News — Design

I never baked sourdough; I bucked the puzzle bandwagon; and I’m not on TikTok. But several months into the pandemic, I did fall victim to a popular quarantine trend: I moved apartments (okay, and got a dog).  Never having changed living spaces within New York (I’d been in the same Bushwick, Brooklyn, walk-up since the day I arrived three years ago), I was ready for a change and, frankly, an upgrade. So when I opened a mass email from StreetEasy and the price of an apartment caught my eye, my two roommates and I decided to look at it “just...

KIT has a simple, cost-effective frame that can be assembled without tools "in less than 20 seconds". Once it is no longer needed, it can be easily folded up and placed out of sight or transported between rooms with the help of a "slot carry handle" to give users a change of scene. Above: KIT is designed with a deliberately simple frame. Top image: it can be folded for storage or transportation KIT is made up of a lacquered plywood top and steel frame, which according to Spacestor creates a "Californian, mid-century" aesthetic suited to a wide range of spaces. The...

A lot goes into picking the right cupboard fronts. You want something that suits your style as well as your practical needs; something that walks the fine line between form and function. Might we suggest glass kitchen cabinets? Somewhere between open shelving and closed-door cubbies, they let you put your favorite plates and glassware on display without racking up dust. After all, you didn’t spend months tracking down the perfect set of vintage enamelware for it to sit hidden away.  Turns out, the design is also an incredibly versatile one: These six spaces prove just how much flexibility it provides,...

Ellen Marie Bennett has been staying extra-busy during quarantine. The founder of culinary workwear brand Hedley & Bennett was one of the first to pivot her business to make fabric masks to help end the medical supply shortage. And when she’s not working on this new venture, she’s at her home in Los Angeles’s Echo Park, cooking up a storm. As Bennett took us on a tour of her small space during a recent Instagram Live session, she shared a few clever organizing tricks along the way. Lesson number one? Stock up on S-hooks.  Rather than shove her pots and...

Greenwashing is back. As concern about climate change, pollution, habitat destruction and species extinction rises, so too are spurious claims about saving the planet. Terms like "sustainable", "biodegradable", "compostable" and "circular" increasingly pepper the press releases arriving in Dezeen's inbox. The claims are mostly nonsense. When our reporters follow up with questions asking for more details, brands tend to go suspiciously quiet. The problem is that terms like these are not well understood, and in some cases have never been precisely defined. They are therefore open to abuse, both accidental and deliberate. As a blanket term, sustainability is "hard to define,"...