From Green to Red is "part music video, part protest song and entirely a statement of our time" says Beatie Wolfe

As part of the VDF collaboration with Beatie Wolfe, the singer-songwriter has shared this exclusive preview of From Green to Red, a forthcoming interactive environmental protest installation.

Created for this year's London Design Biennale, the project sets to music NASA data showing how atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased over the past 800,000 years.

From Green to Red is an interactive environmental protest installation by singer-songwriter Beatie Wolfe

For VDF, Wolfe has prepared a special movie preview of the installation. This features a digital timeline that visualises the dramatic increase in CO2 in the atmosphere over the preceding 8,000 centuries, "reimagining both the music-video format and protest song," according to Wolfe.

"A statement of our time"

"It's part music video, part protest song and entirely a statement of our time," said Wolfe.

The title of the project comes from Wolfe's track From Green To Red, which explores climate-change denial and which Wolfe wrote after seeing the 2006 climate-change documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

"We don’t want to hear that the problem is us," Wolfe sings in the track. "So we live like we want in our own universe."

From Green To Red has been produced in collaboration with visual-effects studio The Mill and will premiere at the 2020 London Design Biennale, which is due to take place at Somerset House in London from 8 to 27 September 2020 and is directed this year by theatre designer Es Devlin.

Interactive installation will give visitors "a sense of agency"

"For the fully immersive From Green To Red experience, people will be able to interact with the piece in real-time via its motion sensors," Wolfe said. "As people approach the installation, both the music and timeline visualisation will respond, becoming clearer and sharper and revealing new factors and elements, allowing people to play with and explore the data."

"This has the effect of giving each individual a sense of agency about their own impact on the environment."

The project sets to music NASA data visualising how atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased over the past 800,000 years

The From Green To Red preview is part of a day-long VDF collaboration with Los Angeles-based Wolfe, who has been described as  "a singer-songwriter of raw acoustic indie channelling Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith" who "pioneers new formats for music."

The collaboration includes the online premiere of the Orange Juice for the Ears: from Space Beams to Anti-Streams documentary about Wolfe's work and a live interview and performance.

About Virtual Design Festival

Virtual Design Festival runs from 15 April to 30 June 2020. The world's first online design festival will bring the architecture and design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances.

To find out what's coming up at VDF, check out the schedule. For more information or to join the mailing list, email vdf@dezeen.com.

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Koto renames and rebrands health-tech company Huma inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and Persian mythology

A huge project that took more than a year, the rebrand echoes a new direction in more approachable health branding.

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Building Beyond Borders uses stone and earth to build Women's House Ouled Merzoug

Architecture students collaborated with a women's group in Morocco to design and build a community centre out of stone and earth in the village of Ouled Merzoug.

Two volumes of granite and adobe brick sit at the intersection of two shortcuts, one leading to the village centre and the other to its schools.

Called Women's House Ouled Merzoug, the centre is a place for women in the village to gather and share their work as craftspeople with their community and visitors to

Building Beyond Borders, a group of architecture postgraduates and academics from Universiteit Hasselt School of Expert Education (UHasselt SEE) in Belgium, created the project with the Association des Femmes d'Ouled Merzoug (AFOM).

Women's House Ouled Merzoug sits on a slope above a gully that channels water from the Atlas Mountains to the palm groves of Marrakesh during the rainy season.

The two volumes are positioned at an angle to each other. One faces the village's main square, the other the schools and football fields.

These orientations mean that one building has views of the sun rising over the mountains, and the other of it setting beyond the river,

Entry is via a communal space between the two wings. One building houses the Atelier des femmes, a workshop for spinning and weaving where AFOM can hold lessons and meetings.

A boulangerie commune, or communal bakehouse, is located in the other building. Women gather here to bake bread and pastries to sell and to share meals together.

Each building opens on to its own private garden. The workshop garden has a sink and a bench for washing and colouring wool, and the one next to the bakery has a cob oven – a wood-fired oven made from earth – that the women designed and built themselves.

As part of their research, Building Beyond Borders chose materials that could be acquired locally and sustainably, working closely with local craftspeople.

Granite rock dug out from the surrounding hills forms the outer envelope of the two structures, and adobe bricks made of earth form the inner walls.

The roof's span was determined by the maximum size of the beams of eucalyptus wood that can be bought from the local market, and the timber is thatched with reeds that grow nearby.

Local woodworkers crafted the doors and kitchen counters from the same eucalyptus wood. Stairs rendered with clay lead up to terraces on the flat roofs of the single-story centre.

The women of AFOM wove the curtains for community centre, and the lamps and ceramic objects that decorate the exterior where made by their local potter.

Next to the centre, the bare rocks of the gully have been forested with trees by the women and their fellow villagers to form a garden. A terraced garden with stacked dry walls built next to it is designed to slow down the rainwater when the gully floods to minimise erosion.

Using local rather than imported materials is important when building in places that are best suited to the harsh desert climate of Morocco. In the Moroccan town of Aknaibich, local workers collaborated with a pair of Belgian architects to build an extension to a school.

Photography is by Thomas Noceto.

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Project credits:

Client: Women's Association of Ouled Merzoug (Association des Femmes d'Ouled Merzoug (AFOM))
Design and build: Participants of Building Beyond Borders postgraduate certificate UHasselt, 2018-2019: John Silvertand, Hannah Van Breen, Arnaud Goossens, Auranne Leray, Margot Lambrechts, Eline Hoftiezer, Tinne Beirinckx, Kjell Keymolen, Aurora Fanti, Sofie Van den Velde, Jolien Bosmans, Martina Petrosino, Giulia Ventre, Emily Haest, Miki Z, Biniam Hailu, Alice Chang, Dany Depuydt
Project initiators and academic tutors: Academic team of the UHasselt postgraduate certificate Building Beyond Borders and BC architects and studies
Team of local workers: Abdelaziz Agoram, Mohamed Oualla, Abdelhadi Arifi, Abdelkbir Sayah, Bouchaib Darai, Hassiz Kassimi, Abde Sadak Agoram, Mehdi El Finti, Allal El Finti, Abdelkarim Kassimi, Abdelwahid El Finti, Rachid Esmali and women of AFOM

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Daily coronavirus architecture and design briefing: 24 April

Daily coronavirus briefing: today's architecture and design coronavirus briefing includes coronavirus tartan and emojis.

Scottish designer makes coronavirus tartan to raise money for NHS

Scottish designed Steven Patrick Sim, also known as the Tartan Artisan, has created a tartan called Virohazard (shown above) as a wearable public health warning.

Sim is donating 60 per cent of the proceeds from each coronavirus tartan scarf and facemark sold to the NHS and has also created a Just Giving campaign to fundraise for the NHS (via The Tartan Artisan).

&Walsh designs coronavirus emojis to offer "comic relief" during pandemic

Jessica Walsh's creative agency &Walsh has designed emojis that detail life during the coronavirus pandemic, including hand sanitiser, a tin of beans and healthcare workers dressed as superheroes (via Dezeen).

BDP converts Cardiff's Principality Stadium into the Dragon’s Heart Hospital

UK architecture studio BDP has converted Cardiff's Principality Stadium, formerly known as the Millennium Stadium, into a 2,000-bed hospital. The studio previously explained how the ExCel conference centre in London was turned into a hospital (via Wales247).

Lockdown is an "exercise in presence and gratitude" says Beatie Wolfe

Ahead of today's VDF collaboration with Beatie Wolfe, the musician says that the coronavirus lockdown is a chance to celebrate "the little things that are so often overlooked" in this video message for Virtual Design Festival (via Dezeen).

Anna Wintour says fashion industry must change after coronavirus

American Vogue editor Anna Wintour has told Naomi Campbell on a live chat on Youtube that the coronavirus has changed people's values.

"I think it’s an opportunity for all of us to look at our industry and to look at our lives, and to re-think our values, and to really think about the waste, and the amount of money, and consumption, and excess – and I obviously include myself in this – that we have all indulged in and how we really need to re-think what this industry stands for," said Wintour (via Independent).

How will coronavirus impact cities?

US magazine the Architectural Digest takes a look back at how previous health issues and diseases have shaped cities to anticipate what coronavirus' impact will be (via Architectural Digest).

Met Museum projects $150 million shortfall for 2020

In New York the Metropolitan Museum of Art – the  largest art museum in the US – has revealed that it is expecting to have a $150 million shortfall in this fiscal year (via NPR).

Keep up with developments by following Dezeen's coverage of the coronavirus outbreak. For news of impacted events, check Dezeen Events Guide's dedicated coronavirus page.

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By leaving traces of his process in his work, Roydon Misseldine “gives it some depth”

Originally from Wellington, but now based in London, the graphic designer jumps around different tools and techniques in his skate-inspired portfolio.

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