#warm-natural-materials

#warm-natural-materials

The convenience of sourcing online is fraught with more pitfalls than most of us want to admit. Try finding adequate photos of a vintage piece's condition-close-ups of the fabric, video of damaged areas, any images of a piece's rear or underside!

When you design your home with intentionality, you are essentially 'hard-coding' healthy behaviors into your daily rhythm. Health outcomes are the result of thousands of micro-decisions—so in his own home, he prioritized spaces like the kitchen, whose open layout makes cooking a pleasure, and the gym, centrally located.

My mother always told me that the best cotton sheets are an investment I would not regret. She is right—the unfussy fabric is anything but one note.

Even long after the tell-tale odor of new paint has vanished, traditional paint can off-gas for months, releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that have been linked to organ and nervous system damage, cancer, and infertility.

This corn-based construction material was made by Manufactura, a Mexican sustainable materials company, and it imagines a second life for waste from the most widely produced grain in the world. The project started as an invitation by chef Jorge Armando, the founder of catering brand Taco Kween Berlin, to find ways he could reintegrate waste generated by his taqueria into architecture. A team led by designer Dinorah Schulte created corncretl during a residency last year in Massa Lombarda, Italy.

The design of Forest Toilet A emphasizes the importance of integrating architecture with the natural environment, ensuring that the structure complements the existing landscape rather than disrupts it.

Rather than representing a simple return to the past, this renewed interest reflects a broader reconsideration of how architecture engages with materials, local resources, and environmental conditions.

Furniture made from mycelium or algae can decompose in five years, sure, but a well-made antique armoire outlives empires because no one throws it away. Columns takes that logic seriously. Handcrafted in solid oak, natural leather, and horsehair, the pieces are built to last a thousand years, which sounds like marketing hyperbole until you look at the joinery, the hand stitching, and the material choices. This is furniture designed to be inherited, repaired, and remembered.

From the large industrial roofs and galleries of the 19th century to the contemporary atriums of museums and public buildings, glass has been a recurring material in shaping large and monumental interior spaces. More than a technological or engineering solution, these horizontal glazed planes introduce a distinct luminous quality: light that comes from above. Unlike lateral daylight entering through façades, zenithal light is more evenly distributed, reduces harsh shadows, and lends spaces a sense of continuity and openness that is difficult to achieve otherwise.

This research-based design project by Laura Oliveira investigates discarded as a potential raw material for sustainable design applications. Human hair is produced continuously and in large quantities through everyday grooming practices, yet it is almost always treated as waste once separated from the body and typically disposed of in landfills. Despite its material properties, strength, flexibility, and durability as a keratin-based protein fiber, its remains uncommon within design and research contexts.