Dezeen Showroom: Z-Bar Gen 4 is a minimalist lamp with flexible joints that users can shape into angular silhouettes, designed by Kenneth Ng and Edmund Ng for lighting brand Koncept.
Created as an improved version of the brand's original Z-Bar lamp, Z-Bar Gen 4 has hidden joint mechanisms that have a greater range of movement.
When not in use, the flexible joints allow users to fold the lamp down into a slim stick to save space.
The Z-Bar Gen 4 has flexible joints that let the users shape the light themselves
Koncept created Z-Bar Gen 4 to have an improved quality of light compared to the earlier version. "The optics have been improved so that multiple, harsh shadows are avoided; instead the user gets soft, even shadows," said the brand.
Z-Bar Gen 4, which is launching in 2022, comes in three sizes of desk lamp models and as a floor lamp.
The lamp was designed to have an improved quality of light
Additional compatible accessories include a desk clamp, wall mount and alternative bases such as a wireless charging Qi base.
The Pro version of the lamp features a USB port and an occupancy sensor that helps reduce unnecessary power consumption. It also has an adjustable colour temperature that users can alter to suit their circadian rhythm.
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Portuguese practice Box Arquitectos has completed a narrow, white home in the dense urban centre of Ponta Delgado, with two volumes that face each other across a long garden.
With a site just over four metres wide, the local firm designed Windmill House to require minimal "transitioning spaces" such as corridors.
Windmill House is built on an infill site along a terraced residential street
The entire ground floor is given over to a large social space and kitchen that opens onto a central garden.
"The program develops without the need of transitioning or dividing spaces," said Box Arquitectos. "The only social space of the house gains dimension in its depth when it finds the garden at the end of the space."
A pale colour palette is used throughout the interior to create a brighter look
The garden is lined with white walls on either side and a built-in bench along one. Internal social spaces spill out onto a paved patio that surrounds a planted bed.
At the opposite end of the garden is an independent single-storey block housing an additional en-suite bedroom.
The entire ground floor is given over to a large social space
In the main home, a black floating-tread staircase leads up to the first floor, where small landing connects a bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which opens onto a terrace overlooking the garden.
What the practice describes as the "vertical perspective" of the home has been emphasised in the first-floor spaces through steeply sloping ceilings topped with skylights.
Two skylights illuminate the eastern bedroom and bathroom, while west-facing second bedroom looks out onto the street through the only window in the building's front facade.
"The necessity to simulate a greater spatial amplitude is made possible by the skylights in the pitched roof, which receives the light and spreads it throughout the interior spaces, working as a 'diaphragm', increasing the 'vertical perspective'," the practice said.
The slanted roof is expressed inside the rooms on the upper level
Finishes throughout the interior have been kept pale to increase the feeling of light in the home, including plastered walls, and pale wooden doors and kitchen cabinets.
Externally, the crisp white form mirrors the characteristic shape of the neighbouring buildings but with few external features.
Social spaces spill out onto a paved patio to the rear
This creates what the practice describes as "the child's imaginary drawing of a house – one door and one window".
"The main facade is exclusively the boundary between interior and exterior, with no reason for a relation between both, besides being in its way," it continued.
The garden is surrounded by whitewashed walls, while a terrace is accessed via the back bedroom
Ever have the urge to get away from it all and retreat to a cosy cabin somewhere quiet and remote? In the second roundup of our review of 2021, we pick out 10 of the best cabins on Dezeen this year, including a metal tube in Russia and a house on stilts in the Brazilian forest.
Elevated on a single column to minimise the size of its footprint, this striking, black-painted cabin is hidden within woodland near the Salamajärvi National Park in Finland.
Its designer, Studio Puisto, based the structure on the raised wooden huts used by indigenous Samí people to safely store food outdoors known as Niliaitta – though this version features most of the amenities of a modern hotel room.
Holly Water Cabin is a holiday home on a farm in Devon dreamed up by architecture studio Out of the Valley.
Constructed from multiple types of timber with a pitched roof and sliding doors opening onto a sheltered veranda, the cabin is intended to immerse guests in nature.
Like two lookout posts, La Tagua and La Loica are set 80 metres above the Pacific Ocean on a steep hillside in Navidad.
In an attempt to make the cabins blend in with their coastal surroundings, Croxatto and Opazo Architects clad them in reclaimed oak treated with petroleum oils to protect against corrosion from the salty air.
Amsterdam studio Woonpioniers created this cabin from pre-fabricated laminated timber, with the whole structure's carbon footprint designed to be as small as possible.
The front of the house is dominated by large windows, while inside, the wooden walls curve upwards right to the roof's apex.
This remarkable tubular house, balanced on the edge of a slope in Russia's Nikola-Lenivets Art Park, was designed by Moscow's chief architect, Sergey Kuznetsov.
"The idea was to create something with an element of magic," he told Dezeen. Despite being 12 metres long and weighing around twice as much as a fully-grown elephant, the whole thing is held together by just six bolts.
Casa Tejida, which translates as woven house, takes its name from the facade of woven wood screens along the cabin's side filtering light and air.
The house was designed by architect Santiago Pradilla and architecture collective Zuloark as a prototype for more sustainable, local forms of construction.
Built for a writer as a full-time workspace, this copper-clad cabin is nestled in a lakeside forest.
"The area is so lush and beautiful that we wanted to really capture the essence of it, to try to create a seamless transition between the inside and outside," said Søren Leth, a founding partner of Sleth, which designed the house.
Wrapped in wooden shingles and mirrored aluminium tiles, The Seeds are a cluster of holiday cabins designed by ZJJZ Atelier for a woodland hotel in China's southeastern Jiangxi province.
Each stilt-raised pod contains a bedroom, bathroom, storage area, attic lounging space and a front terrace.
Last but not least, Marko Brajovic's Monkey House was built as an isolated haven during the coronavirus pandemic.
It sits on a forest of slim stilts, a system Brajovic designed after observing how the Juçara palm tree native to the forest uses its roots to anchor its slim stem to the earth.
The row over how the fire-gutted Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris should be restored has restarted as plans to give the interior a tourist-friendly makeover are emerging.
Confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures are set to be replaced with modern art murals and new light and sound effects designed to create "emotional spaces", according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.
Visitors would be led on a "discovery trail" through themed chapels, including one with a strong environmental focus, under proposals seen by the newspaper. As part of the plans, quotes from the Bible would be projected onto chapel walls in various languages, including Mandarin.
However, the debate over the most appropriate way to renovate Notre-Dame was reignited last week when reports emerged about the planned revamp of the cathedral's interiors.
Maurice Culot, a Paris-based architect and critic, told the Telegraph it was "as if Disney were entering Notre-Dame".
"What they are proposing to do to Notre-Dame would never be done to Westminster Abbey or Saint Peter's in Rome," he said. "It's a kind of theme park and very childish and trivial given the grandeur of the place."
Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut, a professor in medieval history at Pisa University, told the paper: "One should simply conduct restoration and not choose solutions that could alter the architectural layout or arbitrarily 'modernise' the edifice."
Commission to review plans
The proposed changes relate mostly to parts of the cathedral that were left relatively unaffected by the fire, with the damaged elements still set to be restored to their former state.
Church officials involved in planning the renovation have argued the changes will help explain Christianity to the cathedral's millions of annual visitors in a more accessible format.
France's National Heritage and Architecture Commission will hear detailed proposals for Notre-Dame's interior at a meeting next week.
Notre-Dame cathedral, in central Paris, was largely built in the 13th century but underwent a substantial restoration during the 19th century led by architect Viollet-le-Duc.
In the second Models Talk film published in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Japanese architect Kazuko Akamatsu explains how she used voids to create a feeling of openness at the Shibuya Stream skyscraper in Japan. Watch from 3:00pm London time.
The nine-minute video, aptly named A Matter of Void, takes viewers through the design process of creating the 37-storey skyscraper and retail complex in Shibuya, Tokyo.
Snippets of a scaled model are woven in between video footage of the finished building, as a voiceover by Akamatsu sheds light on how it is designed to connect visitors to the outside.
Shibuya Stream in Tokyo is the focus of the film A Matter of Void
A Matter of Void is one of three videos being published this week by the research institution and museum Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in partnership with Dezeen.
The film series, named Models Talk, explores recent architecture projects in Japan that address different urban issues. Each video is available to watch in Japanese with English subtitles.
Kazuko Akamatsu discusses the skyscraper's design in the film with a scaled model
Shibuya Stream was developed by Akamatsu as part of Coelacanth and Associates, an architecture studio where she is a partner. In A Matter of Void, she focuses specifically on the design of the building's lower levels, which are punctured by a series of voids.
The architect said these voids create a feeling of porosity and help visitors to connect to the outside, deliberately challenging more traditional skyscrapers that are designed as sealed-off environments.
"When you enter a typical high-rise building, you are completely enclosed by interior air," Akamatsu explained.
"But here, we wanted users to see the outside," she continued, "to feel what's happening outside by interacting with the outdoor air."
The voids that break up the Shibuya Stream serve primarily as semi-outdoor terraces. However, one of the largest ones incorporates a big open staircase.
Pointing at the scaled model in the video, Akamatsu explained how this stairway was designed to draw people up from the street and open up the building to the city.
Other voids in the building help bring in natural light, while others simply serve as visual links throughout the development.
"It's nice to have visual contacts with various scenes in the building even if you cannot be there," said Akamatsu. "This is the condition we wanted to create."
The video highlights the tower's large staircase
As part of the film, Akamatsu also uses the scaled model of Shibuya Stream to highlight the curved passage that runs through its ground floor.
This passage, which was modelled on an old train line that previously occupied the site, informed the zoning of the building's lower levels. Shops and restaurants are left open to the passage and encouraged to spill out onto it, while terraces on the upper floors look down onto it.
Akamatsu graduated from Japan Women's University in 1990, before joining Coelacanth and Associates and being promoted to partner in 2002.
Alongside practising as an architect, she is also a professor at Hosei University and lecturer at Kobe Design University.
Footage of the finished building is woven into the film
The three-part Models Talk series was produced by the CCA in collaboration with architectural curator Kayoko Ota and directed by architectural design firm Studio Gross.
It was carried out for the CCA c/o Tokyo programme, which is run by the institution with Ota to "develop research and projects, and to facilitate public engagement in Tokyo".
On 8 December, the CCA will be hosting a live conversation at 8:00pm Montreal time with its director Giovanna Borasi, alongside Ota, Studio Gross and the architects featured in Model Talks. The panel will discuss the film series and the urban issues they address.
Attendance is free and registration is open here. To find out more about CCA c/o Tokyo, visit cca.qc.ca/tokyo.
Partnership content
This article was written by Dezeen for CCA as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
