

If you love innovative architectural designs, check out more concrete and brick-based architectural designs to inspire you!

This geometric wooden cabin is perfect for a socially distant getaway!

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Every weekend I can only think about what cabin in the woods I would go to for my next vacation. Cabins let you get outside and at the same time be socially distant making it perfect for a post-pandemic getaway. Italian architects Massimo Gnocchi and Paolo Danesi probably also can’t wait to enjoy some downtime and therefore created the Mountain Refuge to express their desire for travel.

It is a wooden, square, prefabricated cabin with an angular roof. While the geometric cabin is a structural contrast to its natural setting, it still blends in well while showing off its modern design. “The project acts as a contemporary interpretation of old traditional mountain refuges, bringing in architectural character and spatial quality,” say the designers. The wooden cabin comes in different modules and each has the capability to be flexible and expandable. It is made to be compact and optimizes the space while taking up the least in nature.

The cabin was designed as a ‘refuge for the mind’ and radiates warmth and coziness that relaxes you instantly. The visual aesthetic and interiors have been carefully crafted with earthy tones and natural materials. The sweeping polygonal windows let you soak the nature in even if you don’t step outside. It lets in ample sunlight and makes the otherwise small space, spacious. Since it is so compact, the furniture has been kept minimal (in terms of size and design) and the one accent piece is the suspended fireplace which completes the perfect cabin picture. Already pinned this to my board!

Designers: Massimo Gnocchi and Paolo Danesi at The Mountain Refuge