BE OPEN BLOG

What do you imagine when thinking about a Japanese garden?  Most likely, it is a zen retreat created to serve as a space of meditation and reflection. What began as a space designed for Japan’s ruling elite to find calm within the storm of their country’s strife, has transformed overtime into a philosophy highlighting natural landscape. Using materials that incorporate simplicity, artists and landscape designers create breathtaking installations that show the relationships between art and nature.

Continue Reading

Ephemerality of nature has been one of the most recurring themes in art over centuries. Aiming to preserve delicate and vivid blooms before they wilt and wither, artists create breathtaking botanical sculptures, encapsulating bouquets and petals in ice, literally freezing their transitory beauty in time.

Continue Reading

 “I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of a library,” Jorge Luis Borges once said. Essential in a process of providing people with an access to knowledge, today libraries are being transformed from silent sanctuary of books into dynamic spaces where technology and traditional co-exist. Yet, experimenting with form, architects manage to keep intact the fundamental experience of choosing a volume from a bookshelf-lined wall.

Continue Reading

As diverse as they are beautiful, leaves from all species of trees have long inspired creative minds. Creating this intricate leaf art by applying ages-old handcraft techniques to this organic canvas, artists seek to encourage the viewer to take a closer look into leaves and not just pass them by.

Continue Reading

Where do architects and designers get inspiration? When creatives are in search of architectural inspiration, they can take cues from literally any aspect of culture – even a favourite movie. The featured projects have been informed by well-known science fiction motion pictures and brilliantly designed through meticulous deconstruction of their sets and scenography.

Continue Reading

Research shows that building sector accounts for 30-40% of total waste worldwide, which makes construction waste a pressing issue all over the globe. Generated throughout the project from the pre-construction stage to finishing stage, it has adverse effects on environment, economy and social aspects. It takes up space in landfills and reduces soil quality and air quality even when properly disposed. In an attempt to cut down the number of resources that are wasted and find opportunities for them to be used, product designers upcycle discarded industrial waste into innovative extraordinary objects applicable for everyday use.

Continue Reading

A cinema building is not a mere box where screenings take place. Setting scene for what is going on on the screen, architecture opens a dialogue with cinema as discipline. The cinema design has been reimagined over the span of the last ten years, evolving to house more screens, new amenities and diverse programs.

Continue Reading

Japanese cuisine is constantly ranked as one of the top ten best cuisines in the world. With its aesthetic of beautifully presented food and the use of fresh, high-quality seasonal ingredients, it is no wonder that sushi is so highly prized by people around the world. Using modern technology and own creativity, featured designers and food artists transform this Japanese delicacy into a sophisticated work of art.

Continue Reading

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, not knowing how to dress is probably the least of anyone’s problems. Fashion designers have attempted to explore the whole spectre of controversial mindsets, conditions and feelings that people had to face during these turbulent times.

Continue Reading

The coronavirus outbreak has forced people around the globe to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) on a daily basis. Prioritizing safety, we forget about the environment. The result is the frightening statistics showing that 129 billion face masks have been discarded every month since the start of the pandemic. Estimates suggest that around 75 per cent of these will end up in landfill or ocean, where over the course of around 450 years they will break down into microplastics. To address this issue, designers offer ingenuous ways of recycling used PPE into something meaningful.

Continue Reading