Be Open think tank

The Solar Egg, a gold-plated sauna by the artistic duo Mats Bigert and Lars Bergström, has travelled around the world inviting visitors from Paris to Minnesota in and is finally back to Sweden. Solar Egg is designed as a social sculpture that prompts thoughts of rebirth and an incubator that nurtures exchange of ideas. Outside the multifaceted form of stainless steel plates reflects the surroundings as a fragmented image, inside there is a heart-shaped sauna stove made out of iron and stone. bigertbergstrom.com

Mirrors are often thought of as mystical objects that open a door into a different reality. That is a great theme to explore in our #BEOPENReflections Instagram challenge presenting an opportunity to win €300. Rules: beopensocial.com For his project Open Fields, the Paris-based photographer Guillaume Amat placed a mirrored stand in various landscapes, reflecting the environment back within the image to create a double interpretation of the surrounding scene. guillaumeamat.com

Artists believe that working with clay is a rewarding job that opens up one’s imagination and yields an attractive result. Kiev-based design brand Faina incorporates local natural materials into its furniture lines based on domestic traditions and craft techniques. The studio cooperates with local artisans and experiments with clay to develop pieces that are durable enough to function as an item of furniture. And they have managed to convert the fragile nature of the material into very reliable and modern-looking pieces. More designer objects made of clay in our blog.beopenfuture.com

Austria-based architecture studio Precht unveiled Bert, a family of modular treehouses for Baumbau start-up that specializes on tiny homes and buildings for alternative tourism. The architects admit they looked at cartoon characters to find a reference. ‘Designing Bert, we tried to remember back to our childhood when we were climbing trees and building shelters with branches,’ says Precht. The building does look like a trunk of a tree and is flexible to grow taller throughout its life-span by adding new pre-fabricated modules. precht.at

Join our #BEOPENReflections open call and win €300! This time we explore how reflections break up boundaries of the reality and change human perception. Share your visuals via Instagram and don’t forget to add the tag. Rules: beopensocial.com Reflections play a special role in the series Reflected Moments by the legendary dance photographer Lois Greenfield. The mirrors are used as eye-catching props and hypnotizing backdrops for the dancers’ striking poses. loisgreenfield.com

Colours, light and a touch of nature can make one’s feelings soar up with simple joy, so designers seek to create city-inspired objects with a happier human in their mind. Belgian Nortstudio have designed Urban Shapes, a geometric bench inspired by rough forms and materials scattered around on various construction sites. The colorful bench is composed of three stools – resembling children’s playing blocks – joined by a steel grid which is typically used as floor surface or a staircase tread. More colorful design objects in our blog.beopenfuture.com

#BeOpenART ‘A pencil and a blank sheet— there is no simpler medium than that,’ says Oscar Oiwa, a Brazilian artist of Japanese origin. Just look at his 360-Degree immersive drawing created with 120 marker pens to see that this simple medium has no boundaries. It took Oiwa and his five assistants two weeks to create this imagined environment, which is composed of dark patches of forest, winding pathways, and a sky filled with high-contrast swirls, inside an inflatable nylon dome.   oscaroiwastudio.com

Shanghai studio Archi-Union Architects designed a rural cultural centre in Sichuan province which appears to be a combination of digital fabrication and integration of local concepts. The shape of the building is derived from the inkstone of traditional Chinese calligraphy, which has a water-holding cavity incorporated into a surface used to grind inksticks. The tiled roof flows into the central courtyard through an elegant curve to connect the boundary of the sky and the earth, and to rethink the elements of the place. The elements of traditional Chinese architecture is closely related to the contemporary non-linear aesthetics in this project. Ph: Shengliang Su archi-union.com

Join our #BEOPENReflections open call and win €300! This time we explore how reflections break up boundaries of the reality and change human perception. Share you visuals via Instagram and don’t forget to add the tag. Rules: beopensocial.com Reflections play a special role in the work of the Germany-born and USA-based photographer Hans Breder - not only dissolving the boundaries of space but disorienting the observer’s view. According to Breder, art has always recognized the mirror as a window or door leading to totally separate and rarely knowable realms. As early as 1964, Breder started a series of works known as ‘Body/Sculptures’ that featured nude models and a rectangular mirror and resulted in an interplay between the real and illusory worlds. hansbreder.com

Denver-based Tres Birds Workshop designed a Japanese restaurant in Denver and topped it with a greenhouse. Uchi takes the ground floor and features an L-shaped dining area that is organized around a central sushi counter and bar. The 650-square-metre greenhouse featuring aeroponic towers that require no soil supplies the kitchen with organic greens available throughout the year. Moreover, this urban farm provides leafy greens for several local restaurants and markets too. More unique restaurant experiences in blog.beopenfuture.com