Dezeen Showroom: these orb-shaped pendant lights by design and manufacturing studio Shakúff are designed to make you feel as if you're "inside a snowglobe filled with soft rain".
Kadur Drizzle, a collection of glass pendant lights with a drizzle pattern, is made from molten pyrex glass. The lights, which each comprise two concentric orbs, are based on older Kadur models that have a similar shape.
"The Kadur Drizzle collection was born out of a challenge: how could we achieve a perfect glass shape within another?" the brand told Dezeen.
Top: Kadur Drizzle lights are designed to look like snowglobes. Above: the concentric orb design is based on Shakúff's original Kadur light
To create Kadur Drizzle, glassblowers use a straw to blow molten pyrex glass into a long oval. A piece of tubed glass is then fired into the hollow oval and used to create the drizzle effect.
Thin "hair-like" strands of melted glass are created inside the orb using tweezers, heat and the tube. As the glassblower continues to blow air into the glass, the strands spread out in a pattern that looks like drips of water.
The lights are made from molten pyrex glass shaped by a glassblower
To make the concentric orbs, the glassblower delicately places the drizzled orb inside a second hand-blown oval.
"The artisan blows this second tube into a large oblong shape, then uses a fire torch to open the bottom," said the brand. "They then take the existing orb and place it carefully within, immediately beginning to melt the glass from the bottom until it becomes one solid, smooth globe. All of these movements need to be made quickly and precisely to trap the drizzled orb within the second."
The two orbs are expertly fused together to create one solid, smooth globe
According to Shakúff, "the result is a three-dimensional piece that pushes past traditional but is still grounded in classic elegance."
"Looking at it, you can picture being inside a snowglobe, except one filled with soft rain falling in all directions and enveloping you in a refreshing sensory experience," the brand added.
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The pool, which runs along the south wall of the house, was the starting point for Bak Gordon Arquitectos design of Casa Azul.
Bak Gordon Arquitectos built Casa Azul in the rural Alentejo region of Portugal
"Built in the vast territory of Alentejo, the house emerges from the figure of an extensive water tank attached to a wall, facing south," Bak Gordon Arquitectos told Dezeen.
"It is as if it was a resonance box of the entire landscape."
The house was built alongside a pool
The water tank was designed to reflect the surrounding rural landscape which is formed of grassy and sandy terrain.
"We like to think about how we relate to the landscape," added the studio.
"This relationship should not be too open, especially in the Alentejo. On the contrary [we like], the idea of framing as if it were a living painting."
The pool stretches the width of the home
The building's geometric arrangement and the wide windows and openings were designed to bathe the residents in light as well as providing multiple places to admire the natural landscape outside.
"The Alentejo landscape is very horizontal and the sunlight is very geometric," said the studio.
"The relationship between light and shadow becomes a fundamental element."
Two double-height blocks stand on either side of the pool
Bak Gordon Arquitectos used cork to insulate the house.
This was covered in a pigmented lime mortar, that was also informed by the area's landscape and heritage.
"The presence of cork, which isolates the entire house from the outside, is also a hallmark of the Alentejo landscape," Bak Gordon Arquitectos explained.
"Lime mortar, which covers all surfaces, has always been used in ancestral buildings in the Alentejo. We spread a pigmented mortar on all the surfaces," it said.
The home has an open plan living space
Within the home, a long room positioned alongside the pool contains an open-plan living and dining space.
This is bookended by a pair of double-height blocks that frame the water tank and contain open seating areas, which were described as fresco rooms by the studio.
It is arranged around an enclosed courtyard
"There are several situations in which the indoor/outdoor relationship is expanded to respond to the landscape and climate," it said.
"The most significant case is the two fresco rooms, where everyday life is more present."
Three bedrooms have pigmented lime mortar walls
The rest of the home is arranged around an enclosed internal courtyard that contains a small pool. Each of the three bedrooms has an en suite bathroom.
Creating furniture from locally sourced wood has allowed Sebastian Cox to make his company and his employees carbon negative, the British designer claims.
Last year, Cox stored 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide in timber products such as furniture, kitchens and treehouses, he calculates. Now, he's on track to "smash" this record in 2021.
"As a company, we emit far less than 100 tonnes," Cox told Dezeen. "So we are already carbon negative by some long stretch, to the point that we're taking responsibility for our staff's carbon footprint, too."
Sebastian Cox (top) runs a small workshop in London (above)
"They would surely be enjoying the extra CO2 in the atmosphere, which increases their mass," he wrote, adding that the discovery of fossil fuels was a blessing for them as this "saved millions of acres of temperate forest since our prime energy source switched from land-hungry wood to buried fossil energy".
He went on to describe the principle of hygroscopy by which carbon in the soil can help water retention, which helps woodlands stay cool and fertile.
Cox sees atmospheric carbon as "a resource to regenerate our earth"
"For every one gram of extra carbon in soils, eight grams of extra water can be held there too because of the complex hygroscopic structure of soil carbon," he wrote.
"The design community should be leading the material world into an intense period of re-greening and cooling our planet, and it should start by finding ways to make the excess carbon we have in our skies a resource to be used to regenerate our earth."
Like all plant matter, wood is 50 per cent carbon once the water content has been removed. Like furniture maker Takt and shoe brand Allbirds, Cox has created a lifecycle calculator for estimating the amount of the element that is both stored and emitted by his supply chain and the small London workshop where he employs 12 people.
He has also created a carbon counting spreadsheet for his staff, encouraging them to estimate and reduce the annual emissions they generate in their private lives through everything from flying to eating meat.
Using wood can enable designers to get carbon neutral "very quickly"
This year, with the coronavirus pandemic restricting air travel, Cox expects that his products will sequester enough CO2 to offset the emissions generated not just by his business but by his whole team.
"If you employ solid wood, you're going to be getting towards carbon neutral or carbon negative very quickly," he said.
"This is the wonderful thing about wood. It doesn't require heavy heating, you don't have to melt it, you don't have to boil it," Cox continued.
"You've literally got solid carbon that comes in and with a light bit of working becomes a useful product."
Cox, who founded his studio and workshop in 2010, creates furniture using timber from his own managed woodland in Kent.
The 4.5-acre forest is never cut down faster than it can regenerate itself in order to preserve it as a carbon sink and a refuge for wildlife. Cox bolsters his supply with wood from other sustainably managed forests in the south of England.
By turning this wood into durable, modern heirlooms, the designer hopes to store the carbon that was sequestered by the trees for generations to come, as well as highlighting the untapped potential lying in the UK's 3.2 million acres of forest.
More than 40 per cent of this area is neglected and unmanaged, while 87 per cent of the timber used in the country is imported.
"We need to put commercial value in woodlands"
Commercialising and maintaining these forests through techniques such as coppicing, in which trees are cut close to the base to encourage rapid regrowth while encouraging biodiversity by allowing light to reach the forest floor, would allow them to grow faster and lock away more carbon as well as creating a potential economic benefit of £20 million a year.
"We need to put commercial value in woodlands and therefore give a financial incentive for managing them," Cox said.
"For me, it's not about saying: we've got this bit of land that is now sequestering carbon for us, let's lock it up and throw away the key," he continued.
"It's about saying: we're going to allocate this land to biodiversity and carbon services. Now, what else can we do with it without disrupting those cycles?"
Cox uses wood from his own managed woodland in Kent to make his furniture
Cox was able to create his life cycle calculator purely based on his own electricity bills and numbers he found in online databases, mitigating the cost of working with an external screening company, which can be prohibitive for a small business.
"Most of the information I've got is just from extensive googling," he said.
"I wanted to create something that was entirely self-led, based on research and a spreadsheet, which I adapt as new data is released."
Carbon stored by trees "can vary so much"
Although this means the final figures aren't independently verified, the designer says they help to provide his studio with a workable estimate.
"It's very much guesswork because we're learning now that the carbon stored by different trees can vary so much depending on the amount of water they had access to," Cox said.
"It can fluctuate a lot but we put in a fairly conservative middle-ground figure."
Most of the company's emissions come from drying the wood and transporting it to the London workshop via lorry.
Cox has already managed to reduce this figure by weaning the timber yards he works with off of red diesel, which is a subsidised, dirtier form of the fossil fuel used by off-road vehicles. Instead, he sends them waste sawdust from his workshop to heat the kilns that dry the wood at around 70 degrees Celsius "like a very cool oven".
"The lorry that comes with the wood also takes our sawdust away," Cox explained. "The drying of the wood is carbon neutral because we're drying it with a waste product. We are obviously releasing that waste as carbon but it's not from a fossil source."
The remaining emissions can largely be traced back to the energy needed to power the workshop itself.
Currently, this comes from non-renewable sources via the energy grid as Cox's studio is part of the larger Thames Side Studios industrial estate, where the landlord claims tariffs can't be changed for individual tenants.
Cox uses "very low energy machinery"
But according to the designer, the carbon stored in the wood still cancels out the associated emissions, as for every kilogram of CO2 his machines emit, another eight are stored in the timber they are processing.
"We use very, very low energy machinery to process the wood into furniture," he said. "And if you're working with solid wood, three-quarters of the material never gets worked or machined."
"There's some carbon tied up in things like screws and glue," Cox added. "But really, that's relatively small because the majority of the material we use is wood."
Sebastian Cox is also in the process of becoming certified as a B Corporation, which involves undertaking an extensive self-assessment of the company's impact on the environment, the community and its workers.
"They make you turn around to your suppliers and your customers to say: 'We're making changes. What can you do?'" Cox explained.
"I think that sort of give-and-take relationship is really essential."
Carbon revolution
This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.
The Pietre Maximum porcelain surface comes in three options that reference stone found across Europe.
Top: the Quarzite Vals surfaces are light grey. Above: Luna Limestone has a pale tone
The Quarzite Vals surfaces references grey stone found in southeast Switzerland, while Luna Limestone was designed to appear like the crema luna marble from Spain and France.
Completing the collection, Roccia di Lucca resembles the "dark ash, tending towards blue, the surface of metamorphic sandstone, with white veining".
Roccia di Lucca is a dark ash tone
The tiles come in a range of sizes designed to reduce wastage on site.
"These three ethically designed surfaces come in formats which avoid wasting materials," said Fiandre.
"The 120 by 270 centimetre format meets the minimum height requirements for habitability, while the 120 by 120 centimetre format is compatible with the standard dimensions required for shower trays in many countries."
Quarzite Vals is available in a range of styles
The tiles also come in 100 by 100 and 300 by 100 centimetres sizes. They are slip-resistant and can be placed in numerous locations including bathrooms, spas or swimming pools.
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.
Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.
Design studio Daytrip looked to Margate's dramatic beach landscape when designing this shop for the Turner Contemporary gallery, which sits perched on the town's seafront.
The David Chipperfield-designed gallery, distinguished by its opaque glass shell and expansive ocean views, recently reopened after a renovation project that included the shop along with a new cafe and common areas.
The revamped Turner Contemporary store looks out over Margate beach (top and above)
Located in the lobby, the shop's existing retail shell was designed to be highly flexible and to reflect the building's gallery spaces, with poured screed flooring, linear glazing and a prominent ribbed concrete ceiling.
Daytrip designed a new fit-out for the store that reflects both the building's architecture and the lifelong admiration that the gallery's namesake, landscape painter JMW Turner, held for Margate and its surrounding landscape in southern England.
Pigment-dyed timber panels were inspired by Margate beach
"As we began putting materials together for the scheme, we wanted to capture the light and patterning of the beach," Daytrip studio co-founder Iwan Halstead told Dezeen.
"Margate beach and its seafront changes dramatically from season to season. As the tide pushes out, the beaches transform into radical landscapes of striation and patterning," he added.
"On a sunny day, the rippled beaches are captured with shadows and glistening pools of water. We also noticed the effect of the salt spray and rainwater on the metal architectural elements – a dappled weathering effect that adds natural patina and cloudy lustre to the exterior."
Display stands are backed with clear, textured fibreglass
This natural texture is referenced in the mottled grey veneer panels that line a portion of the walls.
Their unique, painterly pattern was created using a method developed by Berlin studio Llot llov, which involves covering pigment-dyed timber with salt crystals that absorb a portion of the colour.
"It felt naturally appropriate and subtle enough to line the display wall of the gallery and a number of the tables' surfaces," said Halstead.
"We paired this with textured cathedral glass shelving, chosen for its fluid, water-like appearance that allows light to transfer dappled shadowing on the veneered surfaces and the existing Chipperfield concrete floor."
All of the elements in the store can be moved to make space for events
A vertical shelving system, which showcases artworks, prints and posters, is backed with a translucent layer of fibreglass.
"Its inherent gossamer nature when illuminated by the sunlight creates beautiful patterning and highlights its fibrous textures – cloudy and ethereal – like many of JMW Turner's artworks," Halstead explained.
The store's furniture was constructed from "humble" materials such as grey Valchromat – a wood fibreboard that is treated with several coats of lacquer to create a high, reflective sheen. This is paired with matt, white-oiled oak, which the studio chose for its sandy hue.
Rippled glass shelves reflect the light streaming in through the panoramic windows
Daytrip's renovation also includes the creation of a merchandising system based on the approach of a magazine editorial.
The display tables and plinths can be organised into formations that create narratives with and around the products, linking back to Margate's wider creative community and its makers.
The building's ribbed concrete ceiling is left exposed
The display system also includes a workbench that is used for group discussions and workshops and invites visitors to congregate. All of the fixtures can be moved to accommodate large-scale events and talks.
