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      Connected virtual exhibition sees nine designers craft carbon-negative furniture from hardwoods

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      Dezeen promotion: a range of carbon-negative furniture items created by designers including Ini Archibong and Thomas Heatherwick for London’s Design Museum can now be viewed as part of a permanent virtual exhibition.Jointly commissioned by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), Benchmark Furniture and the Design Museum, the Connected exhibition tasked nine designers with creating a table and seating object for their own home offices.

      Top: Studiopepe’s geometric table and chair. Above: The Connected exhibition was on show at London’s Design Museum
      Designed for their personal use, each designer’s creation was made to suit their new ways of living and working from home as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
      The exhibition aimed to explore how designers and craftspeople have adapted their working methods during lockdown.
      Designers were also invited to record video diaries documenting the process of creating their pieces, which have been compiled and made into a documentary.

      Ini Archibong’s design was informed by the rock formations of The Giant’s Causeway

      Participants included Archibong, who is based in Switzerland, London-based Heatherwick Studio, Jaime Hayon from Spain and Netherlands-based Sabine Marcelis.
      Other designers involved were Maria Bruun, Sebastian Herkner, Maria Jeglinska-Adamczewska, Studiopepe and Studio Swine.

      Ini Archibong designs rock-like furniture with its own drainage system

      While Archibong took cues from the undulating rock formations of Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland for his Kadamba Gate table and seating design, Heatherwick Studio created a modular desk with wooden planters for legs.
      The nine furniture pieces were displayed at London’s Design Museum from 11 September to 11 October. The show, which was digitally scanned by V21 Artspace, is now permanently available to view online as a virtual exhibition.

      Thomas Heatherwick designed a table with planters as legs for the Connected project
      Each design was made from a choice of three sustainable American hardwoods: red oak, maple or cherry. According to AHEC, the resulting collection of objects removed more carbon from the atmosphere than they generated.
      “When considered as a group, the Connected designs are better than carbon neutral,” said AHEC. “The total global warming potential (GWP) – often referred to as the ‘carbon footprint’ – of the nine Connected designs is minus 342 kilograms of CO2 equivalent.”

      Heatherwick Studio unveils modular desk with wooden planter legs

      “It takes a little over 10 seconds for the hardwood logs harvested to manufacture all the Connected designs to be replaced by new growth in the US forest,” it continued.
      “The full environmental Life Cycle Assessments on each of the nine projects prove that these pieces are environmentally sound, going beyond carbon neutrality and leaving a negative carbon footprint.”

      Sabine Marcelis designed a work-from-home cubicle with a bright yellow interior for the show
      Details on the exhibition can be found via the Design Museum website, while more information on the work AHEC does can be found on its webpage.

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      Game On's neon-filled exhibition design paid homage to 80s video games

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      Spanish practice Smart & Green Design re-designed the Barbican’s touring Game On exhibition for a former underground cistern in Madrid, using more than 150 LED arches to evoke the neon colours of the 1980s.The retrospective, which is reportedly the largest international exhibition to explore the history of video games, spans more than 400 collector’s objects and drawings covering the birth of the technology in the 1960s to the present day.

      Visitors to the exhibition can play 150 video games
      Alongside this, 150 original video games can be played as part of the show, including early games like Space Invaders and Tetris, classics like Rock Band, Pokemon and The Sims as well as more recent games like Fifa and Wii Sports.
      After touring more than 30 countries including China, the US and Australia, the exhibition came to Madrid between November 2019 and May 2020 courtesy of arts and culture foundation Fundación Canal.

      The LEDs are arranged into colour-coded arches

      Game On’s revamped set-up, which won Smart & Green Design the public vote at this year’s Dezeen Awards in the exhibition design category, relied heavily on multicoloured LED tubes suspended throughout the exhibition space.
      Set against an otherwise dimly lit interior, these nodded to the vector graphics of early video games such as Battle Zone, in which simple lines and curves on a black backdrop were used to create the illusion of three-dimensional spaces.
      LEDs were arranged into colour-coded arches and tunnels to create the impression of architectural elements, demarcating 15 distinct sections and guiding visitors through the exhibition.

      V&A curator Marie Foulston describes five pioneering designs in Videogames exhibition

      “The design follows simple geometries and repetitions as some of the most famous video games did,” Smart & Green Design’s founder Fernando Muñoz told Dezeen.
      “These lines created perspectives and the illusion of a 3D space, despite all the elements being two dimensional.”
      Each section was also signposted through a neon sign proclaiming its theme, which was suspended in the air in a nod to the floating score numbers often found in the top corner of a game’s screen.

      Neon signs read the names of the different sections
      The main challenge for the studio was to balance the buzz and excitement of an arcade with the kind of quiet, contemplative spaces needed to take in the archival objects, sketches and the stories behind them.
      For this purpose, Muñoz developed two distinct spatial typologies.
      While stations for playing the games were placed inside of the cistern’s existing 7.5-metre tall brick arches, each illuminated by an LED frame, the remaining exhibits were housed in “lights tunnels”, running perpendicularly to the arches.

      Stations for playing the video games are integrated into the cistern’s existing brick arches
      “We designed several tunnels using rectangular timber frames with lights integrated into them,” said Muñoz.
      “The rhythm of these structures created the feeling of being inside a separate space and they also hold either walls or vitrines to show the contents.”

      The light tunnels run perpendicularly to the existing brick arches (marked in black above)
      To create these walls, the studio opted for sound-absorbing panels, which had the dual benefit of muffling the noise coming from the gaming area outside as well as being easier to reuse for future exhibitions.
      “We try not to use heavy resources like MDF or drywall, which cannot be reused without generating waste and need a lot of energy both in the assembly and disassembly,” said Muñoz.
      “We try to create lightweight systems that are easily assembled and stored and with standardised dimensions so that they can be reused and adapted to any space or design.”

      Walls are integrated into the light tunnels to house information
      In order to offset the high embodied energy of the LEDs, Muñoz designed the lighting system to be modular, with tubes that are either half a metre, one metre or two metres long, so that they can be efficiently stored and repurposed again and again in different constellations.
      This is part of the studio’s wider strategy to try and cut down the amount of waste produced through temporary installations.

      The walls are made of sound-absorbent panels
      “The exhibitions industry is responsible for a huge amount of waste due to the ephemeral condition of its products,” Muñoz explained.
      “We believe that through design and longterm strategies of collaborating with exhibition organisers, waste can be reduced. We have designed our own carbon calculator and tailored protocols to interact with the administration and coordinators in the exhibitions world.”

      The exhibition was on show until May 2020
      Aside from Game On, other exhibition designs shortlisted for Dezeen Awards 2020 include a memorial filled with items that belonged to victims of gun violence and an installation at Fondazione Prada with 1,400 porcelain plates suspended from the walls of a golden room.
      Although the recipients of the public vote have already been determined, the winners of the official Dezeen Awards, judged by a panel of experts including Norman Foster, Michelle Ogundehin and Konstantin Grcic, will not be announced until the end of November.
      The Game On exhibition took place from 29 November 2019 to 31 May 2020 at Madrid’s Castellana 214. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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      Creating sets for Normal People took a mixture of intuition and second-hand gems says production designer

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      Using second-hand finds to create “clinical but tasteful” spaces reflective of protagonist Marianne Sheridan’s family life drove the set design of hit series Normal People, says production designer Lucy van Lonkhuyzen.Van Lonkhuyzen aimed to create a sense of realism when designing the show, which is set in the small, fictional town of Carricklea in Sligo, Ireland and later in Dublin.
      Making the sets look “lived-in” was one of Van Lonkhuyzen’s main objectives in production design, which she achieved by sourcing all props and details second-hand, from online marketplace Gumtree as well as charity, antique and vintage shops.
      “Finding these things is completely down to chance,” the designer told Dezeen. “That’s why I hoard!”
      “I hate to work with anything new,” she continued. “So I didn’t want to go to any big, major furniture places. I don’t do it and I never will.”
      “I wanted every set to be unique, and for the viewer to see that character in that set. I wanted everything on screen to look the best it possibly could be without looking like a set.”

      Top image and above: The Sheridan house in Sligo. Images by Suzie Lavelle.
      The 12-part production, which first aired in the UK in April 2020, is an adaptation of the best-selling book Normal People by Sally Rooney.

      Along with finding the right props from second-hand sources, the main challenge for Van Lonkhuyzen was forming the sets from the limited visual prompts in Rooney’s original narrative.
      “From a location perspective, Sally Rooney isn’t very descriptive in her books – she lets you kind of do the thinking on it. So it was really tricky,” she said.
      Cold colour palettes emulate Marianne’s family life
      The drama series follows the turbulent relationship between Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron – played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal – as they grow from teenagers to adults.
      Both the novel and TV series centre around Marianne’s complicated home life. Her father, who is deceased, is revealed to have been a domestic abuser, while her brother Alan is portrayed to carry many of the same traits, and is abusive to Marianne throughout the series.

      Connell’s bedroom in Sligo. Image by Suzie Lavelle.
      Van Lonkhuyzen wanted the sets to feed into this difficult dynamic. The Sheridan household is a large country-style estate featuring a “sedatory” interior colour palette of muted blue and grey tones.
      “I wanted the character of Marianne’s mother to be reflected in her [family] house,” Van Lonkhuyzen told Dezeen. “[Denise] is a solicitor who was born in Dublin but now lives in Sligo. She’s not a nice character, but she has taste.”
      “So, inherently, I wanted the Sheridan household to be quite cold, but yet there’s still little pockets of taste in there,” she continued.
      “By doing that, we literally didn’t buy anything new; everything was from auctions or from Gumtree. I didn’t want the house to look like anything else.”
      “If people notice that [the set] was designed… I haven’t done my job”
      The subdued colour palette provides the backdrop for tasteful pieces of art and furniture that Van Lonkhuyzen imagines to have been inherited from parents and grandparents, which she used to convey a sense of controlled sophistication.
      “It’s even in the way the house is laid out – she’d be quite progressive putting the kitchen in the front room, but yet she still has her traditional dining room across the hallway,” said the designer.

      Marianne’s bedroom in Sligo. Image by Suzie Lavelle.
      According to Van Lonkhuyzen, it was important to contrast Marianne’s cold, and at times dark, upbringing to the love-filled relationship that fellow protagonist Connell has with his mother, Lorraine, who works as a cleaner for the wealthy Sheridan family.
      The two characters live in a terraced house in the suburbs, which features warm tones and walls covered with worn wallpaper that is dotted with framed photographs of the mother and son.
      “Lorraine, even though she’s a single mom and money is tight, she has pride in her house,” said Van Lonkhuyzen. “So I wanted to give her a bit of design as well – the kind that didn’t jump out at you, but where everything just blended in.”
      “I’m not talking about colours or palettes here, I’m talking about look,” she continued. “Because, for me, if people notice that it was designed… well then I haven’t done my job.”
      “With shoots like Normal People, your first instinct needs to be right”
      The process of creating realistic sets was made easier by working with the location manager Eoin Holohan, who also happens to be Van Lonkhuyzen’s husband.
      “Locations are so important in anything like this. But also it was mainly just intuition. As soon as you step into place, you think, yeah, this is right,” she said.

      The kitchen in Marianne’s university house in Dublin. Image by Suzie Lavelle.
      “With shoots like Normal People you don’t really have time to think; your first instinct needs to be right, and if it’s not then you’re in trouble,” she continued.
      “I was lucky in that, instinctively, myself and my team got it correct eight or nine times out of 10. Once the Sheridan house was nailed, it made everything a lot easier because you had a basis to work from.”

      Marianne’s Wellington Road house. Image by Lucy van Lonkhuyzen.
      Later in the series, Marianne and Connell leave Sligo to attend university at Trinity College Dublin.
      For Marianne’s university accommodation, which is located on Wellington Road, Van Lonkhuyzen wanted to bring in some of the same design elements seen in her mother’s home, but with a more vibrant and less constrained touch.
      Marianne’s university flat reflects her freedom from hometown
      While the set conveys her new-found independence and freedom that was granted by moving out of her family home, it still shows that she hasn’t quite been able to let go of the style that formed her, said the designer.
      “She’s come from such a cold and clinical, but tasteful, environment, so I wanted to bring a sense of warmth and security into Wellington road.”
      This was formed with the help of colourful, “bourgeois-style” furniture and “much looser” artworks than was seen in the Sheridan home, which hang on pistachio green walls alongside shelves full of random objects and trinkets.

      The living room in Marianne’s Wellington Road house. Image by Lucy van Lonkhuyzen.
      While Marianne’s family home and Wellington road flat were filmed in-situ, other settings were built from scratch in a studio to better host some of the show’s more intimate sex scenes. This included Connell’s bedroom at his family home in Sligo.
      “Connell’s [family] house was tiny, and the bedroom was even smaller. So because of the nature of the scenes, it made complete sense to put it into a studio,” explained van Lonkhuyzen.
      “We built it so we could have a slightly bigger space that was better for camera angles and lighting and privacy, in order to get the right atmosphere for the scene that they needed to get.”

      Connell’s bedroom in Sligo. Image by Lucy van Lonkhuyzen.
      This room was one that Van Lonkhuyzen worried about the most, she explained, as it was important to make it effortlessly seem like any other ordinary bedroom belonging to a boy in his late-teens.
      The room is characterised by its messy, mismatched bedding and posters taped to the wall, which Van Lonkhuyzen confesses she “hates for various reasons”. However, she still managed to get one of her favourite pieces in – a simple yellow and red lamp from the 1980s, found in a nearby charity shop.
      “I was petrified of getting it wrong,” she said. “But then two women with sons in their late teens visited the set one day, and said ‘oh my god this looks exactly like my boy’s bedroom!’, so it turned out perfect.”

      Dressing scenes for Killing Eve was “like finding treasure” says set decorator

      Normal People was first released in the UK online on BBC Three on 26 April 2020, before premiering on RTÉ One in Ireland on 28 April and in the US on Hulu on 29 April. The full series is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
      Images courtesy of Suzie Lavelle and Lucy van Lonkhuyzen.

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      Tom Postma Design suspends 1,400 porcelain plates in gold-gilded room at Fondazione Prada

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      A Fondazione Prada exhibition about Chinese export porcelain, designed by Dutch firm Tom Postma Design, was housed within three prefabricated timber volumes clad in velvet and real gold leaf.From January to September 2020, The Porcelain Room installation was staged in one large exhibition space in the OMA-designed Torre annexe.
      The Porcelain Room has been shortlisted for this year’s Dezeen Award in the exhibition design category.

      Above: two of the timber volumes were clad in velvet and one in gold leaf. Top image: the final, golden room housed 1,400 porcelain plates
      Visitors passed through the walk-through volumes within it, tracing the history and legacy of Chinese porcelain in Europe and the Middle East.

      The installation progressed in chronological order, showcasing porcelain pieces dating back to the arrival of the Portuguese in south China in the early 16th century, all the way up to the 19th century.
      After passing through the first two rooms, the climactic highlight of the show was the final, gold-gilded room. Here, 1,400 of the approximately 1,700 porcelain pieces in the exhibition were suspended from the walls and ceiling.

      Porcelain pieces were suspended from the walls and ceiling of the Golden Porcelain Room
      This offered a modern reimagining of the porcelain rooms found in European palaces and aristocratic houses of the time, such as the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin and the Santos Palace in Lisbon.
      Then, China plates and other tableware pieces were used as decorative rather than functional items, arranged into lavish displays that covered most of the visible surfaces including the walls and sometimes even the ceiling like three-dimensional wallpaper.

      The room was a modern interpretation of the royal and aristocratic porcelain rooms of the time
      “These porcelain rooms were the first examples of people using objects designed for a purpose, usually dishes intended for the table, in a completely different way as pieces of a decorative puzzle,” said Jorge Welsh, who curated the exhibition alongside Luísa Vinhais.
      “To bring the original concept into a contemporary context, we designed a dense, abstract pattern in which each piece of porcelain is used rather as if it were a pigment, chosen for its colour and shape, to create a kind of mural that engulfs the exhibition space.”

      Black display cases housed rare made-to-order pieces in the first room
      In contrast to this, the first two volumes were much more muted, covered inside and out in deep brown velvet.
      The introductory room housed some of the first porcelain editions, which were made-to-order for Portuguese and Spanish clients in the 16th and 17th century.
      Of the approximately 150 pieces of this type that remain in the world according to Welsh, 53 were displayed here, set against a deep black backdrop and illuminated by spotlights to allow their rarity to speak for itself.

      The second room showcased tableware shaped like animals, vegetables and fruit
      The second room took the form of a 12-metre long corridor, flanked by display cases on either side that contained later tableware designs, shaped like different animals, vegetables and fruit to cater to Western tastes.
      This passageway led the way into the golden room, with a layout designed in collaboration Welsh and Vinhais, who also co-founded the Jorge Welsh Works of Art gallery.

      The second room acted as a corridor leading into the last
      Using cutouts of each of the hundreds of plates, they created a scale model of the room, which was then transferred into a digital drawing by Tom Postma Design.
      “We checked every single plate and assigned it a unique code, indexing its display position, diameter, typology, the distance from the wall and other data,” Paride Piccinini, an architectural engineer at Tom Postma Design, told Dezeen.
      “Then we attached a life-sized print out of the drawing to the walls in order to drill the supports in exactly the right positions.”

      Welsh and Vinhais designed the pattern using a scale model
      This allowed the team to develop an unobtrusive system of fixings and lighting that kept the overall design clean and minimal.
      “This immersive environment needs effective lighting to able to reach all the pieces in all directions, without blinding the visitors or showing the source of light,” said Piccinini.
      “This issue has been solved with a system of diffused and hidden spotlights, embedded into the walls, the ceiling, the floor and the glass balustrade system.”

      Tom Postma Design developed the reuseable lighting and supports in the Golden Porcelain Room
      The gold gilding, which took a group of artisans five days to apply to the interior and exterior of the volume leaf by leaf, mirrored the colours of the porcelain and reflected light onto the plates from behind.

      Formafantasma designs recyclable displays for Rijksmuseum exhibition

      Aside from the smallest spotlights, the lighting system was developed from reused fixtures from Fondozione Prada’s existing supply. The whole installation was designed to be disassembled and used again.

      Underneath the cladding, the installation consists of modular timber panels
      “The installation is entirely built from timber, with modular panels that can be stored and reused for future exhibitions,” said Piccinini.
      “The metallic supports for the plates, the lighting system, shelves and display cases can also be reused for a similar installation.”
      Other projects nominated for Dezeen Awards include a memorial filled with items that belonged to victims of gun violence and ĒTER’s multi-sensory design for an exhibition about ASMR at ArkDes.
      Photography is by Mark Niedermann.

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      Horticus creates modular indoor living wall

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      Horticus is showcasing its indoor living wall system as part of the Dezeen x Planted collaboration during this year’s London Design Festival.

      Designed by Horticus to bring plants into small indoor spaces, the system combines a hexagonal metal trellis frame that is screwed to a wall with hexagonal terracotta plant pots.
      “By focusing on our desire to nurture our carefully grown houseplants, Horticus rethought the living wall; made it more flexible, added lifestyle features and kept the practice of cultivation,” said the brand.

      Horticus’s modular system can create indoor living walls
      The system of tessellating hexagons means that small or large green walls can be created, with additional units added when required. As the units are modular, plants can be rearranged and replaced according to the owner’s requirements.

      “The Horticus terracotta plant pots can be lifted in and out of the frame for easy repotting or rearranging. The planters can also be watered in situ through a grid of watering holes,” said the brand.

      The small kit contains one frame and three terracotta planters
      For those wanting to add a little plant life into a room the Small Kit contains one powder-coated steel frame and three terracotta planters. For more ambitious indoor gardens the Medium Kit contains six planters and three frames, the Large Kit contains 12 planters and six frames and the Extra Kit has 24 planters and 12 frames.
      Dezeen x Planted
      Exhibitor: HorticusWebsite: www.horticusliving.comContact: info@horticusliving.com
      Planted is a contemporary design event that aims to reconnect cities with nature, which will make its physical debut as part of London Design Festival alongside an online trailer for next year’s main event.
      The Planted x Dezeen collaboration presents a series of projects by international designers that align with the ideals of the Planted design event.

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      Brave Ground named Colour of the Year for 2021

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      Paint brand Dulux has unveiled a “reassuring” earthy beige hue called Brave Ground as its colour of the year for 2021.Brave Ground was selected as an “elemental” hue that reflects “the strength we can draw from nature, our growing desire to align more with the planet and looking towards the future” – particularly in a world still dealing with the challenges of the coronavirus crisis.
      Dulux decided on the shade after months of working with paint company AkzoNobel, and a roster of trend forecasters, design specialists, editors and architects from across the globe.

      “As a result of the global pandemic many people’s priorities are shifting significantly, to focus much more on their well-being,” explained creative director of Dulux UK Marianne Shillingford.

      “Colour can play a significant role in this – and with the calming, restorative and natural tones of our ColourFutures 2021 palettes we hope to empower professionals to create spaces where occupants can reflect, recharge and recalibrate.”

      “The past year has seen how we live and work utterly transformed,” added Heleen van Gen, head of AkzoNobel’s Global Aesthetic Centre in the Netherlands.
      “We have gone through the most uncertain of times, so it’s understandable that we see reassuring, natural tones returning, which can be used to create the calm and sanctuary people require.”

      As well as offering a sense of tranquillity, Brave Ground is also intended to be a versatile colour that can be applied to a variety of different settings. Shifting in tone throughout the day, the colour creates what Dulux and AkzoNobel describe as “subtly responsive environments”.

      “Could all things ‘green’ be the glue that sticks us back together?”

      The two companies have additionally developed a handful of complementary colour palettes that can “sit comfortably” alongside Brave Ground – among them is Expressive, a collection of striking reds and pinks, and Timeless, a warm group of yellows and ochres.

      Brave Ground is slightly more muted in appearance than Tranquil Dawn, a cool-green shade that Dulux selected as its colour of the year for 2020.
      At the time of its unveiling, interiors writer and former ELLE Decor editor-in-chief Michelle Ogundehin said in an opinion piece for Dezeen that the paint brand “could have been bolder” and opted for a stronger hue that more acutely reflected mounting global unrest.
      American company Pantone is yet to announce its 2021 colour of the year – last year it chose Classic Blue, a “universal favourite” hue that is meant to “brings a sense of peace and tranquillity to the human spirit”.

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      Thomas Heatherwick and Ab Rogers to speak at virtual Workplace Wellbeing by Design conference

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      Dezeen promotion: Workplace Wellbeing by Design is a week-long online event taking place during this year’s London Design Festival, which explores the complex relationship between design and wellbeing in the workplace.The event, which will take place from 14 to 18 September 2020, includes talks by leaders in the architecture and design industry, including Thomas Heatherwick, Ab Rogers and HOK senior director of WorkPlace, Kay Sargent.

      Thomas Heatherwick will be speaking at the Workplace Wellbeing by Design event
      These creatives will be joined by more corporate figures such as Bruce Daisley, who developed Twitter for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Cees van der Spek – communications director for EDGE – and workplace theorist Jeremy Myerson.

      Other speakers include biometrician Nikita Mikhailov, who will discuss new data-driven biometric techniques for employers and employees, as well as Maaind founder Martin Dinov, who will outline how AI can be harnessed for workplace wellbeing.

      Ab Rogers will be speaking at the event about his Maggie’s Centre design
      Over the course of five days, five 75-minute sessions will explore the issues of workplace design from a range of viewpoints including technology and diversity, as well as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
      Each session will be hosted by author and design commentator Aidan Walker and will be split into three sections: a keynote, a practical case study and a Q&A session.

      Maggie’s chief executive Laura Lee will explain the organisation’s architectural philosophy
      Day one – the Well Workplace – will begin with a talk between Rogers and Heatherwick about their work for Maggie’s Centres.
      While the two architects discuss how they have tried to use the built environment to influence the psychology of its inhabitants, Maggie’s chief executive Laura Lee will explain the organisation’s architectural philosophy.

      Bruce Daisley will also be speaking at the event
      Day two, led by Dinov, will focus on the smart workplace and the impact of technologies like AI on wellbeing. EDGE’s van der Spek will also uncover the ideas behind the brief for the firm’s existing project in Amsterdam and its new one at London Bridge.

      Heatherwick Studio designs plant-filled Maggie’s Centre in Leeds

      “People have been talking about – and designing for – psychological diversity, as well as the individual’s control over their physical environment for a generation now,” said Walker.
      “Sensor technology has given a whole new meaning to the smart building and the impact of artificial intelligence is just around the corner,” he continued. “It’s time to take stock and Covid-19 has added currency and urgency to the discussion.”

      Speakers will also discuss the impact of office design on mental and physical health
      Day three – the Human/Humane Workplace – will be led by Swann, whose book The Human Workplace explores interior and behavioural design.
      Swann will be joined by architect Giuseppe Boscherini, Mikhailov and director of Chapmanbdsp design consultancy Ian Duncombe to discuss “psychosocially supportive design”.
      Day four, led by HOK’s Sargent, will concentrate on creativity, productivity and diversity in discussions with Ricoh’s workplace services director Simone Fenton-Jarvis and MoreySmith principal Linda Morey Burrows.
      Real estate company CBRE’s Kate Davies and Art Acumen CEO Catherine Thomas will also join the talk.

      Workplace theorist Jeremy Myerson will be part of a discussion about the future of work
      Day five considers the future of work, led with a keynote by Myerson from the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art and the Worktech Academy.
      This will be followed by a discussion with Mike O’Neill, former director of global research at Haworth, Guy Smith, founder of COSU and former design director of WeWork, and Frances Gain, associate of strategy at M. Moser Associates.
      The conference has been organised by the creators of the MAD World Summit with Dezeen as the media partner.
      Registration is £25 for all five sessions, with profits donated to cancer support charity Maggie’s.
      For the full agenda, visit the event’s website.

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      This week, Rolls-Royce had a rebrand and NASA's Mars mission got a logo

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      This week on Dezeen, design studio House of van Schneider unveiled the logo for NASA’s robotic rover and Pentagram gave the Rolls-Royce visual identity a makeover.House of van Schneider has designed the branding for NASA’s 2020 mission to send a rover to Mars to look for signs of past life.
      A red circle symbolises the red planet, overlaid with a pixellated outline of the robot and a star that represents Earth glimpsed from Mars. This logo is going on the main rocket as well as the rover, along with badges and keycards used by scientists on the project.
      “We never had our work on a rocket, or sent to space, let alone on Mars. This was a first for the entire House of van Schneider team,” said  founder Tobias van Schneider.

      Rolls-Royce unveils “confident but quiet” rebrand by Pentagram
      Design studio Pentagram revealed the rebrand it designed for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, based around the signature statuette that perches on the bonnet of its cars.

      Called the Spirit of Ecstasy, the figure of a woman with diaphanous wings has been updated and flipped to be a simplified logo for Rolls-Royce.
      “Things like the size of the waist were so important,” said Pentagram partner Marina Willer, “because we didn’t want to indicate that she was too skinny, as that wouldn’t set a good example, and we didn’t want to make her too feminine and sexual either.”

      Expo 2025 Osaka logo revealed as ring of red blobs
      A red circle was revealed as the winning design of the competition to make the logo for Expo 2025 Osaka. Graphic designer Tamotsu Shimada won over the jury and the public with a circle of blobs that look like cell nuclei – and googly eyes.
      Japan embraced the anthropomorphic qualities of the design on social media, producing memes and fanart of the logo as an alien creature, a video game character, and even a loaf of bread.

      Melania Trump criticised for “upsetting” White House Rose Garden renovation on social media
      Melania Trump also had the attention of design Twitter this week. Her redesign of the Rose Garden at the White House went viral after she shared pictures of her foray into landscape architecture.
      It wasn’t the first time that the First Lady – who left her formal architecture studies to pursue a successful modelling career –turned her hand to design. We rounded up four examples here.

      Photos reveal Foster + Partners “floating” spherical Apple Marina Bay Sands store
      Photos of the new Apple Marina Bay Sands shop in Singapore have also been popping up on social media. British practice Foster + Partners is building the spherical store on the water, where it will be reached via a footbridge.
      Foster + Partners’ founder Norman Foster also unveiled his design for a temporary parliament building for the UK. The proposal includes a debating chamber and office spaces for 650 politicians wrapped in bomb-proof glass.

      MAD wraps Beverly Hills residences Gardenhouse with America’s “largest living wall”
      Planted facades had a moment in architecture news this week. Chinese architecture studio MAD laid claim to building America’s “largest living wall” by wrapping a housing development in Beverly Hills with a swirl of succulents.
      Norwegian firm Snøhetta covered a timber office in Austria with a layer of greenery trailing up a latticed metal frame.

      Perforated metal pavilion by Neiheiser Argyros disguises London Underground vents
      In other architecture news, major infrastructure projects had their vents cunningly disguised by architects. Architecture studio Neiheiser Argyros shrouded the exhaust vents and fire escape of a London Underground station with a stylish pavilion and cafe.
      To hide a ventilation shaft for the upcoming HS2 railway line, architecture firm Grimshaw has proposed a decorative roof of weathered steel to transform it into a local landmark.

      [In]Brace allows users to control a computer with their tongueIngenious wearables featured in design and technology news on Dezeen. Graduate designer Dorothee Clasen has created a retainer called [In]Brace that allows the wearer to communicate with a computer using just their tongue.
      Amelia Kociolkowska, another graduate designer, has created a wearable spandex pouch called Carrie that allows for the convenient and discreet carrying of period products.

      Island Rest is a black-timber holiday home on the English coast
      This week our readers were excited about a larch-clad holiday home on the Isle of Wight, a hilltop house in Costa Rica with views of the ocean, and a government building in India covered in an Ikat pattern of bricks.
      This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week’s top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don’t miss anything.

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