Design Wire July 2021
Winner of Fast Company’s 2020 Innovation by Design Award in the Home category, the BEARABY TREE NAPPER is a weighted blanket filled with Tencel fabric weights, as opposed to unsustainable plastic ones. The blankets weigh between 15 and 25 pounds, or 10 percent of an average person’s body weight, which doctors say reduces the stress hormone cortisol while also boosting the pain-reducing hormone serotonin. Founder KATHRIN HAMM told Fast Company that her goal was to ensure her company wasn’t adding to pollution on the planet. With their breathable loose weave of sustainably sourced eucalyptus fibers, the blankets can be used year-round and are available in a wide range of textures and colors, like the new summer collection in powder blue Dayflower, vibrant yellow-orange Amber, and dusky pink Elderberry. A smaller, lighter version called the NAPPLING is perfect for kids with anxiety or sleep issues.
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Noise-canceling headphones not doing the trick? RAMSES ALCAIDE, the cofounder and CEO of the Boston-based company NEURABLE, has patented a brainwave-reading technology that he is using to build headphones that can help you concentrate. The headphones, which are called ENTEN—“to understand” in Spanish—use machine learning algorithms to determine whether you are concentrating or distracted, and based on that information, can adjust noise cancellation and suggest the kind of music that might aid focus. A corresponding app provides data on the times of day when you’re most productive and when you need a breath of fresh air. Enten is still a working prototype but is scheduled to start shipping next year.
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In June 2020, Los Angeles recorded 66,433 homeless people living on the streets, in shelters, or in vehicles. To address this crisis, several architects and design firms are working on affordable, prefab community shelters. ALEXANDRIA PARK TINY HOME VILLAGE, located near the 170 Freeway in North Hollywood, is a development of 103 micro homes designed by LEHRER ARCHITECTS that can house up to 200 people at a time in its neighborhood-style cluster of eight-by-eight shelters. The cabins can be locked by the occupant for security, and there are on-site communal dining areas, showers, restrooms, a laundry, and a place to receive assistance when applying for city services. It is named after the park it sits in and took just 13 weeks to construct.
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A group of octahedral concrete armor units have been installed in two locations in the Port of San Diego by eco-engineering company ECOncrete to control erosion while simultaneously providing rock-pool-like habitats for marine life. Replacing traditional riprap rock mounds, which are made from land-based quarry rock and typically offer little value to underwater ecosystems, the unique coastal armoring solution, named COASTALOCK, utilizes ECOncrete’s patented nontoxic, eco-friendly concrete admix made from a mix of recycled materials. When installed underwater, the armors’ textured finishes encourage organisms to latch on and colonize. According to a conversation the company had with Dezeen, the units are multidirectional: when the tide pool is faced upward it becomes a water-retaining feature; when sideways, a cave; and when faced downward, an overhang. The goal is for COASTALOCK to secure the sloped shoreline and become home to calcitic organisms, such as coral and clams, which draw carbon from the water to build their skeletal forms and shells.
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TAMBACOUNDA HOSPITAL in eastern Senegal, which serves a rural region that spans multiple countries in West Africa and sees 20,000 patients a year, has received a necessary and noteworthy upgrade with the addition of a new maternity and pediatric building. Funded by the JOSEF AND ANNI ALBERS FOUNDATION, it was designed pro bono by architect MANUEL HERZ, who traveled to Tambacounda so he could speak directly with the doctors, medical staff, patients, and local officials before presenting his design. The addition opened in May of this year and is displayed at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. Herz developed the structure’s unique U-shaped bricks on the facade, which were cast on-site and are used as a perforated screen, allowing air ventilation while simultaneously shielding the hospital rooms from rain and sun.
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The PAUL J. SCHUPF ART CENTER at 93 Main Street in downtown Waterville has been approved and is set to open in December 2022. The center will include Waterville Creates; the Maine Film Center, with three cinemas; Ticonic Gallery and Studios; and the Joan Dignam Schmaltz Gallery of Art, an extension of the Colby College Museum of Art. It will also be home to the Maine International Film Festival. The building, designed by SUSAN T. RODRIGUEZ ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN, will feature a large glass curtain overlooking Castonguay Square, as well as a cafe on the first level. Schupf, the center’s namesake, was an art collector, longtime Colby benefactor, and emeritus trustee of the college who made a large contribution to the project. He died in 2019.
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Portland-based artists (and power couple) Ryan and Rachel Adams have completed a new city mural in partnership with the INDIGO ARTS ALLIANCE (IAA), a Black-led creative organization cultivating the development of Maine artists of African descent. A collaboration with artists Pam Chévez, Ebenezer Akakpo, and husband-and-wife duo Jason Brown and Donna Decontie of Decontie-Brown, the WAVE MURAL, which is located at Root Wild Kombucha on Washington Avenue in East Bayside, incorporates design elements from each artist inspired by their African, Mexican, Indigenous, and African American heritages. According to IAA, the overall concept was informed by the geometric patterns formed in quilt making, and the layout of the mural was constructed using elements of freedom quilts, which were given to slaves in the 1800s and allegedly contained directions to free states. The mural is meant to reflect the benefits of embracing diversity as well as the beauty that comes from the melding of different cultures.
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Two days before Earth Day this year, HANNAFORD SUPERMARKETS announced that food waste from its 183 stores across the Northeast will no longer be sent to landfills. Food waste not only contributes to the hunger crisis, but when it decomposes in landfills it also releases a large amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The United States throws away more food than any other country in the world, and according to the Environmental Protection Agency, that meant 63 million tons in 2018 alone. Hannaford’s unsold food will now be either donated to those in need, distributed to farmers for livestock, or processed into gas through a partnership with an anaerobic digester, which is then used to power a generator that returns electricity to the grid.