Videos

With so many architecture and design trade shows taking place around the world each year, it can be challenging to identify which ones offer exhibitors and visitors a genuinely useful and valuable experience. In recent years there has been a trend towards more local events that provide opportunities for industry professionals to make meaningful connections with potential partners. Since it was established in 2019, The Architect Show has become an important forum for Greece’s architecture community, bringing together representatives from national and international brands that support the country’s vibrant real estate market.

Home elevators are increasing in popularity. For one thing, people are living longer and the vast majority plan to age in place. Indeed, a US survey found that 90% of adults over 65 would like to stay in their current residence. A lift in one's home serves a number of practical purposes besides enhancing mobility, like the convenience of moving groceries or heavy objects between levels. In addition, a home elevator is a real conversation piece – not to mention that it can add up to 10% to the value of a home.

It is the contrast between the beach and forest walks that are so important, and the vibrant city with its multicultural influences that informs Nathalie Deboel's style. The interior designer lives in Ukkel, just outside Brussels, but runs her studio in the Belgian seaside town of Knokke – where she finds the tranquility that's reflected in her projects. "Comforting Homes" is the title of her monograph, published by Stockmans Art Books, which features some of her well balanced projects. To understand how she does it, Markus Hieke and Bette interviewed the designer on perpetuating stories of buildings and making them –with a view towards the sustainability of bathroom spaces– their inhabitants' favorite place.

How can we create the best possible surroundings for the elderly to live and enjoy their later years? This seems to be the core question behind the Wentworth Grange care home in the North of England. Here, the word 'care' takes on a great variety of meanings. Essential things like accommodation, nutrition and nursing services have been given a high level of attention, all combining to offer an ideal type of experience for this period of our lives. Wentworth Grange's insightful interpretation of care is visible in the architecture, the garden and the interiors, even in the staff uniforms, demonstrating sensitivity and understanding of the degree to which our physical environment plays a role in our everyday wellbeing. 

In an ideal world, doors could seamlessly disappear and reappear, creating connections and barriers when needed to provide the ultimate flexibility. Domestic interiors increasingly combine work and leisure, requiring both conviviality and solitude, and the same is true of workspaces, which increasingly feature adaptable ways to link different zones and activities. Tried and tested spatial concepts such as open plan or many small, cellular rooms are no longer sufficient as, on their own, they do not provide real flexibility and adaptability.

For city dwellers, balconies can be a real blessing. They mediate between space-saving stacked domiciles and the vastness and liveliness of the surrounding neighbourhood. They can be landscaped into small oases, and you can even take a holiday on a ‘balcony’. And for architects, they offer a welcome element for structuring the facade. They also, however, pose a challenge, because not every balcony faces a garden or a quiet side street.

We are living in an era of active interiors where shifting perimeters, flexible set ups and agile activities are truly testing the limits of design; workspaces are hybrid, retail installations are ever-evolving and cultural spaces are multi-dimensional. Amidst changing scenarios, lighting is key to shaping interior spaces with just the right amount of mood, drama or practical spotlighting. To meet the demands of these cutting-edge interiors, lighting today must provide a solid framework that can embrace both changing dynamics and high quality consistency ​​– offering flexibility, precision control and a timeless aesthetic.

Is it the award-worthy barista skills at the third-floor coffee bar that make your days in the office bearable? Or is it being able to ring-fence a desk and height-adjusted chair and call them your own while the rest of the world hot desks? Perhaps it is knowing that the warming of your hands and toes is at someone else’s expense or that in this space you are you and not mum, dad, daughter, or husband. Or you might put it simply down to the camaraderie of the team and the common sense of purpose. One thing that is not in question, however, is that since the recent shake-up of our working practices, it matters now more than ever that productivity and wellbeing are in balance in the office, and contentment and comfort are key to both.

What’s more important, work or wellbeing? Should we have to choose? A ‘good work ethic’ –as in placing work before all else– used to be a badge of honour, certainly among generation X-ers who grew up with post-war parents and a recession to wrestle with just as they were getting going on working life in the 1990s. Today’s economic situation might present similar wrangles in securing a wage among their off-spring, so-called generation Z, but it is nevertheless this emerging set of workers that are teaching the rest of us that work at any cost –particularly that of our mental and physical wellbeing– should not be a life ambition.

No topic permeates more areas of society today than concerns about the global climate in the coming decades. How extreme will it become and above all how can we adapt as quickly as possible to better cope with and manage the situation? Because one thing is certain: The last hundred years could be characterised with the words 'too much' – in relation to emissions, resource consumption and imbalance in nature. Driven by the internationally declared motivation to limit climate change, the industry is reacting with determination and recognising the crisis as an opportunity.

Videos

If anyone can be said to know about the wishes and dreams of brides-to-be, surely it's those behind the creation of that mythical matrimonial object, the wedding dress. For more than 30 years, one of Sweden’s most famous fashion designers, Lars Wallin, has created dresses for women about to live, what is for many, the ultimate romantic experience. And with his design for a recently finished bridal suite at Gothenburg's SAS Radisson, Wallin has demonstrated not only his haute couture finesse in realising dreams of glamour and romance, but also an ability to seamlessly transfer his creative talents from the boutique to the bedroom.

The Design Center Baden-Württemberg has opened the call for submissions for the 2023 edition of its Focus Open International Design Award. As a non-commercial design prize, the Focus Open offers particularly low barriers to participation thanks to its moderate fees, while providing a high level of visibility from which, in the event of an award, smaller agencies, design studios and companies, in particular, can benefit. Entries can be submitted in a total of 14 categories including Bathroom, Kitchen, Light, Mobility, Investment products, Sport and Mobility.

Videos

The last two years have turned society and its habits upside down. The working world, too, where hardly anything is the way it used to be. But this new start is proving to be a wonderful opportunity to rethink content and work processes and to reinvent oneself. Since last fall at the latest, it has been clear where this journey is headed. In October, the internationally active contract furniture manufacturer Brunner presented innovative design news that offers a solution to the issues and the changed situation.

The Desforma range is quite unique in the design world. It doesn't do reheated mid-century modern or strict straight lines or no-nonsense functionalism in powdered steel. Desforma does swooping, fluid lines and organic curves, sofas composed of sine waves that seem shaped by natural forces and summon up swaying sea life, chairs that might have blossomed into being.

With its curved, handcrafted shapes inspired by Japanese culture, the Zencha bathroom collection by Sebastian Herkner soothes its users in a meditative way.

Trends 23/24 at January's Heimtextil in Frankfurt will focus on material cycles and sustainability strategies for textiles – and use the analogue fair platform to promote exchange, present new products and bring experts together.

In early December, the global winners of the International VELUX Award 2022 were announced, a competition for architecture students that celebrates the innovative and creative use of daylight in a broad range of different projects.