ArkDes, Ilse Crawford, Alcova and Farshid Moussavi feature at VDF this week

Week eight of the Virtual Design Festival starts this Monday with a collaboration with ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design, taking visitors on a virtual 360-degree tour of the opening of its new exhibition, and much more.

We also talk about upcoming industry trends with Lixil chief design officer Paul Flowers and show new touchless and 3D-printed collections as part of our collaboration with Grohe, the VDF headline sponsor.

Designer Ilse Crawford and industrial designer Benjamin Wilson will take part in two live discussions with Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, presented by Braun, and Theodora Alfredsdottir and Patternity join us for our Screentime design series sponsored by Philips TV and Sound.

On Thursday, we showcase the work of 10 designers in collaboration with Milanese design platform Alcova, while the Friday brings a takeover from Austrian Fashion, which presents the work of 15 contemporary fashion and accessories designers.

Iranian-born British architect Farshid Moussavi is this week's guest on our Screentime architecture series, sponsored by Enscape.

We are now more than halfway through VDF. To catch up on what you've missed so far, check out Fairs' selection of highlights from the first half of the festival. For what's to come, see the full VDF schedule. All times are UK times and are liable to change.

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Monday 1 June

VDF x ArkDes

For this daylong takeover, Virtual Design festival will showcase a 360-degree virtual vernissage from ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design, as well as a live interview with ArkDes director Kieran Long, an interview with artist Linda Tegg, and more.

11.00am Virtual 360-degree vernissage of Kiruna Forever 

A virtual visit that lets you explore the latest exhibition at ArkDes, with over a hundred works by architects, city planners and artists, before it opens on June 2.

12.00pm Kiruna Forever 

Take a closer look at the project behind Kiruna Forever – how do you move an entire city?

1:00pm Interview: Linda Tegg

An interview with Australian artist Linda Tegg, whose Infield project has changed the entrance of ArkDes from asphalt car park to a meadowland.

3.00pm Virtual vernissage: WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD

Take the opportunity to see ArkDes' new exhibition about ASMR, featuring global ASMR artists as well as commercial pieces and works from TV artist Bob Ross, from your own home.

4.00pm Interview with Kieran Long

ArkDes' director Kieran Long in conversation with Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, live from Stockholm.

www.arkdes.se

2:00pm Screentime: Theodora Alfredsdottir

Icelandic product designer Theodora Alfredsdottir joins Marcus Fairs for a presentation and conversation about her work in this Screentime design episode sponsored by Philips TV and Sound.

www.theodoraalfredsdottir.com

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Tuesday 2 June

VDF x Grohe

Today's Virtual Design Festival is a collaboration with our headline sponsor, bathroom and kitchen manufacturer Grohe. Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs will discuss upcoming industry trends with Paul Flowers, the chief design officer of Lixil, and Grohe will present its touchless and 3D-printed collections and their relevance to health and wellbeing.

www.grohe.co.uk

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Wednesday 3 June

VDF x Braun

German brand Braun presents two talks on the theme "Times of change and good design" as part of today's VDF line-up.

The first talk features industrial designer Benjamin Wilson and philosopher, writer and curator Dr. Peter Kapos, followed by a second talk with designer Ilse Crawford. Both talks will be moderated by Marcus Fairs.

www.uk.braun.com

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Thursday 4 June

VDF x Alcova

VDF teams up with Milanese design platform Alcova on Thursday 4 June to present the work of 10 designers, studios and brands from its stable.

2:00pm Screentime: Patternity

Anna Murray of London design studio and creative organisation Patternity, which aims to share the positive power of patterns with the world, is today's interviewee for our Screentime design series sponsored by Philips TV and Sound.

www.patternity.org

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Friday 5 June

VDF x Austrian Fashion

Today's collaboration with Austrianfashion.net, the platform for Austrian contemporary fashion design, will showcase the work of 15 designers working in fields ranging from jewellery to footwear and fashion.

www.austrianfashion.net

3:00pm Screentime: Farshid Moussavi

Iranian-born British architect Farshid Moussavi will discuss her work, which includes cultural centres, retail spaces, apartment blocks, museums and more, with Marcus Fairs as part of our Screentime series sponsored by Enscape.

www.farshidmoussavi.com

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Virtual Design Festival, the world's first digital design festival, runs from 15 April to 30 June 2020 and is sponsored by bathroom and kitchen manufacturer Grohe.

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Cardboard hospital beds that double as coffins developed in Colombia

A Colombian company has created an emergency hospital bed from cardboard that can be quickly assembled and transformed into a coffin in response to the coronavirus crisis.

ABC Displays, a company in Bogotá that specialises in advertising materials, has started making and distributing the low-cost bed for coronavirus patients.

In the worst-case scenario, each bed can be rapidly reconfigured to become a cardboard coffin.

ABC Displays has created a hospital bed that can be converted into a coffin 

CEO of ABC Displays Rodolfo Gómez told Dezeen the idea came after seeing the dire situation in the neighbouring country of Ecuador. Mortuaries have been overwhelmed and the government had to distribute emergency cardboard coffins as bodies were left on the streets.

"It is a worthy solution so that people are not lying on the floor of hospitals and [they] are not throwing them in mass graves if they die," said Gómez.

"By converting this bed into a coffin, it also allows medical personnel to have biological isolation from the corpses without having to manipulate the corpse much, protecting the medical team," said Gómez.

"The entire procedure is done in the same bed, as in the worst case, the patient's death, it can be converted into a coffin in less than 18 seconds."

As a hospital bed, the cardboard design has slots in the sides for railings and space for brakes, so it can be mounted on wheels.

The team at ABC Displays designed the bed after observing the situation in Ecuador

ABC Displays said they consulted with doctors and hospital staff during prototyping to make sure the bed had the best dimensions for coronavirus patients. Sheets and blankets can be used to cover the cardboard surfaces, just like a normal bed.

Cardboard was chosen for several reasons. According to recent studies, coronavirus can only survive on cardboard surfaces for 24 hours, whereas it lives for two to three days on materials such as wood, metal and plastic.

Each bed can be shipped flat packed, and the corrugated cardboard is light but strong enough to support 150 to 200 kilograms. An average adult weighs just 62 kilograms.

It also minimises the environmental impact, as it can be easily recycled after use – if not used as an emergency burial device.

Each bed is designed to be shipped flat packed

ABC Displays is sending a donation of cardboard beds to Leticia in the Amazon region on the border with Peru and Brazil. Leticia's biggest hospital has only five ventilators, reported the Bogota Post, and no intensive care unit beds. Colombia currently has over 25,300 coronavirus cases and has registered over 800 deaths.

The company will donate beds to the worst affected regions, and is offering to sell them to other local governments in places such as Peru that are looking for inexpensive solutions to bed shortages. ABC Displays estimates it can manufacture 3,000 beds a month if needed.

"The company has all the capacity to export these beds worldwide, considering that there are airlines with the availability to make and carry humanitarian aid," said Gómez.

At the start of the pandemic, Swedish startup Stykka made a cardboard desk that could be used as a cheap solution by people suddenly working from home.

Photography courtesy of ABC Displays.

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Tracks Architectes creates colonnaded cinema in former French convent

French studio Tracks Architectes has built a cinema fronted by an irregular arched colonnade in the grounds of a former convent in the town of Riom, central France.

Arcadia Cinema at Riom forms part of the conversion of the Redemptoristine convent into the Jardin de la Culture cultural centre near the historic centre of the town.

Tracks Architectes designed the multi-screen cinema as the first stage of the conversion, which will also include a multimedia library built alongside it and a music school built in the former convent building and an exhibition hall in the chapel.

The cinema's distinctive facade was informed by a wall broken with seven arches that encloses the former convent and stands next to the cinema.

However, unlike the regular sized arches that break the wall, the arched openings that support the cinema's facade are three different sizes arranged in an irregular pattern. To add to the irregularity the arches turn the corner at the building's edges to create a larger opening.

"The arches were inspired by the rich history of the site of the convent of the Redemptoristines," explained Moïse Boucherie, partner at Tracks.

"We borrowed this element of architectural vocabulary from existing structures and then gave it a contemporary interpretation," he told Dezeen.

Tracks Architectes created the sheltered space in front of the building to open up the cinema to the public and the garden that forms part of the cultural centre.

"The design concept was to create a building that was open toward the green spaces of the garden of culture and the existing convent," continued Boucherie.

"Indeed a cinema programme imposes dark rooms and we tried to create a generously open and welcoming space functioning at night as 'light signal'."

Beyond the colonnade is a large barrel-vault shaped reception hall that leads to three cinema screens and a conference room.

In total, the cinema's have 543 seats, while the conference facility seats 112.

Paris-based Tracks Architectes is led by partners Boucherie and Jérémy Griffon. The studio previously designed a honey-coloured in the village of village of Perthes-en-Gatinais in France.

Photography is by Guillaume Amat.

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Christo dies aged 84

Breaking news: Christo, the Bulgarian artist famous for wrapping buildings, has died of natural causes at the age of 84.

Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, known as Christo, died in his New York City apartment on 31 May.

The artist is known for the large-scale installations that he started creating with his late wife Jeanne-Claude in the 1960s.

They include wrapping the German Reichstag in Berlin with 100,000 square metres of silver fabric, which was tied to the building for two weeks using 15.6 kilometres of blue rope. They also covered a medieval tower and a fountain in Spoleto, Italy in 1968, a 250-metre section of the Aurelian Walls in Rome in 1974, and the entirety of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 1985.

"Christo lived his life to the fullest, not only dreaming up what seemed impossible but realising it," said a statement from Christo's office.

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude's artwork brought people together in shared experiences across the globe, and their work lives on in our hearts and memories."

Christo continued to produce installations following his wife's death on 18 November 2009. In 2018, The London Mastaba was installed on the Serpentine Lake in London, which marked their first major UK sculpture.

Composed of a vast stack of brightly coloured barrels, the structure was also the culmination of over 60 years of working with stacked barrels.

His latest project, L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, was to envelop Paris' Arc de Triomphe in 25,000 square metres of silvery recyclable fabric and 7,000 metres of red rope. Christo's office said it will continue to produce the work with the ambition to complete it next year.

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude have always made clear that their artworks in progress be continued after their deaths," it explained. "Per Christo's wishes, 'L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped' in Paris, France, is still on track for September 18 – October 3, 2021."

An exhibition about Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work will also open at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris on 1 July.

Christo was born on 13 June 1935, the same day as Jeanne-Claude, in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. He told his life story and discussed some of his best-known works in an exclusive two-part video filmed with Dezeen last year.

"I was born in Bulgaria and I escaped from the communist country to the west on 10 January 1957," he explained in one of the movies. "I met Jeanne-Claude in November 1958 and we together fell in love."

"We lived in Paris in between 58 and 64. I was so poor, I had no studio and I was living in one room. I started working with little cans, tin cans of industrial paint. From the cans of the smaller size, I moved to the smaller sized barrels. I rented a garage outside of Paris when I started working with real barrels."

Photo is by Dezeen.

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Studio Dwell stacks black volume onto brick structure to form top-heavy Hermitage Residence

US architecture firm Studio Dwell has stacked a rectangular volume clad with black zinc on top of a pale brick structure to form this residence on a corner lot in Chicago.

Hermitage Residence is located in the Bucktown neighbourhood of Chicago on a residential and commercial street. The clients, a professional couple, asked local firm Studio Dwell for a house with privacy and natural light.

In order to withdraw the 6,800-square-foot (603-square-metre) home from the busy road, the studio installed raised plant beds around its perimeter which reduced the area the brick volume could occupy.

An overhanging structure clad with black zinc is stacked on top of the brick structure to form the second floor.

"In order to provide a buffer from the busy street corner to the home, a deep landscaped relief region was established by drastically carving back the first floor of the residence," the studio said.

"This was further expressed by cladding the first floor in this area with a lighter brick, which produces the effect of a lighter volume supporting a heavier cantilevered volume above."

Rectangular windows of various sizes are cut into each of the structures and outlined with black frames that contrast against the pale bricks.

A grouping of windows on the south elevation flood natural light into the interiors and offer a glimpse of a glass and metal staircase situated in the centre of the house.

Studio Dwell designed the staircase to act as the "epicentre" of the house. It comprises a black steel stringer that is paired with a tempered glass enclosure, steel railing and wood steps. A bed of rocks and plants form a small garden underneath the geometric structure.

"The epicentre of the house is the cantilevered glass and steel staircase that unites the floors," the studio added.

Main living areas, the kitchen and a guest room occupy the ground floor, while the basement houses recreational space. Four bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms are located on the top floor.

All of the walls are painted white and the floors are covered with hardwood. A number of wood accents throughout the houses contrast against the plain walls, including a custom-built teak bench in the master bathroom, a row of cabinets in the dining room and a built-in study unit.

In the kitchen, the cabinetry is finished with white lacquer that matches the white quartz countertops. Three bulb-like pendant lights hang over the kitchen island.

Other details of the house are the grey striped porcelain tiles that clad the walls and floor in the master bathroom and shower and the abstract splatter artwork hanging on the living room wall.

Studio Dwell is a Chicago architecture firm led by Mark Peters. It has worked on a number of projects in Illinois including a house hidden by brick screen and an aluminium clad structure with cantilevered terrace.

Photography is by Marty Peters.

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Project credits:

Principal in charge: Mark Peters
Project manager: Jonathan Heckert
Engineer: Louis Shell Structures
General contractor: Allianz Construction Inc

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