Alfredo Häberli creates "architectural" Giro Soft sofa for Andreu World

Dezeen Showroom: Furniture brand Andreu World has launched Giro Soft, a modular sofa system created by Alfredo Häberli.

In this exclusive video interview produced by Dezeen for Andreu World, the Swiss-Argentinian designer shared the story behind the product.

The modular design features a series of slender upholstered seats with interchangeable legs that can be joined together to build a larger sofa.

The collection, called Giro Soft, is the result of a collaboration between Häberli and the brand that started before the pandemic.

Designer Alfredo Häberli

"We had a team relationship from the very first second," Häberli told Dezeen's founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs in an exclusive video interview conducted over Zoom. "We have the same vision,"

"I sent some drawings at 1:1 scale and we immediately started by working on prototypes in 1:1, which for us designers is the most beautiful thing".

The seating modules come in a variety of shapes that feature a combination of straight edges, rounded ends, and 90-degree or 45-degree curves. The latter lends Giro Soft its name, as "giro" means "curved" in Italian.

Giro Soft modular sofa system designed by Alfredo Häberli for Andreu World

Häberli designed the sofa as a collection of separate, reconfigurable parts to allow users to adapt the furniture to their spatial and personal requirements.

"It's also interesting ergonomically," said Häberli. "It's extremely comfortable to sit on it, to work on it, to relax on it."

Included in the collection is an optional swivelling table that can be slotted between two seating segments.

For use in public spaces, a power outlet can be integrated into the end of a seating module.

A range of legs are also available, including sledge-like supports made from solid ash wood and injected aluminium frames that come in matt or polished, white and black finishes.

These components were designed with both structure and aesthetics in mind, said Häberli, who describes the product's base as "very architectonic".

Black Giro Soft with black aluminium legs

The legs are intended to reduce the amount of materials required to raise the sofa above the floor, thereby giving the sofa a lighter appearance.

"It's like it's flying in a way," said Häberli from his studio, which is located in Zurich in Switzerland.

"The idea came because in a dream I wanted to have the same material as the floor but I cannot come up with 30 different materials," he explained.

"We decided at the end to do it in wood, but the idea was to use the same material as the floor because it makes it even more transparent in a way – and more 'architecture' than 'design'."

Häberli envisioned customers using Giro Soft to break up large spaces as an alternative to a screen or a partition.

Large red Giro Soft sofa and small black Giro Soft sofa

"When I start working I imagine where will I use [the product]," said Häberli. "In this case, it was more in the bigger spaces than smaller ones to use it as an architectural element to divide big spaces."

"I was thinking of hotels but I was also thinking of airports. I was thinking of an office and semi-public spaces where you might have to [architecturally] divide the space."

The sofa system was designed before the outbreak of coronavirus but Häberli argues that Giro Soft could be successfully deployed in a post-pandemic world – particularly in the workplace.

"Yes, we are in a very strange period. When we started, of course, nobody was thinking of [coronavirus]," said Häberli.

"But in the meantime, I have to say it fits perfectly because it's easy to clean. It gives you the opportunity of having enough distance in between the people. And I think these two elements are essential for the future of the offices."

According to Häberli, the pandemic has also created a demand for more comfortable yet functional domestic furniture, as more people are working from home.

"How do we work at the moment? We just work on the dinner table just behind the kitchen," said Häberli. "But if we are really working several days at home, we immediately need more ergonomic items at home."

This video was produced by Dezeen for Andreu World. Giro Soft was due to launch at Milan Design Week in April this year but the annual festival was cancelled earlier due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

Product: Giro Soft
Designer: Alfredo Häberli
Brand: Andreu World
Contact: info@andreuworld.com

About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

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Ouroboros Steak grow-your-own human meat kit is "technically" not cannibalism

A group of American scientists and designers have developed a concept for a grow-your-own steak kit using human cells and blood to question the ethics of the cultured meat industry.

Ouroboros Steak could be grown by the diner at home using their own cells, which are harvested from the inside of their cheek and fed a serum of expired, donated human blood.

The resulting bite-sized pieces of meat, currently on display as prototypes at the Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition, are created entirely without causing harm to animals.  The creators argued this cannot be said about the growing selection of cultured meat made from animal cells.

Ouroboros Steak is part of the Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition

Despite the lab-grown meat industry claiming to offer a more sustainable, cruelty-free alternative to factory farming, the process still relies on fetal bovine serum (FBS) as a protein-rich growth supplement for animal cell cultures.

FBS, which costs around £300 to £700 per litre, is derived from the blood of calf fetuses after their pregnant mothers are slaughtered by the meat or dairy industry. So lab-grown meat remains a byproduct of polluting agricultural practices, much like regular meat.

"Fetal bovine serum costs significant amounts of money and the lives of animals," said scientist Andrew Pelling, who developed the Ouroboros Steak with industrial designer Grace Knight and artist and researcher Orkan Telhan.

"Although some lab-grown meat companies are claiming to have solved this problem, to our knowledge no independent, peer-reviewed, scientific studies have validated these claims," Pelling continued.

"As the lab-grown meat industry is developing rapidly, it is important to develop designs that expose some of its underlying constraints in order to see beyond the hype."

Human cells are fed with serum from expired blood donations

Ouroboros Steak, named after the ancient symbol of the snake eating its own tail, cuts out the need for other animals by drawing exclusively on human blood and cells.

The version on display at London's Design Museum was made using human cell cultures, which can be purchased for research and development purposes from the American Tissue Culture Collection (ATCC). They were fed with a serum derived from expired human blood donations that would otherwise have been discarded or incinerated.

The grow-it-yourself kit would include mycelium scaffolds (centre) and the human serum (right)

Amuse-bouche-sized steaks are preserved in resin and laid out on a plate complete with a placemat and silverware as a tongue-in-cheek nod to American diner culture.

As part of the DIY kit, the team envisions users collecting cells from the inside of their own cheek using a cotton swab and depositing them onto pre-grown scaffolds made from mushroom mycelium.

For around three months, these are stored in a warm environment such as a low-temperature oven and fed with human serum until the steak is fully grown.

For display, the bite-sized steaks are preserved in resin

"Expired human blood is a waste material in the medical system and is cheaper and more sustainable than FBS, but culturally less-accepted. People think that eating oneself is cannibalism, which technically this is not," said Knight.

"Our design is scientifically and economically feasible but also ironic in many ways," Telhan added.

"We are not promoting 'eating ourselves' as a realistic solution that will fix humans' protein needs. We rather ask a question: what would be the sacrifices we need to make to be able to keep consuming meat at the pace that we are? In the future, who will be able to afford animal meat and who may have no other option than culturing meat from themselves?"

Ouroboros Steak was previously exhibited at the Unlikely Futures exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Although no lab-grown meat has so far approved for sale in any part of the world, the market is estimated to be worth $206 million and expected to grow to $572 million by 2025, largely due to the increasing environmental and ethical concerns about the mass rearing of livestock for human consumption.

Among the companies hoping to bring cultured meat to market are Aleph Farms, which claims to have been the first company to make a lab-grown steak. Others have focused on substituting meat entirely, with Novameat creating a 3D-printed steak from vegetable proteins.

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Ariostea unveils new marble-effect textures as part of Ultra Marmi​ collection

Dezeen promotion: floor-and wall-covering brand Ariostea has added the Michelangelo Altissimo​, Brilliant Green and Verde Saint Denis marble-look textures to its Ultra Marmi​ collection of large porcelain slabs.

The three new marble-effect textures form part of the Ultra Marmi​ collection of porcelain stoneware, which can be used to cover walls, floors as well as to make items of furniture.

Like all of the 32 colours in the Ultra Marmi​ range, each of the Michelangelo Altissimo​, Brilliant Green and Verde Saint Denis textures are available in large slabs of up to 4.5-metres squared.

Brilliant Green has been added to the Ultra Marmi​ collection

The Brilliant Green texture is designed to look like Irish green marble – a rare type of marble that is quarried in Connemara, Ireland.

Ariostea's porcelain stoneware enables users to achieve the same "soothing" effect of this rare marble on walls, floors or furniture, but with a cheaper material that is also practical and functional.

The Brilliant Green texture is designed to look like Irish green marble

"The surface of Brilliant Green has an amazing iridescent green base, in which the dense, dark shades mingle with lime and white undertones," explained the brand.

"The great attention paid to the texture and highly realistic colours conjure up images of excitingly powerful and wild nature that is also soothing, just like the green Irish landscapes," it added.

The Michelangelo Altissimo looks like Italian Carrara marble

The Michelangelo Altissimo design is made to resemble Italian Carrara marble, which is quarried in the country's Apuan Alps. The material was used extensively by artist and architect Michelangelo, from whom the texture takes its name.

The material features a snowy-white background colour that is traversed by fine grey veins.

The slabs can be used on surfaces and to create furniture

"Michelangelo Altissimo takes its name from the sculptor who, more than any other, has made this type of marble eternal," said the brand.

"It was in the q​uarries of the Apuan Alps ​that Michelangelo searched for the most beautiful blocks of marble for his creations, and it is thanks to the technological know-how​ that has developed over the years that Ariostea is now able to re-propose all its charm in its own large slabs."

Verde Saint Denis is a dark green material with white veins

The third finish is Verde Saint Denis, a marble effect that is designed to pay homage to a type of ​Italian marble from the Aosta Valley.​ The dark bottle-green material that is covered in white veins was created to meet the demand for historical-style finishes.

"To meet the trends in interior design, which has in recent years seen a growing fondness for the past, for history and traditional atmospheres, with ​Verde Saint-Denis,​ Ariostea pays homage to a magnificent type of ​Italian marble from Valle d'Aosta," explained the brand.

The material can be used for floors and walls

Each of the materials are available in slabs of 300 by 150 centimetres, 150 by 150 centimetres, 150 by 75 centimetres, 75 by 75 centimetres and 75 by 37.5 centimetres. The slabs are all six-millimetres thick.

To find out more about Michelangelo Altissimo​, Brilliant Green and Verde Saint Denis and the Ultra Marmi​ collection visit Ariostea's website.

Product: Ultra Marmi​ collection
Brand: Ariostea

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Monforte soundproof partition by Raffaella Mangiarotti for IOC

Dezeen Showroom: Monforte, created by Italian architect and designer Raffaella Mangiarotti for IOC, is a sculptural, undulating room divider that can be used to separate desks and entire self-enclosed meeting rooms.

The freestanding, mobile wall comes in different lengths from 120 to 190 centimetres and consists of a series of tubes wrapped in sound-absorbing Kvadrat fabrics.

As the screen is made up of individual modules, which are simply connected via a chain at the bottom, it can easily be reconfigured into different shapes.

The Monforte room divider can be finished in a range of fabrics and colours including blush pink

Whether running between two tables to create privacy or curving into a snail-shaped wall around a breakout area, Monforte also acts as an acoustic panel to keep out ambient noise and allow for uninterrupted working.

"When I was designing this product I had a dream of a flexible sound-absorbing screen that can shape the space in a smart and fluid way," said Mangiarotti.

"Something that you can change easily depending on the activity you are doing but also something that has a beautiful texture and rhythm."

Product: Monforte
Designer: Raffaella Mangiarotti
Brand: IOC
Contact: n.mismara@ioc.it

About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

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Foster + Partners adopts Spot the Boston Dynamics robot dog

Architecture firm Foster + Partners has employed a robot dog named Spot, designed by Boston Dynamics, to oversee construction at Battersea Power Station in London.

The four-legged machine, which can walk up and downstairs and move across uneven ground, is being used to regularly scan the site to monitor progress at Battersea Roof Gardens.

Spot can handle uneven construction sites

A video shows Spot being welcomed into the office and presented with its own Foster + Partners lanyard and ID card, before accompanying architects around the site and performing a scan.

This information Spot collects is fed back to Foster + Partners and used to build and update a "digital twin" model of the project as it is built. The model can be used to compare the design to the built reality.

The robot is remote controlled

The architecture firm's Applied Research + Development group (ARD) collaborated with American engineering firm Boston Dynamics to explore how a robot such as Spot can be used in the context of construction.

Spot is remote controlled and follows a pre-mapped route again and again. The robot's four feet help it cope with rough terrain and it can explore sites that might be hazardous or uncomfortable for humans.

Spot performs a weekly scan along a set route

As well as its own sensors, Spot can carry up to 14 kilograms of equipment.

At Battersea Roof Gardens, the robot dog is able to monitor construction as it progresses, something Foster + Partners said was very useful when different teams of contractors are on site.

Spot returns weekly to follow its route and perform its scan of the site.

Architects can use the data to build accurate digital models

"The ability of Spot to repeatedly and effortlessly complete routine scans, in an ever-changing environment was invaluable not only in terms of the consistency but also the large amount of high-quality data collected," said Foster + Partners partner Martha Tsigkari.

"Through this process, we developed a sequence of scans that may help us track the project progress against timeframes as well as facilitate regular comparisons against the BIM model," she added.

"Our scans can ensure that very quick and accurate changes to the newly designed system could be made to accommodate the differences captured by the scans – all in a matter of days. This could result in savings both in terms of time and money."

The scans can detect rates of progress

Battersea Roof Gardens is part of the conversion of Battersea Power Station, a decommissioned coal-fired power plant, into a mixed-use complex that will include apartments, a hotel with a rooftop infinity pool and an Apple headquarters.

Battersea Roof Gardens is part of phase three of the redevelopment and will encompass housing and a 250-metre-long garden overlooking the Thames. Foster + Partners, the architecture firm founded by Norman Foster in 1967, is collaborating on phase three with Frank Gehry's architecture practice.

More animal-inspired robots include Samsung's pet-like personal care robot that responds to voice commands, and MIT's backflipping mini cheetah robot.

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