Although the U.S. ranks highest in pet-care spending per person, the Czech Republic is among the top 20 countries of dog and cat populations. At Hunting Grounds, a templelike crematorium in Žižice by Petr Hájek Architekti, man’s best friends can not only get a special sendoff but their owners may also experience what the great beyond might look like for them. The site itself is unique: a 3,000-square-foot decommissioned military bunker. It’s one of several at the Drnov Air Defense Site, the Cold War fortification turned museum and tourist destination situated approximately 25 miles northwest of Prague. The underground concrete structure remains mostly in its original form, except for an ethereal transformation near the building’s entrance. Running perpendicular to a pair of concrete-block walls, Petr Hájek installed a monumental panel finished with a reflective mirrorlike surface that channels the works of Anish Kapoor and Richard Serra. “It’s like moving toward a liquid wall,” Hájek says of the 20-by-36-foot expanse onto which he and his team glued 6,000 pieces of aluminum-coated polycarbonate by hand, so that each has a slightly different tilt and angle. The resulting image is a mosaic abstraction of the surrounding landscape that seems to shimmer and flicker as visitors walk by. “It’s like a gate to another dimension,” the architect notes, “and adds a mystical feeling.”

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A Closer Look at the Facade of Library Street Collective in Detroit

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AI is practically
everywhere these days—phones, cars, hospitals, outer space. Now, with “Ai-Da Self Portraits” at the Design Museum in London, add arts institutions, and possibly your client’s living room wall, to the list. Named after Ada Lovelace, the pioneering female scientist and mathematician, the robot is the vision of independent gallerist Aidan Meller and researcher/curator Lucy Seal and made by Engineered Arts and University of Oxford PhD students. Ai-Da stands 5 feet 8 inches tall, took a year to build, and has been programmed to use algorithms to create art that comments on the current and future uses of AI. “She” will be present at the opening of the exhibition, alongside the trio of selfies she produced.

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Her signature mash-ups of 1980s-leaning abstractions in offbeat color combinations have been applied to swimming pools, hotel murals, rugs, and wallpaper. Now, with Aurora, from manufacturer Concrete Collaborative, Studio Proba’s Alex Proba can add tile to her ever-expanding portfolio. The 25-piece collection is made up of 8-inch-square encaustic tiles, their patterns of organic shapes in vivid colorways such as lilac/golden sparked by Proba’s travels to Morocco. Masses of a single style or mixed combinations make for a lively shower stall, wall, backsplash, or floor.

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In April 2020, a cohort of resident physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital launched CoVent-19. The open eight-week innovation challenge addressed the anticipated ventilator shortages by crowdsourcing ideas for rapidly deployable alternatives. From 200-plus submissions, seven frontrunners ultimately emerged, including a joint effort between Fuseproject, the San Francisco design agency founded by Yves Béhar, medical technology start­up Cionic, and several mechanical engineering consultants. The team developed VOX, a pneumatically driven ventilator that costs less than $1,000 to produce, takes under four hours to assemble, and is portable (it can be mounted to a standard IV pole). “We specifically designed VOX for the pandemic setting,” says Fuse­project senior industrial designer Daniel Zarem, who led the 19-person team. “We interviewed a lot of ICU nurses and respiratory therapists—people from both sides of the country, some in heavily hit, overcrowded ICU units. It was a very collaborative process.” Using a computer or tablet, medical workers can even control up to four machines remotely, an especially novel—and healthful—feature.

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A decade ago, a group of young Singaporean designers, friends who returned to their homeland around the same time after working abroad, decided to go into business together as Stuck Design. The venture, ahem, stuck, and now, the 28-person team led by Tze Lee, Yong Jieyu, and Donn Koh has completed an array of multidisciplinary projects, including pandemic-
ready technologies to mitigate COVID-19. One in particular is Kinetic Touchless, an elevator-button device that
automatically depresses when it senses a finger hovering before it. “In contactless interfaces, we often use sound and light for input,” Koh says. “But we tend to forget that physical movement is a satisfying form of haptic feedback.” And the product isn’t limited to just elevators: A sliding door could follow the move­ment of your hand 2 inches away.

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