Dezeen's in-house video studio Dezeen Studio has been named best video team at this year's BSME Talent Awards.
Dezeen Studio beat video teams from seven other UK media brands to win the award, including publisher Hearst and magazines Which? and Glamour UK.
"A very worthwhile winner," the judges said of Dezeen Studio's win, which was announced at a virtual ceremony on 2 July. "Aesthetically really striking with impressive impact."
Award recognises "expertly produced and edited video"
Organised by the British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME), the BSME Talent Awards aims to celebrate the editorial and digital teams that contribute to a magazine's success.
The category for best video team, which was introduced this year, recognises teams that have created "expertly produced and edited video to support their brands 360 offering", the organisers said.
Dezeen Studio was recognised for its crucial role in helping Dezeen to pivot its business model and editorial offering in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic last year.
The team was instrumental to the success of Virtual Design Festival (VDF), the world's first virtual design festival, producing live talks and videos that were watched over 2 million times.
Dezeen Studio also produced a series of virtual events for Dezeen Awards last year when the physical ceremony could not take place due to the pandemic.
The team also delivered a number of prestigious branded content partnerships including our Out of the Box design competition with Samsung, Rado Design Week with Swiss watch brand Rado and Design for Life with French software company Dassault Systèmes.
Latest award win for Dezeen
The award follows Dezeen's success last year at the BSME Awards, a sister awards programme that celebrates the work of magazine editors. Dezeen's founder and editor in chief Marcus Fairs took home prizes in the Specialist Editor of the Year and Independent Editor of the Year categories.
Earlier this year, Dezeen won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for our Out of the Box competition with Samsung, which received over 1,500 applicants from across 80 different countries.
British architect Alison Killing has become the first of her profession to win a Pulitzer Prize for reportage with a series of articles revealing a network of Chinese prison camps allegedly built to incarcerate Muslims.
Killing, who is an architect and geospatial analyst based in Rotterdam, is thought to be the first architect to win a prestigious Pulitzer journalism prize for writing rather than criticism.
Killing used her expertise in forensic analysis of architecture and satellite images of buildings to expose secret camps allegedly built by the Chinese state in the Xinjiang region to imprison Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities.
268 internment camps identified
The detainment infrastructure was unveiled in a series of articles for Buzzfeed News, which were published from August to December 2020.
The Pulitzer jury awarded the team the prize for "a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs, using any available journalistic tool." Killing, Rajagopalan and Buschek won $15,000 for their work.
"The issue concerning Xinjiang is by no means about human rights, religion or ethnicity, but about combating violent terrorism and separatism," it said.
"Xinjiang has set up vocational education and training centres in order to root out extreme thoughts, enhance the rule of law awareness through education, improve vocational skills and create employment opportunities for them so that those affected by extreme and violent ideas can return to society as soon as possible," the consulate added.
Architecture skills "invaluable in analysing the detention compounds"
Killing's background as an architect proved helpful in finding where the camps might be, she told Dezeen.
"It meant that I had a good knowledge of how to work with maps and satellite imagery and to accurately identify buildings and other objects when viewed in two dimensions from above," she said.
"It has also been invaluable in analysing the detention compounds," she added. "It meant we were able to produce a detailed 3D reconstruction of one of the camp buildings based on satellite imagery, construction knowledge and our interviews with former detainees."
Architects can make a "valuable contribution" to investigation of social issues
Killing's studio Killing Architects uses architecture and urban planning skills to investigate urgent social issues. It is also behind Migration Trail, a project that used maps, data, audio and social media to follow the story of two fictional migrants travelling to Europe.
Killing believes that architects can play an important role in helping to investigate social issues.
"I think architects can make a valuable contribution to investigating and explaining the spatial aspects of these issues – those aspects aren't always well understood and our skills, in spatial analysis or construction knowledge, for example, aren't common outside our profession," she explained.
The Pulitzer Prize was founded by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who made provisions for its establishment in his will in 1904. It gives out 22 awards split over two categories: Journalism and Books; and Drama and Music.
A Special Citation and Award is also given out each year and was given to Darnella Frazier this year, with the motivation "for courageously recording the murder of George Floyd."
Former Pulitzer Prize winners include Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and John Steinbeck. In journalism, a well-known winner is The Washington Post for its 1972 investigation of the Watergate case.
Killing's work won the International Reporting category. Previously five writers have won Pulitzer Prizes for architectural criticism.
These are Inga Saffron of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Paul Goldberger of The New York Times, Blair Kamin of Chicago Tribune, Robert Campbell of The Boston Globe and Allan Temko of San Francisco Chronicle.
The AME Natural Lounge chair features a shaggy back made of an array of natural fibres that gather and drape down to the floor.
The back of the AME Natural Lounge chair is handwoven from a mix of natural fibres
The design is informed by Japanese garment making and especially the "mino", a traditional raincoat made from layers of straw.
"We were looking to explore a connection between furnishings and garment making," said Ferrari, who is based in Toronto while Takeda works from New York City.
"For us, it was an opportunity to envision furniture beyond ergonomics and form and explore materiality in a more expressive way."
Ferrari wanted to create a piece of furniture that wasn't purely about function
The back of the AME Natural Lounge chair is handwoven by Takeda from a combination of cotton tape yarn, linen, hemp, silk, wool and other fibres, including the industrially made wool bucle pulled from the front of the chair.
Each piece is unique, with the mix of fibres varying from chair to chair.
The chair was designed as part of Editions Paolo Ferrari and originally presented during New York Design Week. It is now available through Los Angeles gallery Twentieth.
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: the Crystal Shell Pendant is a clam-shaped addition to New York-based studio Shakúff's hanging lighting range.
Shakúff's Crystal Shell Pendant is "reminiscent of a clam" and was informed by the carapaces of sea creatures found among the sand.
"Distinctly personal, this collection was inspired by founder Joseph Sidof's childhood spent foraging the beaches of Northern Israel for treasures to create with," said Shakúff. "This foraging of natural materials continues to inspire each one of Shakúff's collections."
The pendant lights were informed by seashells in Northern Israel
The design is made from leftover pyrex glass, which is crushed into a ball and then blown so that it becomes a cymbal-like shape.
The process results in a crackled finish across the glass discs and waves around their edges.
Each light has been glassblown to create the special shape
"Reminiscent of a clam, the Crystal Shell pendant holds a treasure of pearly remnant glass within and is fastened at the top by a single screw and suspended by coaxial wire," said Shakúff.
The pendants can be hung together in multiples configurations from one fixture, and suspended at different heights to create unique arrangements.
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.
The owner of Terracotta House approached Austin Maynard Architects to help her create independent homes on a shared lot for herself and her son's family.
Top: the home is comprised of three volumes. Above: it is accessed via an alleyway
Located in the Fitzroy area of Melbourne, the site consisted of a cottage and a garden large enough to accommodate a second property along with a shared library pavilion.
The project involved renovating the existing street-facing cottage where the son's family now live, as well as building a new house for the client with independent access to a laneway at the rear of the site.
Terracotta tiles and recycled brick were used for the facade
In between the two buildings is a shared, productive garden that was a key element of the brief. This space also houses a library building that can be used for guest accommodation.
"Terracotta House is, essentially, a communal-living family 'compound' – akin to a village square, with the owner and her son's family living individually in homes on a shared block," said Austin Maynard Architects.
"As an architecture practice we always aim to maximise space, relate internal spaces to the garden, embrace the street and make the most of laneways," the studio added. "The site that [the client] Belinda purchased offered potential to achieve all of these ideas and more."
Two volumes are joined by a glass corridor
The existing timber-clad Victorian worker's cottage was renovated to retain its original character whilst making it better suited to modern living.
The interior was rearranged to bring the kitchen, lounge and dining areas to the front of the house so they look onto the north-facing garden and the street.
Recycled brick was used for the interiors
Internal walls were removed to improve circulation, with the new layout enhancing the connection with the front garden and verandah. A new kitchen and bathroom were installed, with private areas – including the bedrooms – moved to the rear of the house.
The library pavilion is positioned on the western boundary of the site and looks onto the shared garden. It incorporates a laundry space and toilet, along with a versatile room that is used as a library, guest room, writer's studio, music room and social area.
Terracotta tiling clads an interior wall
The new-build Terracotta House is positioned at the rear of the site and spans the entire width of the plot. It contains a kitchen, dining area, living room, bathroom and a study on the ground floor, with the main bedroom and ensuite upstairs.
The house is comprised of compact and connected volumes, planned to optimise the available outdoor space. The building's orientation and roof form maximise exposure to light and views.
The house's materiality was informed by the owner's love of gardening and the terracotta pots she used to grow plants in at her previous home.
Terracotta tiles applied to the walls and roofs appear to take on different tones throughout the day. Their colour and texture complement the reclaimed brick used for other sections of the external walls and garden planters.
Double doors lead from the library to the garden
Due to a limited budget, utilitarian features such as waterproofing details that would typically be concealed are instead left exposed and are celebrated through an unusual material treatment.
"Rather than hiding the flashings and capping, we accentuated them," the architects explained. "Like the thick outlines of a comic book, each form is captured within lines of black steel of various thicknesses, framing and accentuating the tiles and the recycled brick."
The home has a large garden at the centre
The entrance from the laneway connects to a paved corridor that leads straight through to the garden. This hallways provides a sightline through the building that links it to the street and the community.
The kitchen and dining area are positioned to one side of the corridor, with the living room on the other. Both spaces feature doors that can be opened to connect the interior with the garden.
A passsageway between the volumes leads to the gardens
Terracotta tiles and reclaimed bricks are also used inside the house, where they form part of a pared-back material palette that also includes wooden surfaces and concrete flooring.
Wallpapers designed by indigenous artists for local firm Willie Weston are used in the kitchen and lounge to provide a sophisticated and delicate contrast to the raw, exposed brickwork.
The existing home is located at the rear of the site
Melbourne-based studio Austin Maynard Architects works across residential, retail and commercial projects – adopting a conceptual approach that responds to issues such as liveability, culture, heritage and community connection.
