Nick Ross designs Proto chairs to offer refuge in busy environments

Scottish designer Nick Ross has created a range of curvy seats for Danish brand +Halle, to offer respite from an overstimulating world.

Proto is a series of chairs, a sofa, a bench and a stool, designed to make a sitter feel safe and secluded.

Designed for busy environments, from the workplace to public buildings like hospitals and airports, they offer an opportunity for quiet escape.

"I envisioned Proto in places where you may be vulnerable, needing a safe corner in a landscape of uncertainty," said Stockholm-based Ross.

"Hospitals are an interesting setting, or any space where you need that inner feeling of security. And perhaps bigger workspaces, where you want to speak to a selected few in a crowded space, using Proto to foster an intimacy that often gets lost today."

Ross came up with the design after being asked by +Halle to develop something in the spirit of a dwelling. This led him to think about primitive forms of architecture and refuge.

The idea takes on new significance in today's world, where digital technologies increasingly prevent people from switching off.

"I was thinking literately about what I felt the word dwelling meant, and it brought me back to an early type of refuge," explained Ross. "I wanted to create a feeling of a primal place, for instance, tucking yourself into a corner."

The distinctive feature of the Proto chairs and sofa is a curving backrest that wraps tightly around the back of the sitter.

This comes in two different heights, allowing either partial or full seclusion. There is also the option to choose between a backrest that opens out at the front, or stays tightly closed in.

Ross imagines the more open versions being arranged together, encouraging quiet encounters and conversations.

The seats can be upholstered in various fabrics, although +Halle is presenting it in earthy shades of green, yellow, brown and beige. The fabric seams are left exposed, creating a small detail around the profile.

"Highlighting the outline of the collection was an important dialogue with +Halle throughout the design process," said Ross. "The outer seams are not an application +Halle normally use, but something that brings a resilient and crafted look."

Ross was one of three designers that +Halle invited to create a piece of furniture responding to the theme of dwelling.

All three teams interpreted the brief very differently. Form Us With Love created Levels, a series of overlapping upholstered benches, while MSDS Studio developed a high-level bench for leaning against in public places.

Proto is the design that takes the idea of shelter the most literally. "I wanted to translate the feeling of sitting in a small tent in bad weather. I was after a basic type of dwelling, and an instinctual feeling," he added.

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Sinister Sunrise Captured by Photographer Elias Chasiotis During an Eclipse in Qatar

All images © Elias Chasiotis

Athens-based photographer Elias Chasiotis was visiting Qatar in late December 2019 when he captured a photo of an annular eclipse that has since gone viral. Taken at sunrise as a part of a series, the image shows the moon covering the center of a red sun. The timing of the photograph turns the crimson star into curved horns emerging from the horizon.

A self-identified astrophotographer and amateur astronomer, Chasiotis tells Colossal that the conditions were hazy on the morning of December 26 when the photographs were taken. The haze gave the sun its red glow, but as NASA astronomer explained on the Astronomy Picture of the Day blog, the Earth’s atmosphere helped create the full image: “The dark circle near the top of the atmospherically-reddened Sun is the Moon — but so is the dark peak just below it. This is because along the way, the Earth’s atmosphere had an inversion layer of unusually warm air which acted like a gigantic lens and created a second image.”

Chasiotis continued to photograph the eclipse as the sun rose, writing on Facebook that the “annular phase was blocked by clouds, but the red crescent sunrise was the most awesome sunrise I’ve ever seen!”

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Happy City photography series captures Santo Domingo's "extravagant love motels"

Love motels in Santo Domingo disguised as grand palacial structures and quiet communities feature in this photo set by American photographer Kurt Hollander.

The Happy City series documents a number of motels used for sex, built among car repair shops, gas stations and parks on the outskirts of Santo Domingo – the capital city of the Dominican Republic.

"The images are of a group of huge, extravagant love motels located on an industrial highway in Santo Domingo," Hollander told Dezeen.

Hollander, who spent four days taking the images, has captured the exterior of the structures. All are devoid of people to leave an element of mystery to the activities that take place inside.

"The photographs, taken at dawn or dusk and without any people in frame, are intended to accentuate the emptiness of this architecture of desire, leaving it to the viewer to imagine what goes on behind the closed doors," Hollander said.

Bold, illuminated signage adorns a number of the motels, whose names include Obsession, Te Javi, Cariño and Happy City – after which the series takes its name. Each motel has a different design, ranging from ornamental buildings to those that resemble small villages.

"Even though they were all built around the same time and were bankrolled by many of the same investors from China, each is a lavish tribute to a different architectural vernacular," the photographer added.

"Some of the motels were designed to look like exclusive suburban communities, with small houses spread out along inner courtyards flanked by palm trees, while others look like regal palaces with majestic cupolas."

Happy City – one of the newest motels in the area – is fronted with decorative stone and white garage-like doors and Obsession's complex is made up of a series of volumes painted in pastel hues that Hollander likens to "toys for tots".

Red hearts detail one, while another features gabled houses with terracotta-hued elements.

"Each motel is carefully designed to protect the identity of the local couples – married, in love, in lust – that choose to stay there for an hour or two," Hollander continued.

"As tacky or kitsch as they might appear to the educated eye, these love motels provide an ideal setting for good sex, something this uptight, overly materialistic world sorely needs."

While capturing the series, Hollander also found a number of traits typical to love motels like loud music and "groans or shouts".

"The motels are specifically designed to keep people from seeing and being seen, and thus there is never any interaction between guests and staff or guests and guests," he said.

"This invisibility allows people of all sexual persuasions to use these gigantic love motels as their own private pleasure palaces," he added. "Although the sexual activity is always out of sight, loud music is to be heard coming from all directions, often accompanied by loud groans or shouts."

Happy City is Hollander's latest work that focuses on the architecture of sex. His other projects include Erotic Videochat Studios, which captures the "tacky innocence" of Colombia's erotic video studios.

Dutch duo Vera van de Sandt and Jur Oster have similarly created a photo series that captures the moods of intimate spaces designed for sex. Called Love Land Stop Time, it shows the interiors of Brazil's "tantalising" motels.

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Delfino Lozano revitalises 1970s Mexican house Casa A690

Mexican architect Delfino Lozano has renovated a house in Zapopan, Mexico to include a mix of Mediterranean and Mexican asthetics, which he describes as "Mexiterrean".

Called Casa A690, the property is a three-storey home that dates back to the 1970s.

It comprises a rectangular ground floor volume and two-stepped blocks on top. The exterior walls are rendered white, while its flat rooftops are covered in terracotta tiles that add warmth to the otherwise stark palette.

Lozano developed the aesthetic of the overhaul to be a fusion of Mediterranean and Mexican architecture and materials.

"We use the term Mexiterraneo to describe the materials and feeling we try to give our projects, in which we interpret the Mediterranean architecture – simple, pure materials – and mix it with our Mexican traditional architecture, in this case represented by the architecture," the architect told Dezeen, who also goes by Fino.

Several courtyards are slotted within the property, including one with a grey-brick feature wall.

The project also features several arched and circular windows, openings and doors, while a linear staircase cuts through the home in the main living area and leads to a home office.

"The original construction had basic rectangular windows, we added arched windows, renovated the interiors and also added new spaces as the client's studio," Lozano said.

Inside, spaces feature grey concrete walls and cabinets and contrasting elements of dark wood, as seen in built-in cabinets, benches and furniture.

An outdoor pathway passes along the side of Casa A690 and leads to the entrance, foyer and central stairwell.

A kitchen and living area is located towards the front of the property.

Another area on the ground floor accommodates a double-height dining and sitting room with sliding glass doors that open onto a grassy courtyard.

"The pursuit of generating interesting paths when moving from one zone to the other gave value to the volumes and informed with the proposed design," said Lozano.

"As a result, the rooftops became usable terraces and architectural elements like the stairs turned into sculptures."

A mezzanine with a desk overlooks the living room below, and two bedrooms and a home office are also located upstairs.

The top floor contains a master bedroom with an en-suite bathroom and a terrace, and can also be accessed from an outdoor stairwell.

The layout of Casa A690 is similar to Casa Azul that Lozano also renovated in Zapopan, which also has courtyards slotted within the main volume.

The architect's other projects include  brickwork dwelling Casa G in the Mexican city, and the renovation of a traditional house in Guadalajara.

Photography is by César Béjar.

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Project credits:

Collaborators: Gloria López Aceves, María Fernanda Rodríguez Lozano, Daniel Villalba, Sebastián Aldrete, Isaac Padilla, Jonathan Castellanos
Structural engineer: Deflino Lozano
Engineer: Sistro Ingenieria y Proyectos
Plumbing: Juan Pablo Ojeda
Woodwork: Ameba
Ironwork: Alberto Flores
Finishes: Mooma Mosaicos
Landscape design: Interior en V

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Combining Vibrant Shapes and Simple Lines, Illustrator Willian Santiago Evokes Scenes of Brazil

All images © Willian Santiago

With an affinity for bold colors, Willian Santiago documents what he sees around Londrina, the city in southern Brazil where he lives. He utilizes bright blues, greens, and reds to create his illustrations of wild animals and posed female figures that often resemble the geometric shapes and lines of woodblock prints frequently seen in Brazilian art.

“I love exploring,” Santiago said in an interview with WePresent. “It may be the step I spend most of my time on when creating an illustration. Color arouses different feelings in people. I ultimately want my work to create feelings of joy.” With a background in textile and pattern design, the artist says “old Vogue magazine covers, Art Deco and overly posed figures” often serve as inspiration, in addition to being “surrounded by strong women” as a child. Follow Santiago’s striking digital illustrations on Instagram, and check out his available prints on Society6. (via Tu Recepcja)

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