Ten interiors with window seats for peaceful contemplation

For our latest lookbook, we've collected 10 homes with restful window seats where the owners can watch the world go by.

From adding clever storage solutions to creating extra seating in a room, the window seats in these ten projects don't just lend the home a quiet nook from which to admire the view, but also fill a space-saving function.

Made from materials including concrete, charred wood and plywood, many have been covered with cushions and pillows to quickly create an additional sofa or daybed.

This is the latest roundup in our Dezeen Lookbooks series that provides visual inspiration for designers and design enthusiasts. Previous lookbooks include marble bathrooms, stylish plywood interiors and mid-century modern interiors.

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Burnt House, UK, by Will Gamble Architects

True to its name, the Burnt House extension by Will Gamble Architects features a blackened-wood window seat. It was designed to reference Japanese architecture, which often uses charring to treat wood.

The black steel-framed windows match the burnt seat, while a mid-century modern style rattan chair adds a decorative, organic touch to the room.

Find out more about Burnt House ›

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Wyoming residence, US, by CLB Architects

This home at the foot of the Teton mountain range in Wyoming is described by CLB Architects as a "quiet platform set amidst the trees".

A built-in wooden window seat provides a view out over the rugged, forested landscape, with a nearby bookshelf offering plenty of options for a relaxed reading session.

Find out more about Wyoming residence ›

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1960s chalet, Belgium, by Graux & Baeyens

A concrete base creates a low datum around the interior of this chalet in Belgium by Graux & Baeyens, which the studio designed as a family home for one of the studio's co-founders.

Animal hides have been placed on top of the smooth concrete to create a more comfortable window seat where the owners can sit and look out at the surrounding countryside.

Find out more about 1960s chalet ›

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Landaburu Borda extension, Spain, by Jordi Hidalgo Tané 

This dramatic subterranean concrete extension to a Spanish stone building features long, large windows from which people can look out from inside the "cave."

In the kitchen, the window is complete with a deep concrete sill that is covered in potted plants and doubles as a seating area.

Find out more about this extension ›

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Woodpeckers, UK, by Ström Architects

An elegant concrete window seat creates a reading nook in this larch and glass holiday home in England's New Forest, which was designed to have a strong connection between the interior and its scenic outdoor spaces.

Terracotta-coloured cushions in the window seat match the tiled floor, while a pillow with a Josef Frank design adds a whimsical touch to the minimalist seating area.

Find out more about Woodpeckers›

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House R, UK, by Nilsson Pflugfelder

Studio Nilsson Pflugfelder designed this prefabricated Cambridge house with windows that were carefully placed to avoid overlooking neighbours' properties.

In its kitchen and dining space, a large window with a deep seat is almost big enough to hold two people and has a view out to a walled garden filled with potted plants.

Find out more about House R ›

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Tribeca home, US, by Dash Marshall

Two single-story apartments were turned into one big family home for this project in New York's Tribeca area, which features plenty of dark wood and green plants.

In a quiet corner in the living room, a wooden window seat functions both as a shelf for plants and a small reading nook.

Find out more about Tribeca home ›

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Birkedal, Denmark, by Jan Henrik Jansen

A luxurious fluffy fur throw and natural linen textiles adorn this rounded window seat in a log-covered holiday home on the Danish island of Møn.

The floor is covered in pebbles collected from a nearby beach, which, in combination with the white-painted panelling and view over the Danish countryside, help with the architect's aim to bring visitors closer to their rural environment.

Find out more about Birkedal ›

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Nook House, UK, by Mustard Architects

A concrete window seat decorates this kitchen in a London house renovated by Mustard Architects. Underneath the informal seating bench, storage is hidden in wooden drawers.

In the corner space, which extends to meet the work surfaces, a collection of cookbooks has been placed, making for suitable kitchen reading material.

Find out more about Nook House ›

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Prague flat, Czech Republic, by Atelier 111 Architekti

Built-in wooden shelving and a comfortable daybed have been added to this window in a Prague living room. The window seat effectively functions as a sofa, while the surrounding bookshelves create a cosy, enclosed space.

Birch plywood was used to build the storage around the existing windows. Underneath the sofa, more storage can be found in wooden drawers.

Find out more about Prague flat ›

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This is the latest in our series of lookbooks providing curated visual inspiration from Dezeen's image archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks showcasing home libraries, plywood interiors and marble bathrooms.

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This week we revealed the Dubai Expo pavilions

This week on Dezeen, we featured pavilions at Dubai Expo 2020 designed by Foster + Partners, Grimshaw, Carlo Ratti and JKMM.

The Dubai Expo is divided into three thematic zones – Mobility, Sustainability and Opportunity, which are each anchored with a pavilion.

Foster + Partners designed a stainless steel clad building as the Mobility Pavilion (pictured top), Grimshaw topped the Sustainability Pavilion with a giant "energy tree" and AGi Architects created a plaza to bring people together as the Opportunity Pavilion.

JKMM Architects "brings a fragment of Finnish nature to UAE" with Dubai Expo pavilion

Alongside these main structures, the expo contains a series of national pavilions designed to promote their respective countries.

Helsinki studio JKMM Architects created a chapel-like building as the Finland Pavilion, Italian architect Carlo Ratti topped the Italy Pavilion with a trio of boats and the Swiss Pavilion had a giant mirrored facade.

Architectural professions top list of elite occupations in the UK

A report released this week by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre found that architecture is one of the most privileged industries.

Titled Social Mobility in the Creative Economy, the report showed that 73 per cent of people working within the architecture profession are considered to be privileged.

Kim Kardashian launches first pop-up SKIMS store in Paris

In interiors news, art director Willo Perron designed a pop-up store for Kim Kardashian's underwear brand SKIMS.

The temporary store in Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann is furnished with glossy, chunky display units and partitions.

Frank Gehry tops Louis Vuitton perfume bottle with aluminium flower

Frank Gehry was in the news this week as the Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect designed a perfume bottle topped with an aluminium flower for French fashion brand Louis Vuitton.

It was also announced that the architect's long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is set to open in 2025, 14 years after construction began.

Balenciaga collaborates with Simpsons to launch Spring Summer collection

In fashion, luxury brand Balenciaga dressed some of The Simpsons characters in clothing from its collections.

The collaboration was as part of a film premiere-style red carpet event at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris to launch Balenciaga's Spring Summer collection.

Trolle Rudebeck Haar floats prefabricated sauna on Lake Geneva

Popular projects this week included a prefabricated sauna floating on Lake Geneva, a geometric villa overlooking the sea in Japan and a waterside bee house at Somerset hotel.

Our lookbook this week focused on plywood interiors.

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

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Steel mesh wraps Nike's LeBron James Innovation Center by Olson Kundig

A full-size basketball court and a 200-metre track are among the spaces found inside a large, metal-clad building designed by US firm Olson Kundig on the Nike campus in Oregon.

The LeBron James Innovation Center is part of the 300-acre (121-hectare) Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. The new facility is named after the basketball star LeBron James, who has been affiliated with Nike since 2003.

The LeBron James Innovation Center at Nike's campus in Beaverton, Oregon, includes a ramp used for workout runs

Encompassing 750,000 square feet (69,677 square metres), the expansive building houses offices, design studios and the Nike Sport Research Lab, where data about athletes' performance is collected and analysed.

The structure was designed by Seattle-based Olson Kundig, which aimed to create an atmosphere that promotes exploration and innovation.

Steel mesh wraps the building

"It's a place for creatives to come in and realise, I'm working for a large company, but there's a sense here that they're looking for the next horizon," said firm principal Tom Kundig.

Roughly rectangular in plan, the four-storey building has two layers of cladding – black steel mesh and gold-painted sheet metal.

The Nike Sport Research Lab is located within the building

On the south end of the building, the top portion cantilevers over the lower level. Visible from below is a concrete waffle slab – a type of slab that helps support a floor with a particularly heavy load, the team said.

"The waffle pattern is also an unmistakable nod to Nike's innovation legacy," the team said, citing the company's first sneaker, which had a sole design inspired by a waffle iron.

A full-size basketball court is included in the lab

Running alongside the building is a 500-foot-long (152-metre) ramp with a 15-degree slope, which is used for workouts on Nike's flat campus. The ramp has concrete steps, plants and a synthetic track.

The building has several entrances. The primary one leads into a shoebox-shaped vestibule, where LeBron James-branded footwear is on display.

The facility is named after basketballer LeBron James

Floors one, two and three hold workspaces, meeting rooms, design studios and social areas. At the heart of the building is an atrium that rises 93 feet (28 metres).

Interior finishes include concrete flooring, metal railings and wood accents. Several colourful murals are found in the facility.

The top level houses the Nike Sport Research Lab, where data is collected to help develop products.

The lab encompasses a full-size basketball court, a 200-metre endurance track, a 100-metre straightaway, and an artificial-turf training pitch. The lab's sloped ceiling rises 48 feet (15 metres) at its highest point.

Colourful murals are found within the complex

Performance data is collected via high-tech equipment such as a motion-capture system comprising 400 cameras, and dozens of force plates that measure the force exerted by the ground when a body comes into contact with it. The lab also has four climate chambers that mimic various weather conditions.

The building has a number of sustainable features, including water-efficient fixtures and over 900 rooftop solar panels. The flooring inside the research lab is made from Nike Grind recycled material.

The flooring inside the research lab is made from Nike Grind recycled material

Other Nike buildings include a flagship store in Manhattan with a rippled glass facade, and a headquarters building in New York that features an indoor basketball court and a rooftop garden shaped like the brand's swoosh logo.

The photography is by Nike.

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Climate initiatives "desperately need the support of government" say RIBA climate report editors

The authors of a RIBA report showing how construction can reduce its carbon emissions have urged people in the sector to endorse their findings to help pressure governments into taking action ahead of the COP26 climate conference.

"The more endorsements we can get, the more powerful that message is," said Maria Smith, editor of the Built for the Environment report published by the Royal Institute of British Architects and climate action group Architects Declare.

"We need people to go onto the website, sign up and endorse the report so that when it goes to government, it has thousands of signatures," added architect Andrew Waugh, who contributed to the report.

Top: a timber school called Feldballe by Henning Larsen is a case study in the report (above)

Waugh, who is a member of the Architects Declare steering group and co-founder of timber-construction specialist Waugh Thistleton Architects, said that governments are lagging behind the sector when it comes to decarbonising the built environment.

November's COP26 climate summit will be the first to recognise the built environment's huge contribution to global warming, with an estimated 40 per cent of global emissions coming from buildings and infrastructure.

Sector's climate aims "desperately need the support of government"

The summit will for the first time feature a Cities, Regions & Built Environment Day at which ideas for reducing these emissions will be discussed.

But Waugh said that governments have been slow to force the sector to reduce emissions due to its importance to the global economy.

Andrew Waugh is a member of the Built Environment Summit Steering Group

"The 2015 Paris climate agreement was very much about the fact that industry wasn't ready," Waugh said. "They weren't going to push targets in construction because you know the world relies on construction so much to produce capital and employment."

"What's happened in the meantime is that the built environment sector has actually started out on its own pathway to transformational change," he added.

"But it does desperately need the support of government."

The report is set to be launched at the Built Environment Summit (BESt) at RIBA in London from 28 to 29 October when experts and thought leaders will explore how its recommendations might be realised.

Alongside a presentation of the report, the summit will see Cristina Gamboa, CEO of the World Green Building Council, environmental lawyer Farhana Yamin and Rice University professor Dr Timothy Morton give keynote speeches.

Report to be presented at COP26

Additional panel discussions centring on how the industry can achieve net-zero will also take place. The report will then be presented at COP26 in Glasgow next month.

It uses case studies submitted to an open call earlier this year to look at how buildings can play a role in tackling the climate and biodiversity emergencies.

Maria Smith is the editor of the climate report

"A key message is that we don't need to wait for breakthrough technologies," said Smith, who is director of sustainability and physics at Buro Happold, told Dezeen.

"We need to act now based on the technologies and the skills and know-how that we do have," she added. "Now, the challenge is how we scale that up."

The report identifies three main ways in which greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced in the built environment: making better use of existing buildings to reduce the demand for new construction, minimising the harmful environmental impact of new builds, and adopting long-term plans that put the health of the planet above short-term financial gains.

Sector "is committed to change"

Several standout case studies from completed buildings exemplify how these three ways can be used in practice.

The report acknowledges the massive contribution the built environment makes to climate change but says the sector "is committed to change" and "has the capability to transition to a sustainable future".

"There are enormous social, economic, health and we​​llbeing benefits to shifting to a sustainable built environment," it adds. But the report highlights the need for government support to make change happen.

"The role of governments is not only to provide the stick, it's not only regulation but also to provide the infrastructure," Smith explained.

"We're trying to say to governments that we have the materials, we have the skills, we have the tools but in order to roll this out, we need support around infrastructure, resources and public procurement. That's the key challenge," she said.

"Governments are still wrapped up in talking about operational carbon"

Waugh added that governments have so far focussed on introducing legislation to improve the energy efficiency of completed buildings but have neglected embodied carbon emissions caused by the construction process.

These can amount to half of all emissions caused by a building.

"This needs to change," he said. "I think governments are still wrapped up in talking about operational carbon [emissions caused by the building in use] but actually the western world is already really efficient at building efficient buildings."

"They need to be legislating for embodied carbon" he added. "They need to be legislating to retain existing buildings where possible."

The Built for the Environment report is just one of many initiatives from the architecture and construction sectors that will be presented at the COP26 conference.

British designer Es Devlin is set to unveil a temporary installation of 197 trees and plants to highlight issues related to climate change.

The UK Green Building Council will present a virtual pavilion showcasing projects and installations that offer solutions to the built environment's carbon emissions.

There are increasing concerns ahead of COP26 about governments' willingness to take tough action on climate.

Earlier this year, Hélène Chartier of international urban network C40 Cities told Dezeen that governments have made "very, very little" progress since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

However, UN climate champion Nigel Topping claimed the architecture sector was not doing enough to reduce emissions from buildings.

Around the same time, it emerged that less than six per cent of RIBA-registered architects had signed up to its initiative to design net-zero buildings.

Photography is by Jateed Lad.

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Built Environment Summit will take place online and at RIBA London from 28 to 29 October 2021 ahead of COP26, which will take place at SEC Centre in Glasgow from 1 to 12 November 2021.

See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest information you need to know to attend the event, as well as a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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AGi Architects arranges Dubai Expo Opportunity Pavilion around covered plaza

Spanish-Kuwaiti studio AGi Architects has created a pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai that is built around a covered plaza that acts as a place where people can gather.

Named Mission Possible, the pavilion anchors the Opportunity District – one of the expo's three main districts alongside Mobility and Sustainability.

A staircase leads visitors to a central plaza

A wide and shallow staircase leads visitors from the ground floor to the pavilion's main level, which includes a long and narrow building and two smaller ones positioned around a central plaza.

These buildings house the pavilion's main exhibition spaces, as well as a Mission Possible store and a cafe.

Lights twinkle on the pavilion's facade after dark

When designing the pavilion AGi Architects took cues from the notion of a plaza, which is loosely defined as an enclosed open space in a built-up area.

Mission Possible's blocky volumes are arranged under a metal canopy featuring six textile layers of fabric by Serge Ferrari.

"The canopy represents clouds and the dreams that we all aspire to achieve to build a better world," said Joaquin Perez-Goicoechea, co-founder of AGi Architects.

"Colourful elements overlap, creating layers, playing with transparency, light, shadows and colour," he told Dezeen. "All this allows us to create a welcoming environment in which visitors can take a break."

A central courtyard is designed to bring people together

Industrial design company Flexbrick wrapped the pavilion's facade in a unique ceramic textile that features a scattering of lit-up sections which glitter after dark.

This ceramic tile also cover's the pavilion's floor, which has been dubbed as the "terracotta carpet," and is designed to form a neutral backdrop created to bring diverse groups of people together.

Perez-Goicoechea explained that the universality of a plaza is Mission Possible's central design focus.

"The concept design behind the Opportunity Pavilion is based on the relationships among people and the impact of their actions," he explained.

"That is why the project revolves around people and, hence, the design of that central 'plaza' that stands as a meeting point where they can interact and interconnect."

The pavilion has a fabric-covered canopy that intends to evoke the idea of dreaming

Mission Possible presents an exhibition designed by Alec Fit Out and Icaria Atelier, which is focused on The Sustainable Development Goals, a set of targets created by the United Nations in 2015.

The pavilion houses an interactive exhibition that features pathways addressing current issues related to water, food, and energy, which are hosted by three specialist guides.

The United Nations also has a dedicated space inside the pavilion called the UN Hub.

Mission Possible seeks to question how we can better build the future

AGi Architects was founded by Joaquín Pérez-Goicoechea and Nasser B Abulhasan in 2006.

Mission Possible joins two other pavilions on show at Expo 2020 Dubai that represent the event's defining themes – Foster + Partners' trefoil-shaped Mobility Pavilion and Grimshaw's Sustainability Pavilion.

The photography is courtesy of Expo 2020 Dubai.

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