Dezeen Showroom: putting a contemporary twist on traditional inlay techniques, the Enigma coffee tables from Hessentia feature a code-like pattern with optical effect.
In the Enigma collection, narrow black and white wood tiles are inlaid across the sides of the tables to create a digital pattern.
The Hessentia coffee tables are made with inlaid black and white wood tiles
The finish, called Matrix, is available in either a natural or glossy lacquered finish, the latter matching the black glass tabletops.
Made by expert craftspeople, the Enigma collection pays tribute to the antique cabinet-making techniques of the 18th century while bringing in a distinctive modern element.
The inlay pattern puts a contemporary twist on traditional cabinet-making techniques
The tables come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They are made out of Kapok wood from Central Africa.
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.
Dezeen promotion:Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Museum of Architecture have launched a competition to find exceptional designs for three new treehouses across Kew UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The competition is part of the Treehouses at Kew Exhibition, which runs from April to October 2023, and aims to "provide one of the most unmissable visitor experiences in the 2023 London cultural calendar".
UK-based and international architects are invited to design a treehouse for one of three trees across Kew's 320-acre site. Each treehouse will have a theme, and architects can choose to design the treehouse of their choice.
The winning designs will examine how trees are essential to human wellbeing
The first treehouse is intended for a Norway maple tree and will highlight play. The second will be for a pine tree and explore biomimicry, while the third treehouse, designed for a silver lime, will showcase sustainable materials.
The winning treehouses will be constructed at Kew Gardens, in addition to three separately commissioned treehouses and another that will be built in collaboration with young people. Seven treehouses will be built in total.
"The other four will be direct commissions," said the Museum of Architecture. "Three treehouses will be direct commissions by architects from Kew's designated International Scientific Priority countries. One will be created as a co-designed project in collaboration with young people."
The winning treehouses will be directly commissioned by Kew Gardens
The winning designs from the competition will be made from sustainable materials, and the designers will also need to ensure that their treehouse can be sustainability reassembled elsewhere.
"An anticipated 900,000 visitors will attend the exhibition during its run, and each treehouse must inspire visitors in fun and interactive ways to learn more about protecting the climate, biodiversity and sustainable design," said the competition's organisers.
The treehouses will also showcase how trees across the world are important to human wellbeing and how they provide us with a range of essential commodities, including food, clean air, medicines, fuels and timber.
The winning treehouses will be designed from sustainable materials
"This is a unique venture for us in that it combines a celebration of our most prized asset, our beautiful collection of trees at Kew Gardens, with an opportunity to highlight our global science work through an architectural exhibition," said Richard Deverell, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
"We hope it will inspire our visitors to look at trees differently and ultimately to protect our planet and its precious biodiversity by championing high-quality, nature-based solutions to the challenges we face."
The treehouses will be built for a Norway maple tree, a pine tree and a silver lime
The winning architects will also be included in the 'Treehouses at Kew' wider visitor programme, which intends to communicate how architects can address the climate crisis, including designing spaces that balance the needs of humans and the natural world.
"Architects draw from nature to inform their designs aesthetically, to find design solutions, and come up with sustainable outcomes," said Melissa Woolford, founder of the Museum of Architecture.
"The Treehouses at Kew Design Competition is an important opportunity to show how forward-thinking designs and material use can have a positive impact on our planet," she added.
"I am excited to see how design teams respond to this opportunity to create innovative design approaches that inspire thousands of people to think differently about the natural and built environments."
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a global conservation centre of plant and fungal science
The Museum of Architecture (MoA) is a London-based charity focused on increasing public engagement with architecture to encourage learning and collaboration.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a botanic garden and global conservation centre of plant and fungal science located in Southwest London.
To learn more about the competition, visit the Museum of Architecture's website.
Partnership content
This article was written by Dezeen for the Museum of Architecture and Kew Gardens as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
The winners of the AHEAD Global 2021 hospitality design awards are being announced in a series of virtual ceremonies broadcast on Dezeen. Watch the second part above from 1:00pm London time.
The event will be hosted by Sleeper Magazine's editor-at-large Guy Dittrich and will feature imagery of the AHEAD nominees, as well as content from the sponsors of the awards programme.
Six Senses Ibiza is one of the nominated hotels for the AHEAD Global 2021 awards
The AHEAD Awards celebrate striking hospitality projects from across the world and is split into four different regions: Europe, Middle East and Africa (MEA), Asia and the Americas.
The AHEAD Global awards represent the finale of the programme of regional events in 2021, in which the winners are pitted against each other to determine the best recently-opened hotels worldwide.
This year the winners are being announced over the course of four virtual ceremonies, taking place daily from 11 to 13 January with a final broadcast on 20 January in which the winners of the People's Choice and Ultimate Accolade awards will be revealed.
In today's ceremony, Dittrich will announce the winners of the Hotel Conversion, Landscaping & Outdoor Spaces, Lobby & Public Spaces, Lodges Cabins & Tented Camps, and Resort Hotel categories.
Hotel K5 Tokyo is also amongst the nominees for AHEAD Global
Tomorrow, winners will be unveiled in the Restaurant, Spa & Wellness, Suite, Visual Identity and New Concept categories.
This ceremony was broadcast by Dezeen for AHEAD as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here. Images courtesy of AHEAD.
Chinese architecture studio Gad has completed a building with a gridded bamboo facade, which serves as an exhibition centre for a traditional type of Chinese wine.
The Shaoxing Rice Wine Town Reception Room is located in Dongpu, a town in China's Zhejiang province where this particular type of yellow rice wine originates.
The building is an "exhibition and experience hall" for Shaoxing rice wine
Gad – one half of former Dezeen Awards winner Gad Line+ Studio – designed the building for a part of the town that is still largely undeveloped.
It will initially serve as an "exhibition and experience hall" for Shaoxing rice wine, but will later be converted into a commercial building containing three restaurants. The centre also currently includes a bookstore and a flower shop.
It features a gridded bamboo facade
With this adaptability in mind, Gad adopted a modular approach that allows the building's layout to be easily changed.
Although the original intention was to use a wooden structure, Gad eventually opted for steel as it was felt the material would be easier to assemble and would better serve the region's rainy climate.
The building will later be converted into restaurants
This modular structure extends out to the building's facade, where the steel members are framed by lengths of bamboo.
"The bamboo planks are preprocessed into L-shaped members in the factory, which reduces the on-site assembling workload and joint treatment, and improves the construction speed and the accuracy of on-site installation," said Gad.
It is located beside the Dashu River in Dongpu
The building is located beside the Dashu River, in a largely undeveloped area of Shaoxing Rice Wine Town.
The site was originally a rice wine factory and the red brick chimney of this former structure is preserved in tribute.
A recessed ground floor creates space for outdoor seating
"The site is surrounded by dense water network," said Gad. "In ancient times, it was the waterway of Shaoxing Grain transport, facing the Dashu River in the east, with good landscape conditions."
The three-storey building takes advantage of its waterside setting, with large sections of glazing set behind the bamboo grid.
At ground level, the exterior wall is set back by one module to create a sheltered seating area for visitors.
The three-storey building has a modular structure
"Adding another frame to the outer wall of the building allows the interior solid space to retreat and form a deep and layered facade," said Gad.
"The awning, which refers to the removable windows of Jiangnan folk houses, further increases the depth and layers of the facade."
The layout is designed to be adaptable. Photo is courtesy of SUNAC China Holdings
The modularity is further emphasised inside, where furnishings follow the structure of the grid. Partitions walls are formed of gridded bookshelves, while display stands feature wooden lattices.
"The project is an experiment in modular design and construction," added Gad.
"It responds to complex functional construction demands with a unified modular design language, infusing the vitality of the times into the thousand-year-old ancient town."
A bookstore is included in the building. Photo is courtesy of SUNAC China Holdings
Design studio Linehouse combined stainless steel and meteorites to create a space-themed cafe in central Shanghai as Australian chain Black Star Pastry's first Chinese outpost.
The ground floor of the red-brick villa serves as a coffee and pastry shop for Black Star Pastry, which is famous for selling a Strawberry Watermelon Cake that was dubbed "Australia's most Instagrammed dessert" by the New York Times.
The cafe is Black Star Pastry's first in China
Shanghai-based Linehouse designed the space to evoke the feeling of being in space.
"The ground floor stirs up the incredible sensation of being aboard a spaceship," said the studio.
Linehouse designed the store to evoke a spaceship
The studio covered the walls of the cafe in stainless steel shelving that holds thousands of meteorites.
The shelving extends across the ceiling to form an arched form that the studio described as "an exploration of gravity vs weightlessness".
A countertop display contains nine floating cakes
Continuing this theme, a countertop display features nine levitating cakes. Displayed in glass containers the revolving cakes are supported by magnetic levitation.
The phrase "we are all just stardust" can be found lining the edges of the communal tables, creating an effect of each letter dripping off the edge of the table by gravity.
Elsewhere on the ground floor there are retail areas stocked with coffee beans and apparel.
A terrazzo staircase leads guests upstairs to a dining space
A staircase clad in roughcast concrete terrazzo leads the guests upstairs to an exhibition-style dining space called the Black Star Gallery.
It features artworks by four emerging international artists curated by Black Star Pastry creative director Louis Li to create an imaginary futuristic habitat.
The ceiling is lined in a metal grid. The floor is a rough concrete cast terrazzo tile, giving the space a hint of wildness and creating a museum-like mood for the art.
The gallery can be used as a tearoom in the afternoon and a cocktail lounge by night.
Blackened timber covers the floors of the private room
A private room named There There is separated from the main dining area by a deep blue velvet curtain. It contains an intimate bar wrapped in acid-etched blue metal.
Blackened wood covers the floor of the room in contrast to the exposed concrete of the cafe's other spaces. A stainless steel curved backdrop holds the wines on display.
The versatile gallery can be used during both day and night
Black Star Pastry was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2008 and is the creator of the Strawberry Watermelon Cake, the world's most Instagrammed cake according to the New York Times. This is its first store outside of Australia.
Creative direction and art curation: Louis Li – Black Star Pastry
Architect: Linehouse
Design team: Alex Mok, Cherngyu Chen, Yeling Guo, Rongli Chen, Kaihang Zhou, Leah Lin
Levitating cake display: March Studio
Branding graphics: Studio Ongarato/Noritake
Commissioned artists: Olivia Steele, Naoko Ito, Rowan Corkhill, Debbie Lawson
Artwork production: UAP
Client: Black Star Pastry
