Creative agency Saint of Athens has used cool blue tiles throughout this jewellery store in Mykonos, Greece, for brand Gavelloto to make it resemble a "luxury 60s swimming pool".
Saint of Athens worked with Dive Architects to make the jewellery store stand out from the plethora of nearby retail stores. It includes light blue tiles, lockers and a pool ladder.
Top: the store looks like a swimming pool. Above: it is in Mykonos
"We were looking for an unorthodox way to present the colourful and opulent Gavello designs, so we came up with a surreal, summery idea," said Saint of Athens founder Nikos Paleologos.
"Cosmopolitan and picturesque places like Mykonos tend to trap themselves in a dipole of rigid tradition versus forced extravagance. But Mykonos is a cosmopolitan place that calls for big and bold moves," he told Dezeen.
Light blue tiles, ladders and lockers create the swimming pool effect
From the outside, the store looks like any other "typical Cycladic store", yet once inside, customers are transported into what looks and feels like an indoor pool.
Referencing the pool, the store incorporates light blue terrazzo tiles, beach balls, striped bolsters and a pool ladder on the wall.
The light blue colour was chosen to create a modern yet retro feel
The designers wanted the swimming pool features to create a nostalgic effect.
"Soft blue, a colour reminiscent of urban pool luxury of the 60s, furniture made from metal, vintage elements and custom blue terrazzo displays constitute a retro yet modern, Wes Anderson kind of universe," Paleologos said.
Towards the back of the store, a bench and set of red lockers add to the swimming pool look. Several round lights that resemble pool lights run around the bottom of the store.
Every detail is meant to make the space feel more realistic. The designers believe this creates a "familiar ambience and evoke an oblique summer feeling".
Necklaces and other jewellery is on display throughout the store
To meet the jewellery brand's practical requirements, mirrors, cushions and display cases have been dotted throughout. Pegs, which resemble hangers that swimmers place their towels on, are also used to display the jewellery.
A tile-covered island in the middle of the store serves as a focal point on the ground floor which encases a selection of the brand's jewellery designs.
An island in the middle of the store showcases the brand's collection
Swimming pool design has influenced other projects including Bun Turin by Masquespacio which features an all-blue seating area is built from pale tiles that are designed to look like a swimming pool.
Concept: Saint of Athens and Elizabetta Gavello Interior design: Saint of Athens Architectural works: Dive Architects Photography: Gavriil Papadiotis Custom displays: Urbi et Orbi
A digital garden celebrating queer icons and a new domestic space drawing from aesthetics of the drag community are included in Dezeen's latest school show by The Bartlett School of Architecture.
Also included is a project that explores the use of clay in contemporary construction methods and a sexual health centre for the queer community in Hackney Wick.
The Bartlett School of Architecture
Institution: UCL School:The Bartlett School of Architecture Course: Architecture MArch (RIBA/ARB Part two), Architecture BSc (RIBA/ARB Part one) and Architecture MSci (ARB Part one and Part two)
School statement:
"The Bartlett School of Architecture is one of the best places in the world to study architecture. The institution teaches an expansive programme of architecture degrees at both undergraduate and graduate level.
"The school's annual summer show shares the creative, radical and thoughtful work of its students with a global audience. Online as in person, the diversity of projects and resonance of thematic concerns exhibited allows audiences to explore what is meant by 'architecture' and what it could be."
The Earthen Land Registry by Daniel Pope
"The project explores the use of clay in contemporary construction methods. Through augmenting extrusion techniques and adopting processes of additive manufacturing technology, the proposal heightens the sensuous relationship between the body and building materials.
"The project includes a house typology and a retrofit strategy for London's current brick housing stock, supported by a new fabrication facility and a public monument in the heart of the city."
Student:Daniel Pope Course: Architecture MArch, PG16 Tutors: Matthew Butcher and Ana Monrabal-Cook Email: daniel.pope.14[at]ucl.ac.uk
Not Set in Stone by Elissavet Manou
"This project is a multi-generational settlement on the windy Greek island of Tinos, exploring the concept of a palindromic construction process. The design features a dual marble architecture: one is a positive, additive construction related to the intimate and humdrum everyday life through the creation of a notional settlement; the other is a negative, subtractive carving-out of a rock temple in the quarry that reflects the sublime essence of Tinos.
"Exploring ideas of longevity, handcraft, technological advancements and the Tinian vernacular, the scheme creates a tension between every day and the extraordinary."
Rituals of Resistance: Narratives of Critical Inhabitation by Arinjoy Sen
"The project addresses the contested inhabitation of fragile ecosystems in the Sundarbans, situated on the borderlands of Bangladesh and India. It proposes a self-sustained productive settlement that fosters a construction of spatial identity while elevating the significance of indigenous land stewardship.
"The settlement seeks to increase the ritual narrative practices of marginalised and hybridised identities, as a means to resist erasure, through the apparatus of a travelling theatre."
Student:Arinjoy Sen Course: Architecture MArch, PG12 Tutors: Elizabeth Dow and Jonathan Hill Email: arinjoy.sen.19[at]ucl.ac.uk
Lipstick on a Pig by Andrew Riddell
"The project proposes an architecture of a bespoke and new queer domestic whilst parodying its heteronormative counterpart. The project draws on the aesthetic, social and domestic attitudes of the drag community.
"The dwelling creates a world for three characters living both individually and collectively. The architecture is reflective of their individual aesthetics while also providing a model of living that manifests in a structure that reflects existing drag families or chosen queer families.
"These chosen families customarily create specific social structures of found relationships outside of institutional and biological definitions that warrant equal validity."
Student:Andrew Riddell Course: Architecture MArch, PG16 Tutors: Matthew Butcher and Ana Monrabal-Cook Email: andrew.riddell.13[at]ucl.ac.uk
The River, Restoration and its Rituals by Annabelle Tan
"Sited along the River Wensum in Norfolk, the project is a roving restoration scheme that visits rural villages to restore the vulnerable chalk river while engaging and empowering the local community to sustain an intimate relationship with the environment through rituals and beliefs.
"The building is simultaneously a restorative and ritualistic machine, marrying ecological values with the process of restoration."
Student:Annabelle Tan Course: Architecture MArch, PG11 Tutors: Laura Allen and Mark Smout Email: a.lin.16[at]ucl.ac.uk
A Garden for Lost Queer Icons by Eoin Shaw
"Sited in Dungeness, this project looks at what could happen to the decommissioned power station and its surrounding landscape. Looking at Prospect Cottage, the home and garden of the queer filmmaker Derek Jarman, AI is used to transform the power station into a celebration of Jarman's life and work.
"The project is a physical and digital garden landscape consisting of a series of platforms and routes that celebrate four queer icons. Here the digital space is virtually projected, looking at the premise of how a queer architecture uses and adapts the site."
Student:Eoin Shaw Course: Architecture BSc, UG21 Tutors: Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton and Jasmin Sohi Email: eoin.shaw.19[at]ucl.ac.uk
Second Chance by Christian Coackley
"The project speculates on the revival of the revolutionary ideals embodied by John F. Kennedy (JFK), 35th president of the United States. JFK is associated with the space race, technological power, the Cold War, unification and integration, idealism, false hope, failure, and his death, leaving his legacy in mystic and allegorical ruin.
"This project takes the ruins of a failed lunar colony base as the foundations for a newly constructed Earth Embassy on the Moon. An outpost at an urban scale, where the nations of Earth can send diplomats and scientists to engage in a united effort towards undoing the scars of the anthropogenic. It serves as a reminder to this generation and the next that Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to Earth."
Student:Christian Coackley Course: Architecture BSc, UG7 Tutors: Pascal Bronner and Thomas Hillier Email: christian.coackley.18[at]ucl.ac.uk
Soft Immersion: Hotel in the Aesthetic by Ruoxi Jia
"This is a design for a hotel complex located on Kensington High Street, London. It draws on the aesthetic movement in Britain, which sought softened everyday experiences in contrast to industrial hardness.
"Through investigating artists' formal softening approaches, including hard-lined curves and blurred boundaries, the hotel intends to cure urban melancholy with recreation, bathing and landscape fusions with the site.
"The curing concept integrates with a theory of perceptual lag and deception, in which visitors could retreat and enter a series of dreamy spatial experiences, which challenge their perceptual consensus."
Student:Ruoxi Jia Course: Architecture BSc, UG13 Tutors: Tamsin Hanke and Colin Herperger Email: ruoxi.jia.18[at]ucl.ac.uk
Building a Bathhouse at Scale 1:1 by Ioana Drogeanu
"This is a design for a bathhouse in Bucharest. The project is concerned with the scale at which people think, design and interact with architecture, prompted by the spatial limitations of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"It researches the ways in which designing a building at scale 1:1, using VR in conjunction with body-augmented tools, can create a new architecture.
"The project asks: how can bodily restrictions determine how a building develops? Does the use of the body as a tool in the design process determine the organicity of the architecture and the fluidity of the spaces inside? Can something that is designed in virtual reality become part of the architecture of reality?"
"The project, located in the rural district of Shunyi in Beijing, China, responds to a lack of entertainment and gathering spaces in a primarily residential neighbourhood.
"Situated along an existing bridge and dam, the building is animated by the journey and movement of fish between each platform and provides a tranquil gathering space on the river for fisherman and locals to prepare, cook, smoke, and eat fish."
Student:Maisy Liu Course: Architecture BSc, Year 1 Tutors: Max Dewdney and Frosso Pimenides Email: maisy.liu.20[at]ucl.ac.uk
Water Squatters: Informal Self-build Settlements by Kaia Wells
"Living on a boat is a more affordable way of life in London. Moorings are, however, increasingly hard to find due to increased demand, their frequent removal and neglected infrastructure. This project is inspired by conversations with Surge Cooperative, who create community-led moorings.
"The project uses squatter's rights to bypass permission to occupy space. Water Squatters occupy land by straddling it and harvest rainwater and solar energy to stay off-grid.
"The architecture is responsive to the user's changing environmental and spatial needs, using moving mechanisms and ad-hoc self-build systems created from waste material. It facilitates decision-making for the people by the people."
Student:Kaia Wells Course: Engineering & Architectural Design MEng, Unit 3 Tutors: Deborah Lobato, Hadin Charbel, Michael Woodrow, Daniel Shinzu Godoy Email: kaia.wells.17[at]ucl.ac.uk
A Sexual Health Centre for the Queer Community in Hackney Wick by Xan Goetzee-Barral
"Hackney Wick's history as a complex 'edgeland' and site of gathering began with industrial manufacture and is now present in the form of a queer community. This project is a new sexual health centre for the queer community.
"The centre promotes sexual health by providing spaces to socialise and interact within a protective walled landscape that also engages with the wider community."
Student:Xan Goetzee-Barral Course: Architecture MSci, Year one Tutors: Thomas Parker Email: xan.goetzee-barral.11[at]ucl.ac.uk
Partnership content
This school show is a partnership between Dezeen andThe Bartlett School of Architecture. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
The controversial fake hill in central London designed by Dutch studio MVRDV has reopened to new visitors and will be free to visit during the month of August.
Visits to the 25-metre-high temporary landscaped mound near the Oxford Street shopping destination will now be free in August. Following this, tickets will start at £4.50 each.
Visitors to the Marble Arch Mound in August will not have to pay
"We wanted to open the Mound in time for the summer holidays and we did not want to disappoint people who had already booked tickets," said Westminster City Council's chief executive Stuart Love.
"We made a mistake and we apologise to everyone who hasn't had a great experience on their visit," he continued.
"With that in mind, we're going to make The Mound free for everyone to climb throughout August."
"Let's give nature a chance"
Built to encourage people to visit Oxford Street following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions in the UK, the artificial hill stands alongside Marble Arch, which was designed by architect John Nash in 1827.
The attraction has been widely criticised due to the quality of the planting and brown sedum covering since it was revealed last week.
The attraction has been criticised for the quality of the planting
Designers of the mound MVRDV accepted that it did not look complete when it opened, but defended the attraction.
"Some elements were not ready, and it would have been better to wait until the greenery looked better," the studio told Dezeen. "But let's give nature a chance."
"There is also a serious message: how important it is to add nature to cities to combat climate change," it continued.
"We think adding plants here is a symbol of where we need to go in the future, greening the city."
Council "working hard to resolve the outstanding issues"
Westminster council is working to improve the planting at the Marble Arch Mound and hopes that people will visit to "make their mind up" on the merits of the attraction.
"Now is the time to bring the buzz back to central London and to see people visiting the West End again," added Love.
"We are working hard to resolve the outstanding issues and create an attraction worthy of our fantastic city. It's going to look great and be an amazing experience once we've got it ready!"
"We are very much looking forward to welcoming visitors back so they can enjoy everything London has to offer and can make their mind up about the Mound."
Dezeen promotion: the winners of the iF Design Award 2021 have been announced in a worldwide digital campaign due to the travel restrictions to the originally planned ceremony in Berlin, Germany.
Launched in 1954, iF Design, intends to promote social change through design, identify "good design" and support young designers in launching their careers.
This year the iF Design Award winners of nine disciplines selected holistic, human-centred solutions that echoed the theme of the 2021 digital iF winners campaign, The CreatiFe Power of Design.
Here we outline the award-winning projects, including a system that helps visually impaired individuals learn to use the internet and a discrete hearing aid device that can be placed under hair.
Blind Storytelling/Auxiliary equipment for the blind
Blind Storytelling/Auxiliary equipment for the blind was designed to help visually impaired individuals use the internet.
The design includes smart gloves that help people undertake operational commands with their hands, while the headset can read screen information and convert it into audio information.
"The headset can read the information on the recognition screen and convert it into a voice to communicate to the user, while smart gloves can help users realise basic operation commands by setting specific shortcut keys in advance," said the award organisers.
This product is a wearable sensor that allows medical specialists to monitor patients discharged from the hospital during their first few days at home. The sensor is designed to connect to the hospital's cloud system, ensuring remote monitoring. It has a simple round-edged design, intended to be easy to wear.
"Convalescing and elderly patients often struggle with electronic devices that require Bluetooth pairing, pin codes or charging," said the iF Design Award organisers.
"Health Dot is a wearable sensor designed so that patients do not need to do anything to make it work, allowing them to focus on their recovery."
Ainos Flora is a testing device for sexually transmitted diseases and vaginal infections. The design is portable and can tell the user if they have an infection and the pathogen type causing it in just one minute.
"Right now, vaginal infections and STDs often require an invasive and embarrassing pelvic test," said the organisers.
"Ainos Flora eliminates this embarrassment, allowing fast, comfortable and discreet tests."
This product is a wearable air purifier designed to protect users. The design uses patented technology to create sterile air in front of a user's face.
Specifically, it generates cleaning agents called Hydroxyl radicals that destroy pathogens and pollutants.
"Airborne contamination both from pathogens and pollution is a growing concern," said the award organisers. "Clean, pure air is especially important for people with asthma and respiratory conditions."
Manufacturer: Hydroxyl Technologies Limited Project:Hydroxyl Aura/Air purifier Category: Medicine and health
Intellimix/Smart Touchless Faucet and Soap Dispenser
Intellimix is a smart touchless tap designed to dispense both soap and water. The design intends to encourage people to wash their hands using soap – a fact that the World Health Organisation recommends as essential to avoid spreading viruses, including Covid-19.
"Rising to the challenges of the modern world calls for a new definition of hygiene," explaines the organisers.
"Intellimix doesn't just deliver superior hygiene, it also reduces running costs, improves sustainability, and even makes maintenance simple."
Mi Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush/Children's Dental Care Packaging
Mi Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush is a toothbrush that includes an app-based brushing animation that enables children to learn good oral hygiene habits. A key component of the design is its packaging, which features interactive illustrations for user engagement.
"The unboxing experience for children replicates the pleasure of reading a picture book or playing a game," said the organisers.
"Once open, the packaging has a second use as a game box, offering children a continued fun and interactive experience."
This product is an anti-snoring pillow intended to improve sleep quality by reducing snoring. The pillow gently moves the user during sleep. It is equipped with airbags that change their sleeping position without disturbing their rest.
"It has an ergonomic C-curve design to comfortably support the cervical spine, and the pillow height is also designed to be adjustable according to individual preferences," said the organisers.
Manufacturer:10minds Co., Ltd. Project: Motion Pillow Category: Medicine and health
NoHand/Handle
NoHand is designed so that people can open doors with their elbow and forearm, transferring the task away from our hands to protect from pathogens. This resolves the issue of opening doors with hands, which quickly spreads pathogens.
"The situation that has unfolded over the past few months has dramatically highlighted the importance of hygiene," said the award organisers.
"Handles that open doors in public spaces have become dangerous and give cause for concern, as constant sanitation is nearly impossible."
Manufacturer: Manital Srl
Project:NoHand/Handle
Category: Home furniture
ObeEnd Weight Loss Wristband/Smart health bracelet
ObeEnd Weight Loss Wristband/Smart health bracelet is a wearable device designed to help users control calories by using neuromodulation technology to help them control their body weight.
"This provides a precise electric stimulation of acupuncture point PC6 to control body weight," said the organisers. "ObeEnd generates targeted electric stimulation to PC6, which helps reduce hunger and appetite by reducing gastric secretion signals from the brain."
Paexo Neck is designed to provide shoulder relief and support to people who do manual work. It has an exoskeleton neck support structure that can be adapted to users by its adjustment options.
The design is lightweight, can be taken on and off in under seconds, and was created to provide users freedom of movement.
"People who perform manual work above the shoulder often experience a great deal of strain in the neck region or even suffer from various work-related disorders," the organisers explained.
Phonak Roger On/Wireless Microphone For The Hearing Impaired
This product is a microphone that intends to aid people with hearing loss to understand speech over noise and across distance. The design is wireless and can pick up groups of voices of people sitting next to each other, for example.
"It can be held in hand to pick up a single voice, or it can be worn on the chest by a distant speaker/presenter," said the organisers. "Thanks to the display and the large centre button, it is straightforward for elderly people to operate."
RONDO 3/Audio processor for cochlear implant system
Rondo 3 is a hearing device designed as one discrete button that can be placed under people's hair. The device's settings and battery levels can be modified and checked on a smartphone, while wireless hearing technology adapts to various environments depending on noise levels.
"Hearing technology should offer one thing: simplicity," said the organisers. "That's why the RONDO 3 audio processor offers cochlear implant users a sleek, smart, and easy-to-use device."
The CFI-ZCT1 is a wireless controller designed with PlayStation 5 to create an immersive gaming experience. It includes a built-in microphone, haptic feedback, and dynamic adaptive triggers.
"The grips taper as they extend toward the tip to ensure the controller fits hands of all sizes," said the organisers. "This configuration allows the user to maintain a firm grip while ensuring the fingers can reach all the buttons effortlessly."
First Shaving Series ER-GK20/ER-GM40/Personal Grooming Device
This product is a grooming tool for teenagers to help them take care of unwanted facial and body hair. First Shaving Series was designed with a youthful colour palette intended to appeal to young people. It received an iF gold award from the iF jury for "the encouraging product line".
"Most trimmers and shavers on the market are geared toward adult men," said the organisers. "The design positions the personal grooming of beards, eyebrows, and body hair as a gentle, easy, and positive experience."
EOOS has developed a prototype for a "zero-emissions utility vehicle", or ZUV, which can be 3D-printed locally rather than having to be shipped around the world.
Created by EOOS NEXT, the social design arm of Austrian studio EOOS, the vehicle was commissioned for MAK's Climate Care exhibition as part of the Vienna Biennale for Change. The tricycle is made from 70 kilograms of plastic packaging waste sourced from supermarkets.
The ZUV can carry two people on its bench seat
"We wanted to design around local, affordable production," EOOS founder Harald Gründl told Dezeen.
"Because of the high labour costs in Europe, almost every bike frame is produced in Asia. But we want a local ZUV production facility in every city around the world."
Its chassis is 3D-printed from plastic waste
Created in collaboration with additive manufacturing company The New Raw, the ZUV is powered via a rear-wheel hub motor without the need for pedals or a bike chain.
To produce the simplified design, Gründl envisioned a local economic cycle, which would allow users to 3D-print the polypropylene chassis at a fab lab with large-scale robot printing.
From here, they could go to any bike workshop to bolt on a motor at its predefined position alongside the handlebars, brakes and three wheels.
Two children or an equivalent amount of cargo can fit in the transport box at the front
This would allow individual components to be repaired and replaced close to home to extend the vehicle's lifespan. And ultimately, the chassis could be shredded and re-printed to form another ZUV.
"What we envision is a circular economy of mobility," Gründ explained.
"Service schemes with a designed 'take back' will be the future. And it's way easier to close the loop if you do it locally rather than sending around ships full of waste as we do today, which is stupid."
Wheels and lights can be bolted on at any bike shop
Even the 3D printing process itself was designed to minimise waste, as The New Raw uses custom machinery built from a disused industrial robot.
This is capable of printing diagonal layers rather than vertical or horizontal ones, which means that no additional falsework is needed to support the structure while it is being printed.
Despite its compact design, which weighs in at only 100 kilograms, the ZUV can carry two adults on its bench seat alongside two children or an equivalent amount of cargo in the transport box at the front.
The hope is that it could help to fulfil some of the heavy-load, short-distance journeys, for which we traditionally default to a car.
"A car has maybe 800 kilogrammes of battery while a bicycle has eight and it does the job for many of the journeys that we want to make in a city," Gründ said.
"A lightweight vehicle has the benefit of having less effort in the production but it also uses less energy to transport people," he added. "The more sustainable you want to make a mobility system, the less weight it should have."
The tricycle is 3D-printed in diagonal layers
Whether the final electric vehicle will truly be "zero emissions" in use is dependant on the energy mix in the city where it is being charged and how much of it comes from renewable sources.
By making use of local fabrication and waste materials, Gründ also hopes the project goes some way towards lowering the emission associated with producing the EV in the first place.
"The reuse of post-consumer plastics is a big step towards net-zero carbon emissions," Gründ said. "Every new vehicle will be, in a way, carbon neutral as long as the 3D printer is operated with energy coming from renewables."
Cargo can also strapped to the top of the storage box
This does not consider the emissions associated with producing the supermarket packaging in the first place, which could only be avoided if the industry moved away from single-use plastics.
But Gründ argues that recycling does eliminate end-of-life emissions when the plastic is incinerated.
"When supermarket plastic in Vienna goes to recycling, they're just burning it," he said. "And this creates another three tonnes of CO2 emissions, which we could avoid."
The tricycle is entirely electrically powered
Another brand on a mission to cut the emissions associated with EV production is Swedish carmaker Polestar, which is aiming to produce a climate-neutral car by 2030.
Reusing materials from scrapped cars will play a key part in achieving this goal, the company's head of sustainability Fredrika Klarén told Dezeen as part of an in-depth interview for our carbon revolution series.
"If you look at a car, you have a very high recyclability but somehow we are not completing the loop," she said. "We don't have a large recycled content today in cars so that would be a challenge going forward."
