InHouse Records launches a weekly magazine for prison inmates during the lockdown

With an aim to inspire and inform current prisoners, the world’s first fully functioning record label that operates inside the prison system has launched a print publication.

from It's Nice That https://ift.tt/3iljFaT

Azeema creates a zine all about collaboration, sisterhood and elevating MENASA voices

Continuing our ongoing partnership with Converse, we team up with the London-based platform and publication Azeema for a collaborative zine focused on sisterhood.

from It's Nice That https://ift.tt/2VBNCtF

Inspired by her mother and ancestral home of Jamaica, Ekua King’s photography is filled with opulence and joy

Talking us through her fashion-driven portraiture, the London-based photographer aims to break down the media’s negative connotations with being Black.

from It's Nice That https://ift.tt/31yUX0M

Nike ditches smooth design for dimples for Premier League Flight football

Nike has released its new Flight ball for the 2020/21 Premier League that has geometric grooves and sculpted chevrons to reduce drag.

The product of eight years of research and development by the Nike Equipment Innovation Lab – and 1,700 hours of testing – the Flight ball grants 30 per cent more accurate flight trajectory than its predecessor.

The ball, which was released on Nike's website on 29 June, will be used in the next 2020/21 Premier League season.

It incorporates Nike's new patented AerowSculpt technology, which sees moulded grooves indented across its surface – much like how the dimples on a golf ball function.

As Nike explains, while all footballs have some unpredictable movement in flight, if the ball is entirely smooth then it is more likely to be gripped by the air, causing turbulence and thus frequent changes in direction.

"These shifts can result in misplaced long balls, derailing a potentially fruitful counter, or shots that stray off goal," the brand added.

The indentations in the Flight ball work to reduce "wobble", offering a more predictable and consistent flight, by encouraging air to move around the ball instead of gripping its surface.

"The construction started with a square-shaped Aerotrack groove," explained Kieran Ronan, head of Nike Global Football Equipment.

"Over the course of the 68 iterations, we modified the shape of the groove, added sculpted chevrons and explored multiple features throughout to deliver one geometric pattern that helps promote a more stable flight," he added.

The ball is constructed from four fuse-welded panels, as opposed to a usual 12, which are stitched together with 40 per cent fewer seams than an ordinary football. This makeup affects both how the ball flies and how the player can touch or kick its surface.

It also is printed with Nike's All Conditions Control (ACC) 3D ink, which is used to print "micro flaps" along the surface to ensure optimal grip in all weather conditions.

Nike's innovation lab worked with various players to address these aerodynamics issues in three stages, which it has labelled explore, recreate and innovate.

In the explore phase, the Nike lab used various tracking systems to measure the ball flight of different types of kicks performed during a game.

The recreate phase saw the researchers replicate the kick styles seen on-pitch with a robotic leg in order to measure any small differences in performance between different ball designs.

In the final innovate phase, the lab tested 68 different iterations of the Flight ball and had over 800 professional athletes participate in field testing validation before settling on a final version.

"Everything done at the Lab is rooted in science," said Ronan. "Here, we are able to detect small differences in performance that may not be perceivable to most athletes, but when those small differences are iterated upon 68 times, the result is a noticeable leap in performance."

Dezeen recently spoke to Nike's sustainable design lead Noah Murphy-Reinhertz about the impact of the current Covid-19 pandemic, and how it will affect the current climate crisis.

"Right now we're in the midst of two global crises," he told Dezeen. "One is super visible that we're experiencing and immediately it's put us all back into isolation for a few months."

"But the other crisis that's happening at exactly the same time is one that could put us all inside air-conditioned homes and gyms for the foreseeable future."

The post Nike ditches smooth design for dimples for Premier League Flight football appeared first on Dezeen.

from Dezeen https://ift.tt/38iB7sa

BIG designs furniture factory for Vestre in Norwegian forest

Danish architecture studio BIG has designed a factory for furniture manufacturer Vestre in a Norwegian forest, which the brand claims will be the "world's most eco-friendly furniture factory".

Named The Plus, the factory development, which will include a visitor centre and a 300-acre park, is set to be built within a forest near the village of Magnor in the east of Norway.

Designed by BIG, the 6,501-square-metre factory takes its name from its cross shape. It will consist of four green-roof-covered wings, containing the furniture manufacturer's warehouse, colour factory, wood factory and the assembly area, extending from a central atrium.

Two of these wings will be publicly accessible with walking tracks running up them, giving visitors access to the roof and a view of the central atrium from above. Large glass windows will allow visitors to look inside the buildings that are closed off to the public to see the inner workings of the factory.

"With Vestre we have imagined a factory that is simultaneously front of house and back of house," said BIG founder Bjarke Ingels.

"The beauty of the factory is the clarity of its organisation. Conceived as the intersection of a road and a production line it forms a large plus connecting everything to everything," he explained.

"The radical transparency invites visitors and hikers to enjoy the whole process of manufacturing while providing the workers the thrill of working in the middle of the forest."

BIG designed the factory to be an exemplar of sustainable architecture, and according to the furniture brand it will generate 50 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than a conventional factory of the same size.

When complete, the architecture studio expects the building to be the first industrial projects in the Nordic region to gain a BREEAM outstanding environmental rating.

The building is constructed from local timber and low-carbon concrete with recycled reinforcement steel. It will be powered by an energy supply system that combines 1,200 solar panel and geothermal wells, while surplus heat created during the production process will be used to heat the building.

According to the architecture studio, this means that the building's energy requirement is 90 percent lower than an equivalent factory.

"Vestre will be the world's most sustainable furniture manufacturer," said Jan Christian Vestre, CEO of Vestre.

"Building The Plus will be an important step in reaching this goal. By using cutting-edge technology and Scandinavian collaboration, we can produce faster and greener than ever," he continued.

"In that way we will ensure global competitiveness through our leadership in environmentally-conscious production."

The factory will be located around half way between Vestre's headquarters in Oslo and its existing manufacturing plant in Torsby, Sweden, which was designed by architecture studio Snøhetta.

Materials will be moved between the facilities by a fleet of all-electric Tesla trucks.

Vestre is a Norwegian furniture manufacturer that was established in Haugesund in 1947. Earlier this year the company won the best stand award at Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair for an installation designed by Note Design Studio.

The stand was made from re-usable materials and had information displayed about the carbon footprint of every product.

At the time, Jan Christian Vestre said he believes the company was the first furniture brand in the world to publish carbon information on its product range.

"We're doing it because we want to be really open and transparent," he said. "I would like to say that clients are actually demanding it, but they aren't yet."

---

Project credits:

Client: Jan Christian Vestre / VESTRE AS
Architect: BIG
Collaborators: Fokus Rådgivning, Gade & Mortensen, Erichsen og Horgen AS, ØM Fjeld AS, Foyn Consult AS, Nordic Architects AS, Norconsult AS, Multiconsult AS, Splitkon AS
Partners-in-charge: Bjarke Ingels, David Zahle, Ole Elkjær-Larsen
Project manager: Viktoria Millentrup, Eva Seo-Andersen
Team: Julia Tabet, Ariana Szmedra, Ningnan Ye, Ron Bexheti, Ksenia Zhitomirskaya, Jens Majdal Kaarsholm, Ulla Hornsyld, Eduardo Javier Sosa Treviño, Steen Kortbæk Svendsen, Kristoffer Negendahl, Pin Tungjaroen, Neringa Jurkonyte, Magni Waltersson, Cheng-Huang Lin, Tommy Bjørnstrup, Tristan Harvey, Duncan Horswill, Katrine Juul, Alexander Jacobsen, Tore Banke, Frederic Lucien Engasser, Thor Larsen-Lechuga, Katrine Sandstrøm, Jesper Petersen, Kaoan Hengles, Ewa Zapiec, Ariana Ribas, Andy Coward, Andreas Bak, Nanna Gyldholm Møller

The post BIG designs furniture factory for Vestre in Norwegian forest appeared first on Dezeen.

from Dezeen https://ift.tt/3ikOWuT