Be Open think tank

#BeOpenART Barcelona-based product design studio Geometrie Da Compagnia founded by Italian designer Federica Sala has developed Happy Hammock. Conceived as part of her new collection of large interactive kinetic sculptures named ‘Playground’, it is a functional sculpture that comprises a red hanging hammock hanging between a minimal black metal frame resembling a smiling face. The project is to honour memory of the designer’s grandmother of Mexican decent and celebrate her tender childhood memories.

#BeOpenNEWS August is time to harvest – and to sum up our #BEOPENGrowFood Instagram open call too! This spring, we invited people to promote United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger and explore the variety of fresh food production available in our everyday lives, by sharing their vision of how we can grow our own food in our unique ways. BE OPEN praises everyone who sent visuals that reflect this topic via Instagram with the #BEOPENGrowFood hashtag. BE OPEN Community members have selected the winning post from a shortlist of submissions with the highest number of likes by Instagram users. Our congratulations and the €300 prize go to Zurich, Switzerland, to Dina Klimentieva for the pictures of a lovely window-sill herb and vegetable garden, and the first little harvest of the season.

#BeOpenARCH Japanese firm Nendo has developed a project of a storage facility for archiving furniture, products, and artwork that combines civil engineering concepts with product design details. Located in a quiet environment in Nagano Prefecture, the tunnel-like architecture took shape through a combination of pre-cast and pre-stressed construction methods. The building is composed of four stacked “tunnels” covered with a roof in the center. In addition to a long, narrow storage room with a depth of approximately 40 meters, there are two smaller storage rooms, but it is envisioned that more will be added to the site in the future as the collection grows. The structure also features a guesthouse attached, with the kitchen and bathroom facilities located on the ground floor and a compact bedroom situated on the upper level. The gravel and plantings used in the exterior were also arranged in the interior to draw the outside environment into the interior.

#BeOpenARCH The Saudi Arabian government has unveiled visuals of a 500-metre-tall linear city named The Line, which forms part of the Neom initiative in northwest Saudi Arabia. Designed as a dramatic alternative to traditional cities that typically radiate out from a central point, the megastructure designed to house nine million residents will be 500 metres tall, but only 200 meters wide. It will consist of two wall-like structures that will enclose an open area between them and be connected by multiple bridges topped with lush greenery. Clad in mirror facades to blend in with the surrounding nature, the megacity will be entirely powered by renewable energy.

#BeOpenNEWS BE OPEN Art is happy to announce that Sajid Hussain, emerging contemporary painter based in Karachi, Pakistan, has been voted the Artist of the Month by the visitors of art.beopenfuture.com in July. Aiming to showcase emerging talents, every month we invite people passionate with art to choose the best artist among those exhibited in our online gallery. Congratulations to Sajid, whose expressionist paintings have gained him a majority of votes! We also take the opportunity to applaud all the featured artists and thank everyone who voted.

#BeOpenDESIGN Concerned by the energy-intensive and resource-intensive nature of avocado production that might be especially foreboding due to the fruit’s ever growing popularity, Arina Shokouhi has come up with an avocado alternative. Working at her final-year project at Central Saint Martins, she joined forces with food scientist Jack Wallman from the University of Nottingham's Food Innovation Centre to invent a recipe approximating the flavour and texture of avocado, which is based on local, natural, low-impact ingredients. The product named Evocado contains a pale green, creamy foodstuff made from a combination of broad beans, hazelnut, apple and rapeseed oil and packaged in a fake avocado skin fashioned from wax. For a makeshift avocado stone Arina has experimented with many options, including a wooden ball and a seed ball, and ended up with a whole nut, either a walnut, chestnut or hazelnut.

#BeOpenDESIGN Two Bangkok-based studios – studio Kaoi and THINKK studio – were inspired by the geometric lines that defined the 1980s Memphis collective when they developed their Ebba modular chair collection. The series features three deckchair-style seats that can be mixed and matched with four graphic armrests to offer different aesthetic "personalities," from gentle, simple lines to super playful and fun curves. Taking their titles after typically Danish names, the armrests – Han, Somma, Franz, and Mujoel – boast bold forms in the shape of squiggles, zigzags and arcs reminiscent of the confetti-like pattern called Bacterio that Sottsass designed in 1978. More Memphis-informed designs in our blog

#BeOpenDESIGN When travelling to school in the mornings, Brighton College student Pietro Pignatti would often take avocados on the train and felt uncomfortable bringing a knife on the train to cut open the avocado. This led him to develop Avogo, a compact tool that could safely cut and destone an avocado on the go. Developed as part of a school project, Avogo incorporates a metal blade and is extremely compact. The product has a curved blade that is hooked inwards to reduce the risk of injury. Since the blade is hooked and short, it falls under the maximum restriction on knives, allowing it to be transported on the go. More innovative tools for avocado-on-toast aficionados in our blog

#BeOpenART Commissioned by English Heritage to mark 1,900 years since construction began on Hadrian's Wall, one of England's most iconic landmarks, The Future Belongs To What Was As Much As What Is by London-based artist Morag Myerscough is a colourful reinterpretation of the original gatehouse at Housesteads Roman Fort, which dates back to 122AD. The pavilion was constructed from a scaffolding frame and covered in brightly coloured panels designed by Myerscough. According to the artist, the contemporary installation, replicaing the size of the original Roman gatehouse standing next to the ages-old fortification that marked the northern border of the Roman Empire, seeks to connect people of 2022 back to 122AD.

#BeOpenDESIGN Kelli Anderson is a designer and paper engineer whose work operates in the space between conceptual art, graphic design, and tech. Just as its name suggests, her whimsical book This Book is a Camera is a working pinhole camera contained within an educational pop-up book. It explains—and actively demonstrates—how a structure as humble as a folded piece of paper can tap into the intrinsic properties of light to produce a photograph. The camera accepts light through a single hole in a flat plan, which is why there are no mechanics to “focus” a pinhole camera—it is a projection from a single beam, much like a camera obscura. The result is that objects near the camera and objects far away from the camera have the same exact amount of focus. The book comes with detailed instructions and a starter pack of B/W Ilford photo paper (any 4×5” or smaller light-sensitive material can be used).