Dezeen Showroom:De Vorm has released the Hale PET Felt lounge chair made from recycled plastic bottles pressed into a soft material with the slenderness of a wood seat.
The Hale PET Felt lounge chair features a seat and backrest made of PET felt. Both recycled and recyclable, the material provides a contemporary and tactile alternative to timber.
The Hale PET Felt lounge chair has a soft but sturdy backrest and seat
With its gently curved economic shape and soft texture, the lounge chair makes a cosy addition to living rooms, hallways and lobbies.
"The extensive flexibility of this material allowed us to experiment with the curves in order to find an optimal ergonomic spine, essential for lounge chairs," said the De Vorm design team.
"As a result, Hale is fitted to embrace the users granting them long-lasting seating comfort."
The PET felt is both recycled and recyclable
The Hale PET Felt lounge chair can be customised with a choice of 11 PET felt blends, custom RAL colours for the powder-coated steel frame, and the option of upholstery in a range of hues.
The chair's few components are easily disassembled, so it can be recycled at the end of a long life.
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.
Cocksedge partnered with property developer Sino Group on the installation in Yue Man Square, which aims to transform the space into a vibrant place for reflection and socialising.
Time Loop is located in the ever-changing Kwun Tong square
Called Time Loop, the installation celebrates the ever-transforming nature of Kwun Tong, a large industrial district in Hong Kong that has seen steady development in recent years.
"This piece reflects on Kwun Tong specifically, and its architectural transformation," Cocksedge told Dezeen.
"I wanted to reflect on this flow, and how the character of this local area has changed and evolved over time. My original drawings of this piece were always meant to represent movement, with a shape that had no beginning or end."
During the manufacturing process, the designers paid close attention to making the loops appear infinite
Time Loop is made up of eight loops of timber that measure 3.82 metres tall.
The interconnected rings form a continuous track that aims to reflect "a sense of motion and change".
A poem engraved into the structure also reflects on the passing of time
The structure provides a place for locals to meet, play, rest or contemplate their surroundings.
"I think the success of these types of projects relies on the opening up of new public space that can house public art, parks, seating and fountains," Cocksedge said. "That's what I'm excited about."
It is engraved with an "infinite poem" in two languages, which also reflects on the passage of time.
Locals are able to sit, play, rest and take in their surroundings on Time Loop
Cocksedge used Accoya timber sourced from fast-growing and sustainably certified forests to create Time Loop.
"Time Loop required timber that would be resilient to all sorts of weather and temperature, while still able to bend and be formed into something as flowing as my original sketch," said the designer. "We used laminated steam-bent Accoya, which was joined together in sections."
The designer paid particular attention to making the timber seamlessly loop so that only a continuous piece is visible.
"We spent a lot of time on the engineered joins and ensured the wood grain lined up to create the appearance of an infinite loop," he recalled.
Cocksedge used Accoya timber to create the structure
Although Time Loop is a site-specific installation that has its roots firmly in Kwun Tong, Cocksedge believes that the installation responds to wider trends.
"I think cities all over the world will evolve over the coming years, particularly following on from the effects of Covid, which is likely to change how we interact with urban architecture and public spaces, as well as how we work in cities," he said.
"It's impossible to predict exactly how that’s going to play out in individual locations, but I'm hopeful it creates more of a canvas for creative people to work and create projects for the public."
The designers intended the timber loops to reflect the ongoing transformation of the area
Despite calling London his "creative home" Cocksedge was keen to create the installation in Hong Kong as he has close personal ties to the city.
"I'm very fond of Hong Kong, first and foremost because I have family there, but also because it's offered a lot to me creatively speaking – several projects have arisen through partnerships with companies and individuals based in Hong Kong."
The designer has created other public installations in cities around the world. For London Design Festival 2019, he completed Please Be Seated, an outdoor seating installation made of three concentric rings.
A prototype power plant with a nuclear fusion reactor is set to be built in Oxfordshire, England, by Amanda Levete's firm AL_A for the Canadian energy company General Fusion.
Located on the UK Atomic Energy Authority's (UKAEA) campus in Culham, the Fusion Demonstration Plant will be used to prove the viability of General Fusion's nuclear fusion technology as a carbon-free energy source.
AL_A is set to build the pioneering Fusion Demonstration Plant in Oxfordshire
A_LA said it will be the world's first nuclear power plant of its kind upon completion in 2025.
"We have really enjoyed working with General Fusion and their team of scientists on the design of the Fusion Demonstration Plant, and are particularly excited that the first of its kind will be built in the UK," the studio told Dezeen.
"This is a real statement of confidence in science and technology and its role in building our future. We look forward to continuing our work with General Fusion and UKAEA."
Nuclear fusion mimics how stars creates energy
In new visuals released by A_LA, the Fusion Demonstration Plant is shown as a circular building with a reactor wrapped by a viewing gallery at its centre.
Alongside it will be meeting rooms and educational spaces to cater to visits from scientists, politicians, investors and the public.
The plant will feature a panoramic viewing platform
The fusion technology in its reactor will be used to combine atoms to generate heat, mimicking the way that the sun and stars create energy. This is different to traditional nuclear power stations in which atoms are split in two – a process called fission.
General Fusion specifically uses magnetised target fusion (MTF). This involves the injection of hydrogen plasma into a sphere of molten lead-lithium surrounded by pistons. The pistons compress the hydrogen until its atoms slam together and fuse to form helium.
This process creates a huge amount of heat that is transferred by the liquid metal to boil water, make steam and spin a turbine to generate electricity.
However, as the plant will be 70 per cent of the size needed for a commercial power plant, it will not actually be used to generate power.
MTF could help decarbonise power grids
As MTF only requires hydrogen as a fuel and its main waste product is helium, the Fusion Demonstration Plant demonstrates a carbon-free way to create electricity.
This means that if it proves to be viable, it could help play a key role in decarbonising the UK's power grid, which remains heavily reliant on burning fossil fuels.
Another benefit of using nuclear fusion to create electricity is that it creates very little radioactive waste when compared to traditional nuclear power plants that rely on fission.
A nuclear fusion reactor will be positioned at its heart
"This new plant by General Fusion is a huge boost for our plans to develop a fusion industry in the UK, and I'm thrilled that Culham will be home to such a cutting-edge and potentially transformative project," said science minister Amanda Solloway.
"Fusion energy has great potential as a source of limitless, low-carbon energy, and today's announcement is a clear vote of confidence in the region and the UK's status as a global science superpower."
However, the International Energy Agency recently said achieving net-zero by 2050 will be the "greatest challenge humankind has ever faced" and that many government pledges "fall well short" of what is required.
Another groundbreaking power plant proposal that was recently in the spotlight is the world's first solar power station in space, which China is developing to provide "inexhaustible clean energy".
Elsewhere, BIG recently completed the "cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world", which is topped by an artificial ski slope. It is capable of converting 440,000 tons of waste into clean energy annually.
A project that bases a transport system on the mythological Yggdrasil tree and a building informed by a termite mound are included in Dezeen's latest school show by the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Also included is a project that uses others' perspectives to understand how the world looks, while another explores reducing the number of crossing points between different user groups to minimise pathogen distribution.
"This school show by the University of Applied Arts Vienna's Institute of Architecture features a total of 15 projects in the digital exhibition by students from different year groups at the Austrian architecture school, completed as part of either Studio Díaz Moreno and García Grinda, Studio Greg Lynn or Studio Hani Rashid.
"Studio One: Studio Díazmoreno Garcíagrinda believes that in such a global catastrophe, contemporary urban challenges (migratory fluxes, global pandemics, urban structural deficits, the digital shift, environmental racism, precarious inhabitation conditions and spatial exclusion) are demanding a change of paradigm on architectural thinking and design practices.
"Students' work centres on the extreme conditions of the European Slums, and particularly in the settlement in Pata Rât in Cluj-Napoca. Here the students investigated how architecture can still play a role in such socially and environmentally polluted situations."
"Studio Two: Studio Lynn's students spent the year critically rethinking existing building precedents and inventing new building typologies for short stay living in constructive dialogue with contemporary real-world challenges.
"During the year, a social and cultural practice discouraged people from spending time in elevator cabins and enclosed rooms with strangers and encouraged fresh air ventilation and socialising outdoors. This studio addressed contemporary concerns for healthy, hygienic built environments. The designers' response to the year's global pandemic discovered innovative new concepts and design mediums that can transform how we conceive buildings from now on.
Studio Three: Studio Rashid addressed the current overlapping crises that cities have been facing today and emphasised the emergence of new architectural paradigms and hybrid urban typologies that can serve as contemporary visions towards a positive future."
"This included designing a centre for contemporary art in New York City and rethinking the future of airports and urban interconnectivity by developing a holistic vision of urban mobility and sustainable models of city planning.
MoMAS (Modern Museum of Audible Space) by Emma Sanson, Witchaya Jingjit and Patricia Tibu
"MoMAS is a network of installations, art galleries and spaces for artists to create. Using sound as the connective tissue embodies the ambition of creating a languageless communication between the different components that compose the art world.
"The project not only accommodates sound-related installations, but it is an instrument capable of producing and manipulating sound, with its design based upon sound visualisation methods derived from the research of physicist and musician Ernst Chladni.
"It is an interconnected collection of spaces created to support, display and integrate art and artists into the city's fast-paced and challenging life."
Student:Emma Sanson, Witchaya Jingjit and Patricia Tibu Course: Studio Rashid Tutors: Hani Rashid, Jose Carlos Lopez Cervantes, Sophie Grell, Eldine Heep, Sophie Luger and Lenia Mascha Email: archi.witchaya[at]gmail.com, emma.sanson9[at]gmail.com and tibu.patricia[at]gmail.com
Traces of Global Warming – Trouble in the Away Away by Jade Bailey
"The incentive is to juxtapose current theory, political and cultural discourse with the unintended and unexpected through the speculation of ideas and spaces.
"The instigating premise of the project is based on the ecological crisis we currently find ourselves within. It is addressed primarily through using traces of global climate change to explore the essence of how we as humans can inhabit and perceive its effects through architectural materiality and spatial qualities. In an attempt to understand how to co-exist with an inevitably tangled future and the sub-nature's it will create."
Student:Jade Bailey Course: Studio Rashid Tutors: Hani Rashid, Jose Carlos Lopez Cervantes, Sophie Grell, Eldine Heep, Sophie Luger and Lenia Mascha Email: jadebailey014[at]gmail.com
Future Traces by Raffael Stegfellner, Shpend Pashtriku and Sarah Agill
"Future Traces is a proposal for Fiumicino Airport, which aims to dissolve the inward-looking nature of today's airports and find a more peaceful, culturally productive coexistence with their surroundings. The master plan creates new urbanist links between the airport, the ancient ruins of Portus and the surrounding residential communities.
"It houses complex water distribution infrastructure, providing flood protection to the shoreline. The water, flowing continuously through the site, is used for various environmental and cultural programmes, superimposed onto the existing airport network.
"This composition aims to define the airport of the future through the optimisation of its technology."
Student:Raffael Stegfellner, Shpend Pashtriku and Sarah Agill Course: Studio Rashid Tutors: Hani Rashid, Jose Carlos Lopez Cervantes, Sophie Grell, Eldine Heep, Sophie Luger, Lenia Mascha Email: rstegfellner[at]gmail.com, s.pashtriku@gmail.com and agillsarah@gmail.com
Paradigm Compostition by Arkady Zavialov and Miriam Löscher
"Compostition denies the existence of the end. Materials and constructions create a structure that lives with time. There is the need for its future destruction, the composting of its remnants to give rise to a new, better life.
"The incompleteness opens up freedom, the bravery to make mistakes and change. These are the attributes of the sustainable world of the future. The future airport will become a self-adaptive ecosystem that responds to environmental and social demands by re-distribution, reshaping or destruction and re-use of the actual facilities. Railway networks along hyperloop and airships provide the new traffic system."
Student:Arkady Zavialov and Miriam Löscher Course: Studio Rashid Tutors: Hani Rashid, Jose Carlos Lopez Cervantes, Sophie Grell, Eldine Heep, Sophie Luger and Lenia Mascha Email: zavialovarkady[at]gmail.com and loeschermiriam[at]gmail.com
Yggdrasil (The Future of Urban Interconnectivity) by Witchaya Jingjit, Patricia Tibu, Simonas Sutkus and Anastasia Smirnova
"Just like the Yggdrasil tree, the project aims at becoming a tool for organising and bringing together different worlds, more specifically different transport infrastructures. At the same time, it is a critique and a reaction to the obsoletion of the airport typology as we currently know it.
"The ambition is to work with pollution as an unavoidable byproduct of air travel and integrate it with our architecture as such. The proposal wishes to become a gate figure for the city; a threshold element that is informed by far more than the functional aspects of air travel."
Student:Witchaya Jingjit, Patricia Tibu, Simonas Sutkus and Anastasia Smirnova Course: Studio Rashid Tutors: Hani Rashid, Jose Carlos Lopez Cervantes, Sophie Grell, Eldine Heep, Sophie Luger and Lenia Mascha Email: archi.witchaya[at]gmail.com, tibu.patricia[at]gmail.com, simonassutkus[at]gmail.com, anastasiasmiirnova[at]gmail.com
Aerial Meadows by Ebrar Eke and Alina Logunova
"In conventional buildings, volumes and spaces are designed first – infrastructure follows the design decisions. In our proposal, we are reversing this hierarchical system by designing the infrastructure of airflow first, which results in new types of organisations, spaces, volumes, programs and occupations.
"We looked at termites mounds as a reference as they have effective natural ventilation. Air supplies from underground inlets are distributed to upper levels through the system of chimneys and atriums.
"On the upper floor, the ventilation system consists of smaller clusters. Air structures with occupiable spaces create a variety of unique spatial relationships."
Student:Ebrar Eke and Alina Logunova Course: Studio Lynn Tutors: Greg Lynn, Martin Murero, Maja Ozvaldic, Bence Pap and Kaiho Yu Email: ebrareke[at]gmail.com and 15_alina[at]mail.ru
Advection by Olga Filippova, Chenke Zhang and Hao Wu
"Occupiable air infrastructure voids replaces conventional circulation cores and additionally drives vertical airflow. An adopted Ferris wheels concept for our building operates as the only mechanical circulation, providing landing ports into various levels and spaces. Isolated floors are extended from these ports to link all the occupiable spaces."
Student:Olga Filippova, Chenke Zhang and Hao Wu Course: Studio Lynn Tutors: Greg Lynn, Martin Murero, Maja Ozvaldic, Bence Pap and Kaiho Yu Email: hao.wu1302[atgmail.com, zckqinyu[at]gmail.com and filipp.o.a[at]yandex.ru
Bridged Discontinuity by Tobias Haas and Jonas Maderstorfer
"To deal with the challenges of the pandemic, the project aims to minimise the number of crossing points between different user groups. By separating the high duration functions library, museum and work into three independent massings, the motion flows of the users can be kept parallel."
"A public boulevard hosts all the amenities and low duration functions and bridges the three massings and providing an enfilade-like spatial experience transporting people with the programme. The boulevard is defined as a void, providing sufficient ventilation for the areas with the highest intermixing of people."
Student: Tobias Haas and Jonas Maderstorfer Course: Studio Lynn Tutors: Greg Lynn, Martin Murero, Maja Ozvaldic, Bence Pap and Kaiho Yu Email: haastobias[at]yahoo.de and jonas.maderstorfer[at]gmail.com
La torta a Strati by Alina Logunova and Joyce Lee
"This project serves as an investigation on thinking of borders in various ways as means of organising plans based on agent behaviour. Simulations are set up by putting targets of different properties inside the footprint of the building.
"Floorplates, cutouts, voids and volumes are defined based on the agent movement patterns. A different workflow is created to define space based on programmes, volumes and duration."
Student:Alina Logunova and Joyce Lee Course: Studio Lynn Tutors: Greg Lynn, Martin Murero, Maja Ozvaldic, Bence Pap and Kaiho Yu Email: 15_alina[at]mail.ru and joyceleeeee3[at]gmail.com
MixINN by Anna Chakhal-Salakhova and Yiting Yang
"The project aims to create an active hotel as a more socially engaged place, with a high level of interaction between users. At the same time, it intends to bring civic experience to the building by arranging hotel rooms mixed with three 'districts' with different spatial organisations and characters generated from the algorithm.
"The agent-based design method helped us define the space typologies in terms of spatial connectivity, boundary conditions and sizes. By blurring the borderline between activity areas and the hotel rooms, the project stimulates interaction, providing a sense of community and connectivity."
Student:Anna Chakhal-Salakhova and Yiting Yang Course: Studio Lynn Tutors: Greg Lynn, Martin Murero, Maja Ozvaldic, Bence Pap and Kaiho Yu Email: chakhalsalakhova[at]gmail.com and yangyiii.yt[at]gmail.com
All Watched Over by Merve Sahin
"All Watched Over is a digitally mediated and camouflaged interior. It is an impulsing artefact of data and images that are cultivated by the political exiles.
"The interior readapts the theatre and parliament typologies to exchange and circulate visual and linguistic elements, while the exterior envelope employs strategies to trick the surveillance gaze for granting digital anonymity."
Student:Merve Sahin Course: Studio Díazmoreno Garcíagrinda Tutors: Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda, Anna Gulinska, Lorenzo Perri, Zsuzsa Peter and Hannes Traupmann Email: mmervesahin7[at]gmail.com
Partly Automated Luxury City by Bofan Zhou, Diana Cuc and Iga Mazur
"The project tries to investigate the heterogeneity and richness of the continuous ground floor conditions of the city where the limits between urban and domestic, public and private are diffused.
"The city operates in the post-work scenario in which leisure creates opportunities for the new social relationships beyond biological family to happen through the spatiality of the communal spaces."
Student:Bofan Zhou, Diana Cuc and Iga Mazur Course: Studio Díazmoreno Garcíagrinda Tutors: Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda, Anna Gulinska, Lorenzo Perri, Zsuzsa Peter and Hannes Traupmann Email: bofan.zhou1996[at]gmail.com, cuc.diaana[at]yahoo.ro and iam.iga.mazur[at]gmail.com
Place of Distinct Voices by Patricia Vraber
"Place of distinct voices wonders how to take others' perspectives to form mental images of how the world looks like through the eyes of others. This new civic is a universe on its own, providing an extensive grid of time and space.
"The visitor experiences it through the architecture of inversion and an infinite archive of people's stories that enhance our empathy and emotions."
Student:Patricia Vraber Course: Studio Díazmoreno Garcíagrinda Tutors: Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda, Anna Gulinska, Lorenzo Perri, Zsuzsa Peter and Hannes Traupmann Email: vraberpatricia[at]gmail.com
The Otherworldliness by Magdalena Gorecka
"The Otherworldliness, an audio-video production, creates augmented spatial sceneries for an informal and dynamic production and projection of Bollywood movies. It is located in the biggest European greenhouses agglomeration in southern Spain.
"The proposal brings together displaced immigrants from the sub-Sahara. The project manifests in a sequence of artefacts, which tense the voids within a dense and homogeneous polyethene landscape."
Student:Magdalena Gorecka Course: Studio díazmoreno garcíagrinda Tutors: Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda, Anna Gulinska, Lorenzo Perri, Zsuzsa Peter and Hannes Traupmann Email: goreckagorecka[at]gmail.com
Vertical Suburbia by Alexander Klapsch and Jenny Niklasch
"This project rethinks an intensified urban realm and the reconceptualisation of open space on the periphery of Vienna.
"Through the vertical integration of activities, the built space is densified and seen as a juxtaposition to the negative space, creating an environment of coexistence for humans and other species."
Student:Alexander Klapsch and Jenny Niklasch Course: Studio Díazmoreno Garcíagrinda Tutors: Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda, Anna Gulinska, Lorenzo Perri, Zsuzsa Peter and Hannes Traupmann Email: alexander.klapsch[at]gmail.com and jenny_niklasch[at]outlook.de
Partnership content
This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
Black-pigmented concrete and black timber battens have been used to create this tactile home in the village of Federal, New South Wales by Australian studio Edition Office.
The Melbourne-based firm designed Federal House to be both a peaceful sanctuary for its clients and a sculptural object dug into a slope in the hilly, forested landscape.
Edition Office has created a black concrete house
"At a distance the building is recessive, a shadow within the vast landscape," described Edition Office.
"On closer inspection, a highly textural outer skin of thick timber battens contrasts the earlier sense of a machined tectonic, allowing organic materials gestures to drive the dialogue with physical human intimacy."
It sits on a slope within a forested landscape
Drawing on the verandah typology common among Australia's colonial homesteads, a central living, dining and kitchen space is wrapped by a partially covered deck area.
This deck was designed to create a variety of different connections to the surrounding landscape.
It was lined with black timber battens that filter air, views and more direct sunlight on the western edge, and left entirely open for panoramic views to the north.
Sliding glass doors open the house to the outside
Sliding glass doors around the living spaces allow them to be completely opened to the elements or sealed off.
At the centre is a double-height garden void, illuminated by a cut in the home's roof.
"The expansion and contraction of the interior allows shifts between the intimate and the public, between immediate landscape and the expansive unfolding landscape to the north," said the studio.
Light wooden floors and tan leather furniture feature inside
Along the eastern edge of the home is the bedroom block, what the studio calls an "enclave of withdrawal, rest and solitude" containing two smaller rooms either side of a bathroom and a large en-suite bedroom with its own private terrace.
For the interiors, the dark wood and concrete are contrasted by lighter wooden floors and tan leather furniture, with custom door pulls designed to encourage a "tactile engagement" with the home.
On the lower level is a thin pool open to the landscape at one end, which cools air as it travels through the building, up the garden void into the living spaces.
This natural ventilation is supplemented with a ceiling fan for the hotter days of the year and a fireplace for winter.
