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    This week we unveiled the Dezeen Awards 2023 shortlists

    This week on Dezeen, we announced the architecture, interiors, design and sustainability shortlists along with the designers of the year for the 2023 Dezeen Awards.

    We revealed the 85 buildings shortlisted in the architecture categories, which included Studio House by William Samuels Architects (above) along with buildings by Zaha Hadid Architects, Olson Kundig and Open Architecture.
    The interiors shortlist featured 47 designs by studios including Omar Gandhi Architects and Universal Design Studio, while the 47-strong design shortlist included creations by Muoto, Luceplan, Fuseproject and Tom Dixon.
    Alexander Burton designed an affordable electric car conversion kitIn design news, Australian student Alexander Burton unveiled an affordable electric car conversion kit.
    Named REVR (Rapid Electric Vehicle Retrofits), the kit, which won the country’s national James Dyson Award, was designed to provide a cheaper way to convert petrol cars into electric cars.

    Thomas Heatherwick said Le Corbusier was to blame for a “global blandemic”Speaking on a BBC radio series this week, British designer Thomas Heatherwick said that 20th-century architect Le Corbusier was responsible for architecture’s current “global blandemic”.
    “I think we’re living through a global ‘blandemic’ in building design,” said Heatherwick. “This age of boring has resulted in soulless, inhuman urban environments.”
    Prada is designing a space suit for NASAAlso this week, fashion house Prada revealed that it was creating lunar spacesuits for NASA’s Artemis III mission – the first crewed moon landing since 1972.
    Developed with commercial space company Axiom Space, the suits are called Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) and will give astronauts “advanced capabilities for space exploration”, according to the brand.
    Carl Philip Bernadotte and Oscar Kylberg launched their brand this weekWe also spoke to design duo Carl Philip Bernadotte – who is Prince Carl Philip of Sweden – and Oscar Kylberg, who launched a brand this week.
    Speaking in an interview, the duo told Dezeen how public scrutiny had kept them on their toes.
    A thatched extension was one of the most popular projects this weekPopular projects this week included a thatched extension to a house in Flanders, an aluminium-clad micro home in Germany and a renovated Ibizan finca.
    Our latest lookbooks featured living rooms with low-slung furniture and restful bedrooms decorated in the colours of autumn leaves.
    This week on Dezeen
    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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    This week we revealed Wild Wonder as 2023's Colour of the Year

    This week on Dezeen, the Colour of the Year 2023 –  a pale yellow that is described as “a soft gold with hints of green” – was announced.

    To mark the announcement by paint company Dulux, we created a lookbook that showcases interiors that have used the pale yellow hue.
    Selldorf Architects has proposed a redesign of the Sainsbury WingThis week, architects, critics and academics raised concerns about the plans to remodel Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s postmodern Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery in London. They described the plans, which have been drawn up by Selldorf Architects, as an “act of vandalism”.
    In an opinion piece for Dezeen, Catherine Slessor wrote that “history now seems to be repeating itself at the Sainsbury Wing”.
    Workers at Atomik Architecture are balloting to strikeAlso in London, staff at architecture studio Atomik Architecture announced a “historic strike ballot”.

    Workers at the studio notified their employers that they were initiating a strike ballot to demand improvements to both their pay and working conditions.
    Lightyear developed “the world’s first production-ready solar car”Continuing our Solar Revolution series we interviewed Emanuele Cornagliotti, who is the lead solar engineer at car company Lightyear, which developed “the world’s first production-ready solar car”.
    Solar cars will be “normal within 20 years,” he told Dezeen.
    No 1 Poultry was the result of a King Charles interventionFollowing King Charles III becoming Britain’s new monarch, we took a look back at his impact on architecture while he was the Prince of Wales.
    In his previous role, Charles exerted significant influence on the built environment through campaigning, building traditional towns and torpedoing modernist projects.
    Dezeen Awards 2022 public vote opened this weekThis week we opened the Dezeen Awards 2022 public vote to allow readers to pick their favourite projects and studios. Readers can now vote for the best projects shortlisted in the architecture, interiors and design categories, as well as our media and sustainability categories.
    Voting closes on 10 October with winning projects receiving a special Dezeen Awards 2022 public vote certificate.
    Indian studio PMA Madhushala designed a brick and stone housePopular projects this week include an Indian home wrapped in a perforated wall of brick and stone, a hotel resembling an upside-down village in the Alps and a rammed-earth retreat in São Paulo.
    This week’s lookbooks showcased eateries that showcase the potential of terrazzo and kitchens with polished granite surfaces.
    This week on Dezeen
    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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    This week we looked at 30 architect-designed kitchens

    This week on Dezeen, we continued our series of pieces focused on visual inspiration for the home, with a roundup of 30 architect-designed kitchens.

    The roundup includes a huge variety of kitchens designed by architects including John Pawson, Amin Taha, Ryue Nishizawa, John Wardle Architects and Note Design Studio.
    Previous pieces in the series focused on design for the home include 30 bathrooms designed by architects and seven bedrooms with statement walls and 10 colourful kitchen interiors.

    Demolition of Tadao Ando-designed wall in Manchester begins

    In architecture news, this week saw demolition begin on part of Japanese architect Tadao Ando’s only building in the UK. The six-metre-long concrete wall in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, forms part of a pavilion, which will remain.
    In Barcelona, the city council announced its plans to create numerous squares by transforming a third of the street in its central Eixample district into green car-free public spaces.

    Hack Care is an IKEA-style catalogue of DIY adjustments for dementia-friendly homes
    In design news, Lekker Architects and Lanzavecchia + Wai created a manual filled with tips on how to hack IKEA products to better serve people living with dementia.
    Also focused on the home, Zaha Hadid Design released a range of door handles that can bring the studio’s characteristically sinuous style into interiors.

    The Crown costumes move “from forensic accuracy to flights of fancy” says Amy Roberts
    We interviewed The Crown costume designer, Amy Roberts, who explained how she used the wardrobes of Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher to reflect their complex relationships with the Queen in the latest series of the television show.
    Roberts achieved this by creating costumes that combined “forensic accuracy” with “flights of fancy”.

    LG Display and Dezeen launch €46,000 OLEDs Go! design competition
    This week also saw Dezeen team up with LG Display to launch a  global design competition called OLEDS Go!
    The contest, which has a prize fund of €46,000, challenges contestants to create beautiful designs that make innovative use of OLED technology.

    Century-old Japanese dwelling transformed into minimalist guesthouse
    Popular projects on Dezeen this week include a 100-year-old townhouse in Kyoto that was converted into a moody and tranquil guesthouse, a bakery in Copenhagen with off-white walls and terrazzo floors and five terraces of brick housing in London designed by Peter Barber Architects.
    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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  • This week, Rolls-Royce had a rebrand and NASA's Mars mission got a logo

    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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  • This week, architects designed innovative public toilets for Tokyo

    This week on Dezeen, we featured three unusual restrooms designed for the Tokyo Toilet project, including Shigeru Ban’s colourful, transparent design.As well as Ban’s restroom, whose transparent walls become opaque when the toilets are in use, designs include Wonderwall’s concrete toilet that references primitive Japanese huts, and Fumihiko Maki’s “squid toilet” which is located in a park known as the Octopus Park.
    The project is being run by the not-for-profit Nippon Foundation and will see 17 toilets being built in total.

    Revit software costs “reasonable” says Autodesk president and CEO Andrew Anagnost
    The CEO of American software maker Autodesk, Andrew Anagnost, replied to criticism from leading architects about the rising cost and lack of development of its Revit application.

    Though he admitted improvements “didn’t progress as quickly” as they should, he called the expense of Autodesk software “certainly reasonable for tools that are at the centre of the daily work of architects.”

    Harikrishnan’s blow-up latex trousers go on sale with “do not overinflate” warning
    Fashion blew up this week, as Harikrishnan’s inflatable trousers went on sale – just six months after the designer showed them at his graduate show – with a warning to “not overinflate” the shiny latex garments.
    Spanish artist SiiGii took the concept one step further with their wearable, inflatable latex lilo, which enables the wearer to float in the ocean without worrying about sun exposure.

    Architecture “is more elitist than the most elite university in the world” says Phineas Harper
    Open House and Open City director and Dezeen columnist Phineas Harper inspired a passionate discussion in the comments after accusing architecture of rampant elitism.
    In a Twitter thread, the former Architecture Foundation deputy director compared the percentage of architects from non-state schools in its New Architects 3 publication with the percentage of state school students who went to Cambridge las year.
    “[W]e *need* to start talking about the impact of private schools on architecture,” Harper said.

    Dyson family to make art collection public in home gallery by Chris Wilkinson
    James Dyson, vacuum-cleaner entrepreneur and the UK’s wealthiest person, and his wife Deirdre are set to open their private art collection to the public in an art gallery that WilkinsonEyre’s founder, Chris Wilkinson, has designed for their UK home.
    In Ireland, O’Donnell + Tuomey unveiled a timber and concrete pedestrian bridge, which was built over the River Lee to improve connections to University College Cork. The bridge gives students direct access to an area of green space across the river from the university.

    Snøhetta, Studio Gang and Henning Larsen unveil designs for Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
    Competing designs for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, which will be built in Medora, North Dakota, were presented by Snøhetta, Studio Gang and Henning Larsen.
    Proposals include a scheme composed of four angular volumes topped by grass, a building composed of three horseshoe-shaped structures, and a library topped with a huge, curved roof that acts as an extension of the landscape.

    BIG reveals masterplan for “urban lilypads” off coast of Penang Island
    In other architecture news, Dutch studio MVRDV announced its plans to turn a deteriorating concrete factory in China into a creative office space with a maze-like garden on the roof.
    Denmark’s BIG unveiled its masterplan for BiodiverCity Penang, a series of islands in Malaysia that will be connected by a car-free autonomous transport system.

    Step House extension built around perforated birch-ply staircase
    Popular projects on Dezeen this week include the Step House extension with its plywood staircase, Worrel Yeung’s industrial artist studios in historic Brooklyn factory buildings, and Ridgewood, a renovated California house that pays homage to its “flamboyant” modernist architect.
    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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  • This week, we unveiled the longlists for Dezeen Awards 2020

    This week on Dezeen, we revealed the longlisted architecture, interiors and design projects that are in line to win this year’s Dezeen Awards, as well as the studios producing the best work.In total, we received over 4,300 entries from 85 countries for the third edition of Dezeen Awards. There are 302 projects on the architecture longlist, 305 projects on the interiors longlist and 318 projects on the design longlist.
    All longlisted projects and studios are featured on a dedicated page on the Dezeen Awards website, alongside information about each practice.

    IKEA unveils first branded fashion and accessories collection
    In this week’s design news, we revealed to our readers Swedish furniture company IKEA’s first branded clothing and accessory collection, called Efterträda.

    The 10-piece line includes t-shirts, hoodies, bottles, umbrellas, towels and tote bags that are emblazoned with the IKEA logo and the barcode of its well-known Billy shelving system.

    Virgil Abloh and AMO design flexible flagship Off-White store in Miami that “can host a runway show”
    Over in the world of fashion, Virgil Abloh unveiled his flagship Off-White store in the Miami Design District, created in collaboration with AMO director Samir Bantal.
    The store is designed to be flexible, functioning as a fulfilment centre that can easily be turned into a multipurpose events space.
    “The shop can host a runway show, it can host a talk, it can host a cafe,” explained Abloh.

    Beyoncé’s Black Is King film aims to start “a global conversation” says stylist Zerina Akers
    Dezeen also interviewed Beyoncé’s stylist Zerina Akers this week on creating the costumes for the artist’s latest visual album Black Is King.
    Looks included a cowhide outfit by Burberry inspired by the Zulu people of South Africa and a Valentino leopard-print sequined catsuit that took over 300 hours to hand-sew.
    “I wanted to have this global conversation with the wardrobe,” Akers told Dezeen. “I hope that people of all colours recognise and respect the power and beauty of brown skin.”

    Anti-drone antennas set to be built on top of Oscar Niemeyer palaces in Brasília
    In Brazil, the country’s national heritage institute stepped up to protect three Oscar Niemeyer-designed buildings in Brasília. The heritage body condemned plans by the government to install anti-drone antennas on top of the Alvorado, Planalto and Jaburu palaces, saying they would “directly impact” the iconic structures.
    Elsewhere in the city, Italian architect Carlo Ratti revealed the design for a one-million-square-metre high-tech innovation district that will be an extension to Brasília’s masterplan that was created by Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa.

    MAD reveals Wormhole Library overlooking the South China Sea
    In architecture news, Chinese studio MAD revealed its design for a library in the Chinese city of Haikou that is intended to be “a wormhole that transcends time and space”.
    Foster + Partners also unveiled visuals of a 39-storey skyscraper that it has designed to be constructed over the Pitt Street metro station, which it is also developing, in Sydney, Australia.

    The Nest at Sossus guesthouse in Namibia features a thatched facade
    Other projects popular among Dezeen readers this week include a Zurich home with lake and vineyard views by Think Architecture, an off-grid guesthouse in Namibia with a thatched roof and a house screened by perforated, black cobogó bricks in São Paulo.
    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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