New AI DALL-E 2 creates images from text prompts
A new AI system can create a variety of images both realistic and surreal from natural language descriptions. It has the potential to be game changing, but not without some concerns. Algorithms and AI continue to make waves across the art industry. The latest breakthrough comes from a research team...
Current in Design
El Salvador president reveals designs for volcanic ‘Bitcoin City’
El Salvador president Nayib Bukele is quite literally obsessed with cryptocurrency. This week, he caused big stir online with tweets showing intricate designs of a full blown Bitcoin city. One does not merely dabble in cryptocurrency. Once you’re in these days, you’re all in. El Salvador president Nayib Bukele is the...
How the pandemic changed our outlook on workplace design
Luring us back into the office was never going to be easy, so architects are finding ways to make modern workspaces virtually irresistible. After spending months working from the comforts of our own homes (and beds) we’ve all been armed with fresh expectations for what office spaces should look and...
Students build solar greenhouse that produces energy
Traditional greenhouses typically use a ton of energy to work properly, but students in Catalonia have built a solar powered structure that creates energy rather than consuming it. Who says greenhouses can’t adapt to modern energy needs? First built in the nineteenth century, greenhouses are a nifty way to grow plants...
South Korea has 15-acre floating city backed by the UN
Atop large, buoyant concrete platforms anchored to the seabed, a South Korean city will house 12,000 by the mid-century. Able to rise and fall with the water, this trailblazing project has now been backed by the UN. By the mid-century, some 800 million people will be residing in conurbations...
Tate galleries cut ties with Russian investors
After weeks of public pushback, all Tate galleries are cutting ties with billionaire Russian investors amid the war in Ukraine. Tate Group, the institution which operates Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St Ives, has severed ties with Russian investors Viktor Vekselberg and Petr Aven. The two billionaires had...
Four sustainable design companies to watch out for this year
From carbon positive public seating, recycled surfboard tables, to papier-mâché guitars & repurposed plastic furniture – we’re rounding up some of the most innovative sustainable designs yet. It’s no secret that humans have historically neglected sustainability and longevity when creating designs for public spaces, appliances, and home furniture. Our affinity for ‘fast furniture’ has resulted in more than 12 million tons of cheap, unrecyclable homeware being sent to landfill by...
Studio Ghibli’s Nizo Yamamoto sells art to support Ukraine
Yamamoto works for the legendary animation company Studio Ghibli. He is selling an original piece of art to help support Ukraine’s relief effort via UNICEF. If you’re at all into animation, then you’ll be very familiar with Studio Ghibli. Heralded as one of the most influential and well-renowned animation companies in the word, Studio Ghibli is responsible for many classic films, including Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro. One of its animators,...
These prefab ‘skins’ could make homes more energy efficient
One of our biggest challenges as we strive for a net-zero world is making existing buildings energy efficient. However, a German engineering start-up may have an ingenious solution to speed up the retrofitting process. Working smarter – and not harder – could be the solution to improving our current problem with inefficient buildings. In a bid to transition urban metropolises to net-zero over the coming decades, architects and city planners are...
Could memorial coral reefs replace traditional graveyards?
For those trying to remain eco-friendly well into the afterlife, being cremated and turned into a host for living coral might sound rather pleasant – but is this new trend actually sustainable? Although most people presume that once we’re dead nothing really matters, humans often ask each other (or state unprovoked) what they want the people around them to do with their body once the inevitable happens. I know, for example,...
