Dezeen speaks to designer Tej Chauhan about his new design for Swiss watch brand Rado in the latest live panel discussion as part of Rado Design Week. Tune in from 4:00pm London time.
For his design, Chauhan has played with the aesthetics found in old sci-fi films to create a watch that employs a bold use of colour, graphics and textures.
Taking inspiration from films such as A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner, Chauhan has given the watch a vibrant yellow colour and features such as a quilted leather strap emulating traditional watch links and a graphic watch face that includes a date indicator using the designer's own font.
"We wanted to strike a balance between something contemporary and something traditional," Chauhan said in the video that Dezeen published earlier today.
"Something that was completely distinctive, visually engaging, felt great when you picked it up and even better when you put it on."
Based in both London and Helsinki, Chauhan specialises in industrial, product and furniture design with a special attention to design details meant to inspire joy in the user.
Fairs and Chauhan will also be joined by Rado's CEO Adrian Bosshard and vice president of product development Hakim El Kadiri, who will give an insight into the Rado brand and why it chose to work with the designer.
Joining Rado as CEO in June 2020, Bosshard was previously CEO of Rado's sister brand Certina, a position that he held for 17 years.
Rado Design Week is a week-long collaboration between the Swiss watch brand and Dezeen, which sees the reveal of four unique versions of its True Square timepiece created by a roster of international designers including Tej Chauhan,Formafantasma, YOY and Thukral&Tagra.
Every day throughout the week Dezeen will also broadcast a live conversation between Fairs, Bosshard, El Kadiri and one of the designers. The week concludes with a competition that gives Dezeen readers the chance to win one of the watches from the collection.
The event marks a pivotal moment for Rado, which started out in a workshop in Switzerland's Lengnau district back in 1917. Although the brand often hosts events to launch its new watches, this is its first virtual design week.
Dominic McKenzie Architects has overhauled a Victorian house in north London, adding an extension with a zigzagging outline, bronze exterior and maple wood interior.
The Hampstead House project involved a complete renovation of the four-storey property, reconfiguring the existing interior to be more space-efficient, and replacing a previous extension at the rear to create a larger lounge and dining room.
The extension is clad in handmade bronze tiles
Architect Dominic McKenzie and his team sought to restore the Victorian character of the main house in their design. At the same time, they wanted to create a modern extension with its own personality.
"With Hampstead House we wanted to try to create something more imaginative than you sometimes see with London house extensions," McKenzie told Dezeen.
"We wanted to get away from the standard box-like extrusion to create more volumetrically interesting space, with an individual material character that brings a sense of quality."
Internally the extension is lined with maple wood
The architects used a gable form that is common of houses in the area and used it to generate the zigzagging form of the extension's roof. At one end, it creates a dramatic ceiling above the dining area, while the other end steps up to create a new first-floor office.
Externally this extension is clad in handmade bronze tiles, which are folded to create a pattern of tessellating triangles. The idea was to create a shape that matched the shape of the roof, and a colour that toned with the original brickwork.
Glass doors open the space up to the garden
"Using a metal meant the same material could be used for the walls and roof, allowing the extension to become a more abstracted sculptural object," said McKenzie.
"We also liked the way bronze ages," he continued. "We thought tonally the bronze would stay in keeping with the original building as it aged, whereas copper by contrast would gradually go green."
The extension creates a new office on the first floor
With fully glazed walls, the new lounge and dining room could easily have felt cold and minimal, but the addition of maple wood panels on the walls and ceiling bring a sense of warmth to the space.
The extension is connected to the front of the house by a glass-roofed "garden passage".
Dominic McKenzie Architects collaborated with designer Suzy Hoodless throughout
For the rest of the house, the architects worked closely alongside interior designer Suzy Hoodless to create a series of spaces that respect the heritage of the building, but are also suited to family life.
The clients – a family of four – see this house as their forever home, so they want it to be flexible for the future.
The original staircase was reinstated at the centre of the house
One of the most important changes was to reinstate the original staircase at the centre of the house. The previous owners had relocated this to the rear, which made poor use of space.
The relocation of this staircase allowed the basement to be completely reorganised, allowing a bedroom to move to a space with better natural light. Meanwhile, the relocation of the office freed up space for an extra bedroom on the second floor.
The kitchen features an island counter in grey marble
Hoodless has designed interiors throughout the house, using a material palette that works with both the Victorian details and the contemporary additions.
In a small library, located off the main living room, walnut shelving and a fireplace made from Welsh slate offer a sense of quality. In the kitchen, she chose a grey marble, while the master bedroom is lined with travertine.
A glass-roofed corridor links the extension with the front of the house
"We think the project is richer for the collaboration between architects and interior designers," said McKenzie. "Suzy understands both modern and historic design and brings a well judged feeling for luxury."
For our review of 2020 here are Dezeen's top 10 staircases this year, including a blue steel stairway by Virgil Abloh and a house by Nendo divided by giant concrete stairs.
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando has built a pair of giant, concrete helical staircases that twist around the centre of the He Art Museum. The stairs connect the galleries and are lit from above by an oculus.
Concrete stairs spiral up the outside of this eco house by the beach in the Yucatan Peninsula. Productora used a special kind of blue-toned concrete that turns pinker when it is exposed to the sun.
Interior design studio Deferrari+Modesti created this teak and powder-coated iron staircase that doubles as a climbing wall for a family that loves to rock climb.
Architecture firm PPAA designed this space-saving plywood staircase in a prototype house for a project devising low-cost dwellings for rural areas in Mexico.
Concrete steps screened by thin mesh zigzag up the side of this warehouse-style live/work apartment block by architecture studio FAR, which was shortlisted for Dezeen Awards 2020.
A flower-like staircase with petal-shaped treds unfurls in the centre of this house built by Tomoaki Uno Architects for a client recuperating from an illness.
The architects made almost everything entirely from cedar and cypress wood to create a natural and calming space.
Nendo's Stairway House is defined by the giant faux staircase that intersects its three storeys and continues out through the glazed facade and into the garden.
Although it can't be used to navigate floors, it creates a connection between the different parts of this multi-generational home.
A wooden swing hangs from the underside of this fun floating staircase made of oak in a house in London that also features a spiral staircase made of polished plaster.
Six Swedish design studios have produced items and materials from industrial waste, including pedestals made from ash and flowerpots from apples, for an exhibition in Malmö, Sweden.
The designers were teamed up with manufacturers as part of the ongoing What Matter_s 2.0 project, which is organised by the Form Design Center cultural institution.
"The design teams 'speed dated' the manufacturers, and we chose Kiviks Musteri because they stood out from the others since their waste material was all organic and we saw that as an exciting challenge to work with," Henriksson & Lindgren told Dezeen.
Henriksson & Lindgren made flower pots and plant clips from apple waste
The result is a collection of flowerpots and plant clips made from the sludge leftover from the company's juice press. Henriksson & Lindgren worked with two companies in Skåne to develop a bioplastic from the sludge.
"The polymer group PHA is made from feeding the bacteria in the sludge, and the bacteria produces the biopolymer," said the designers.
"The pots can be made from PHBV, which is the kind of PHA you would get out of the sludge from Kiviks industry, that is extruded into 3D printing filament, and then printed in a regular 3D printer."
The pots and clips can be composted
The polymer breaks down even in cold temperatures in the ocean without turning into microplastic, according to the designers.
"The idea is that the pots and clips can be used many times, and composted if they break. If a clip by mistake falls off a plant and disappears there is no harm done," they said.
Kajsa Willner's pedestals pay tribute to Roman designs
Designer Kajsa Willner collaborated with pulp and paper materials company Stora Enso to turn biofuel ash from its production process into a series of pedestals with history informed shapes.
"When tackling many of today's challenges I believe an important key can be to look back in history for solutions," Willner told Dezeen.
"Starting with the Egyptian pyramids, on to the temples of Greece and later to the Romans who produced Roman concrete from volcanic ash, I found contemporary research on geopolymer, often based on coal ash."
The designer believes the material could replace Portland cement
"Geopolymer is an inorganic 3D structure formed between amorphous SiO2 and Al2O3 at medium heat (about 100 degrees) in the presence of strong alkali," she explained.
"These components are found in high concentrations in fly ash from coal combustion, which has been researched the most, but they are also found in smaller quantities in fly ash from biofuels like the one from Stora Enso."
Carl-Ludvig Svensson collaborated with Vida
According to the designer, with optimal mixing, geopolymer concrete is stronger, more environmentally resistant and has a lower carbon footprint than concrete made using Portland cement, the most common type of cement.
"I wanted to create massive, cast objects, to really demonstrate the potential with the material and that it can work to replace Portland cement in many applications," Willner said.
Lab La Bla worked with Ballingslöv and Bonnie Hvillum
Also showing at the exhibition are Carl-Ludvig Svensson, who teamed up with Vida to create a new material from mycelium and sawdust, and Louise Hederström, who made a concrete bench and traffic barrier with waste from Finja Prefab.
M&E turned waste materials from Movomech into a material that can be used for table tops or room dividers, while Lab La Bla worked with Ballingslöv and Natural Material Studio to create veneers and shelves made from wood and ash.
Louise Hederström's traffic barrier
The aim of the project was to demonstrate the power of interdisciplinary collaborations.
"Many big manufacturing companies don’t have any experience of working with a designer and they are unaware of what a designer can bring in terms of understanding users, challenge assumptions, redefining problems and creating innovative solutions," What Matter_s 2.0 project manager Terese Alstin told Dezeen.
M&E's material made with Movomech
Currently, two materials research centres are also under development in southern Sweden, the European Spallation Source (ESS) facility and the MAX IV Laboratory, which Form Design Center's head of exhibitions Johanna Sjögren Duthy said gives this part of Sweden a new identity at the forefront of materials science.
"The last few years there’s been several designers emerging from the south with an interest in sustainability and production," she added.
"Given the climate change challenges we’re facing we’re certain this field of design will develop, moving on from a more craft-led production to a commercial setting where it can make a difference."
Metabolic Processes for Leftovers will be held in January 2021. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Industrial designer Tej Chauhan reveals the science-fiction influences behind his special edition of Rado's True Square watch in the latest exclusive video as part of Rado Design Week.
The British designer has created a vibrant twist on the Swiss watch brand's True Square timepiece, employing bold uses of colour, graphics and texture.
Chauhan looked to science-fiction films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and Moon to develop the watch design.
"My influences come from typography, old sci-fi movies and popular culture," Chauhan explained in the video.
"We wanted to strike a balance between something contemporary and something traditional."
Produced in ceramic with a matt yellow finish, the watch face features an intricate display of silver concentric circles and indexes, as well as a small window fitted with a date indicator featuring a custom-designed font.
Instead of using the True Square's traditional linked ceramic strap, Chauhan used quilted leather to create a strap with a pillow-like surface that imitates watch links.
"I wanted to do something completely different with the strap, which emulated watch links but is clearly this kind of soft tactile material," he said.
Working with Rado to develop this design, Chauhan's watch is made using the brand's injection moulding technology and its signature high-tech ceramic material.
Introduced to the industry by Rado in the 1990s, the material is used in watchmaking due to its lightness and durability, making it extremely comfortable for the wearer.
"I wanted something that was completely distinctive, visually engaging, felt great when you picked it up and even better when you put it on," Chauhan said.
"Something that was really inspiring for me was being able to go to the heart of the Swiss watchmaking industry and see Rado's process from beginning to end."
Tej Chauhan, industrial designer
Based between London and Helsinki, Chauhan approaches industrial design with a look to the end user's emotional response, often embedding his designs with small details meant to elicit joy and wonder.
Chauhan will be speaking about the watch to Dezeen's founder Marcus Fairs, Rado's CEO Adrian Bosshard and its vice president of product development Hakim El Kadiri in a live talk at 4:00pm London time today as part of Rado Design Week.
Chauhan's True Square watch is one of four watches by a roster of global designers that will be revealed during Rado Design Week, a week-long collaboration between the Swiss watch brand and Dezeen.
