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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.

As part of the activities taking place during the What Design Can Do festival, the Make It Circular Challenge has been launched, with a deadline of January 31. The challenge seeks proposals in the categories of "What We Eat," "What We Wear," "What We Buy," "How We Package," or "How We Build" to help address the devastating effects of overconsumption, waste, and climate change. The Make It Circular Challenge awards a prize of 10,000 euros for the development of circular design projects that help combat the climate crisis in a creative way.

Chilean architect Smiljan Radic will deliver a lecture this Wednesday, January 18, at 8:00 PM as part of the XXII Architecture and Urbanism Biennial of Chile: 'Vulnerable Habitats.' The event will take place in the temporary inflatable structure designed by the architect in collaboration with Nicolás Schmidt, located in Plaza Bulnes, Santiago.

The submission of papers for the six thematic sessions is open to all participants of the V International Seminar on Hospital Architecture History (V SIHAH).

The modern design of a protected life, assuming a passive body constructed individually in the disease-health opposition, focuses on the elimination of disease through the use of the hospital as a fundamental device for biomedical knowledge and intervention. However, health is permanently reinvented through its social, ecological, and political dimensions, and the medicalization of life centered on the individual is expanding into spaces composed of less static and more complex visions, problematized by (re)emerging challenges such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic.

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.

Innovative strength in industry is not only about developing new products, but also successfully establishing them on the market, because they make everyday life and the world a little bit better. As a full-range supplier of sanitary products, Duravit has a number of innovations in its range: the hygienic, easy-care ceramic surface HygieneGlaze, the efficient, water-saving HygieneFlush WC flushing technology or taps with the energy- and water-saving FreshStart or MinusFlow functions. Known for its acrylic bathtubs and shower trays, the Black Forest-based manufacturer continues to ask itself: How can we make it even better? Could a material be developed that has similarly positive properties to acrylic but can be completely recycled at the end of its life cycle? The answers can be found in its first product made of a new material called DuraSolid Nature: the Sustano shower tray range.

The 36th PLEA Conference will be held in Santiago, Chile, from November 23 to 25 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. This year’s theme is influenced by the pandemic and questions the role of our future built environments: "The Future of Sustainable Buildings and Urbanism in the Age of Emergency."

Designer and academic Brook Muller has authored a book called Blue Architecture: Water, Design, and Environmental Futures that presents innovative approaches to water-centric urban design. We asked him how a “hydro-logical” approach to architecture could allow us to design cities that improve water sustainability as well as promoting more equitable distribution of our most vital resource.

Sustainability was a hot topic at this year’s Cersaie trade fair, the biggest international ceramic tile and surfacing event, held annually in Bologna, which exhibits the latest developments in ceramics industry trends. Dynamic discussions explored the environmental impact of the raw materials of ceramics, the thermal properties of ceramic tiles as insulators, the biophilic effect of ceramic tiles within urban interiors – and much more.

Opulence comes at a cost and it’s not just the sort that will leave your purse lighter. Exotic woods dent, gold tarnishes, marble stains and chips. But it doesn’t stop us hankering after the materials we perceive to be effortlessly elegant and replete with character. Okay, so we also like a bit of polish and precision in our building materials these days, alongside durability and ethical manufacture, ease of installation and maintenance alongside hygienic surfaces. But what’s often been missing from modern engineered materials is old-fashioned warmth and poetry. Is it too much to ask for both?

With the political, economic, social and ecological rollercoaster seemingly careering out of control, we are discovering what might be considered by some as the blooming obvious but by much of the business world who often like to box consumers, a hurdle: we humans are multifaceted and changeable. For Baiju Shah of Accenture Song, the creative arm of the consulting conglomerate, the term life-centric is replacing customer-centric, as people grapple to focus in on themselves, their health, happiness and survival, while panic planning for the future of the planet.

Our quest today for the natural, the hand-crafted and the original in our built environments is righting some of the wrongs we’ve inflicted on our land and seas with the mass production of products made from synthetic materials. It’s also exposing a contemporary yearning for warmth, comfort and poetry in our surroundings, not seen perhaps since the seventies slump – the last economic happening that opened design doors to bamboo and rattan, and cosseting ‘fat’ furniture. 

Even if you have never engaged with the ins and outs of a building’s acoustics, you will, no doubt, have had many a meeting or passing conversation eased by Rockfon’s sound-absorbing solutions. They may have invisibly clad a ceiling above you in tile form or seamlessly formed the white walls that surrounded you. Rockfon – a part of Rockwool Group – specialises in banishing acoustic bounce with sound absorbing products made from organic stone wool. The products have been part of the fabric of our public spaces – offices, schools, restaurants and libraries – for more than 60 years.

As our collective conscience challenges the ethics of mass production and the manufacturers of high-end furniture make moves towards more mindful and individually specified making, a design-and-make mentality is becoming ever more present in the industry. It’s new but old. It’s workshops coming to the fore and it’s happening when design entrepreneurs are committed to the very 2022 preoccupations of waste-free production, individualisation and durability.

Castro Abierto is an architecture, landscape, and heritage festival that aims to highlight local construction culture, its contemporary expressions, and the memories embedded in the urban and rural archipelago landscape of the Castro commune. This initiative is organized by Fundación Aldea and funded by the National Fondart, under its architecture festival category.