House in Asamayama by Kidosaki Architects Studio

Designed for a client who spent years looking for the ideal location for a residence, the house sits on a steep slope off the side of a wooded road. The north-facing side of the residence boasts extensive glass walls allowing natural light to filter through and offering gorgeous views of Mount Asama in the distance. Wood panelling on the outside gives the residence an elemental look and helps it to blend in with its surrounding natural environment

House in Asamayama, Japan, by Kidosaki Architects Studio

BeoPlay A9 Speaker by Bang & Olufsen

The stand-alone speaker features a 2.1 bass reflex loudspeaker system that combines five dedicated speaker units and amps with timeless design to create a complete sound solution. The speaker also features a fine-tuned DSP (digital signal processor) algorithm that makes one’s music collection come alive and deliver surprisingly rich bass tones with the patented Adaptive Bass Linearization technology.

BeoPlay A9 Speaker, from Bang & Olufsen

The Mandai Courtyard House by Atelier M+A

Setting amidst the nature reserve that bounds the Upper Seletar reservoir, the bungalow at Mandai area is bestowed with the serenity and repose rarely found in the island of buzzling Singapore. In the island where every inch of land is dear, the owner’s brief for a single-storey bungalow house is unusual, and reflects a nonchalant attitude towards the mainstream practice of maximising the allowable buildable area granted by the authority. The house is designed in an orthogonal ‘doughnut’ shape, with the interior spaces surrounding a central open courtyard. The ‘doughnut’ configuration allows the owner to enjoy a secured outdoor space inside the building during the evenings after work, while the roof laid with timber deck above the living/dining space is an ‘outdoor living/dining space’ during parties and gathering. The living/dining space make up the front of the house that opens up to the road along the front boundary. A wall-to-wall timber deck strip aligns each side of the living/dining space where one could sit to enjoy the front garden and the courtyard, not unlike the ‘engawa’ concept of the traditional Japanese house, which is a transitory space between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. Full-height glass sliding panels open the interior and the central courtyard to the public unapprehensively to blend the exterior into the interior. Natural light abounds the interior and constant breeze of fresh air is a given for the abode. An overhanging canopy floats in front of the entrance door to create a weightless statement in contrast to the grounded house form. The white colour with black colour such as ‘gargoyles’ and window frames as accentuation is a tribute towards the black and white colonial bungalows which are significant in Singapore.

The Mandai Courtyard House, Mandai, Singapore, by Atelier M+A
Photography by Robert Such

Mayor Sofa by Arne Jacobsen for &tradition

The Danish design company &tradition has introduced the Mayor Sofa designed by designer and architect Arne Jacobsen for Søllerød City Hall in 1939. The sofa is one of his early designs and has not been put into production until now.

Mayor Sofa, by Arne Jacobsen, for &tradition

Casa O by 01ARQ

Casa O, Chile, by 01ARQ

Tenda by Benjamin Hubert Research

Tenda is a series of textile lamps launching at the London Design Festival as a result of Benjamin Hubert’s materials driven research
Tenda Italian for tent is comprised of materials from a diverse mix of industries: Fibre glass rods from the kite manufacturing industry, Lycra from the sports industry, 4 way stretch mesh from the underwear industry, A construction technique from the tent industry.
The primary component of the lamp series is a multi layered construction of textile. The exterior is covered by a quad-directional high stretch micro mesh. This give the lamp its volume and an ethereal lightness with a sense of varying opacity depending on your viewing position. The internal layers are constructed from Lycra which diffuses the light source. The interplay between external stretched convex curves and internal concave forms creates a dynamic typology of components and progressive design language. These layers of textile are supported by flexible fibre glass rods held in tension by textile and brass connectors. The technical textile system has been developed in house over a period of 12 months after several iterations of prototyping and testing.

Tenda, by Benjamin Hubert Research

150 m House by Shinichi Ogawa & Associates

Through the water fall as a entrance gate, the road leads you to the main house extending east and west on the left, and on the opposite side, a glass house in the forest as a guest house. The main house is simply composed of a white cube and 2 horizontal plates of 11m wide by 150m long.

All rooms for owner family are put linearly between the plates, opening to both north corridor and south deck terrace. A glazed room for spa & fitness at the east end, 6 bedrooms with exclusive bathroom and living room, a family living/dining room, and storages or maid rooms at the west end. This extremely long planning takes advantage of the beautiful landscape, gaining a panoramic view and a dynamic scale space as the very long deck terrace. At the same time, it regards a airy comfortable living environment.

Above the private rooms, there is a roof top terrace covered with sand and the swimming pool of 40m long. It’s like a floating sky beach surrounded by mountains. The white cube as formal living/dining room has 6M high ceiling. The stairs from the hall below divides the large room into southern living space and northern dining space.

150m weekend house — the longest house in this century — was born by admiring the mountain scenery as a given condition and imagining a seascape as the contrastive view.

150 m House, Khao yai, Thailand, by Designer, for Shinichi Ogawa & Associates, Photography © Pirak Anurakawachon

Blaster Chair by James Irvine

“NgispeN is a company which seems to want to enjoy itself. If I think about furniture to enjoy I think about those wonderful time wasting moments in life. Those moments when you want to do nothing. Maybe just spin around and let time drift by. Maybe wait for someone to come up and say hello. So I thought of a cone sitting on another cone and where the two cones meet they rotate. Then I realised it looked a bit like the nozzle of a rocket engine so I gave the chair the name Blaster.”

Blaster Chair, by James Irvine, for NgispeN

Röhsska Chair by CKR for the Swedish Design Museum

Röhsska Chair, by Claesson Koivisto Rune, for The Röhsska Museum of Fashion, Design and Decorative Arts

Junta Castilla León by Alberto Campo Baeza

We raise high stone walls built of the same stone as the Zamora Cathedral, that follow the outline of the site, like a box open to the sky. We thus achieve a secret garden in which we conserve and plant leafy trees, aromatic plants and flowers. And we open openings in these stone walls that frame, from within, the cathedral, the landscape and the surrounding buildings. And in this verdant garden we build a transparent glass box that makes it seem as if one is working within the garden.

For the stone wall, qualities and dimensions were studied to express the strength of the stone in the same way as it is in the Cathedral. The same stone in large dimensions and with great thickness that accentuate the strength of the proposal. For the building itself, a glazed and perfectly controlled facade was conceived, with maximum simplicity in its construction system. The facade works actively in regard to the climate, able to hold in heat in the winter (Greenhouse effect) and at the same time to expel the heat and protect the building in the summer (Ventilated facade). It is a stone box open to the sky that holds a crystalline box and protects it and tempers it, immersed in the midst of a wonderful garden.

Offices for Junta de Castilla y León, Zamora, Spain, by Alberto Campo Baeza, In collaboration with Pablo Feméndez Lorenzo, Pablo Fledondo Diez, Alfonso Gonzalez Gaisan and Francisco Blanco Velasco