Dezeen Showroom: Italian furniture brand Pedrali has released a new version of its Ila armchair by French designer Patrick Jouin, adding the option of a four-leg base made of solid ash.
Pedrali introduced the Ila armchair last year as a comfortable and enveloping seat made of large volumes and flexible polyurethane that cocoons the sitter.
The Ila armchair is now available with an ash wood base
"The elegant, high-quality Ila armchair is a refined piece of furniture with a strong personality, expressing utmost comfort, softness and sensuality," said the brand.
Ila was initially made available with either a geometric swivel base and four-leg steel tube frame options. Pedrali has now added the option of a base made of solid ash.
There is also a version with a headrest that partially muffles sound
Ila comes in a range of colours and finishes, and for those who want an added sense of escape from the world, there is a version with a large headrest that creates a private niche and partly muffles sound.
The chair is designed to be disassembled, so it is possible to change the upholstery during its lifecycle.
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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.
Undulating panels of Corten steel create a woven effect across the facade of a seven-storey office block in St Petersburg designed by architect Sergei Tchoban.
Ferrum 1 is one of several buildings that Tchoban's Germany-based studio, Tchoban Voss Architekten, has designed for the site of the former Rossiya factory in St Petersburg's Polustrovo district.
According to the firm, it is "one of the first buildings in Russia to be constructed with a sculptural Corten steel facade".
The facade is constructed from Corten steel
These weathering-steel panels feature on all four of the building's facades, creating a grid around the square and rectangular windows.
The panels curve up and down and appear to overlap one another, creating a basket-weave effect. The three-dimensionality of the panels adds emphasis, meaning the effect is the same no matter the viewing angle.
Undulating panels create a basket-weave pattern
"The sculptural façade is constructed in a geometric grid and presents itself as a coherent, dynamic, organically flowing fabric of loose 'warp and weft' threads," said Tchoban Voss.
"Three-dimensional stripes span the rectangular building both horizontally and vertically. The alternation of flat and protruding modules creates the illusion of a plaiting."
The panels appear to be overlapping
To allow the basket-weave pattern to take centre stage, the structural glazing is highly minimal with slender frames even at the corners.
Inside Ferrum 1, the rusty orange hues of the Corten steel are replaced with the golden tones of the aluminium panels that line the entrance lobby. This space dissects the centre of the building, creating two evenly-sized ground floor offices on either side.
The upper levels contain smaller offices, organised around central corridors, but these spaces have been left bare so that occupiers can design their own fit-out.
Gold tones feature in the entrance lobby
The former Rossiya factory site has housed a variety of establishments. Before becoming an industrial site, it was home to a country palace designed for Prince Alexander Andreyevich Bezborodko at the end of the 18th century.
It briefly also served as a health resort for St Petersburg's wealthiest residents.
The site has been under development for over a decade. Tchoban Voss's other buildings on the site include office complex Seasons-Ensemble, the Five Stars residential blocks and commercial campus Benois.
The studio is also building another block to sit alongside Ferrum 1, called Ferrum 2, which will boast an identical basket-weave facade.
The building is located in the former Rossiya factory site in St Petersburg
Sergei Tchoban was awarded the European Prize for Architecture in 2018.
Global communications group WPP is creating a digital campus in computer game Minecraft featuring replicas of its offices around the world, allowing employees to visit other buildings without leaving their desks.
The "Minecraft world" will allow employees to attend events, launch projects and visit more than 19 offices, according to Colin Macgadie of BDG Architecture + Design who is helping to realise WPP's metaverse.
"WPP is building this Minecraft world of all its campuses next to each other, all at scale and fully realised," said Macgadie, who is BDG's chief creative officer.
"So it doesn't matter what campus you're working in globally, you can visit any of the campuses inside Minecraft."
WPP is using Minecraft to build digital replicas of its offices (top image) including the new Detroit campus (above)
Speaking during a live talk broadcast from the new Dezeen Studio Space in London, Macgadie revealed that the practice is now helping to translate these buildings into a parallel virtual world, or metaverse, as part of a dedicated task force that also includes customer experience agency VMLY&R.
The virtual spaces will be used by employees to socialise, hold events and launch projects
WPP's Minecraft world will feature the London and Detroit buildings, as well as offices in Madrid, Jakarta, Melbourne and other locations laid out "avenue by avenue, street by street".
"It's not just a way of exploring the campuses but actually experiencing them in a virtual sense," Macgadie added.
"It's early stages but we're now beginning to give them access to the CAD plans and the information around Sea Containers House and other buildings so you'll be able to go street by street to different parts of the world."
Metaverse can improve productivity and build community
The news comes after WPP revealed that only two per cent of its staff in the US and three per cent of those working in the UK had returned to their offices as of December 2020, emphasising the need for more "flexible, hybrid models of working" post-Covid.
Macgadie revealed details of the Minecraft project during a talk exploring how BDG designs office buildings that adapt to the changing needs of companies and their employees.
But according to Macgadie, WPP hopes to push this idea further by using the platform as a means to improve productivity and build community while in-person interactions remain rare.
"What else can we do with this," he posited. "How can we launch things in it? How can we run events in it? And how can we use it as more than just a communication tool?"
"It's going to be exciting to see how they pull it off," he added.
Technology can't replace real-life interactions
However, Macgadie also believes it is crucial to reinvigorate physical offices post-pandemic, especially in creative sectors where effective collaboration is key.
"I think technology will make leaps and bounds, there's no doubt about that," he said.
"From our own experience of running our studio and having to continue workshops for clients, the online collaborative whiteboards we use have been fantastic but they don't quite replace that physical collaboration."
Minecraft is a game that allows users to build their own virtual worlds. Launched in 2011, it now has over 126 million monthly active users.
The game can be used for team and community building
Leading figures in digital design predict that the digital metaverse that is being built in Minecraft and other gaming and VR environments will eventually merge with the real world.
"The virtual world and the real world will integrate," said Amber Slooten of virtual fashion studio The Fabricant.
"There will be like a virtual layer on top of the reality that you'll be able to switch on and off," she said during a panel talk at Dezeen's metaverse meet-up earlier this year. "And there will be virtual worlds that you can go into."
"We are very concerned about the incorrect message [the story] gives, particularly in the run-up to the COP26 climate conference and given the urgency for climate action," Shah said.
The IPCC report points out that around half the carbonate emissions from cement production are reabsorbed by concrete structures.
But Shah said these emissions are "only a fraction" of the total produced by the cement industry, which is estimated to produce around eight per cent of all global greenhouse gases.
Darshil Shah said he was "a bit frustrated" with the IPCC report
Concrete surfaces naturally absorb atmospheric carbon via a process called mineral carbonation.
"The uptake of CO2 in cement infrastructure (carbonation) offsets about one half of the carbonate emissions from current cement production," the report says.
In reality, Shah said, carbonation only absorbs around a quarter of total cement-making emissions, when you take into account the fossil fuels that are burned to power cement plants.
Atmospheric carbon rising to "dangerously high levels"
Shah, who is senior researcher at the Centre for Natural Material Innovation at Cambridge University, said that the acknowledgement of the cement carbonation process in the IPCC report means that "the [climate change] problem is worse than we thought".
This is because levels of atmospheric carbon are rising to dangerously high levels even with this newly recognised "sink".
Shah added that he was "a bit frustrated with the IPCC using the word 'sink' because that gives the impression that it is beneficial."
"Cement and concrete are not carbon sinks," Shah said. "They are net sources [of CO2]."
"Timber or plant-based materials are net sinks and we need to construct more with them," added Shah.
The IPCC report refers to "carbonate emissions", which occur when limestone, which is a calcium carbonate material, is crushed and burned to produce clinker.
This calcination process separates the calcium, which is retained, from the carbon, which combines with oxygen and is released into the atmosphere.
The IPCC report refers to these emissions but not the more substantial emissions created by other aspects of cement production. Dezeen's original story has since been updated to make this clearer.
Cement carbonation requires "very specific conditions"
"Carbonate emissions, or process emissions, are only a fraction of the emissions related to cement production and use," Shah explained.
"They exclude the more substantial fossil-fuel energy emissions associated with cement production, they ignore CO2 emissions from the manufacturing of concrete and mortar and construction of buildings, and exclude any fossil-fuel emissions associated with deconstruction of the concrete structures."
Shah also said that "cement carbonation requires very specific conditions" including humidity of between 40 and 80 per cent and open-air conditions.
"Submerged or buried concrete or concrete will not undergo carbonation," he said, adding that "concrete carbonation happens at an extremely slow rate: an average of one to two millimetres per year."
"It's even more effective than trees" at sequestering carbon, he said. "Industrial hemp absorbs between 8 to 15 tonnes of CO2 per hectare of cultivation," which is twice as much as forests.
Main image: The DL1310 apartment block in Mexico City. Photography is by Rafael Gamo, Young & Ayata and Michan Architecture.
