Dezeen Showroom: British brand Clayworks has released a range of wall surfacing informed by the Japanese tradition of mixing straw with clay and plaster to create a textured finish.
Named Arakabe after the artisanal Japanese plastering technique, the collection was designed for use on interior walls in residential and commercial buildings.
Clayworks' Arakabe clay plaster is informed by traditional Japanese building techniques
"Straw has been one of the essential building materials in Japan since the seventeenth century," Clayworks said.
"The use of clay with straw in it brings warmth and depth into a space, while the organic elements are deeply appreciated by Japanese culture."
It is made from a mixture of straw and clay
Clayworks worked with a variety of different straw colours and weights as well as different aggregates to create the Arakabe range.
The team experimented with woody roots and different clay mixes, creating new finishing materials that "incorporate local, organic and abundant resources".
Straw has been used in Japan since the 17th century
Adding straw to the clay gives the material greater flexibility, strength and moisture resistance, as well as acting as a carbon sink.
"Straw is also one of the materials making the world a better place, protecting biodiversity and helping to capture carbon," the brand explained.
The interior of Walmer Yard is covered in a charcoal version of the clay plaster
The Arakabe range was previously used for the interiors of Walmer Yard, a residential development in London designed by Peter Salter and Fenella Collingridge.
Here, charcoal-coloured clay plaster with yellow gold straws was used to create a warm, inviting interior.
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Imagery of breasts and beakers is combined in this fountain, designed by graduates Lolita Gomez and Blanca Algarra Sanchez based on the Korova Milk Bar from A Clockwork Orange and currently on display at Milan design week.
The installation, which forms part of the Alcova exhibition, encompasses a fleshy pink, circular bar that serves guests through udder-like siphons and nippled cups.
The installation is based on the Korova Milk Bar from Clockwork Orange
By suggesting the curves of the female form, the students from Geneva's HEAD design school hope to offer a more abstract reinterpretation of the set from Stanley Kubrick's dystopian film, where men drink drug-laced milk from statues of naked women.
"We decided to do something a little more sensual and organic," Gomez told Dezeen.
"So we worked with the idea of a fountain and the visual of feeding. It incorporates the female body but in a subtle way, so it's more about the shape of the breast and the ritual of taking the milk."
Milk is syphoned into spherical beakers
The milk itself is stored in four steel jugs, suspended theatrically in the air above the bar and illuminated by glowing spheres.
From here, it is pumped into spherical beakers and syphoned into hand-turned, ceramic cups, each with a nipple on its underside and illuminated from below by a singular spotlight recessed into the counter.
Ceramic cups shaped like breasts are held aloft by a steel framework
"We really wanted to design everything down to the glasses," Gomez said. "All the nipples are unique and have different colours and shapes."
This sense of femininity is combined with the clinical visual language of factory farming, evident in the industrial steel jugs and the stools topped with metal tractor seats.
Taken together, this is designed to create the impression of milking the fountain but with almond instead of cow's milk spurting out of the ducts in a comment on the exploitative nature of the dairy industry.
"It's all about this cow-woman comparison," Gomez explained.
The stools encircling the bar are topped with metal tractor seats
Originally designed as part of the students' master's degree in interior architecture, the project is now on display for the first time two years later due to continual coronavirus delays.
It forms part of a larger graduate show from the university, curated by French architect India Mahdavi and centred around the theme of iconic interior spaces throughout history, both real and fictional.
The installation is on view at the Alcova exhibition at Milan design week
All shortlisted projects are listed below, each with a link to a dedicated page on the Dezeen Awards website where you can find more information about each one.
Prizes for sustainable architecture, interiors and design are new for Dezeen Awards this year. Sponsored by Dodds and Shute, these awards will go to projects that strive to reduce their impact on the planet.
Above: Furniture Pavilion by ROOI Design and Research is shortlisted in the sustainable interior category. Top: Common Sands: Forite Tiles by Studio Plastique, Snøhetta and Fornace Brioni is shortlisted in the sustainable design category
The announcement follows the reveal of the architecture shortlist, interiors shortlist, and design shortlist, all of which we published earlier this week. The media shortlist will be published later today and the studio shortlist announced tomorrow.
In 2019, this saw a record number supertalls – buildings over 300 metres – reach completion worldwide. However, since 2010, the title of the world's tallest building has been held by the Burj Khalifa (above), a skyscraper in Dubai designed by architect Adrian Smith while working at architecture studio SOM.
At a height of 828 metres, the Burj Khalifa is actually classed by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat as a megatall – a building that is over 600 metres tall. Its 11-year reign as the tallest building could soon end though, as construction of Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, also designed by Smith, is underway with a goal of exceeding 1,000 metres in height.
The world's two other megatall buildings are the Shanghai Tower in China, which Gensler completed in 2015, and the Abraj Al-Bait Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia that Dar al-Handasah Shair & Partners completed in 2012.
Photo is by Ulrik Hasselstrom via Unsplash
Glass facades
Clean-cut glazed facades have come to define the modern skyscraper, with eight of the world's 10 tallest skyscrapers – including the Burj Khalifa and the Shanghai Tower – wrapped in large expanses of glass.
While becoming a symbol of progress in contemporary cities, glass towers have also exploded in popularity as they provide well-lit interiors and double as viewpoints. Typically, they are achieved using curtain walls – a thin facade that hangs on the exterior of a building.
However, using glass in this way requires high levels of air conditioning, which makes glass skyscrapers notoriously energy inefficient and some architects believe the trend of glass skyscrapers could be coming to an end. In New York City, mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced plans to ban their construction in an effort to help tackle climate change.
Mixed-use programmes
Some architects shifted their focus from designing monofunctional skyscrapers to mixed-use towers in the past 20 years. This often sees traditional commercial functions married with transportation, residential programmes or publicly accessible cultural facilities.
The benefit of mixed-use skyscrapers is that they can help save space in increasingly dense cities while benefiting the wider community, rather than just office workers.
In Tokyo, Sou Fujimoto Architects is working with Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei on the design of a public plaza atop the Torch Tower (above) to make it "a place for people instead of an object".
Photo is by Miikka Airikkala via Unsplash
Skinny skyscrapers
The number of skinny skyscrapers, otherwise known as pencil towers, has also soared worldwide. Skinny skyscrapers typically contain apartments and are built in cities where land available for building is scarce, such as in Hong Kong.
While there is not a universal definition that is used to determine whether a skyscraper should be categorised as skinny, structural engineers generally consider those with a minimum width-to-height ratio of 1:10 to be slender.
New York is also home to the world's skinniest skyscraper, 111 West 57th by SHoP Architects, which is under construction on Billionaires' Row. It is 24 times as tall as it is wide and will only have one residence on each floor.
Elsewhere, architecture studio Durbach Block Jaggers is developing the Pencil Tower Hotel in Sydney with a width-to-height ratio of 1:16, while Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron and Canadian studio Quadrangle are developing the super-skinny 1200 Bay Street tower in Toronto.
Free forms
While experimenting with the width of skyscrapers, architects have also challenged the tradition of rectilinear skyscrapers, opting for circular, contorted and amorphous forms instead.
Some of the most unusual examples can be found in China, where Italian architect Joseph di Pasquale designed a doughnut-shaped skyscraper (above) and OMA completed the angular looped CCTV Headquarters.
According to a study by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) in 2016, the rise of twisting skyscrapers has been partly driven by technology and sustainability, as a contorted forms can lead to more aerodynamic and energy-efficient structures.
Linked towers and sky bridges
Linking skyscrapers together with high-elevation sky bridges is another significant trend that has boomed in the last two decades of skyscraper design.
Sky bridges is a term to describe enclosed structures positioned at least six floors above ground to physically connect two or more separate buildings. They are typically used for circulation and programmatic purposes, offering a valuable way to save space in densifying cities.
One of the most notable examples of where skyscrapers have been linked by sky bridges is at Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore (above), where Safdie Architect has connected three towers with a 340-meter-long SkyPark.
Other recent examples of interlinked skyscrapers include the mixed-use Collins Arch in Australia by Woods Bagot and SHoP Architects and NBBJ's "vertical campus" for Tencent's headquarters in China.
Vertical forests
In the past decade, the trend for incorporating greenery in high rises and skyscrapers has taken root in cities around the world. While helping to reconnect city-dwellers with nature, using greenery in this way can also be used to promote biodiversity, improve air quality and create cooling islands.
A project that brought global attention to the concept was Stefano Boeri's Bosco Verticale high-rise, which incorporates as many trees as could be planted in one hectare of forest.
In Singapore, a policy introduced in 2014 requires any greenery lost due to development to be replaced. This has given rise to towers such as Eden by Heatherwick Studio (above), which is lined with plant-filled balconies, and the Robinson Tower by KPF that incorporates planted terraces.
As land becomes increasingly scarce in cities and populations continue to rise, architects have been turning their focus to "agritecture" – the marrying of agriculture with architecture.
In skyscraper design, this has seen a rise in concepts for vertical farms that rely on hydroponics to grow fruits, vegetables, and grains. Hydroponic farming relies on water-based, mineral nutrient solutions instead of soil, meaning crops can be grown in vertical formations and in a variety of climates.
Architecture studio Precht has developed a concept for modular housing where residents produce their own food in vertical farms, while Carlo Ratti Associati is currently designing a 218-metre-tall skyscraper in China (above) that would use hydroponic farms to produce 270 tonnes of food per year and feed roughly 40,000 people.
9/11 anniversary
This article is part of Dezeen's 9/11 anniversary series marking the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
According to the report, the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in a terrorist attack on 11 September, was one of 285 buildings over 200 metres standing in 2001.
According to CTBUH 84 per cent of skyscrapers have been built since 2001
However, since the attack, the organisation reports that 1,480 skyscrapers over 200 metres have been built. This means that 84 per cent of the skyscrapers standing today have been built in the past 20 years.
The rate of construction has also increased, with an average of 12 buildings over 200 metres built a year in the decade running up to 2001 and 112 built a year in the past 10 years.
"The age of the skyscraper seemed to be at an end"
The rapid increase in the construction of tall buildings runs counter to many people's predictions following the terrorist attack.
"In the immediate aftermath of the terrible events of 9/11, the age of the skyscraper seemed to be at an end," said the CTBUH.
"After witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center towers due to terrorist attacks, many people, including some in the building industry, believed that we would no longer be comfortable living, working, and socializing in such iconic buildings, given their potential as high-profile targets," it continued.
"Yet 20 years later, the data study below indicates the exact opposite, with more than five times as many tall buildings built since 9/11 than existed before."
This echoes the opinions of the leading skyscraper architects we interviewed as part of Dezeen's 9/11 anniversary series, who said there was "a renaissance of tall building design and development that happened after September 11".
Skyscrapers getting taller
Along with a surge in the number of skyscrapers being built, the CTBUH report also highlighted that skyscrapers are being built taller than ever.
Of the 191 buildings over 200 metres, often know as supertall skyscrapers, only 27 – or nine per cent, were built before 2001.
In total, 86 of the world's current tallest 100 buildings have been built in the past 20 years.
If the World Trade Center was still standing it would be the 31st tallest building in the world today. At the time of its destruction, it was the world's fourth-tallest building.
Only 15 per cent of skyscrapers now in North America
The CTBUH also reports that there has been a shift in where skyscrapers are being built.
Before 2001 almost half (49 per cent) of all buildings over 200 metres were located in North America. However, this number has dropped to 15 per cent, as large numbers of skyscrapers are being built in Asia and the Middle East.
The use of skyscrapers is also changing with residential, mixed-use and hotel towers becoming more common. In 2001, 80 per cent of skyscrapers taller than 200 metres were built as offices, but this number has fallen to 46 per cent.
This Saturday marks 20 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As part of our series marking the 20th anniversary of the attack which destroyed the World Trade Center we looked at how the site has been redeveloped since 2001.
