Dezeen Showroom: German brand Wilkhahn has expanded its versatile Occo seating line by Jehs + Laub, adding a lounge chair model and a relaxed-looking upholstery option.
The Occo lounge chair retains its predecessors' characteristic shell seat, with its cutout backrest section, but adapts the design for the living room by way of a lower and slightly tilted seat position.
The Occo lounge chair has a lower base and tilted seat
The seat is mounted at an angle of eight degrees onto the base, which is available as an aluminium star base or a four-leg solid wood frame.
There are also two backrest heights to choose from, and the option of a looser-fit upholstery option, which makes the fabric gather around the backrest seam and gives an inviting, laidback appearance.
The new additions allow Occo to fit into the home, office, and spaces somewhere in between
This new upholstery option is also available on the premium Occo Conference models, for which there is a wide selection of base frames including star bases with glides, casters, an optional height adjustment and active rocking technology.
The new additions allow Occo to fit into the home, office, and spaces somewhere in between.
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Dezeen has teamed up with No.3 Gin to host a live talk with photographer Justin Zoll and designers Bethan Laura Wood and Sebastian Cox about how their work uncovers beauty in unexpected places. Watch it from 4:30pm London time.
Titled Design, Detail and Aesthetics, the panel discussion brings together three distinct creatives working across different disciplines to create bright, beautifully crafted and visually intricate work.
Taking place at the V&A museum in London as part of the Global Design Forum series of talks during London Design Festival, the talk sees Dezeen's chief content officer Benedict Hobson speak with Zoll, Wood and Cox about their practice and how their work reveals beauty in the everyday world and materials around us.
Justin Zoll uses a microscope to photograph objects
Zoll is a photographer from Ithaca, New York, who specialises in capturing the microscopic world using a microscope and digital camera.
Recently, Zoll has worked with No.3 Gin to create a colourful, kaleidoscopic artwork (top) by freezing the award-winning gin and photographing the crystals through his microscope.
Bethan Laura Wood's work is known for its focus on detail and colour
Wood has run her multidisciplinary studio since 2009, which is characterised by materials investigation, artisan collaboration and a passion for colour and detail.
Wood is fascinated by the connections we make with the everyday objects that surround us and, as a collector herself, likes to explore what drives people to hold onto one particular object while discarding another. Bethan explores these relationships and questions how they might become cultural conduits.
Sebastian Cox produces sustainable wood furniture
Cox is a furniture designer, maker and environmentalist based in south London.
He founded his carbon-counting, forward-thinking, zero-waste workshop and design studio in 2010 on the principle that the past can be used to design and make the future.
Talk in partnership with No.3 Gin
Dezeen is hosting the talk in partnership with No.3 Gin, which has been voted World's Best Gin four times at the International Spirits Challenge (ISC) and is the only gin ever to be crowned World's Best Spirit at the ISC.
It took two years to get the perfect balance of juniper, citrus and spice in the gin liquid, which Zoll has captured using his microscope to create the colourful artwork.
The Design, Detail and Aesthetics talk takes place at the V&A museum in London and will be streamed on Dezeen from 4:30pm on Friday 24 September. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Partnership content
This talk was produced by Dezeen for No.3 Gin as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen's partnership content here.
Graduate designer Alexia Audrain has developed a chair with cocooning, inflatable walls that helps people with autism self-soothe when they are experiencing sensory overload.
Designed to emulate the feeling of being embraced, the Oto chair and its accompanying footrest squeeze the chest and legs via blow-up modules similar to those of a blood pressure monitor.
The Oto chair features inflatable walls that hug the user
This kind of deep pressure therapy has proven beneficial for people with autism, who can struggle with processing sensory information such as noise, light or physical contact, by helping them focus on the limits of their own body.
Normally, this requires help from another person by being tightly held, hugged or pinned to the ground. But with the Oto chair, Audrain hopes to introduce a sense of agency and dignity into the process.
A corresponding footrest applies pressure to the legs
"The aim of the chair is to allow as many people as possible to use it autonomously, in order to meet their own sensory needs," she told Dezeen.
"The hug should not be applied as in a restraint device or in psychiatric shock treatment. The user is in a seated position to remain in control of their body and open to the environment so that the hug is a choice."
The walls can be inflated and deflated using a remote
The blow-up modules at the heart of the hugging mechanism can be inflated and deflated via remote control or tablet, which allows users to fine-tune the pressure level.
Unlike the weighted blankets or vests that are sometimes used to administer deep pressure therapy, this system applies active rather than passive compression and thus provides more effective relief, Audrain said.
Pictograms make the remote control easy to use
Housed within a beech wood shell, the chair's plush interior is padded out with sound-absorbing upholstery foam and fabric, while distracting details such as zippers are hidden away, turning the design into a makeshift sensory deprivation chamber.
"The cocoon shape and the upholstery provide muffled acoustics that help users to concentrate on their senses and on their body while keeping them isolated from other stimuli," said Audrain.
"In the first version, there was also a zipper on the cushion. But for some autistic people, it was really too tempting to touch it and play with it, which would have disturbed the feeling of pressure on their body."
Audrain created the prototype chair during her degree at L'École de design Nantes Atlantique based on user feedback from people with autism and psychometricians studying sensory processing disorders.
Based on this input and her training in carpentry, Audrain envisioned the chair to look more like a piece of design than traditional "hug machines", deep-pressure devices and other medical aids.
The chair was conceived as a piece of design rather than a medical aid
"Users, families and the medical teams confirm that it is important to have access to beautiful and non-stigmatising therapeutic furniture to contribute to the soothing effect that it provides," the designer explained.
"I have used beech as it is a type of wood common in French forests unlike much medical furniture, which is made from plastic," she continued.
"Moving away from the aesthetics of medical furniture is important because it could facilitate the inclusion of autistic people in different public and private environments."
And starting in October, Audrain hopes to trial five of the chairs in different settings while working to make the manufacturing process more affordable, with the aim of commercialising the design within the next year.
Designer Stefan Scholten has aimed to create a sense of luxury out of waste in The Stone House, his first solo project after disbanding Scholten & Baijings.
Displayed as part of Masterly, the Dutch exhibition at Milan design week, the Stone House installation was made entirely out of waste marble and travertine sourced from quarries around Italy.
The Stone House exhibition evoked the idea of a house through the inclusion of domestic elements
The waste was fashioned into objects such as walls, furniture and even a stone "carpet" – enough elements to create the suggestion of a full house beyond them.
The pieces feature natural colours and patterns that are unusual for marble. Scholten intended that this element of surprise could spur viewers to see the material in a new light.
The exhibition included a "carpet" with a complicated book-match pattern
The designer is based in both Amsterdam and Carrara, the home of Italian marble, and conceived the project with the brand Stone Made Italy to address the issue of the industry's excess waste.
"We came up with the idea to upcycle marble, but we wanted to do something really special," Scholten told Dezeen. "There are already projects where they glue all kinds of waste material into one slab, but we wanted to get a higher level, almost to create a new luxury."
"Because marble is, of course, always referring to luxury in a way," he continued. "Once you've quarried it you don't get it back. It takes a billion years to create a block of marble."
All of the pieces in the exhibition were made from waste stone and marble
He hoped the work would divorce the idea of "waste" from its more negative connotations.
"All upcycling or waste material always has this negative spin, which we wanted to transform to a more high-end level," he added.
To achieve these new effects, Scholten revisited centuries-old production methods while experimenting with different combinations of colours and materials.
The dining table is made from larger waste pieces that are recognisable as their original stone
Working with Morseletto, a factory that takes an artisan approach with highly specialised workers, he tried making terrazzo, palladiana, mosaico and marmorino – all different ways of assembling and using stone.
Saw residue, broken chunks and marble grit went into the Stone House pieces, which present a contemporary take on these traditional techniques.
There is the "carpet", made of imperfect marble waste pieces cut into slabs and assembled into a book-matched pattern, where two mirror-image slabs face each other like the pages of an open book.
The marble and travertine comes from Italian quarries
There is a coffee table that uses waste stones "almost like a weaving technique" and a bench made of pieces of travertine with the same stone residue used for the grouting.
A dinner table, by contrast, uses the waste pieces as they were found, so they are recognisable as the original stone.
Scholten experimented with age-old stone production techniques and unusual combinations of colours
The stone used includes Statuario from IGF Marmi, Fantastico Arni from Bonotti, Grigio Collemandina from Collemandina, Travertino Silver and Ocean Blue from Travertini Paradiso and Calacatta Macchia Vecchia and Zebrino from Max Marmi.
Cement is used as the binding material for the waste pieces, which Scholten defends as the "least worst" option currently available.
The coffee table uses stone in a way that is almost like weaving
The designer and manufacturer Morceletto considered alternatives. They dismissed epoxy resin because, when mixed with stone, it would be almost impossible to recycle, as well as bio-resin, made without petrochemicals, because its quality and durability could not be guaranteed.
Scholten even experimented with an old terrazzo technique involving natural rubber cement, but he said he couldn't make it work.
Rotta said that while cement was an imperfect choice, she hoped the project would push the industry towards finding more sustainable solutions.
Scholten and Stone Made Italy hopes the project helps push the stone industry to act more sustainably
"This is just the first step," she told Dezeen. "We are trying to push the industry in general to consider the beauty of the waste and how it could be reused. And we are also saying, this time, we have to do it with cement."
"This was the most sustainable option available at the moment, and then, shouldn't we be working on something which is also more sustainable, to help to bind the stone, to process it?"
Rammed earth walls and a glass outhouse feature in this rural Ecuadorian house by architectural studio Al Borde that is meant to challenge standards of comfort.
The Casa Jardin, or Garden House, is located in Conocoto, a rural area south of Ecuador's capital Quito. It was designed for a client, José, who studied ecology and desired a home that felt seamless between inside and out.
The house is rural Ecuador comprises separate structures amongst the garden
While conceiving the design, Quito-based Al Borde studied the Cochasquí archaeological site in northern Ecuador, where the architects found replicas of houses built by a pre-Inca civilization.
"The house was structured from a circular, rammed-earth wall built around a Lechero tree of approximately four metres high, planted in the centre during construction time," the team said.
Rammed earth walls blend inside and outside areas
Taking inspiration from the ancient ruins, the studio came up with an unconventional home made of natural materials and afforded a strong connection to the landscape.
The home consists of three separate structures: the main dwelling, a bathing area and a water closet. One must pass through the outdoor garden to access each building.
The main dwelling holds space for a drum set
"José and his house question the comfort standards," the team said. "There are places where people do not know whether they are in a garden or house, or a house built by the garden."
Rectangular in plan, the main dwelling has a single, large room that holds a kitchen, dining area and sleeping quarters. There also is a space for the client's books and drum set.
Sleeping quarters are also located in the main building
Rammed-earth blocks were use to form three of the walls. The fourth is made of glass and wood.
"The same soil removed in the excavation was used for load-bearing adobe walls," the architects said. "They rest on a stone foundation that also works as a skirting board."
Wooden staves line the roof
The roof consists of wooden staves, waterproof fabric, and tiles made of earth and brick. Weeds are intended to sprout up between the bricks.
A front patio is shaded by a large overhang made of a polycarbonate panels and chaguarqueros branches. The canopy is supported by felled Euphorbia laurifolia trees – also known as Lechero trees – that will take root and regenerate.
"Over the years, new branches and leaves will grow, allowing the tree to follow its life cycle," the team said.
A simple shower is housed in a greenhouse made of polycarbonate panels and Lechero trunks. Nearby is the outhouse – a glazed enclosure that is sheltered by a canopy held up by tree trunks.
A glazed outhouse is held up by tree trunks
"Pooping for José is a ritual," the architects said. "Between him and nature, there is only glass."
"We imagine that guests will have many anecdotes to tell after visiting him," they added.
The project overlooks surrounding hills
The property also features a permaculture system that was developed and built by the client.
Sewage is treated via a system with red worms, and gray water is treated with dwarf papyrus, a type of pond plant. The filtered water is used to irrigate fruit trees.
The minimal shower is in a greenhouse
Moreover, organic waste is turned into compost, which serves as fertiliser for the property's vegetables and medicinal plants.
"Native-wild plants have been kept to attract insects and birds from the area, controlling the proliferation of possible plagues," the client said. "It works as a biological control in situ."
Native wild plants and vegetables grow in clusters around the garden
Al Borde is led by principals David Barragán, Esteban Benavides, Marialuisa Borja and Pascual Gangotena.
The Ecuadorian studio is also behind the House of the Flying Beds – a renovated 18th-century home that has sleeping spaces suspended from the ceiling.
