Delft-Style Weaponry by Artist Helena Hauss Contrasts Fragility with Strength and Destruction

All images © Helena Hauss, shared with permission

Paris-based artist Helena Hauss juxtaposes the domestic feminity synonymous with delft-style porcelain and the brute force of barbed weaponry. Her sculptural series, titled Hell Hath no Fury, is composed of an axe, grenade, spiked bat, and morning star, each of which is ornamented with floral motifs.

Hauss shares with Colossal that she hopes to disrupt notions that women are the “weaker sex” and opts instead for a message of empowerment. “Too often portrayed as fragile and delicate, this project is an expression of the contrasting subtleties that come with femininity, as well as an attempt at vindication from a feeling of constant vulnerability that’s been forced upon us,” she says. “Contrary to what you might think, we’re not made of glass, porcelain, or crystal. We’re not gonna break, we’re wearing full metal jackets, and we’re ready to fight back.”

To view more of the Hauss’s subversive sculptural works, head to Instagram and Behance.

 

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Plesner Architects builds Six Senses Shaharut hotel in the Israeli desert

Tel Aviv practice Plesner Architects has built a hotel in the Negev desert of Israel harnessing local materials and regional craft like limestone walls, ceramics and pergolas.

The hotel Six Senses Shaharut spans 46 acres (18 hectares) in the tiny desert community of Shaharut in the far south of the country.

Pleaser Architects designed the resort on a sandy site that includes 60 suites and villas with expansive views of the Arava Valley and ridges of the Edom mountains.

The studio partially buried many of the buildings into the ground and built them with rough-hewn limestone and flint excavated from the site, as well as thatched roofs, outdoor walkways and swimming pools.

"We wanted the stones, the patterns, the textures and the colours to be omnipresent, resulting in architecture that is woven in with the natural elements," Pleaser Architects said.

The design is intended as a modern interpretation of architecture from the region's ancient civilisations, particularly the nomadic Nabataeans who were skilled traders and specialised in carving their capital city Petra into the rocky cliffs of nearby Jordan.

"The design of the property is the result of a dialogue between protecting and taking advantage of the unique characteristics of the site, which together build the memory and experience of visiting the Negev," said the studio.

"This manifested in a concept that is a modern interpretation of nomadic structures, reminiscent of the Nabataean community which occupied the area over 2000 years ago."

Local craftsmen also worked on the Six Senses hotel, including carpenters, welders and masons, and a nearby kibbutz or collective Neot Smadar supplied glass-reinforced concrete for the construction.

All of the hotel suites have private patios, and the large villa offerings have indoor living rooms and private swimming pools. A three-bedroom villa is outfitted with a spa, steam room, gym and Boffi kitchen.

The interiors have a minimal, pale aesthetic with white linens, plaster walls using the traditional Moroccan technique Tadelaktand, and sliding glass doors to usher in views of the desert.

"An intentionally restrained base palette of stone, wood, copper, and fabric is used to reflect the natural surroundings of weathered rock, vibrant sunsets, and minimal vegetation," the studio added.

Colourful details reference the ancient trade routes that passed through the region to connect Asia to the Mediterranean Sea and include pottery by Tel Aviv artist Rachel Elimelech Urbach and textiles by artist Erez Nawi.

Several doors were custom-made from teak that was rescued from houses, boats and footbridges.

Six Senses Shaharut is complete with several restaurants, a spa, hammam, indoor pool, outdoor lap pool, gym and yoga studio. It is an hour drive away from Israeli resort city Eilat and Ramon airport designed by Amir Mann-Ami Shinar Architects and Moshe Zur Architects.

The project is part of Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas' international portfolio which includes Six Senses Bhutan that was awarded this year's AHEAD Asia prize for best resort.

Danish architect Ulrik Plesner founded Plesner Architects in Israel in the 1970s after working for Arup in London, and the studio is led by his daughters Daniella and Maya.

Ulrik himself designed an addition for a brick house in England by Danish architect Jørn Utzon in 1961 that has been renovated by British studio Coppin Dockray.

Photography is by Assaf Pinchuk.

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Dawnridge House by Field Architecture splits in two around giant oak tree

US studio Field Architecture has designed the dining room of this house in a suburb of Silicon Valley, California so it is open to the outdoors and frames an oak tree.

Field Architecture, which is based in Palo Alto, completed Dawnridge House in Los Altos Hills on a site with two key features: a creek that flows intermittently and large oaks.

It is split into two volumes other so that it can wrap around one of the existing and also follow the flow of the water.

"Formally, a low-sloped ranch form splits to make room for the giant live oak tree on the site, that anchors the home by sheltering an internal courtyard," said the firm.

"The split in the building's volume doesn't just make room for the tree; it also follows the bend of the stream, settling in perfect complement to the shape of the land and breaking the symmetry of the building's geometry," it added.

Dawnridge House's wings – one is one storey and the other is two – are linked by a tall glazed structure and encase an outdoor yard underneath the shades of the tree.

"This central knuckle of the home – located off the main living space – offers a melding of natural landscape with built form at its most elemental: the yard is sheltered on its sides by build form and above by the tree canopy," Field Architecture added.

The firm said the design of the house was borne from careful study of the surrounding landscape, which also led them to leave much of the surroundings untouched.

"We began with a careful study of the site's topographical qualities, its native flora and fauna, and the particularities of its relationship to the areas that surround it," the studio explained.

"We designated more than half of the site as a natural, protected habitat, prioritising the restoration of an intermittent freshwater stream that winds along the northern edge of the site."

"Allowing these movement patterns to influence our design process, we thought also about the way in which visitors would move through the site and through the architecture, and the way in which the architecture itself would wind through the landscape," it added.

As part of an ambition to provide a strong connection to the outdoors, the studio designed the house's dining room so that it is open to the outside. Sliding glass doors open the kitchen onto the covered dining area with a barbecue. A path leads from here into the woodland around.

Glazing also links other spaces in the house to complementary outdoor areas including the living room, which opens onto a triangular gravel yard filled with large boulders "borrowed from the site", and the master bedroom on the second level, which opens onto a terrace. Large amounts of glass throughout the residence also open up to vistas.

"The windows descend to the floor, allowing the grasses that blanket the grounds to sketch their shadows across the interior floors," said the studio.

The glass is teamed with concrete and slatted cedar to forms part of a simple material palette that draws on the surroundings.

This is continued through the furnishings and decor with elements like grey stone flooring, pale built-in wooden cabinets in the lounge and the kitchen, and greyed wooden treads. Other details include wooden furniture – such as a table made from a tree stump – and muted textiles.

Field Architecture completed Dawnridge House in 2018. Other projects by the studio that are set in California's natural habitats are Pinon Ranch home in Portola Valley, just south of San Francisco, which was also designed to ensure that no trees had to be removed from the site.

The studio has also completed two homes in Napa Valley – the wood-clad Zinfandel House, which takes cues from vernacular architecture, and the Sentinel Ridge dwelling, which has facades wrapped in salvaged wood and tan stucco.

Photography is by Joe Fletcher.

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Xiaomi launches world's first mass-produced transparent TV

Chinese electronics company Xiaomi has unveiled its Mi TV LUX see-through television, which displays images that appear to be "floating in the air".

Billed as a world's first, the Mi TV LUX features an edge-to-edge transparent display, leaving what looks like a simple glass screen, allowing viewers to see through to the other side.

The TV's glass-like quality is possible due to the use of transparent organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology.

Unlike ordinary LEDs in TVs, which are used to light an LCD display, the pixels of an OLED TV are self-illuminating, ridding of the need for backlighting.

This means that, while conventional TVs require a back panel to contain their processing units, these elements are integrated into the base stand of the Mi TV LUX.

The TV's rectangular screen measures at 55 inches, with an "ultra-thin" width of approximately 5.7 millimetres. The screen is capable of displaying 1.07 billion colour combinations.

Its cylindrical base stand is topped with a covering that has a visual resemblance to "compact discs", said the company, which was designed to help it blend into a variety of surroundings.

According to the electronics manufacturer, it is the world's first mass producer of transparent OLED TVs.

Xiaomi's transparent TV will be released in China at a cost of around £5,500 (RMB 49,999) and will be available to purchase on 16 August.

Many electronics companies have been developing different designs that aim to disguise the true appearance of TVs.

In 2017, Yves Béhar's studio Fuseproject designed a smart TV for Samsung that looks like a framed artwork when hung on the wall.

A year later, Samsung introduced the Ambient Mode feature to its QLED TVs, which enables the screen to appear almost transparent when not in use by mimicking the look of the wall behind it.

Dezeen later teamed up with the company to launch a design competition that tasked entrants with creating graphics for the Ambient Mode feature, which saw a range of creations from an architectural illusion to a "meditation platform".

Other attempts to minimise the impact of the screens include LG's rollable TV, which has a flexible display allowing it to be rolled up into its base and out of sight at the click of a button.

Bang & Olufsen took a more straightforward approach with its Beovision Harmony TV, the screen of which can be partially obscured by two oak and aluminium covers that fold down into a sculptural form when not in use.

Vitra, Panasonic and designer Daniel Rybakken, on the other hand, had a similar idea to Xiaomi for their prototype Vitrine TV, which comprises a simple wood frame containing what looks like a single pane of glass set at a slight angle.

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Ten self-designed homes that reflect the unique styles of their owners

Following the popularity of a riverside house that an architect and designer built for themselves in Australia, we've rounded up 10 other original self-designed homes by architects and designers from around the world.

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Home Farm, UK, by John Pawson

Home Farm is the clutter-free second home of John Pawson, the British designer best known for his minimalist style.

Built within a 17th-century farming complex in the Cotswolds, the dwelling is fitted out with limited furniture and a deliberately simple material palette of pale lime plaster, elm and concrete.

Find out more about Home Farm ›

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House in Samambaia, Brazil, by Rodrigo Simao Arquitetura

A large, sweeping rooftop shelters the stripped-back House in Samambaia that Brazilian architect Rodrigo Simão designed for himself, his wife and children.

Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap its exterior and frame its tactile, open-plan interiors, which feature various recycled elements and an exposed structure of white-painted steel pipes, beams and board-marked concrete.

Find out more about House in Samambaia ›

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House in Tokiwa, Japan, by Makoto Suzuki

Makoto Suzuki designed the fragmented House in Tokiwa to facilitate communal living – accommodating living spaces for himself, an office for his wife, a remote retreat for his father and a studio for the sculptor Takenobu Igarashi.

It is made up of individual blocks that are interlinked and unified by the same vertical timber cladding, which Suzuki left unpainted to mimic the trunks of the surrounding trees.

Find out more about House in Tokiwa ›

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Ceiba House, Mexico, by Jorge Ramirez

Ceiba House is the 1930s family home of Jorge Ramirez, which he refurbished and extended with a white rooftop yoga studio for himself and his wife.

Located in Aguascalientes, the small home retains as much of its existing detail as possible, including weathered mud-brick walls, crumbling render and a small courtyard with a ceiba tree after which the house is named.

Find out more about Ceiba House ›

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Hytte Ustaoset, Norway, by Jon Danielsen Aarhus

Framing the view of the nearby lake was the priority of Jon Danielsen Aarhus when designing his family's remote timber cabin, located on the mountain plateau Hardangervidda in Norway.

The pared-back dwelling is otherwise built to merge with its natural setting, clad entirely in pinewood that will grey over time and mimic the colours of the surrounding trees and rocks.

Find out more about Hytte Ustaoset  ›

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Blythe Road, UK, by Alex Michaelis

Alex Michaelis' self-designed sculptural brickwork house in London slots into a long, narrow site that was previously occupied by a disused garage.

Complete with rooftop gardens and a swimming pool, the design is Michaelis' "contemporary take on Corbusien modernism" and intended to offer a "unique and unparalleled experience of city living".

Find out more about Blythe Road ›

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Dodge House, Portugal, by Daniel Zamarbide and Leopold Banchini

Daniel Zamarbide's Lisbon home is fronted by an opaque facade that opens unexpectedly into a bright, full-height living space, overlooked by staggered glass-walled rooms.

Its distinctive stepped section squeezes a kitchen, bathroom and three bedrooms into a footprint of less than 40 square metres and is designed to maintain a visual connection throughout the home.

Find out more about Dodge House ›

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House in the City, Japan, by Daisuke Ibano, Ryosuke Fujii and Satoshi Numanoi

A stack of staggered white boxes makes up Daisuke Ibano's House in the City, which he built for his growing family on a compact site hemmed in by other buildings in Tokyo.

This characteristic form reflects its unusual interior layout, where the rooms are arranged as one "helical continuous space" without doors to help maximise light and space.

Find out more about House in the City ›

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Le Pedrera, Uruguay, by Alejandro Sticotti

Le Pedrera is a coastal holiday home that architect Argentinean Alejandro Sticotti designed for his family using textural board-marked concrete and weathered-wood cladding.

The interiors were designed largely by his wife Mercedes, a graphic designer, and have a complementary material palette dominated by tactile wooden flooring, ceilings and furnishings.

Find out more about Le Pedrera House ›

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Basic House, Thailand, by Korn Thongtour and Nartrudee Treesaksrisaku

An indoor garage containing a vast collection of cars is the centrepiece of Basic House, the "clean-cut" home of architects Korn Thongtour and Nartrudee Treesaksrisaku in Bangkok.

Developed with their studio, Brownhouses, the dwelling conceals all its storage behind walls to enhance the pared-back aesthetic and retain focus on views of the garage throughout the home.

Find out more about Le Pedrera House ›

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