Spanish practice Estudio Albar has used cork cladding to help this home near Madrid blend in with the scrub-like landscape of a neighbouring national park.

Named Casa Eñe, the home is located half an hour's drive from the Spanish capital and was designed for clients who wanted a home that would have a minimal impact both visually and environmentally.

In order to "unify the plot and the park", Estudio Albar removed a row of hedges classed as a prohibited species that previously separated the two, opening the site up to dramatic views across the landscape.

"At the north boundary of the Casa Eñe plot, beyond the great hedge barrier that had been unmaintained for decades, the natural park was located," said Estudio Albar founder Daniel Lozano.

"Hectares of holm oaks and rockroses, a place where you can cross paths with deer, wild boars, and even wolves just half an hour from Madrid," he told Dezeen. "We couldn't block those views, we had to integrate them into the project."

To allow every space to enjoy these views to the north as well as sunlight from the south, Casa Eñe is organised in a long, narrow plan measuring six by 40 metres and topped by a large rooftop terrace.

Two corridors extend down either side of the home, with living spaces and bathrooms organised in the centre. Sliding doors and curtains allow these areas to be opened up or closed off when greater privacy is required.

On the first floor, Estudio Albar has created an independent "pavilion" containing an office accessed by an external spiral staircase.

The orientation and narrow plan also make Casa Eñe easy to heat and cool, with the south-facing windows helping to warm the home during winter. These are sheltered by vegetation during summer.

While helping the home to blend with its surroundings, the cork cladding also helps to keep it warm thanks to its insulating properties. Cork is a renewable material harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree, which is biodegradable, durable and insulating.

According to Estudio Albar, the home is so well insulated that it meets the Passivhaus standard – a certification given to low-energy buildings with high levels of insulation and airtightness – and requires just three small towel radiators to keep it warm.

Casa Eñe is built from a prefabricated timber frame and finished with white-walled interiors, warmed by pale wooden frames and fittings. The interiors are kept purposefully minimal to focus attention towards the landscape views.

"We believe in simple architecture. We don't like artifices or the superfluous. If something doesn't contribute to the architecture, it should be eliminated," Lozano told Dezeen.

"The elongated shape allows us to create a fluid house. All the communications in the house are taken to the perimeters. Not even when walking around the house did we want to lose sight of the field," he added.

Other homes that have recently made use of cork cladding include a pair of apartment blocks in Belgium by Officeu Architects and a "camouflaged" home in Portugal designed by Inês Brandão Arquitectura.

The photography is by Imagen Subliminal.

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London studio Delve Architects has transformed a Victorian house in Camberwell with a cork-clad extension that introduces a bright open-plan kitchen and dining space for entertaining.

Appropriately named Camberwell Cork House, the 20-square-metre extension project replaces an existing kitchen and back room that the studio said was "cramped and dark".

"The kitchen was small, cramped and dark, with a small door into the garden and no visual connection between interior and exterior," Delve Architects told Dezeen.

"The intention was to maximise sight lines into the long garden and bring in light as much as possible."

Camberwell Cork House's dining room now extends out into the garden, enclosed by large triple-glazed windows and a 2.4-metre-high glass door with green-painted frames.

These large glazed areas focus attention on the outside while allowing westerly light to filter into the dining space.

According to Delve Architects, a key move to help make the space feel brighter and airier was to sink the extension, which required a step down from the main living spaces into the dining area.

"It is one of the design principles we propose for Victorian properties as it can often be achieved without major structural implications or underpinning – a simple step, but a highly beneficial one," explained the studio.

Skylights also run along the length of the extension's roof to drench the space with light from above.

Further supporting the connection between the home's interior and the garden is a stretch of brick paving that runs from the patio and into the kitchen.

Another key element of the project was the use of cork, a renewable material harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree, which is biodegradable, durable and insulating.

The natural material is used as cladding and insulation, forming part of a wider design strategy focused on minimising carbon emissions and energy bills.

However, Delve Architects aimed to ensure that its use of this contemporary material does not overshadow the existing Victorian architecture.

Cork cladding is only used on the rear side of the home, covering the facade of the extension, while internally it is only used as insulation. The extension also has a butterfly roof to echo the existing streetscape.

Delve Architects, a small studio set up in 2017 by two school friends based in south London, had not worked with the material before Camberwell Cork House.

According to the studio, by using it as both external cladding and a thermal insulator, the project aims to showcase the potential of cork beyond aesthetics.

"We want to show how decarbonising can be done at any scale and loved the challenge of working with this natural material," said co-director Alex Raher.

Cork is used as part of a palette of materials that were chosen for either their low U-values or for being environmentally friendly. Others include hard-wearing terracotta floor tiles in the kitchen and water-based paints made using clay.

As well as opening up spaces at the back of the terraced house, Delve Architects has introduced a utility room and created a snug lounge at the front of the home.

To create a feeling of warmth, the walls and ceiling of the lounge are painted in a rich Venetian red.

Cork is increasingly being selected as a material for domestic architecture projects.

Other cork-clad houses recently featured on Dezeen include a home in east London by Polysmiths and a residence by Inês Brandão Arquitectura in Portugal that uses the material to camouflage into its surrounding landscape.

The photography is by Fred Howarth.

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East London hair salon Buller and Rice has opened a new venue with an interior design palette that includes seaweed, algae, cork and mushroom leather.

Buller and Rice Wanstead is a salon that doubles as a lifestyle store, selling products ranging from homeware to wine.

Company founders Anita Rice and Stephen Buller designed the interior themselves, filling it with bespoke creations from designers and makers including Natural Material Studio's Bonnie Hvillum and Copenhagen-based Jonas Edvard.

Rice told Dezeen their ambition was to use as many plant-based materials as possible.

"We wanted to deep dive into what could happen with plant matter," she explained.

The collaboration with Hvillum – who won the inaugural Bentley Lighthouse Award at Dezeen Awards 2023 – resulted in latex-like curtains made from a yellow algae-based material.

Edvard's contribution is a series of yellow pendant lamps made from recycled paper and seaweed, similar to those he previously made for Copenhagen burger joint, POPL.

Rice said she spotted them by chance while enjoying a burger there. "When it turned out they were made from seaweed, I knew they were perfect," she explained.

Other plant-based details include a cork wall and seat pads made from algae-based foam, while cushions made from mushroom leather will be added in early 2024.

The space is also filled with plants, with many installed behind the front windows.

Buller and Rice Wanstead is the third venue that the company has opened in east London, following salons in Hackney and Walthamstow.

Rice said the project represents the latest step in a journey of exploration into eco-friendly materials.

Initially, they focused on simple natural materials like wood and cork. They then started experimenting with materials made from recycled waste products, including a sheet plastic made from yoghurt pots.

"Our primary interest is in finding innovative and sustainable building materials that we can work into an aesthetically pleasing approach," Rice said.

The renovation involved a complete refit of a former Chinese restaurant that had been shut down for years.

A yellow colour scheme features throughout, marking a departure from the pink hues of the two other Buller and Rice salons.

This shade can be found on bespoke concrete pieces created by London-based maker Smith & Goat, including an orthogonal reception desk, a wall-hung washbasin and the column-like legs of two styling stations.

Stainless steel features on both walls and surfaces, offering a utilitarian feel that contrasts the warmth of the yellow. "Practicality had a hand in that decision," Rice admitted.

The space is completed by custom-made barber chairs, frameless arch mirrors, yellow tiling and speckled vinyl flooring from manufacturer Tarkett.

The photography is by Megan Taylor.

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UK-based designer Lara Bohinc has unveiled a series of bulbous furniture and decorative objects for public use at the Miami Design District during the city's art week.

Called Utopia, Bohinc's collection comprises four different clusters of sculptural forms, placed both in the Miami Design District and outside of the Design/ Miami fair in Miami Beach.

The pieces are ergonomic, taking the shape of chairs, benches and tables with bulbous forms rendered in cork and then finished with pastel colours. Among the designs is an egg-shaped object with hollow insides meant to be a play-place for children, surrounded by two pink benches arrayed in front of a Balenciaga storefront.

A series of hundreds of birdhouses, also egg-shaped, were hung from the trees throughout the Design District.

Another ring of seating was placed around an expressive sculpture with a slightly humanoid figure. It was placed in front of the district's famous geodesic dome by modernist architect and thinker Richard Buckminster Fuller.

The juxtaposition seems fitting given the utopian impulse of Fuller and the explicit utopian themes of Bohinc's installation and she told Dezeen that she picked the spot – a feature of winning the design competition that decides the commission each – for that reason and for its "organic" appearance.

Bohinc aimed to work with this natural form, working in dialogue with the form of Fuller's work.

"His project was the direct inspiration for the piece," she said.

"It's called fly-eye dome, but to me, it looks like a cell multiplying and overtaking the square and – and I thought, what if those cells kept multiplying?"

In line with the "natural" theme, it was also important for Bohinc that she used organic materials. The structures were constructed using blocks of cork pasted together and supported by steel frames, fabricated by a family-run studio in Portugal.

The pieces were then painted with a water-resistant paint used for outdoor furniture.

"It's a natural material," Bohinc said. "That was very important for me, because it's really about nature, and life and cells and organism and growth, and this kind of lifeforce."

A reusable material was also important because the installation is temporary. Bohinc wanted to create work that would engage with the public and noted that even just a few days after the installation she noticed people interacting and even carving into the work.

"The site itself is very important," she said. "The site inspired it and the colours were inspired directly from the buildings around it."

Bohinc, who was born in Slovenia, displayed pieces with similar forms but made with wool at Milan's design week in 2022. Utopia is among several large-scale installations on show during Miami art week 2023; we rounded up 10 of the most interesting here.

Miami art week takes place from 6 to 19 December in Miami, US. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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London-based studio EBBA Architects has channelled the environmental ethos of fashion rental platform Rotaro for its pop-up boutique at department store Liberty.

The project aimed to show that beautiful and interesting spaces can be created for temporary use, while still considering the environmental impacts of materials and construction.

"We are very aware of our environmental impact and we believe design should speak to this, while also trying to make a unique experience for the visitor," EBBA founder Benjamin Allan told Dezeen.

"Rotaro is all about fashion rental, as a response to waste in the industry," he added. "Circularity is key to their ethos and we wanted to connect to this, both in the use of material and form."

Bringing definition to Rotaro's space within the wider store, EBBA has demarcated the area with a pair of substantial columns, each with an elongated, semi-circular cross-section.

"The position and shape of the columns create the sense of walking into an entirely new space within the historic context of Liberty," said Allan.

Entwining the two columns, a pair of metal rails have the dual function of creating a display area and introducing a sculptural element that further defines the space, with soaring, free-form curves.

"The two rails rotate and wrap around each of the columns, while also simultaneously responding to the opposite rail, a bit like a choreographed piece," Allan said.

Continuing the theme of duality, just two key materials have been used in the space – cork and metal.

EBBA was influenced by the work of artists Donald Judd and Carl Andre and their elevation of humble materials through detailing and construction.

"We always look to push the potential of a project, to make the most impact through the simplest of means and also address the need to be economical," Allan said.

"Essentially the design revolves around only two materials which, working together, give a sense of regularity in the layouts of the blocks, combined with the sculptural forms of the rails."

Cork was used as the primary material, cladding the two columns and creating the backdrops that zone Rotaro's area.

EBBA aimed to use a material that had an environmental quality, while using the standardisation of the blocks to set parameters for the design.

"We chose blocks of a specific dimension that could then be adapted to create both the walls and the columns themselves," Allan said.

"The cork is a natural material that has an inherent warmth and depth, while also being incredibly versatile and easily recycled," he added.

Brushed stainless steel was used for the metalwork, with each rail comprised of a single piece of metal that was bent and sculpted to wrap around the columns.

This rail's curving form relates to the idea of circularity in Rotaro's business model, while also bringing an adaptability to the space by allowing the garments to be shown in a variety of ways.

"The primary purpose is to display the continuously updated collection while also adding a sculptural aspect that helps to create a sense of space," said Allan.

Within the ornately-detailed Liberty store, the project offers a bold, contemporary response to the interior, while finding common ground with the wider building.

"The tones and textures in the warmth of the cork, tie in with the timber and natural colours of Liberty's interior spaces," Allan said. "Detailing and decoration in the original columns relate to nature and vegetation, which also tie into the use of cork and its qualities."

Because the Liberty building has Grade II listed status, no fixings were allowed into the building fabric.

"The benefit of the lightweight cork material meant we could also adapt the Rotaro space with minimal impact on the wider building," he added.

To create a plinth that provides a flat surface for displaying objects, EBBA used the same semi-circular form of the columns, but flipped onto its side.

This element has been given an ultramarine blue coating to add a sense of playfulness and catch the attention of visitors, using one of Rotaro's key colours to connect with the brand's identity.

While the space has been designed as a pop-up, EBBA worked – through the quality of the materials and the construction of the walls and blocks – to give it a sense of permanence.

"All of our projects aim to achieve a quality of permanence through the use of natural materials and the detailing of the construction," Allan said.

"We believe that this level of quality helps to create a design that feels purposeful, even for temporary uses."

Other recent projects by EBBA Architects include a shop for Cubitts in an old pie-and-mash restaurant and a house extension with brutalist-style materials.

The photography is by James Retief

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Promotion: architects and designers are increasingly finding new ways to use cork to help reduce the carbon footprint of their projects, according to Portuguese company Amorim Cork Composites.

As the innovation arm of the world's largest cork producer Corticeira Amorim, Amorim Cork Composites, has seen a marked uptick in interest over the last few years, whether producing furniture for designer Tom Dixon and the Campana Brothers, creating door handles for architect Eduardo Souto Moura or supplying wall panels for Counterspace's 2021 Serpentine Pavilion.

The company describes cork as "one of the world's most versatile materials", as it provides both thermal and acoustic insulation on top of being naturally impact absorbent, anti-slip and soft to the touch.

Cork has the ability to sequester carbon while replacing other, more polluting materials.

That's because cork is a renewable natural material derived from the outer bark of the cork oak, which grows mainly in western Mediterranean countries such as Portugal.

Here, cork forests retain up to 73 tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of cork harvested every year in a process that, unlike timber production, leaves the tree standing and sequestering carbon.

Most often, cork is still used for the production of bottle stoppers. But manufacturers such as Amorim Cork Composites are increasingly exploring new ways to make composites and novel products by reusing any cork that went to waste in the manufacturing process.

This sees the material combined with other natural materials such as clay, foams, wood and metal in table, kitchen, office accessories, furniture and lighting.

"There are countless objects produced with cork that are stunning in their beauty and contemporary design," said Amorim Cork Composites.

Another example is Cork Polymer Compounds, which are bio-composites produced through a process that mixes cork and polymers, which has the "malleability and durability of thermoplastics and on the other, the lightness, resilience, and sustainability of cork".

"Cork's low density allows it to reduce the volume of plastic consumed up to 60 per cent, representing a more sustainable alternative when compared to 100 per cent plastic-based materials," said Amorim Cork Composites.

Last year, the company created the ACC Design Studio to further push the boundaries of what can be made from cork.

The creative studio develops new innovative materials and concepts in collaboration with designers, architects and brands and provides them with ongoing technical support throughout their projects.

To find out more, visit the company's website.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Amorim Cork Composites as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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A cave-like cork lounge is hidden at the back of this barbershop in southwest Houston, by Gin Design Group, which also offers IV drips to cure customers' hangovers.

This second location of the Treadwell men's salon chain in situated the Texas city's Southside Place neighbourhood.

Part of the Southside Commons development, the 2,697-square-foot (250-square-metre) space was designed to echo the first outpost in Houston Heights, but have its own distinctive character.

The history of this area, as a once "meager" and overlooked suburb that slowly became a thriving community, guided some aspects of the design.

"Taking cues from the cultural fibre of Southside Place, Treadwell's second location will allude to the industrious nature of the area through the use of more industrial touches like steel and concrete," said Gin Design Group, which is led by founder Gin Braverman.

"While these materials speak to the strength of the community, they're softened by clean mosaic tiles, wood, and woven rattan," the team continued. "Paired with organic architectural elements, this diverse blend of materiality helps to create an illustrious, yet comforting, medley."

Customers are greeted at a reception desk fronted by square white tiles, which match the walls behind.

They then proceed to the "cutting floor", which has a unique radial layout. Six identical chairs face outward at lozenge-shaped mirrors suspended in the middle of white metal poles.

A central circular unit forms a stand and incorporates storage for the stylists' equipment. It wraps a wooden column, from which matching ceiling beams radiate like wheel spokes.

Tucked away at the back of the salon is an area lined entirely in cork, which features a curved bar made from glass bricks.

The dark and moody lounge is completed with turquoise bar stools and custom 1970s-influenced furniture, "speaking to the history of the mid-century architectural style of Southside Place", according to Gin Design Group.

Other brighter rooms where the white mosaic tiles are continued include a hair-washing space, and another reserved for treatments including cryotherapy, pedicures, and IV drips intended to rehydrate the body and help alleviate hangovers.

"The overall interior design aesthetic marries the branding and concept to convey a cohesive design intent, felt in every detail," said Gin Design Group.

"Bridging minimalist materiality with optimal functionality, Treadwell will remain a clear expression of innovation for the men's grooming industry."

Other unusual, design-forward barbershops around the world include a minimalist space by Ivy Studio in Montreal, a "brooding" men's spa by Nicholas Szczepaniak Architects in Dubai, and a salon with greyscale interiors by Sivak & Partners in Odessa.

The photography is by Cladia Casbarian for Julie Soefer Photography.

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Spanish architect Andrés Jaque's Office for Political Innovation has completed a school near Madrid that aims to be as colourful and playful as a child's imagination.

Located in Encinar de los Reyes, on the northern outskirts of the Spanish capital, Reggio School is a six-storey building featuring cork walls, concrete arches, porthole windows and zigzagging roofs.

Inside, classrooms and other teaching spaces are interspersed with indoor gardens.

Jaque – who is dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture as well as the founder of New York-based Office for Political Innovation – describes it as "a complex ecosystem" for education.

"Avoiding homogenisation and unified standards, the architecture of the school aims to become a multiverse where the layered complexity of the environment becomes readable and experiential," the studio said.

"It operates as an assemblage of different climates, ecosystems, architectural traditions and regulations."

The Reggio school model was pioneered in Reggio Emilia, northern Italy, where a series of preschools promote child-led rather than adult-dictated forms of learning.

Based on a concept developed in the 1940s by educator Loris Malaguzzi, these schools offer more scope for creativity and imagination than traditional learning environments.

Office for Political Innovation, led by principal Roberto González García, has brought the same kind of thinking to architecture.

To create spaces that fully support this method of education, the building is organised as a mini vertical city. Each level has a different feel and the age of pupils increases as you move up.

"This distribution of uses implies an ongoing maturity process that is translated into the growing capacity of students to explore the school ecosystem on their own and with their peers," said the architects.

Ground and first-floor rooms are designed to interact with the landscape, with some partially submerged in the earth.

On the two intermediate floors, rooms are organised around an eight-metre-high hall. This open-air space functions as both a social plaza and a space where children learn about nature.

The two upper levels feature classrooms interspersed around an atrium greenhouse and various indoor gardens, which are filled with plants thanks to reclaimed water and soil tanks located below.

Sustainability played a key role in shaping the building's design aesthetic, but also keeping costs low.

A minimal-waste approach led to service pipes, ducts, wires and grilles being left exposed rather than concealed.

Instead of doubling up on exterior cladding and thermal insulation, cork – an entirely natural material – serves both purposes, covering 80 per cent of the building volume.

The building volume is also highly efficient, thanks to both its multi-level layout and an optimised structural arrangement calculated by engineer and researcher Iago González Quelle.

Office for Political Innovation describes the approach as "thinning, skinning and making fluffy".

"The overall amount of material used in the facades, roofs and interior partitions of the building has been reduced by 48 per cent just by replacing a big part of the construction by simple strategies or thermal insulation and mechanical systems distribution," it said.

"The result presents a naked building where the non-edited visibility of its operating components defines its aesthetics."

Jaque is known for his experimental approach to architecture, as seen in projects like the Never Never Land House in Ibiza and the Cosmo installation in the MoMA PS1 courtyard in New York.

Reggio School is his studio's largest built work to date.

The ambition is for the building to redefine the concept of a sustainable school, looking beyond the building fabric to the types of uses and activities it facilitates.

The photography is by José Hevia.

Project credits:

Architects: Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation
Team: Roberto González García, Luis González Cabrera, Alberto Heras, Ismael Medina Manzano, Jesús Meseguer Cortés, Paola Pardo-Castillo, Rajvi Anandpara, Juan David Barreto, Inês Barros, Ludovica Battista, Shubhankar Bhajekar, Elise Durand, Drishti Gandhi, Maria Karagianni, Bansi Mehta, Alessandro Peja, Meeerati Rana, Mishti Shah, Saumil Shanghavi
Structural engineering: Qube Ingeniería de Estructuras
Services engineering: JG Ingenieros
Quantity survey (project): Dirtec Arquitectos Técnicos
Ecology and edaphology: Mingobasarrate
Project management: Ángel David Moreno Casero, Carlos Peñalver Álvarez, Almudena Antón Vélez

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Architecture studio Polysmiths used cork panels to clad internal and external surfaces at Cork House in east London, which was built using materials available during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Polysmiths director Charles Wu adopted the roles of architect, client and developer for the Cork House project, which he designed as a home for himself and his partner.

Wu purchased a rectangular brownfield plot in Forest Gate in 2020 and set about producing plans for a three-bedroom house that was to be built using conventional blockwork and timber frame construction.

Lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic led to a shortage of materials such as concrete, plasterboard and plywood, which became too expensive to use in the project. This prompted Wu to look for more affordable and less commonly used alternatives.

"We decided to research and opt for materials that didn't have supply chain issues and could actually enhance the building's sustainability credentials," Wu told Dezeen.

The house is built using locally sourced timber and lime plaster, with cork panelling applied to the internal and external walls. This material palette gives the interior an earthy and cocooning feel.

The cork was sourced from Portuguese firm Amorim through a Welsh supplier called Mike Wye. Harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree, the material is highly insulating and was treated to meet fire-proofing regulations.

"I had used cork previously as cavity insulation but I hadn't really used it as a wall finish before," said Wu, adding that the material has a multi-sensory quality that brought a further dimension to the project.

"It smells amazing – like slightly charred wood," he suggested, "and it has this rich colour and texture that comes alive when light hits the surface."

The brownfield site was hidden from the main street and surrounded by the typical walled gardens of the neighbouring terraced houses. This prompted the architect to seek out innovative ways of introducing daylight to the interior.

"The first thing I tried to do was to bring more light in using courtyards," Wu explained. "These internally facing courtyards also allowed us to create cross ventilation throughout the spaces."

Building regulations limited the overall height of the building, so part of the site was excavated to drop the floor level by half a storey, resulting in a split-level interior.

Cork House's entrance leads into a hallway that connects with the open-plan kitchen, dining area and lounge. A centrally located lightwell and staircase separates this space from two bedrooms and a shower room to the rear of the property.

"The two wings help distinguish between the public and private parts of the ground floor," Wu pointed out. "The dining room and living area is somewhere we can have parties and then the other more intimate wing contains the bedrooms."

The main courtyard is lined with fully openable folding glass doors, creating an indoor-outdoor living space that is inspired by the time Wu spent living in Australia during his childhood.

Alongside the central lightwell, skylights, high-level windows and a smaller void in the back corner of the house ensure natural light penetrates deep into the internal spaces.

Cork House's lower ground floor contains the main bedroom, which looks onto a courtyard at the base of the larger lightwell. The en-suite bathroom also receives daylight from the corner lightwell.

Wu described the project as an example of "beautiful sustainability" that showcases an experimental approach to self-building using unusual materials and methods driven by difficult circumstances.

"I would encourage other architects to take on this kind of project if they have the opportunity," he added. "Alongside working for clients, architects should look to lead building projects and use them as prototypes for testing new materials and new ways of living."

Cork is a natural and renewable material that has become increasingly popular with architects in recent years, as demonstrated in our roundup of ten interiors with cork-covered walls.

Portuguese studio Inês Brandão Arquitectura used cork to clad the upper storey of a house near Lisbon, creating textured surfaces that complement the natural setting.

Nate Dalesio also covered the exterior of his own home in the State of New York with corkboard panels chosen to improve the building's insulation.

The photography is by Lorenzo Zandri.

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Dezeen Showroom: designer Marco Carini has created two seating designs made from recycled cork for Italian bathroom brand Agape, which are designed to provide a relaxing place to sit in the bathroom.

The designs include a lightweight stool named Vis-à-vis that can also be used as a small side table and the Rendez-vous bench, which provides extended seating for users to stretch out.

The Vis-à-vis stool has a cylindrical form made from heat-treated cork, with a curved cut-out that Agape describes as a "smiling" shape.

The Rendez-vous bench is made up of hand-woven cork ropes wrapped between recycled aluminium tubing, which is painted in a warm brick-toned red.

The cork used to produce Vis-à-vis and Rendez-vous was sourced from material discarded from the production of wine bottle stoppers.

Designed for both residential and commercial interiors, the stool and bench are water-resistant and intended to provide a relaxing place to reflect.

"Like in a child's drawing, or a fairy tale by Gianni Rodari, these whimsical and playful elements show both lightness and originality of thought," said Agape.

"In a world that wants everything neatly categorized and defined, these pieces celebrate their versatility and freedom of use."

Product: Vis-à-vis and Rendez-vous
Designer: Marco Carini
Brand: Agape
Contact: info@agapedesign.it

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Architecture studio Atelier SAD and interior designer Iveta Zachariášová have created a cork-clad family home in the Czech Republic, which was embedded into a grassy ridge.

Atelier SAD and Zachariášová chose to clad the rural house in cork due to its thermal and weather-resistant properties, which it benefits from in its exposed setting.

The house is orientated along a contour line at the foot of the Ještěd Ridge, overlooking the Bohemian Paradise Protected Landscape Area.

"The landscape is open, dominated by flowering, unfenced meadows," said the designers. "The view and the integration of the interior spaces into the landscape was one of the main motifs driving the house design process."

The house is partially set into a grassy embankment, which is topped by a road that allows part of the roof to act as a parking space. It was surrounded by an irregular cluster of vernacular pink granite stones.

"The slender mass of the house cuts diagonally into the steep slope of the road, and the ridge seems to slope down into the garden," the designers added.

The remainder of the roof is made from pitched aluminium sheets and features a gable that projects out at one end to create a covered terrace overlooking the unfenced garden.

Areas of the facade which are not glazed are clad in Portuguese expanded cork applied in vertical strips of varying widths – the first application of its kind in the Czech Republic, according to the designers.

A triangular glazed partition that echoes the form of the gable extends to separate the terrace from the interior, wrapping around the front of the space to open up a view over the meadows.

The glass panels can slide to open the space physically as well as visually.

An open-plan kitchen, dining and living space was orientated around a suspended fireplace and is overlooked by a secondary living space on the mezzanine floor.

The concrete walls and floors are punctuated by furnishings sourced primarily from furniture companies Konsepti and Ligne Roset, providing a playful edge to the otherwise functional space.

Bedrooms, bathrooms and storage areas share the pared-back look of the main area, and are arranged along a straight corridor towards the front door.

"The interior design of the house with the internal layout of the rooms may have been created earlier than the house itself," said Zachariášová. "Many of the functional aspects were clear from the outset, and we basically only dealt with their alignment."

"This is how the entire project was gradually born – with respect for local traditions, history, materials and the surroundings," added the studio.

Other homes in natural settings published on Dezeen include a house that frames its views of the Suffolk countryside by Norm Architects and a renovated 1960s house that frames its Californian coastal views by Fuse Architects.

The photography is by BoysPlayNice.

Project credits:

Construction: Ještědská stavební společnost
Landscape architect: Partero
Interior construction: MY76

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Two cork-clad apartment blocks flank a renovated 18th-century building at the De Sijs co-housing project in Leuven, Belgium, designed by local studio Officeu Architects.

Located on a street corner at the edge of Leuven's historic town centre, the project combines 12 apartments and shared facilities around a central garden.

The project, which is shortlisted in the housing project category of Dezeen Awards 2022, is designed to maximise opportunities for residents to meet each other.

It is named De Sijs after the cafe that formerly occupied the central 18th-century building, which has been repurposed as a communal living area and the "beating heart" of the project.

"Three separate building volumes are connected by an L-shaped circulation axis, along which the entrances to the flats and the collective spaces are located," explained Officeu Architects.

"A listed 18th-century building at the centre of the circulation axis is the main entrance to the project and contains a collective dining space with kitchen, a cosy living space, a fully equipped guest stay, an atelier and a coworking space, becoming the inviting face to the project and the beating heart of the collective life," it continued.

The thin gabled form of the old cafe stands at the corner of the site, with two blocks of six apartments on either side creating new cork-clad street frontages.

At the rear of the existing building, full-height glazing opens up the living and dining areas to the adjacent garden where a paved patio steps down towards a lawn.

Inside De Sijs's apartment blocks, residences range from compact studios to three-bedroom duplexes. They are arranged so that each one opens onto either a patio or balcony facing the main garden.

Cut-outs in the front elevation of the blocks create spaces for external access stairs, allowing each apartment to have its own front door. The doors are hidden behind a screen of metal wire that will eventually host climbing plants.

De Sijs' structure of wood and steel with simple infill walls was chosen to create easily modifiable interiors, and the first residents were able to customise their spaces during the design process.

"A co-housing project is in many ways different from a standard housing project," said Officeu Architects.

"Collective and personal interests must go hand in hand at all times," the studio added. "To achieve this, the future inhabitants were involved in the design process from a very early stage."

The wooden ceiling beams and ventilation ducts have been left exposed in the pared-back white interiors, which are enlivened by coloured tiling.

Panels made from waste cork clad the exterior of both apartment blocks, intended to bring a softness and warmth to the structures while buffering sound from the road.

Cork, which is made from the bark of the cork oak tree, has become an increasingly popular building material in recent years because it is renewable, resistant and insulating.

Other projects that use it as cladding include the Cork Screw House by Rundzwei Architekten and Casa Bonjardim by ATKA Arquitectos.

Another project shortlisted in the housing project category of the Dezeen Awards 2022 is Stories in Amsterdam by Olaf Gipser Architects, which also encourages community living.

A dormitory for nurses at Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok by Plan Architect also made the shortlist.

The photography is by Stijn Bollaert.

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From an artist's studio in Devon to a coffee bar in a Beijing hutong, this lookbook rounds up ten interiors with tactile walls that are clad or built with cork.

Cork is a natural and renewable material sustainably harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree.

In architecture and interiors, it is commonly used in the form of cladding panels or building blocks. These are typically formed by heating cork granules, triggering the release of natural resins that bind them together.

Cork is an increasingly popular material for exterior and interior walls as it is biodegradable, durable and insulating, and when left exposed, it adds warmth and tactility to a space.

This is the latest in our series of lookbooks providing curated visual inspiration from Dezeen's image archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks showcasing multi-generational homes, residential corridors and homes filled with decorative ceramics.

Art Barn, UK, by Thomas Randall-Page

Cork cladding gives a sense of cosiness to this freestanding "winter studio", which architect Thomas Randall-Page designed for his father and sculptor Peter Randall-Page.

Elevated on timber supports with stone feet, it forms the centrepiece of a wider open-plan workspace and archive created for the artist within an old barn in Devon.

Find out more about Art Barn ›

Cork House, UK, by Nimtim Architects

Nimtim Architects paired cork with bright pink window frames at this playful house extension in London.

Exposed inside and out, the material was chosen to create a continuous textured surface that offers "a subtle counterpoint to the original brickwork" of the existing dwelling.

Find out more about Cork House ›

Big Small Coffee + B&B, China, by Office AIO

Cork panels are among several materials that decorate this small coffee bar, nestled in one of Beijing's hutong districts.

Office AIO used the wall coverings to add comfort and tactility to the interior while absorbing sound, preventing disturbance to an adjoining guesthouse.

Find out more about Big Small Coffee + B&B ›

Cork House, UK, by Matthew Barnett Howland with Dido Milne and Oliver Wilton

Lego-like blocks of cork were used to build this modular house in Berkshire.

Left exposed throughout the interior, they provide a snug and earthy aesthetic for the house and also ensure its structure is easily recyclable at the end of its life. The material was decorated with brass, oak, spruce and black-stained Accoya wood details.

Find out more about Cork House ›

The Day After House, Spain, by Takk

In this 110-square-metre Madrid apartment, several of the walls, ceilings and columns are covered in charred cork chosen for its heat-retaining and low-carbon properties.

The front door is also covered by the blackened panels, disguised as part of a storage wall with built-in pinewood shelving.

Find out more about Day after House ›

Olive+Squash, UK, by Neiheiser Argyros

Neiheiser Argyros used the material in the dining space at the Olive+Squash cafe in London, which is concealed by a gridded metal structure dotted with potted plants.

The cork visually separates the eating area from the white-walled serving counter below, while creating an inviting atmosphere that encourages visitors to "gather and linger over their meal".

Find out more about Olive + Squash ›

Heart clinic, Switzerland, by Dost

A 1960s restaurant was overhauled to create this heart treatment centre in Zurich, within which architecture studio Dost installed a series of cork-lined cubicles.

The earthy tones of the cork juxtapose the more clinical white finishes in the rest of the space, avoiding the sterile appearance of a typical healthcare environment.

Find out more about the heart clinic ›

Biju Bubble Tea Rooms, UK, by Gundry & Ducker

Cork cladding extends down from the walls to form tiered seating and flooring at the Biju Bubble Tea Rooms in London, creating a playful internal landscape for visitors.

Architecture studio Gundry & Ducker selected the material for the fit-out as it is naturally occurring and echoes the cafe's use of fresh ingredients for its drinks.

Find out more about Biju Bubble Tea Rooms ›

Selencky Parsons office, UK, by Selencky Parsons

Timber pegs that support models and hanging plants slot into this cork-covered pod in Selencky Parsons' self-designed studio space in London.

The workspace was designed to give a cosy character to the irregularly-shaped commercial unit while also providing privacy for staff from passersby.

Find out more about the Selencky Parsons office ›

Ecork Hotel, Portugal, by José Carlos Cruz

Architect José Carlos Cruz overlapped a series of different-sized cork slabs to create the feature wall of this restaurant in a hotel in Portugal's Alentejo region.

It matches the exterior of the building, which the architect designed "to promote cork as a cladding material" because it is insulating and recyclable.

Find out more about Ecork Hotel ›

This is the latest in our series of lookbooks providing curated visual inspiration from Dezeen's image archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks showcasing multi-generational homes, residential corridors and homes filled with decorative ceramics.

The post Ten interiors with textured cork-covered walls appeared first on Dezeen.

Cork cladding creates a "camouflaged" upper storey at this home near Lisbon, Portugal, designed by local studio Inês Brandão Arquitectura.

Appropriately named Cork House, the dwelling is located in Aroeira, a protected area of woodland that has been a popular spot for weekend and holiday homes since the 1970s.

The client desired a home that could serve both as a quiet shelter and as a lively social space for family and friends to gather.

Approaching these as two distinct functions, Inês Brandão Arquitectura created two forms – a long, low-lying block containing open social spaces and a smaller two-storey block housing bedrooms "camouflaged" by cork cladding.

Surrounded by a low white wall and Mediterranean-style garden, Cork House's two volumes open onto a central decked terrace with a swimming pool.

"The house, on the one hand, should have a practical and playful character which would encourage an active social life, and on the other hand it should allow for the creation of a shelter," explained Inês Brandão Arquitectura.

"Our goal was to integrate the building into the surrounding landscape, by choosing a strategic position to settle the house and by selecting cork as the main covering layer – a camouflage around the trunks of the pine trees," the studio added.

Sliding glass doors connect the external terrace to an open-plan living, dining and kitchen space, which is organised around a suspended fireplace and two polished concrete columns.

A long corridor lined with narrow windows runs along the back of the Cork House to the bedroom block where there is one sleeping area on the ground floor and a further three above.

These upper rooms open onto small balconies and connect to a large rooftop terrace above the living area that features wooden planters and seating.

"The exterior areas are divided into different areas, providing distinct experiences with various scales of privacy," said the studio.

"The main area is the central outdoor space, which merges with the social area of the house through a large sliding door. In the remaining areas, the spatial fluidity between interior and exterior and natural lighting were also privileged," it continued.

White walls and pale wooden furniture throughout create simple, bright living spaces, oriented to make the most of the views while minimising overlooking from the adjacent street.

Inês Brandão Arquitectura was founded in Lisbon in 2005. The studio's previous projects include the conversion of a barn home in Portugal with a large black box built of oriented strand board at its centre.

Cork cladding has become an increasingly popular building material in recent years. Harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree, it is renewable, resistant and insulating.

Other cork-clad buildings in Portugal include a concrete house by Contaminar Arquitectos that celebrates the material's "sensorial properties" and a hotel by José Carlos Cruz that features only a few small openings in its exterior.

The photography is by Tiago Casanova.

Project credits:

Architect: Inês Brandão Arquitectura
Design team: Inês Brandão, Ana Filipa Santos, Olivier Bousquet
Engineering firm: Equação PTV
Landscape design: Inês Brandão Arquitectura
Interior furnishings and decoration: Inês Brandão Arquitectura
General contractor: Guilherme Borges Construção Civil Unipessoal
Gardening firm: TerraPlanus (Rui Bento Unipessoal)

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Architect Nate Dalesio has completed a cork-covered home for himself and his young family in New York, reusing the existing foundations but replacing almost the entire building.

Dalesio, who also runs the architectural firm Multitude Studio from his home, overhauled the house originally built in 1937 in South Salem, Westchester County, New York State. The abandoned property needed to be almost entirely razed in order to make it habitable.

"The timber framing and the floors were consumed by rot and mold,” Dalesio said. “The entire house had to be leveled down to the top of foundation and built anew.”

"The existing footprint was entirely retained while targeted expansions have been used to enlarge the living spaces and bedrooms."

The single-storey residence is laid out in a T-shaped plan, with one arm containing the public areas and kitchen, while the other accommodates three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

The completed house encompasses 2,500 square feet (232 square metres).

Because of the site's slope, the home's entry porch is reached via a flight of stairs. Inside, a small vestibule with large, built-in storage cabinets and a powder room is separated from the kitchen by a countertop – creating sightlines between the two areas.

The interiors features wide-plank white oak floorboards and white-painted walls. Pitched ceilings that follow the roof profiles give the rooms a spacious feeling, and plenty of skylights help brighten the living spaces.

"Vaulted ceilings throughout the home create surprisingly spacious volumes that belie the modest footprint, and white oak panelling and floors bring warmth to contrast the crisp and sculptural white walls," said the architect.

At the back of the home, sliding glass doors open out onto a patio.

Dalesio designed the building's exterior to relate to the area's agricultural structures and barns, but using a more contemporary and minimal aesthetic.

The previous house on the site had a tin roof and wooden plank siding, which were swapped for black corrugated metal and corkboard – a lightweight material made from compressed cork.

The cork offers an additional layer of insulation, according to the architect, helping to lower the home's heating energy consumption.

"A modest budget of $150 per square foot was stretched to invest in highly insulated walls, roofs, floors, and windows to minimize utility bills, and the exterior cladding doubles as a continuous layer of corkboard insulation," Dalesio said.

Cork is a useful building material, as it naturally resists humidity and mildew. It's also light and offers the potential to be recycled after use.

Other projects that incorporcate the material include a home in the Italian countryside by LCA Architetti, and an English countryside residence that Matthew Barnett Howland built using of monolithic cork blocks and was shortlisted for the 2021 Stirling Prize.

The photography is by Nate Dalesio, unless indicated otherwise.

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Cork-clad concrete canopies cover large outdoor gathering spaces at a primary school on the outskirts of Leiria, Portugal, designed by local practice Contaminar Arquitetos.

Casa da Árvore or Tree House was designed to foster a close connection to the outdoors and a nearby pine forest, with classrooms opening onto a central courtyard surrounded by a series of covered patios.

"The idea of connecting classrooms to outside space was the starting point for the development of this project," said Contaminar Arquitectos.

"This premise, coupled with large windows, allowed us to create classrooms where the interior space appears as an extension of the exterior, thus creating a strong connection with nature."

To the surrounding streets and roads the school presents simple, austere elevations. A base layer of concrete and flat roof sections are clad in cork tiles, laid to create a rhythm of thin gaps between the panels across the exterior.

The school's entrance, with bespoke wooden door-pulls, leads up a low ramp directly into the central courtyard space, revealing views into the interiors through large sliding glass doors as well as back out of the site through a black metal fence.

The simple plan sees two large classroom spaces arranged to the north and east of this courtyard, separated by an office and facilities block in the building's corner.

Inside the courtyard, the use of cork panels as cladding for the building's upper sections continues, extending around to cover the ceilings of the external canopies, which also feature light fittings.

Concrete pillars are surrounded by concrete-block seating areas, conceived as the "tree-trunks" supporting the cork canopy, while the centre of the courtyard is covered in grass and is planted with a tree.

"The [cork] was crafted like pieces of a puzzle, creating a rhythm on the facade that allows for different appropriations and movements," said the practice.

"The use of natural cork as a cladding material in the eaves connects us with nature...the concrete of the walls almost alluding to the roots of the trees, where you can see the inert materials that make up and support the structure."

The classroom interiors have been left open and flexible to allow for a range of layouts and connections to the exterior. Sections of wall and a run of large timber slats create privacy from the outside.

Last year, Contaminar Arquitetos also completed a home called Casa Povo on the outskirts of Leiria, with an angular, concrete form referencing a series of nearby caves.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

The post Contaminar Arquitetos designs concrete and cork school in Portugal appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen Showroom: designed by Maddalena Casadei for Pretziada, the Accanta tables are carved from Sardinian cork and based on a type of furniture traditional to the region.

Accanta is a trio of small tables that reference a traditional stool with a cork bark seat that Casadei observed in Sardinia.

The traditional stools are lightweight, durable and versatile. They would often be carried by people taking sheep out to pasture or picking olives.

Casadei's versions are pressed and carved entirely from Sardinian cork, which is left completely natural with no varnish or lacquer.

"Cork is a material that has always fascinated me because it is part of the Mediterranean and especially Sardinian culture," said Casadei. "Cork oak is essential for the local ecosystem and its processing does not harm plants, animals or humans."

Accanta comes in three sizes: a larger reading table and a smaller teacup table and magazine table.

The tables are made in collaboration with the family-run workshop Falegnameria Pisu, which created the dense waste cork blocks used for Accanta.

Product: Accanta
Designer: Maddalena Casadei
Brand: Pretziada
Contact: contact@pretziada.com

About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

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French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance has used discarded burnt cork to create this furniture collection featuring sinuous forms and a gradient of textures.

Created through Duchaufour-Lawrance's Portugal-based studio Made in Situ, the Burnt Cork collection of chairs and tables are all carved from blocks of cork, similar to those used in buildings as insulation.

Duchaufour-Lawrance developed his own twist on the process to incorporate the rougher textures of burnt cork, which is usually an industrial waste product.

The seed for the collection was planted when the designer first moved to Portugal in the summer of 2017. He did the three-day drive from France alone, encountering devastating forest fires in the hills of Pedrógão Grande along the way.

"It was a shock to drive into these hills ablaze, the inferno consuming the landscape and leaving behind a world of visible entropy," Duchaufour-Lawrance said in a blog post. "The power of fire struck me, one of the five elements vital to existence on earth, a keystone to the development of culture."

"Fire is somehow always beautiful," he continued. "Part of me didn't want to think about this, but I took photos and this experience stayed with me. It made me question my interaction with nature as a designer and as a consumer. I felt it would resurface in the work I was to do here in Portugal."

The time to explore these ideas came in October 2018, during a visit to NF Cork, a small family-owned cork production facility in Faro, as part of a cross-disciplinary exchange set up by Made in Situ.

There, the designer learnt about the process of turning cork bark into blocks, but he also discovered one of its unused waste products, burnt cork.

Cork comes from the cork oak tree, or quercus suber, and is one of Portugal's biggest exports. During forest fires, the top layer of bark chars and protects the tree beneath, and cork producers need to peel this layer off to promote new growth.

Duchaufour-Lawrance saw the opportunity to finally make a creation that was born from fire, and over the next two years, he experimented with ways to incorporate the burnt cork into NF Cork's traditional block-making technique.

The traditional process involves mixing and glueing cork granules together in a mould, cooking the block for 16 hours, and then drying it over six weeks.

Duchaufour-Lawrance incorporated different sizes of granules with the goal of achieving a gradient effect ranging from the fine grain of traditional cork to a bark-like texture where the charcoal of the burnt material dominates.

In his Burnt Cork pieces, the rougher end of the gradient appears in the furniture bases, which feature vertical shapes to make the textures particularly visible.

These transition into smoothly curved seats and backrests that welcome the body. In the case of the tables, they form rounded tabletops that invite touch.

"I wanted the user to have a direct connection with the cork as it is on the tree," said Duchaufour-Lawrance. "And thus the gradient from rawness to refinement. Connecting directly with the history and process of the material itself."

The furniture was carved by another Portuguese company, Granorte, using a seven-axis CNC machine capable of sculpting organic forms.

This makes the Burnt Cork series a fusion of both handmade and industrial processes, with both companies pushing their techniques into new terrain.

The full collection consists of a dining chair, lounge chair, chaise longue, dining table, two low tables and a stool.

Duchaufour-Lawrance told Dezeen that the project had made him appreciate the beautiful properties of cork.

"It is impermeable, buoyant, elastic, and fire retardant," he said. "Every cork oak forest has its own microclimate. It is not exactly a natural ecosystem as it requires the human hand, but it is a very old and very sustainable ecosystem."

He considers Burnt Cork to be a tribute to Portuguese cork representing resilience.

It is the second project from Made in Situ, which presents a very limited number of pieces for every collection.

Among Duchaufour-Lawrance's previous furniture designs are the Harper rocking chair for Bernhardt Design and the Aoyama overlapping glass table for Ligne Roset.

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The Cork House, designed by CSK Architects in collaboration with the Bartlett, was the subject of the second Dezeen x Knauf Architecture Project Talk. Register now to watch the recording.

Matthew Barnett Howland and Dido Milne from the Berkshire architecture studio presented their carbon-negative house, which was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize 2019, together with the Bartlett's Oliver Wilton.

Located on a small island in the River Thames, The Cork House is a single-storey dwelling comprising a row of five volumes with pyramid-like roofs and walls made from blocks of expanded cork.

The sustainable building was developed to address the architecture industry's contribution to biodiversity loss, carbon emissions and the depletion of planetary resources.

Barnett Howland, Milne and Wilton used expanded cork as the building's primary construction material because it generates less waste during manufacturing than traditional materials.

Expanded cork also reincorporates leftover product, as it is made from the waste that results when harvesting bark from cork trees.

Additionally, harvesting the bark does not fell trees, which allows landscapes populated by cork oak to retain their biodiversity, a term used to describe the number and variety of species in an ecosystem.

The resulting building is carbon-negative due to the structure's ability to absorb more carbon dioxide than was emitted during the entire construction process.

Conceived as a kit of parts for self-building, the components are prefabricated offsite and assembled on site like giant pieces of Lego.

The expanded cork blocks are designed to interlock, removing the need for glue and mortar.

The absence of binding agents enables the building to be dismantled into its constituent components at the end of its lifetime for reuse or recycling.

Inside, the cork is left exposed, while timber and copper are used for the remaining structural elements and details.

The Cork House is part of an ongoing research collaboration between Howland, the Bartlett School of Architecture, the University of Bath, Amorium UK and Ty-Mawr.

For the past seven years, the team has been developing sustainable cork-based construction systems.

In addition to its Stirling Prize nomination, The Cork House also won the Stephen Lawrence Prize 2019 and was longlisted for a Dezeen Award the same year.

Barnett Howland is the director of research and development at CSK Architects and led The Cork House project.

He also lectures at the Bartlett and has previously taught at the Architectural Association, University of Cambridge and London Metropolitan University, where he was awarded the RIBA Tutor Prize.

Milne is the director of CSK Architects. The Eton-based practice specialises in crafting bespoke buildings that are designed to be sensitive towards their predominantly historic locations.

In response to climate change, Milne's work focuses on innovative forms of conservation  – particularly the reuse and adaptation of existing buildings.

Wilton is director of technology and lecturer in Environmental Design at the Bartlett in London.

His research and teaching cover such fields of enquiry as inhabitation, material technology, environmental and energy performance, and developing new forms of construction.

Wilton is also a director of architecture practice WW Studio and has over 20 years of experience working as an architect and environmental design consultant.

Architecture Project Talk: Cork House took place at 1:00pm London time on Friday 11 June 2021. The talk has ended but you can register for free to watch the recording.

Dezeen x Knauf Architecture Project Talks

Dezeen x Knauf Architecture Project Talks is a series of live CPD webinars in which leading architects deliver an in-depth lecture about one of their key buildings.

Other talks in the series include lectures about Battersea Arts Centre by Haworth Tompkins and 168 Upper Street by Groupwork.

The project is a partnership with Knauf, the world's largest manufacturer of gypsum-based construction materials.

Knauf's latest BBA certified ThroughWall system aims to provide a full interior-to-exterior fire-rated system from one source. Sign up to Knauf’s mailing list via the webinar registration page to hear more.

Read more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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LCA Architetti has used cork, straw and timber to build a simple and sustainable house overlooking woodland in the small town of Magnago, Italy.

Aptly named The House of Wood, Straw and Cork, the dwelling near Milan was commissioned by a young couple who wanted to live more sustainably and in closer contact with nature.

LCA Architetti's design is deliberately pared-back, in a bid to retain focus on the home's rural surroundings while minimising its environmental impact.

This is helped with the use of natural and recyclable construction materials, including a prefabricated timber structure, straw insulation and cladding made from cork – a renewable, resistant and insulating material that is harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree.

"The clients wanted a home in direct contact with nature, a healthy and environmentally-friendly building, where they could enjoy the little things," said the studio's founder, Luca Compri.

"The house wanted to be born from the earth and have the colours of the earth, of the cultivated fields that surround it," he told Dezeen. "The composition is deliberately simple and primitive, the model was the old barns still present in the area."

The size and shape of The House of Wood, Straw and Cork takes its cues from neighbouring buildings, which includes a series of old agricultural barns.

Devoid of ornament, this form establishes the textured cork cladding as the home's focal point.

The use of cork also provides a thermally efficient skin for the house that, in tandem with the straw insulation, helps to minimise the building's energy demand.

The straw that has been used to insulate the building was all acquired from rice plants discarded by local farmers.

An array of rooftop solar panels and an air-source heat pump help reduce the building's energy consumption further.

Inside, the ground floor of the house contains a kitchen, bedroom and study, alongside two bathrooms, a laundry room and a double-height living room.

Above, a mezzanine floor houses a small gym, alongside a second bedroom, a bathroom and another study.

The living room, which sits at the heart of the house, is fronted by a large glazed wall that disrupts the monolithic cork cladding.

This is designed to frame the surrounding landscape, ensuring that nature has a "constant presence in the daily life of the house and of the people who live there".

The furnishings used throughout The House of Wood, Straw are complete in a minimalist material palette of oak wood, ceramic and stone.

This is acts as a continuation of the home's simple form exterior and helps to retain focus on views outside.

Stand-out furnishings include seamless bespoke cabinetry across the walls, marble-cladding on some walls and the deep-set door frames.

Rundzwei Architekten also recently used cork cladding to create the Cork Screw House in Berlin. The panels are made from waste cork granules discarded by a wine-bottling company.

Studio Bark built a garden building almost entirely from cork in 2018 to show how one eco-friendly material can be used to form an entire building envelope.

Photography is by Simone Bossi.

Project credits:

Architect: LCA Architetti
Windows and frames: SMP serramenti
Furniture: Falegnameria Codar
Cork: Tecnosugheri

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British designer Tom Dixon is releasing a series of furniture made from cork that has been charred to give it a rich, deep brown colour reminiscent of rosewood.

The Cork collection features a shelf, stool and three tables, with chubby, rounded silhouettes that are designed to let the material shine.

"When I was growing up we had cork floors and they had this amazing warmth and tactility," Dixon told Dezeen.

"It's also sound absorbent, fireproof, water resistant and lighter than water, which is why it floats, so it's easy to transport. In terms of a dream material, you couldn't really get a lot better."

The raw material itself is derived from the outer bark of the quercus suber tree, commonly known as the cork oak.

Today, the majority of it is used for the production of bottle stops, which are punched out of sheets of the bark. For the Cork collection, the remaining, pre-consumer waste material from this process was granulated and compressed into composite blocks.

At this stage the material was also charred, "a bit like popcorn" so it browns and expands. This means the final pieces are less susceptible to dirt, while also steering clear of an overly Scandinavian aesthetic.

The material was mixed with a small amount of polyurethane resin to bind it at a ratio of 93 per cent cork to seven per cent resin.

"We experimented with using no filler at all when we trialled the furniture in our restaurant in Milan, but people would pick out the granules and we couldn't really let that happen with the final collection," explained Dixon.

"It can still be continually recycled, even with the resin. Combined with waste tyres in can be used for flooring or playgrounds. There is pretty much no waste in the process, even the dust from the production is used to power the furnaces in the factories."

Dixon sources the material via the same Portuguese manufacturer that is also supplying cork for the 2020 Serpentine Pavilion designed by South African architecture studio Counterspace.

Thanks to its waterproof, fire retardant qualities, the material has historically been used in the production of shoes, as well as for flooring and wall cladding.

Today, it is experiencing a resurgence in design and architecture due to the fact that is it also recyclable and, according to Dixon, carbon negative as it can be harvested without harming the tree that it grows on.

"You're not cutting a tree down like you would for a wooden table or chair – all you're doing is skinning it," he explained.

"So you're planting trees with the long-term in mind and you harvest every nine years," he continued.

"All this time, the material effectively captures carbon as it grows. The tree continues to grow more bark, that bark captures more carbon and you're planting more trees to make more cork. Meanwhile, the carbon that's stored in the cork stays in the furniture pieces unless it is burned."

To keep transport to a minimum, the pieces themselves are also produced in Portugal, with the round tables and stools made from solid cork while the rectangular table and shelf have a cork veneer over a plywood and cardboard frame.

"Because they are so long, they would warp if they were solid cork," said Dixon. "So they have a cardboard and plywood base to hold them up."

The soft, rounded edges are created through CNC milling machines, with the offcuts reused to form new composite blocks.

"I was very angular before I was a dad," the designer remembered.

"But once you've had a kid walk into the corner of a sharp table you suddenly start rounding everything off," he continued.

"It sort of happened without me realising. But on a practical level, corners and sharp angles will deteriorate very quickly in a soft material like cork so it was also about making them less destructible."

Dixon first conceptualised the round table and stools for his Gardening Will Save The World installation with IKEA, which won a silver medal at last year's Chelsea Flower Show.

But this latest iteration sees the material used across a range of different furniture pieces, which will be available for purchase from the end of March.

There has been a marked rise in cork-clad buildings in recent years, from a Stirling Prize shortlisted house in Berkshire, England, to a Berlin home that repurposed waste from wine production.

British designer Jasper Morrison shared his own take on cork furniture last year, which was made from industry offcuts.

Photography is by Peer Lindgreen.

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South African architecture studio Counterspace will use cork and bricks made of recycled construction waste to build this year's Serpentine Pavilion, which refers to the experiences of London's migrant communities in its design.

K-Briq modules, a new technology from Kenoteq that makes bricks from 90 per cent recycled construction and demolition waste, will be used for the pavilion.

Because these bricks don't require firing, they produce just a 10th of the carbon emissions of standard fired bricks, according to Kenoteq.

The other main material will be cork sourced from Portuguese producer Amorim. Cork is considered a more sustainable alternative to many woods because it doesn't require cutting the tree down to harvest its bark.

Counterspace's pavilion, which is the 20th Serpentine Pavilion, will centre on the experiences of London's migrant communities.

Different textures, shapes and gradients will be used to reference places in London that have large migrant populations, such as Brixton, Hoxton, Hackney, Whitechapel, Edgware Road, Peckham, Ealing and North Kensington.

"The pavilion is itself conceived as an event — the coming together of a variety of forms from across London over the course of the pavilion’s sojourn," said lead architect Sumayya Vally

"These forms are imprints of some of the places, spaces and artefacts which have made care and sustenance part of London’s identity."

Moveable elements will allow parts of the Serpentine Pavilion 2020 to be taken and put on display in different neighbourhoods around London. Here they will host community events before being returned to the main structure at the end of the summer.

This live programme is part of the Serpentine's Back to Earth series, which explores how architecture can create spaces outside of hierarchy, promote wellbeing, and evolve with the environment.

Counterspace's three directors Sumayya Vally, Sarah de Villiers and Amina Kaskar, who founded the studio in Johannesburg in 2015, will be the youngest architects to design the Serpentine Gallery's summer pavilion.

Counterspace is also only the third studio founded exclusively by women to receive the Serpentine Gallery commission, following Zaha Hadid in 2000 and Frida Escobedo in 2018.

Last year, Counterspace used mirrors to reflect the pollution that hangs over Johannesburg from mining waste.

Counterspace were chosen by the Serpentine's artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and CEO Bettina Korek, who was appointed in 2019 after Yana Peel resigned.

Advisors on the project included architects David Adjaye, Lesley Lokko and David Glover, alongside the Serpentine's head of construction Julie Burnell and the project's curator Natalia Grabowska.

"The idea of working with different communities is very important for us and Counterspace's proposal does this in a remarkable way," said Ulrich Obrist. "We were totally convinced by the social dimension of their practice."

"They bring an African perspective, an international perspective but they are working with locations and communities right here in London and their pavilion design is inspired by that work."

In a recent interview with the art newspaper Ulrich Obrist said that "ecology will be at the heart of everything" the Serpentine Galleries will do going forward.

Last year's Serpentine Pavilion was designed by Japanese architect Junya Ishigami, who built a hill from stacked slate piles.

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Edoardo Tresoldi has combined sound, projections, landscaping and fabric with his signature wire-mesh sculptures for Gharfa, a large site-specific pavilion in Riyadh.

Gharfa is the first project completed by his interdisciplinary lab Studio Studio Studio, in collaboration with artist Alberonero, musician Max Magaldi and garden designer Matteo Foschi of Odd Garden.

Conceived as a theatrical experience, the structure stands 26 metres at its highest point, and is the largest of Tresoldi's ghostly wire-mesh sculptures to date.

Within Gharfa's volumetric, cuboidal arrangement, free-standing cylindrical columns mimic an arcade.

The main entrance is formed by a geometric cut-out with a triangular top, designed as a simplified version of traditional Arabian doorways.

The wire-mesh is partially filled with cork to reflect Diriyah's local mud-brick architecture. Like in his five-metre-tall sculpture Simbiosi, which Tresoldi filled with rocks, the material filling highlights the installation's presence within the landscape.

"The use of the cork expresses a contemporary interpretation of the local ruins," said Studio Studio Studio. "The medium's scenic characteristic is not hidden, but proudly exhibited within a general theatrical approach."

Other aspects of the installation also nod to Riyadh's history and architectural culture. Tresoldi has laid carpet – commonly used as a floor covering in Arabian culture – in one area of the installation beneath a digitally created ceiling of "clouds".

Tresoldi also implements the symmetry characteristically seen in Arabian decor in Foschi's landscape design. Greenery spills equally through the wire mesh walls on opposing sides of the central atrium of the project.

Alberonero, an artist known for his colour-block works and interiors, created a fabric installation called Duna to accompany the monumental wire-mesh outlines.

Semi-transparent fabric walls are supported by a frame of black columns. A video, directed by Tresoldi, depicting fire is projected onto the white fabric.

"[Duna] is right on the threshold of the visible and invisible," said the studio. "It explores space as a place in which one can disappear – stepping away from sight and its tangible perception, creating a subtle limbo that isolates the visitor from the outside world."

Musical segments, created by Magaldi, are played separately in different areas of the Gharfa complex. It is only at the centre where the musical arrangement comes together and can be heard as the full composition.

According to the musician, the visitor is able to "experience their own personal audio mix" as they walk through the installation.

Through contrasting features of digital and analogue, anthropic and natural, and geometric and organic shapes, Studio Studio Studio designed Gharfa as a "combination of reality and illusion".

Gharfa is one of many installations found across Diriyah Oasis, located near UNESCO World Heritage Site At-Turaif.

The installation is part of the Diriyah Oasis project, a festival curated by Designlab Experience that takes place on the outskirts of Saudi Arabia's capital, in the town of Diriyah.

Throughout the month of December every year, it hosts entertainment and events that draw attention to Diriyah's heritage and culture.

The historical district is currently under development to build new museums and cultural buildings. This follows in the footsteps of modernisation happening in Saudi Arabia, including the completion of major architectural landmarks over the coming years.

Photography is by Roberto Conte.

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For this week's Pinterest boards, we've created mood boards that feature the scene-setting trends we saw in Dezeen Awards 2019 entries. Take note of bunker-like architecture, facades with shutters and the use of cork as an upcoming construction material. Follow Dezeen on Pinterest ›

Main image shows there's no need for windows to the outside world if you're in the lush planted interior of Cloister House.

Check out all the projects that were longlisted for Dezeen Awards 2019 on our special boards dedicated to the architecture, interiors, design and studio categories, and the list of the winners revealed this week.

Open the Pinterest app on your phone, tap the camera icon and scan the below Pincode to explore Dezeen's feed.

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Matthew Barnett Howland with Dido Milne and Oliver Wilton have used cork blocks to build Cork House in Berkshire, England, which is shortlisted for this year's Stirling Prize.

Nestled in the undergrowth beside the River Thames, the dwelling was designed by Howland, Milne and Wilton in response to the architecture industry's impact on biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on single-use materials.

The house comprises five volumes topped by pyramid-like skylights, and is constructed from sustainability-sourced cork blocks supported by timber components. It is designed so that in the future it can be easily dismantled, reused or recycled.

"The Cork House is an innovative and thought-provoking response to pressing questions about the materials that we build with," explained Howland, Milne and Wilton.

"Rather than the typical complex, layered building envelope incorporating an array of building materials, products and specialist sub-systems, the Cork House is an attempt to make solid walls and roof from a single bio-renewable material."

Cork House has been longlisted for a Dezeen Award 2019 in the rural house category.

It is the latest development in an ongoing research project by Howland in collaboration with Bartlett School of Architecture, the University of Bath, Amorim UK and Ty-Mawr.

Since 2014, the team has been developing a sustainable construction system that depends almost entirely on cork – a renewable, resistant and insulating material that is sustainably harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree.

"This work started around six years ago with us asking some questions about how we build today and wondering if it would be possible to develop an alternative with less complexity," Howland, Milne and Wilton told Dezeen.

"In particular we were interested in an approach that took into account environmental sustainability principles at each stage of a building's lifecycle."

The system relies on expanded cork blocks, which are made from cork granules heated to form a solid building material. These blocks are then cut with interlocking joints to form a "lego-like" modular kit of parts that can be used to self-build solid walls.

Supported by engineered timber, this system negates the need for mortar or glue, and simultaneously provides structure, insulation, external surface and internal finish making it an easily recyclable and reusable structure.

The use of cork also meant that the house was carbon-negative at its completion, as it absorbed more carbon dioxide than has been emitted during the entire construction process.

It will continue to have extremely low whole life carbon, which the studios expects to be less than 15% of a new-build house.

Howland, Milne and Wilton first used the construction system in 2017 to build a prototype building called Cork Cabin, before it was developed far enough to build Cork House.

The home is made from 1,268 cork blocks, which are combined to form five linked volumes with a distinctive roof composed of five pyramid-shaped light wells. These are designed by the studios to span the open-plan interiors and bring in light, while ensuring they can also be easily built and disassembled by hand.

Inside, Cork House has an open plan kitchen and dining area, which leads into a living living area and bedroom in the space beyond.

The fifth volume hosts an outdoor decking area that is designed to "act as both an antechamber to the house and a gateway between two gardens".

Cork House's interiors are also characterised by the solid cork blocks, as no finishes or other treatments are applied. Instead, the cork is dressed structural beams, lintels, windows and doors made from black-stained Accoya wood teamed with solid brass fittings.

The floorboards are made from cross-sawn solid oak, handmade stools are made from English pippy oak and the remaining bespoke furniture uses cross-laminated spruce.

As part of the ongoing research project, Howland, Milne and Wilton are intending to develop the cork system further to work on standardisation and moving towards a marketable cork construction kit.

It is also hoped the research team will collectively develop more alternative construction systems with similar life-cycle characteristics like low carbon materials and or dry joint assembly.

Cork House was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize 2019 – the UK's most prestigious architecture award – earlier this year. Other projects vying for the award include Grimshaw's London Bridge Station, Feilden Fowles Architects' visitor centre at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Witherford Watson Mann builds rural opera theatre.

Cork is becoming an increasingly popular material within the architecture industry. While Cork House is the first full-scale building to use the material as structure, several architects have recently used it as a cladding material, including Nimtim Architects' London house extension that is punctured by pink window frames.

Photography and drawings are courtesy of Matthew Barnett Howland with Dido Milne and Oliver Wilton.

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An exhibition of cork furniture by Jasper Morrison has opened at the Kasmin in New York's Chelsea, the designer's first solo show in North America.

Called Corks, the show brings together items of furniture by the London-based designer that are all realised entirely in cork.

Items on display include a chaise longue, bookshelves, a dining table, chairs, stools that double as low tables, a bench and a cork fireplace surround.

The pieces are cut from cork block material left over from wine bottle cork stopper production.

The particular cork block that Morrison has chosen is distinctive for the fact that wine corks are visible across its surface once the pieces are machined.

"Developed by the cork oak tree as a protective covering, this particular iteration of the material is reconstituted from unselected wine bottle corks, some still visible in their original shape," said Kasmin.

An area of the gallery space has been configured as a domestic setting, with chairs arranged around both the dining table and a low stool.

Here, the walls have been painted a deep green with free-hand depictions of the furniture items and their dimensions outlined in white at various points.

On the other side of the space, a series of stools, a chair and a bench are arranged on a raised L-shaped white display, in a more conventional gallery setting.

Morrison has previously worked with cork, including on a hut for Muji that was presented at Tokyo Design Week in 2015. Prior to that he made a trio of lightweight stools for Vitra from the material.

Kasmin explained that the designer was interested to explore the material's functional quality.

"Morrison's interest in cork stems from its remarkable functionality as well as its unique atmospheric qualities, which he recognises as a key design component of an object's long-term success," explained the gallery.

Morrison has worked with a variety of furniture brands including Cappellini, Mattiazzi, Emeco and Maruni. He has even turned his hand to designing soap and book ends for Penguin.

"As limited editions, these pieces mark a departure from the designer's usual methods of industrial production and initiate a new collaborative partnership that speaks to Kasmin's continued engagement with presenting boundary-pushing work at the intersection of art and design," said the gallery.

Kasmin announced last month that it would begin representing Morrison in the US. Founded by Paul Kasmin, the gallery operates at three exhibition spaces and a sculpture garden in New York.

Corks is on show at the space until 28 June.

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Nimtim Architects has added a extension clad in cork with contrasting pink windows to a Victorian terrace house in south London.

The extension has a simple pitched roof and cork walls designed to complement the dwelling's existing brickwork, while the window frames offer a bright counterpoint.

Named Cork House, it was designed by Nimtim Architects in collaboration with the family of four that own the house.

"The form is a playful response to the roof, openings and levels of the existing house," project runner Allie Mackinnon told Dezeen.

"The materials were also chosen to respond to the existing house as a subtle counterpoint to the original brickwork. The pitched elevation needed a consistent material and the cork provided an unbroken, textured surface."

Along with complementing the aesthetic of the existing building, Nimtim Architects also chose cork cladding for its sustainable properties.

Sustainably harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree, cork is a chemical-free material that can be fully composted or recycled. It is also naturally water resistant, sound absorbing and thermally efficient, meaning the building did not require extra foam insulation.

"The cork offers so much as a building material," Mackinnon said.

"It ticks all the boxes when it comes to thermal and acoustic performance but is also breathable, free from chemicals, synthetic resins and carcinogenic materials and creates a healthy environment inside the house."

Inside Cork House, Nimtim Architects designed a stepped internal landscape, which responds to the house's positioning one metre above garden level.

While creating a more seamless connection with the garden, which is accessed through a large pivot door, it also helps define different spaces within the extension.

"A kitchen, dining space and informal seating area are defined by their own topography, meaning the whole family can share the space whilst doing different things," she continued.

The extension is complete with a long window that aligns with a glazed roof light, while the material palette is minimal, with a pale grey resin floor and light wooden cabinetry that draws focus to the cork walls that are left exposed internally.

As part of the project, Nimtim Architects also added renovated the first floor of the house and added a loft extension, which contains a master suite.

Like the cork extension, both are complete with minimal finishes and white walls, teamed with splashes of colour including a lilac bath panel and patterned tiles.

Cork has been used as cladding by several architects in recent years, including Lisa Shell who used it to wrap the timber frame of a cabin in an English salt marsh.

More recently, Rundzwei Architekten used it across the facade of a house in Berlin, and Studio Bark developed a cork-building prototype to demonstrates how the material can be used to form an entire building envelope.

Photography is by Megan Taylor.

Project credits:

Architects: nimtim architects
Structural engineers: SD Structures
Main contractor: TW Space Conversions Ltd

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Portuguese studio Digitalab has won the rising star award at Stockholm Furniture Fair, with an innovative method of turning cork into thread.

Architects Brimet Silva and Ana Fonseca of Digitalab have together developed a method of turning cork into a thin thread that can be used in the manufacture of furniture, lighting, textiles and accessories.

Called CO-RK, the thread offers a sustainable, non-fibrous alternative to materials like plastic.

The Stockholm Furniture Fair Editors' Choice jury, chaired by Dezeen founder Marcus Fairs, said the duo "used cork to produce a beautiful fabric that can be used to make products."

"The winner exhibited creative exploration of an underused natural material," they said.

Silva and Fonseca created the product for Gencork, an offshoot of 50-year-old Portuguese company Sofalca, which manufactures cork pellets using the branches of cork trees. This process is more sustainable than the typical manufacture of cork, which comes from tree bark.

The thread is formed by injecting water vapour through these cork pellets. This causes the pellets to expand, whilst the water bonds with the resin in the cork.

The mixture is then pressed and combined with a base layer of cotton fabric to produce a thin sheet that can be cut to a millimetre thick. The resulting threads are then washed to increase their flexibility and elasticity.

"It's a robust and comfortable material, resistant to light traction and it's also washable, keeping all the original physical properties of cork," Silva told Dezeen.

"This super-material, cork, offers a huge range of advantages, because in addition to being an excellent thermal and acoustic insulator and as well as anti-vibration, it's also a carbon dioxide sink, playing a key role in protecting the environment."

The robust fibres can be woven into "complex generative forms" or mesh-like structures using an algorithm based on mathematical formulas.

"It is a high-tech and low-tech approach where craftsman practices are mixed in with technological processes," said Silva.

"The aim was to develop and manipulate different mesh densities to apply to different scales and functions according to the product. For example, we are exploring higher densities that are strong enough to apply to seating solutions and space dividers, among other applications," he explained.

Digitalab showed the products at Stockholm Furniture Fair between 5 and 9 February.

Pieces from the collection were displayed on a stand clad in the brand's flexible cork wall-cladding in geometric and swirling patterns, an application made possible by applying algorithmic processes to the CO-RK thread. The wall-covering functions as a thermal and acoustic insulator while preventing sound or music-induced vibrations.

"The 100 per cent natural and sustainable expanded-cork agglomerate is transformed through generative design algorithms and advanced digital fabrication processes, expressing a new formal aesthetic," said Silva.

"This creative and disruptive system not only optimises cork's thermal and acoustic properties but also adds artistic value to traditional walls," he continued.

The annual Editor's Choice awards at Stockholm Furniture Fair are judged by a selection of editors from international design magazines. The judges this year were Marcus Fairs of Dezeen, Costas Voyatzis of Greek website Yatzer, Dana Tomic Hughes of Australian site Yellowtrace, and Beryl Hsu of Chinese magazine IDEAT.

The best product award went to the entire collection of furniture and fittings commissioned from various designers for the re-opening of Stockholm's Nationalmuseum.

The best stand award was given to acoustic products brand Baux for a cube clad inside and out with its latest biodegradable acoustic panels, called Baux Acoustic Pulp.

Concerns about noise, lack of privacy and unhealthy working practices fuelled a rise in products aimed at improving wellbeing in the office at this year's Stockholm fair.

Meanwhile, cork is increasingly being used as an architectural material. Dezeen recently highlighted seven projects that use the versatile material as cladding.

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See versatile uses of cork on our dedicated Pinterest board, including an artists studio that becomes inaccessible in high tide and a house in Berlin with a waste cork facade. Follow Dezeen on Pinterest ›

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Cork cladding is a renewable, resistant and insulating material that is harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree. Here are seven buildings clad in the increasingly popular building material.

Redshank by Lisa Shell

Elevated within a salt marsh on England's east coast, this cabin was developed by British architect Lisa Shell for an artist that wanted a peaceful place to work.

Cork panels wrap its exterior surfaces, forming a protective skin that shields the building from salty winds, and resembles the plumage of a redshank bird after which the building is named.

Find out more about Redshank ›

The Cork Studio by Studio Bark

Made almost entirely out of cork, this building prototype was developed by London-based Studio Bark to challenge the architecture industry's dependence on "unhealthy single-use materials".

It is water and fire resistant, and every component can be completely disassembled, recycled, reused or composted at the end of its useful life.

Find out more about The Cork Studio ›

Casa Bonjardim by ATKA Arquitectos

This house in Portugal was remodelled and extended by ATKA Arquitectos for a couple that wanted space to work at home.

It features a protruding master bedroom at its rear, which is wrapped in cork cladding to shield it from the noise of a nearby school playground and provide thermal insulation.

Find out more about Casa Bonjardim ›

Cork Screw House by Rundzwei Architekten

Rectangular-shaped panels made from waste cork from the wine industry were used to create the "monolithic", thermally efficient skin of this house in Berlin.

Rundzwei Architekten's decision to use the material was the result of its search for a product with a high acoustic performance, which also led it to discover the environmental benefits of cork.

Find out more about Cork Screw House›

Cork Study by Surman Weston

Occupying a large proportion of a London house's back garden, this outside study by Surman Weston was encased in untreated cork to create a "natural earthy" aesthetic that would help it nestle into its surroundings.

Teamed with a wild-flower roof, it also provides weatherproofing, acoustic and thermal insulation for the cubic volume.

Find out more about Cork Study ›

Ecork Hotel by José Carlos Cruz

José Carlos Cruz used cork across the external walls of this hotel in Portugal to promote both the environmental benefits of the material and its availability in the country.

The hotel only has a few small openings in its exterior walls, which creates a striking, uninterrupted facade, while also maximising its thermal performance.

Find out more about Ecork Hotel ›

The Hill Cork House by Contaminar Arquitectos

Cork cladding envelops the concrete structure of this house in Portugal, which features a large protruding swimming pool.

Beyond providing effective thermal insulation, the material was chosen by Contaminar Arquitectos for its "sensorial properties" and "earth tones" that would help the house become part of nature.

Find out more about The Hill Cork House ›

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Cork Screw House, designed by Rundzwei Architekten in Berlin, has a facade and roof clad with waste cork from the wine industry.

The rectangular-shaped panels of cork provide a thermally efficient skin for the house, while also creating a bold, "monolithic" aesthetic.

Rundzwei Architekten's decision to use the material was result of its search for a product with a high acoustic performance, which also led it to discover the environmental benefits of cork.

"Initially it was through the client's interest in achieving good acoustic performance that we came across this unusual choice of material," said the Berlin-based studio, led by Marc Dufour-Feronce and Andreas Reeg.

"However natural cork also has very high insulation values and is well suited to use as cladding. The choice of this material contributes significantly to the energy efficiency and sustainability of the building."

Cork Screw House's facade panels were made through a sustainable process of heating and pressurising waste cork granules, which were acquired from a wine-bottling company.

Heating cork causes it to release a natural resin that binds its granules together, forming lightweight, durable slabs that can be cut to a desired size.

Inside the house, there are a series of bright, open split-level floors made from timber, which are positioned around a spiralling staircase at its centre.

They sit atop a concrete base, which is embedded partially below ground level, and forms the floors of the lower levels of the house.

This layout was designed by Rundzwei Architekten to maximise useable floor area of Cork Screw House, which was limited by strict building regulations.

"Although the local planning regulations only allow for a maximum floor size of 100 square metres, by lowering the ground floors and arranging the upper floors in multiple split-levels, we have maximised the floor area to over 320 square metres," explained the studio.

Nestled into the concrete base, the lower floors comprise a master bedroom that transitions into a staggered kitchen, living and dining area.

This bedroom also has access to an adjoining sauna, bathroom, and a linear pool that extends out into the garden, hidden within the concrete walls.

Above, the upper levels of the house comprise a further two bedrooms and bathrooms, another living and dining area, as well as a study space on the top level.

Rundzwei Architekten punctured each room with large windows. Combined with a gable skylight above the central staircase, this reduces the need for artificial lighting throughout the house, improving its energy performance further.

The studio also incorporated space on the facade for a potential second entrance, which gives its occupants the option to convert the house into studio apartments in the future.

Cork, the sustainably harvested bark of the cork oak tree, is a durable, insulating material that has been used by several architects as a cladding material in recent years.

In 2017, architect Lisa Shell used it to wrap the timber frame of a cabin in a salt marsh on England's east coast, which helps to protect it from salty winds.

More recently, Studio Bark developed a cork-building prototype, which demonstrates how the material can be used to form an entire building envelope. Named Cork Studio, it can be completely recycled, reused or composted.

Photography is by Gui Rebelo.

Project credits:

Project team: Luca Di Carlo, Ana Domenti, Marc Dufour-Feronce and Andreas Reeg
Cork facade: Johannsen Timber Constructions
Windows: Timm Fensterbau GmbH
Timber stair: Johannsen Timber Constructions
Pool: Seeigel GmbH
Rammed concrete: Caerus Construction

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The Cork Studio, a garden building made almost entirely out of cork, has been constructed by Studio Bark as a building prototype that can be completely recycled, reused or composted.

To challenge the architecture industry's dependence on "unhealthy single-use materials", London-based architects  Studio Bark sought to demonstrate how one eco-friendly material can could be used to form an entire building envelope.

"As a society we waste a huge amount of time, energy and resources in decorating, redecorating, demolishing and rebuilding parts of our buildings, using unhealthy single-use materials," said the architect.

"We built the Cork Studio to show that there is an alternative."

Following a series of experiments that tested water, fire and degradation resistance, Studio Bark chose to work with cork – a strong, durable material that is sustainably harvested directly from the bark of the cork oak tree.

"All of the elements in this solid cork building can be disassembled at the end of their useful life, and the individual components are either fully biodegradable or recyclable," continued the studio.

The Cork Studio was constructed using discarded granules from a wine cork manufacturer.

The granules were turned into solid blocks through a heating process, which triggers them to expand and release a natural resin that binds them together. Following this the blocks were cut into desired slab sizes, and joined on site.

"There is no cladding, rainscreen, cavity, plaster or paint, ground floor slab or foundation. Just a single thickness of cork, which carries out all the necessary functions of structure, waterproofing, acoustic, fire, airtightness and aesthetics," explained the architect.

Chosen for its high thermal property, a low density cork is used for the floor slabs. Combined with the material's waterproof qualities, this negated the need for concrete screed or a damp proof membrane.

The same type of cork has been used to create a flat roof, supported with a series of timber joists that help stiffen its structure.

To provide better resistance against lateral loads like wind, the walls of the Cork Studio are constructed using higher density slabs that are fitted together with recyclable insulation screws.

Throughout the studio every surface has a natural finish, without any toxic varnishes, meaning each part can be easily recycled after the building's life.

A Sycamore tree that was already growing on the site has been incorporated into the building, as the lightness of the structure allowed Studio Bark to build on top of its roots without damaging the tree.

At ceiling level, it is enclosed by a rubber gasket that allows water to trickle down the tree so it can "self-water", while keeping out heavy rain.

The Cork Studio has recyclable polycarbonate windows, a plywood door and internal sliding shutters, which act as an additional buffer against temperature, while controlling light levels.

Studio Bark built the envelope for under £500 per square metre, and claim the structure could easily built by two people in two days, and fitted out and inhabited within seven.

The Cork Studio is not Studio Bark's first sustainable prototype. In 2017 it developed a micro-home as part of an initiative called The SHED Project, which aims to provide an alternative to property guardianship, where people pay very little rent to live in abandoned buildings.

The prototype allows easy assembly in just one day using a mallet and a drill, and can also be disassembled, transported to another location and rebuilt.

Photography is by Lenny Codd.

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Brazilian design duo Humberto and Fernando Campana have created a collection of furniture consisting of an armchair and three cabinets made almost entirely from cork.

Named Sobreiro Collection, the pieces were created to show off the potential of cork as a design material – that can be versatile, attractive and sustainable.

Known for their use of natural and raw materials, this is the first time the Campana brothers have worked with cork. In the past they have used leather, palm fronds and even fish skin to create unusual effects in their work.

"We've always been fascinated by cork, not only because it is an ecological material but because of its lightness," explained Humberto Campana.

"The texture, variety of applications and insulation properties enrich the possibilities of using this material, in order to express new concepts and gestures. It's like marble that can be sculpted."

The sustainability of the material was also very appealing to the designers. Cork is one of the most sustainable materials to harvest and is completely recyclable.

"We're keen on exploring recycled materials. We have been discovering so many impressive sustainable and ecological materials and processes," Campana continued. "At the moment, we are researching the possibilities of use of the pineapple leather."

The single arm chair and three cabinets come in different shades of natural browns. One cabinet features a wave-like texture, while another has a stippled texture reminiscent of pebbles.

The armchair is made from natural cork alone, while the cabinets are composed of a wooden structure made from expanded natural cork agglomerate, a material made by heating the cork and does not contain any additive.

One of the three cabinets is made from a combination of the cork agglomerate and natural clay – an experiment into hybridity of the materials.

"The cabinet made of cork and clay was an experiment," said Humberto. "I immediately got inspired by the hybridism between these materials and I saw a possibility to design a piece for the Sobreiro collection. We are very much into hybridism."

The Sobriero Collection was revealed at the Consulate of Portugal in São Paulo, Brazil during the annual Experimenta Portugal arts and culture festival. The festival celebrates the cultural connections between Brazil and Portugal.

Research for the cork furniture was conducted in Portugal in collaboration with the Portuguese cork association (APCOR) and a major Portuguese cork supplier, Amorim. Humberto Campana spent time in Amorim's laboratory experimenting with the materials. Cork is one of Portugal's main export materials.

Founded in 1983 in São Paulo, Campana Studio has become renowned for its creative design and furniture. In 2016 the Campana brothers built a house in São Paulo, Brazil that is covered in palm fibre to give it a hairy exterior. They've also created furniture from fish skin leather and a bed hidden behind a curtain of raffia.

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Brussels designer Alain Gilles stacked different shapes to form these totem-like side tables, which are supported by a lightweight cork base.

Gilles created the Assemblage tables for Italian brand Bonaldo. For his design, he chose to use cork as opposed to a standard solid base, and each of the side tables can be assembled in various ways.

Gilles likens the assembly to a "child's game," as each piece is placed on top of one another, and fastened together using a long bolt that runs through each piece.

"It is an assemblage of two materials that have been turned, the cork and the wood, but that has a very different finish – as if they were two entities not made to be matched together."

By topping the cork bases with a dense wood surface, Gilles intended to reverse the ordinary composition of furniture where the base is the heaviest element.

"With the Assemblage table, the mass that provides the stability to the base is constructed of cork," he said. "Cork is visually a very present material with its typical multicoloured structure, but with its low-density aspect is usually associated with a lightweight material that floats, rather than a material which lends stability."

"The cork – the material with the lighter mass – is treated in the design as the weight that holds the table up, thus creating a dialogue within the piece itself," he added.

This inversion of the load-bearing base of furniture items is a continuation of Gilles' Mass tables, which sees bases made from bent metal frameworks that resemble crinoline petticoats.

"I started working on a discussion between actual weight and visual weight, or mass, with the Mass table I designed for Bonaldo in 2016. In this case, the typically dense base has been replaced by a lightweight metal structure, which actually happens to be visually very present," said the designer.

"This makes its visual weight the opposite of its actual mass; the table top in heavy wood or marble is the heaviest part, but also the most simple graphically."

The designer has created several pieces for Bonaldo, including an extendable table that revealed its inner workings, and furniture that sits on brightly coloured sloping legs.

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Oil rigs, Maunsell forts and a wading bird provided the inspiration for this artist's retreat in a salt marsh on England's east coast, which becomes inaccessible when the tide comes in.

The seaside studio space was developed by British architect Lisa Shell for artist Marcus Taylor, who wanted a peaceful place that he could retreat to and concentrate on his work.

Taylor had purchased a dilapidated timber-framed house from the 1920s in the hamlet of Lee over Sands, which is situated within Essex Wildlife Trust's Colne Point Nature Reserve.

The site's location on the exposed side of the sea wall means it is regularly inundated, so the old house had to be removed and replaced with an alternative that is suited to this unique location.

"The coastal site is an extreme environment in which to build," said Shell, "but also one that is delicate and sensitive: these constraints demanded innovation and experimentation."

"The changing climate – annual, seasonal, monthly and daily cycles, alongside long-term climate predictions – had a crucial influence on the design."

Rather than proposing a robust, flood-proof structure, the architect developed a design that raises the building out of reach of the rising tide.

Three galvanised-steel legs finished in a resinous paint that will withstand the salty air elevate the structure and allow the sea to wash underneath. A staircase with symmetrical flights docks to the side of the cabin.

The elevations are clad in untreated oak boards and cork panels that form a skin around the cross-laminated timber frame and offer protection from the salty winds.

The stairs ascend to a decked terrace from which the entrance leads into a small hall providing access to a bedroom and wet room.

A sliding door separates the hall from a living space featuring a kitchen and wood-burning stove. The building's orientation and internal arrangement are determined by the path of the sun and the available views.

The southern elevation incorporates a large window that looks out towards a shingle bank and the sea beyond, while other openings are carefully positioned to avoid overlooking neighbouring properties so the building's sense of isolation is enhanced.

Significant features that can be seen from the studio provided key sources of inspiration. These include wind turbines and one of the armed towers built in the Thames during the second world war.

The colour of the building's painted pillars also reference the red legs of the redshank – a wading bird that can be found in the salt marsh and from which the project takes its name.

The delicate seaside ecosystem necessitated a design and construction method that minimises the house's impact on the environment. Cross-laminated timber panels were prefabricated to reduce time spent on site and provide a natural finish that is left exposed internally.

"The construction period was limited to summer months to avoid impact on the environment whose qualities are relied upon by overwintering birds," Shell added.

"By removing the asbestos-polluted hard-standing that covered much of the plot and lifting the building aloft, the ground level is donated back to the marsh."

The cork sheets are applied to every surface of the building's exterior, including the roof and underside. The material's mottled texture echoes the plumage of the redshank, as well as the tones of the surrounding landscape.

"Redshank demonstrates how to survive flood risk in an era of storms and tidal surges, whilst giving proper consideration to the natural environment in which it sits," the architect concluded.

"Its idiosyncratic design has also generated an extraordinary, comfortable retreat without offending the locals."

Redshank featured on the longlist for the 2017 RIBA House of the Year Award, which went to a house in Kent with chimney-like roofs inspired by traditional oast towers.

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Potted plants and herbs clip onto a gridded metal structure inside this London cafe by local architects Neiheiser Argyros, which also features exposed ductwork and cork-panelled walls.

The London-based architecture studio, directed by Ryan Neiheiser and Xristina Argyros, was commissioned to design a neutral backdrop to the vibrant produce on the menu at the Olive+Squash cafe.

The cafe comprises two spaces with contrasting finishes – a dining area and take-out area – that are visually connected by a floor-to-ceiling metal grid designed to resemble the trellises used by vegetable farmers.

The ground floor features all-white finishes, while the dining area of the first floor is lined with cork panels.

Neiheiser Argyros chose brightly coloured stools and hanging bulbs for the first floor seating area, adding vibrancy and a sense of playfulness to the otherwise simple space.

"The space below is neutral, cool, and hard, allowing the bright colours and geometries of the raw produce to be the primary material. Above, the palette is warm, textured, and soft, inviting visitors to gather and linger over their meal," Neiheiser told Dezeen.

"A contemporary echo of the traditional farmer's trellis, the grid hosts plants, flowers, herbs, menu signage, and integrated seating," he added. "We developed a series of custom metal objects that could clip onto the metal grid, giving it a flexible functionality."

The gridded framework forms a balustrade to the wooden staircase, and its contents is intended to grow and adapt with the cafe to meet its changing needs in the future.

Inside a custom-designed serving counter on the ground floor, stepped display areas are designed to ensure food is always visible to the customer.

"While all the ingredients are displayed together in three terraced rows, we wanted each one's colour and texture to stand out," said the architects.

"We therefore carefully calibrated the spacing between each ingredient with visual gaps that allow each ingredient to read independently from the rest of the group."

Minimal finishes also offer a muted backdrop for the food on offer at Ritz&Ghougassian's cafe in Melbourne, which features concrete and terrazzo details and an abundance Australian ferns.

Photography is by Ioana Marinescu.

Project Credits:

Architecture: Neiheiser Argyros
Structural engineer: Webb Yates Engineers
Contractor: Own Developments
Graphic designer: Mind Design
Client: Olive+Squash

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Selencky Parsons has designed its own London studio, using a cork pod with pegboard walls for storing stationery, displaying models and hanging plants.

Selencky Parsons' studio occupies the ground floor of a residential building located on a street corner opposite Brockley station in southeast London.

Large windows make the space visible from the outside, so the architects used the pod to create an intimate working studio in the pointed corner of the irregularly shaped space.

Cork is used to line the walls and floors, as well as make desks, to add a warmer atmosphere to the previously "characterless" commercial space.

"We wanted to create a comfortable working zone within the space, while maximising the benefits afforded by the highly visible site," said the architects.

"The cork-lined pod, mediates the external environment creating the right degree of exposure versus privacy," they continued.

Timber pegs slot into the holes across the interior and exterior of the cork walls to support shelves, models and rolls of paper that decorate inside the studio.

On the outside, the pegs are used for hanging plants and coats on either side of the rectangular opening into the space.

"It was important to have a flexible and changeable environment," explained the architects, "so by drilling holes across the interior and exterior surfaces of the cork pod we have used timber pegs to support shelves, models, coats, plants or anything required in the operation of the studio that can be adapted as required."

These holes also act as a discreet ventilation from a plenum in the ceiling to maintain a comfortable temperature across the studio space, and reduce reverberations to improve the acoustics of the space.

Display shelves are fitted on the exterior of the pod in front of the street-facing windows so the studio can present its recent work like a shop window.

The meeting area and social space that occupies the surrounding area, is furnished with cork stools from Ilse Crawford's collection for IKEA.

Apart from a white-painted floor graphic, it was left largely unfinished to contrast to the cork pod. A kitchenette is cut out of one of the outer walls of the pod, and the toilet and sink is placed in a separate room.

Selencky Parsons is one of a number of architects who have designed studios for themselves, with spaces ranging from a solitary woodland retreat to another finished with repurposed scaffolding boards and concrete.

Other projects by the architecture studio include a stepped extension to 1960s terraced house in London and a glass and white concrete house in Oxfordshire.

Photography is by Richard Chivers.

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This cork-clad studio provides a shared workspace for a musician and a seamstress in the back garden of their north-London home.

London office Surman Weston – formerly Weston, Surman & Deane – designed Cork Study for a spot at the back of the couple's narrow garden. It follows another backyard studio the architects built back in 2014.

Spanning almost the full width of the space, the building is surrounded by brick walls and foliage that stretches over from neighbouring gardens.

The architects wrapped the block in sheets of cork – offering a similar tone to the brick backdrop, but creating a contrasting texture. This mottled-brown cladding also weatherproofs the structure, and provides both acoustic and thermal insulation.

"The natural earthy quality of the thick cork, combined with wild-flower roof, helps nestle the building into its organic green surroundings," said architects Tom Surman and Percy Weston.

Forfeiting a large proportion of their own garden, the studio boasts a large skylight in its flat roof and a sliding glass door that make the most of views of the adjacent greenery.

Inside, the cubic volume in lined in birch plywood and features matching furniture – which cantilevers off the walls to make the most of the limited floor area of just 13 square metres.

Twin desks provide separate workstations for the couple, with shelves both above and below the tabletop for storing music- or sewing-related items.

A long vertical window frames a section of the brick wall behind the studio and creates a break between the two desk spaces.

The space is naturally lit from above by the skylight, as well as the sliding glass door in the front of the structure, which is surrounded by an oak frame and retracts into a cavity in the wall.

The wild-flower sedum covering the roof helps to reduce the building's visual impact when viewed from above.

This element also contributes to the project's green credentials – the cork used for the walls was sourced sustainably and untreated, while timber provides the structural frame.

Photography is by Wai Ming Ng.

Project credits:

Architects: Surman Weston
Lead contractors: Surman Weston Construction
Carpentry: Tom Kelly & Gino Saccone
Joinery: Tim Gaudin

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Dezeen promotion: designers and architects including Ross Lovegrove, Kenneth Grange and Snarkitecture have customised Modus' cork Casper stool for a charity auction.

British furniture manufacturer Modus teamed up with designjunction for the Who's Casper? charity project, which invited 15 designers to add their own spin on a recycled cork stool originally created by designer Michael Sodeau.

The aim was to raise funds for Movement on the Ground – a foundation that works to support refugees at the forefront of the European crisis.

Designer Moritz Waldemeyer, architecture studios Autoban and Studio Egret West, and artists Barnaby Barford and Alex Chinneck have each created versions of the stool for auction – but the designs are all anonymous.

Other participants include artists Jon Burgerman, Anthony Burrill, Nicholas Burrows and James Joyce, and illustrators Vic Lee, Esther Cox and Chrissie Macdonald.

"Each one will be sold on the merit of its creativity rather than the name of its creator," said the organisers.

"Each stool is a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire a unique piece of art that contributes directly to helping provide safety, shelter, warmth, food, water and medical aid to refugees."

Michael Sodeau designed the Casper stool for Modus earlier this year. It features two finger holes that make it easy to move – but which also make the object look like it has a face.

"Casper is a true collaboration between design and refugee support. The stool cleverly highlights a key component in crisis situations – eye contact," said Movement on the Ground co-founder Dylan Ingham.

One of the customised stools is wrapped in a gold survival blanket, while another is torn in half and chrome plated. Others have been hand-painted with street-art-style graphics, or decorated with pen and ink illustrations.

There is also a white version that is topped with plants, and one with a miniature rubber ring around its middle.

All 15 stools are currently on show at Modus' London showroom, located at 28-29 Great Sutton Street, as well as online. Dezeen is media partner for the auction, which closes on 19 October 2016.

www.whoscasper.co.uk

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Office AIO has converted a courtyard residence in Beijing's Xiang'er Hutong into a tiny cork- and tile-lined coffee bar with a traditionally styled guest room (+ slideshow).

The tiny 34-square-metre business named Big Small Coffee + B&B is set within one of Beijing's hutong districts, which consist of high-density houses set along narrow alleys and around courtyards.

Office AIO founders Timothy Kwan and Isabelle Sun divided the space into two parts – a 19-square-metre coffee bar and a guest room measuring 15 square metres – linked by a courtyard shared with an elderly neighbour.

"The owners of the coffee business wanted to bring serious artesian coffee to their customers in a small space, emphasising focus on just a good cup of coffee," said Kwan and Sun. "Hence the brand Big Small Coffee – being small in size but big on intention."

The coffee shop is split lengthwise by a mirror-clad bar topped by a slab of shimmering granite.

The granite counter top passes through a slot in the glass shop front to provide a small outdoor seating area sheltered by a clear acrylic canopy.

"The gesture also serves to dissolve the envelop in between the interior and the hutong scenes," said the architects, who added a pair of metal blocks to provide further impromptu seating outside.

While the barista's realm is covered in small white tiles that give it a sterile appearance, on the other side of the bar the seating area is lined in tactile cork panels.

"The small white butcher tiles scale the space, and are a timeless, versatile, bright backdrop," said the architects. "The cork panels on the other hand are warm and inviting to the touch. It is also a sound absorber, making it an ideal choice of material in the context of a co-shared wall with the neighbouring living space."

Small tools are affixed with magnets to the wall behind the bar, while larger objects are displayed on a clear acrylic shelving unit suspended above the granite counter. A light tube hangs below the shelves on four leather straps.

Leather bar stools are lined up along the edge of the bar, while a row of metal flaps to their rear fold down from the cork-covered wall to offer a cup-rest for patrons only having a quick coffee.

Corks doors open into the back-of-house washing area and toilet, and the entrance to the guest room set on the other side of the shared courtyard.

Previously occupied by the landlord and her son before he left for college, the architects extended the tiny space and refreshed the interior with a layer of straw clay, walnut flooring and joinery.

The built-in double bed has storage room beneath it for extra bedding and luggage, and a simple cantilevered cork desk doubles as a bedside table.

"The interior is furnished sparsely to fulfil the basic needs of a B&B," they said. "The result is reminiscent of a traditional hutong dwelling interior."

Many of the traditional hutong neighbourhoods are being redeveloped to create contemporary housing and businesses.

Previous hutong redevelopments in Beijing include a series of bubble-shaped extensions designed by local firm MAD to improve living conditions while preserving the vernacular urban fabric, and a teahouse with curving glass courtyards by Chinese firm Arch Studio.

Photography is by Eric Zhang and Yu Cheng.

Project credits:

Architecture: Office AIO / Timothy Kwan, Isabelle Sun
Project designer: Timothy Kwan
Project manager: Isabelle Sun
Project contractor: Wan Hong Gang
Visual identity: MEAT Design Agency
Client: Ipeng Zhang, Shan Nan

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Swiss studio Dost has transformed a 1960s restaurant into a heart treatment centre in Zurich, featuring cork-lined cubicles and waiting rooms (+ slideshow).

Dost reorganised the existing rooms and corridors of the 260-square-metre space, which is spread over two floors of an existing building in the Swiss city.

The team then added a range of cork-clad cubicles and waiting areas, intended to visually tie together the two levels.

"Carefully proportioned cubes structure the space and organise the paths for the user," said the architects. "In this fashion, a backspace with a separate entrance and a light, courtyard-oriented patient area is created."

"A division of the waiting areas based on the urgency of the patient diminishes fear and promotes the feel of short waiting times," they added.

The warm-toned cork material offsets the clinical white finishes of the rest of the space, helping to create a less sterile environment.

"Natural cork provides for a comfortable sound reverberation, regulates humidity and absorbs odours," said the architects. "The resulting spaces embody the main values of the clients – care and tranquility."

The Herzpraxis Zürich-Höngg clinic treats patients with a range of cardiovascular conditions ranging from high blood pressure to heart disease.

Beyond the reception desk and initial waiting area, there is a suite of consultation and examination rooms, including spaces for heart imaging and stress testing.

Seating is set into a niche in the cork walls, facing floor-ceiling windows by the courtyard. Magazines are placed on small white tables alongside.

Inside the consultation rooms store computer equipment is stored in black wall niches. The rooms are dressed with white and pastel-toned furniture, and have translucent curtains in front of the windows.

Photography is by Andrin Winteler.

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A bedroom at this remodelled and extended house in Porto, Portugal, has been wrapped in cork to shield it from the noise of a nearby school playground (+ slideshow).

Casa Bonjardim was designed by Porto studio ATKA Arquitectos for a couple, who wanted space to work at home and a second bedroom for their daughter, who visits regularly.

The 85-year-old house was originally built with a timber frame and had a bulky concrete extension at the back. Both were in such a poor structural state that it had to be completely rebuilt, save for the front facade and side walls.

"We asked an engineering firm to do several tests to see if we could preserve at least the timber sections, but a large amount of the wood was deformed, rotting, or had bugs, so we had no choice but to renew everything," architects Diogo Paradinha and Patrícia Moreno told Dezeen.

The rebuilt house is 233 square metres and has the same narrow proportions as the original structure – 20 metres long and 4.5 metres wide – but it has been extended with a new level at the top. An outbuilding was also added in the garden to house technical equipment and provide storage.

On the ground floor there is an open-plan kitchen, dining area and living room, and on the first floor there are two bedrooms and bathrooms. The top floor has a painting studio at the front and an office, terrace and internal patio at the back.

The master bedroom on the first floor protrudes out from the back of the house and has been clad in cork to cushion it from surrounding noise, and provide insulation.

"We used expanded corkboard to affirm this protruding volume, and suppress noise from a school playground nearby," said the architects. "Cork is entirely natural, and offers an alternative to more conventional forms of insulation, with a good acoustic and thermal performance."

Portugal is a major producer of cork, and the material has been used to cover a number of buildings in the country, including a house partially built into a hill, and the world's first cork-clad hotel.

Casa Bonjardim is supported by a steel frame and split into a series of stepped half levels. This helps to deal with the difference in height between the street at the front and the garden at the back, which is higher.

"We wanted to create a sense of continuity between the living area and the garden, so we had two options – excavate the garden to make it lower, or raise the house," explained the architects. "Excavation would have been unsafe as the garden is adjoined by a large stone wall, and we could not raise the house entirely because we had to retain the front facade, so we came up with an intermediate solution of half levels."

The half levels also allowed for a greater variety of ceiling heights throughout the house. They vary from 2.4 metres at the entrance to 2.8 metres in the kitchen, and rise up to 3.7 metres in the central stairwell.

To maximise light in the narrow house, all rooms at the back were designed with full-height glazing. A circular rooflight was also added at the top of the stairs, and the internal patio on the top floor was fitted with a glass roof and an internal window to bring more light into the centre of the home.

"The house faces west at the front, and east at the back, so the light is very horizontal when it is direct," said the architects. "To create a better flow of this light, we avoided barriers between the stairwell and the windows, and added the internal patio, which illuminates the central space until the middle of the afternoon."

Oak flooring was used for the ground floor and study, chosen for the warmth of its colour. Concrete flooring runs through the painting studio on the top floor, which also features a wall of built-in storage.

"Given the use of the painting studio, the owners wanted a surface that was neutral and easy to clean," said the architects.

In the entrance hall, a black-painted diagonal wall has been added to conceal storage and a WC at the front of the house. The partition also shields the living space beyond from the gaze of passersby on the street.

"The black absorbs the light, and offers a contrast with the white surfaces used elsewhere throughout the house," said the architects.

Construction was completed in 15 months, and cost approximately €750 (£540) per square metre.

Photography is by ATKA Arquitectos.

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NeoCon 2015: Dutch designer Hella Jongerius used unconventional materials and assembly methods to create these vividly striped Cork & Felt rugs for Danskina.

First introduced in Milan last year, the Cork & Felt collection became available in the US for the first time this spring and was shown at Chicago trade show NeoCon.

The rugs are 65 per cent felt and 35 per cent cork, which combine to create a floor covering with the texture of fabric and the durability of cork.

Jongeriuslab, the designer's Berlin-based studio, groups the felt into five colour categories: warm reds, cool blues, pastels, high-contrast colours, and neutrals.

Within those categories, the felt strips are randomly combined with the cork, creating variation within an industrialised process and making each Cork & Felt rug unique.

Jongerius has long been interested in combining elements of craft with mass-produced goods. Earlier this year, she released a manifesto calling for a "new holistic approach to design".

The randomised patterns of each rug are anchored by solid blocks of coloured felt at the top and bottom of each rug, to prevent the cork from chipping. The strips of felt and cork and attached to a polyester backing but not to each other, allowing the rugs to be flexible.

In addition to using natural materials, felt and cork are both rapidly renewable. The rugs can be made to any length with a maximum width of three metres (nine feet, 10 inches).

Jongerius is the creative director of rug specialist Danskina, which is jointly owned by textile companies Maharam and Kvadrat. She has also designed numerous textiles and wall-coverings for Maharam, which was acquired by American furniture giant Herman Miller in 2013.

She is one of a number of designers using cork in furniture and homeware design. Ilse Crawford chose cork to create many of the items in her range for Ikea, while others have used it to make clocks, sofas and even a sound-insulating helmet.

NeoCon 2015 took place from 15 to 17 June at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. The event also saw the launch of Herman Miller's "hackable" foam office system and a collection of African-inspired textiles by David Adjaye.

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White curved walls merge into a tapered ceiling inside this yoga and meditation studio in New York, designed by Clouds Architecture Office to look like a fog has descended (+ slideshow).

Clouds Architecture Office was asked to convert a former office into a community space suitable for yoga and meditation, but that could also be used for other activities, such as photography.

The architects wanted the space to embody all of its different uses – so came up with a concept based on the idea of transcending reality.

This involved removing as many of the room's hard edges as possible, creating a volume designed to "recede and disappear, as if a fog had entered the space and obscured its limits".

"Given the typology of the program, we wanted to create a space that would transport people to an unexpected place where one could forget the everyday," Clouds AO partner Ostap Rudakevych told Dezeen.

"We tried to create a studio of emptiness for people to relax and concentrate their mind."

Aiming to partially blur the edges and depth of the room, dampened plasterboard was moulded to create the curved walls.

The architects hoped that by creating a single crease along the curved walls and ceiling, they would provide the room with "aspects of finitude and infinitude, restriction and openness," reminding occupants that "the edge is meaningful and gives a sense to the space it encloses".

The ceiling tapers towards a large window, which acts as the horizon point of the room.

"The maximal edge which defines the common space within which we all live is the horizon," said the architects. "The edge of the horizon anchors us, grounding our psyche".

To accommodate the range of activities taking place in the studio, the architects chose cork flooring for its soft and durable nature.

"It's an ideal material for this application since it's comfortable against the body when sitting or laying down, and it has great acoustic properties," explained Rudakevych.

Just outside the studio, visitors can hang their belongings on wall-mounted wooden pegs, created by local designer Farrah Sit.

Photography is by GION.

Project credits:

Name: CRS Studio
Type: Studio, Office
Location: New York, NY
Completion: May 2015
Designer: Clouds AO, New York City
Project Designers: Masayuki Sono, Ostap Rudakevych
Lighting Designer: Brian Mosbacher
Client: CRS (Center for Remembering and Sharing)
Builder: Toderic Inc
Photography: GION

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Milan 2015: Brussels designer Pierre-Emmanuel Vandeputte has created a cork helmet that lowers over the wearer's head when they need a respite from ambient noise.

Chosen for its insulating properties, the cork is shaped to resemble a bell jar that covers the user's entire head and neck – blocking out all of the surrounding sounds.

"Nowadays, we are surround by noise pollution and there is almost nothing to protect yourself from it," Vandeputte told Dezeen. "We've made fashion statements with glasses to protect you from the sun, or to improve your vision, but there is nothing for your ears."

The helmet is attached to the ceiling with a mechanism comprising a cork counter-weight, a rope and two pulleys.

When required, the user stands directly under the headgear and uses the ropes to lower it over their head. Two curved sections are removed from either side so the product rests snuggly over the shoulders.

"From time to time, when you get bored of the daily doldrum, you might need something like a break – to escape from the place you are in," said the designer. "The object is linked to your environment, where you are, where you want to escape from."

Vandeputte's Cork Helmet will launch as part of the Belgian Village exhibition at the Ventura Lambrate district in Milan, during next week's Salone del Mobile furniture fair.

The designer will also be launching a ladder with a seat at the top in the fair's Salone Satellite section for emerging talent.

Other products designed for shutting out the surroundings include a portable fabric pod that encases the top half of the body and squishy headgear for a power napping on the go.

Photography is by Delphine Mathy.

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Dutch designer Ilias Ernst has created a simple clock that rests on a corner extended from its cork frame.

Created for Amsterdam products brand Puik Art, Ilias Ernst's Clork is designed for use on a bedside table, desk or shelf.

The clock has a circular face made from white sheet-metal, encased in hand-finished cork that follows the shape as a thin strip around most of the edge.

The addition of a right-angled corner on the bottom left enables the clock to stand on any flat surface.

"Time rolls on, but once in a while you need to stand still," Ernst told Dezeen. "Clork does not present a full circle, it has an edge that stabilises you for the moment."

The minute and hour hands are black with rounded tops and bottoms. There are no numbers or increments on the face, but circular depressions mark the positions of numbers 12, three, six and nine.

The young designer worked with cork for the first time on this project. "The fact the clock is well received is a relief for me, it means that I've done my job well," Ernst said.

"Using both cork and metal creates an attractive contrast," he added. "Clork should make people feel content about themselves every time they check the time."

Clork is available in natural or black cork and has a diameter of 19 centimetres.

Puik Art works in collaboration with new Dutch designers to help get their products to market. Previous projects include Keyker by Mas Peters, a mirror with a magnetic board to hang keys on underneath; Thomas van Rongen's Candela, a five-footed self-supporting candle; and the stainless steel and bamboo Shunan table by Nieuwe Heren.

Cork also features prominently in Ilse Crawford's range for Ikea, which was launched in Stockholm earlier this month.

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Stockholm 2015: furniture giant IKEA has collaborated with London designer Ilse Crawford to launch a range of cork and natural-fibre homeware products.

Unveiled during an event at Crawford's Ett Hem hotel in Stockholm yesterday, the Sinnerlig collection heavily features natural materials and neutral colours that were chosen to fit into any home.

"It's supposed to work in a bathroom in Mumbai as well as a kitchen in Neasden, it has to fit into people's lives," Crawford told Dezeen.

The first collaboration between IKEA and Studioilse contains a range of around 30 products – from larger furniture pieces such as cork-covered tables and a daybed down to hand-blown glass bottles.

"[IKEA] asked us to work in natural materials, which of course is very appealing to bring the physical quality to our range, which I think they would say themselves is very missing," said Crawford. "I think they know that their surfaces have become quite flat in the push for perfection."

For all of the pieces, emphasis is put on material combinations rather than statement shapes.

"It is quite low key but we deliberately designed it like that," Crawford continued. "We see it as background, it's not trying to compete with these fantastic icons of design – it's a different thing. But we all need a number of lights that aren't supposed to be waving at you."

Cork is the predominant material in the collection, used in thin layers to cover table tops and seats as well as thicker sections to form tops for jars and bases for lamps.

"[Cork] is very much a part of our range, because of its acoustic properties and it works great with glass," said Crawford, who sees this as an important repurposing for the material because "no one wants wine corks any more."

A set of bamboo-lattice pendant lights concertina together to pack and ship more efficiently, a typical element in many IKEA products.

Cushion upholstery in neutral colours is woven from a cotton blend that uses less water in its production.

Dried seagrass is used for a variety of products including baskets, again shaped to fit into one another for tight packing. "IKEA doesn't ship air," Crawford said.

The collection also includes a variety of ceramic pieces, which are treated to look slightly weathered.

Crawford's team began collaborating with IKEA after the appointment of Marcus Engman as the Swedish company's head of design, who is determined to raise the "design quality" of the brand.

"About three years ago they approached us to develop a collection with them, and our first thought was 'yikes!'," Crawford told Dezeen. "It's not a special collection, it's very much a part of IKEA's main line."

Working closely with the designers and researchers at Ikea, Studioilse was able to tap in to the vast resources available from such a large brand but still keep a focus on the materials and details of the products.

"What's very interesting is the idea of working with a company that has a very smart system, a scientific system," Crawford said. "It's been a fascinating project to create design for the many, at the level you can achieve with working for smaller companies."

Unveiled during Stockholm Design Week, the range will be available at IKEA stores and online from August.

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Bubble tea drinkers perch on tiers of cork seating around brightly coloured tables at this London cafe by architects Gundry & Ducker (+ slideshow).

Gundry & Ducker designed the space for a teashop called Biju Bubble Tea Rooms, in London's Soho district.

The cafe serves a style of milky tea that originated in 1980s Taiwan – often infused with fruit and poured over a layer of chewy tapioca pearls.

The London-based studio created areas of terraced seating on either side of a shop floor dotted with brightly coloured tables to create sociable environment for customers.

"Envisaged as a modern day tea room, the design emphasises the social aspects of drinking tea," said studio co-founder Christian Ducker.

The studio forewent the typical bentwood cafe chairs in favour for a range of informal seating that creates "an internal landscape that people can occupy as they choose."

Cork steps flank the shop floor are dotted with a selection of thick circular cushions that match the brightly coloured tabletops and paintwork.

A series of cork-lined blocks stacked against the wall create arm-rests and make-shift tables for customers on the upper levels.

Small cork stools with tubular metal legs cluster around the vibrant turquoise, pink and yellow tables overhung by a large section of industrial pipework is suspended from the striped ceiling.

"The use of natural cork in the interior refers to Biju's use of only fresh natural ingredients, whilst the fun aspect of the drinks is reflected by the vibrant colours neon lighting and op-art graphics," Ducker told Dezeen.

A large white counter against the rear wall of the cafe serves as a preparation area, where customers can select ingredients and watch their order being brewed.

"The idea was to display the raw materials and celebrate the theatre of the preparation of the tea," said the whose previous projects include a tiled pizza parlour in east London.

Diagonal slices through the interior paintwork reveal sections of pale brickwork. The pattern continues onto the facade where strips of brighty-coloured metal fold off the grey painted shopfront to form signage for the cafe.

The graphics and branding for the teahouse were produced by British design studio Ico Design.

Photography is by Hufton & Crow.

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Czech designer Lucie Koldova has designed a sofa for Belgian design brand Per/Use using cork as the primary material (+ slideshow).

"Cork is an incredible material with natural origins. I became familiar with it when I was working at a smaller scale and I liked the texture and the fact that it is completely sustainable," said Koldova. Cork is harvested from the bark of cork trees every nine years. The process doesn’t harm the trees, which often live for over 200 years.

"Cork is mainly used for tableware or accessories. I wanted to explore the idea of a large-scale piece that could be central to the interior. I was amazed by being able to sculpt an object out of a soft, textured material and I wanted to explore that further too," explained Koldova.

The sofa is carved from a single block of pressed cork, made as a byproduct of bottle stopper production in Portuguese factories. It is then varnished, resulting in a durable and tactile finish.

"I paid a lot of attention to every curve of the cork body, since the cork forms both the construction and also the final visual result," said the designer.

Upholstered cushions are closely fitted to the shell. "It's not only a functional addition to the comfort of the sofa but also a visual statement," said Koldova.

"The contrast between the smooth polished cork surface and the softness of the Kvadrat fabric is an important point for this sofa. Kvadrat provide a fabulous palette, which resonates with my affinity for bright colours. For the first pieces, I have chosen a bright strawberry melange Divina for a fresh vivid look contrasting with the texture of the cork."

The Corques Sofa is available as a double seater sofa and armchairs and comes upholstered in a choice of four Kvadrat Divina fabrics in black, white, red or lilac.

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Daylight filters sparingly across the concrete walls of this indoor swimming pool, which protrudes from the cork-clad facade of a family house in Leiria, Portugal, by local studio Contaminar Arquitetos (+ slideshow).

Contaminar Arquitetos designed the Hill Cork House to be concealed from neighbouring residences and the adjacent road, but to open out to a garden at the rear. To achieve this, the house is sunken into a hillside on the eastern facade, but emerges as a single-storey building on the western side.

The long and narrow swimming pool stretches east to west across the centre of the plan, protruding out from the western facade into the garden. Like the rest of the house, this rectilinear volume is clad with cork.

"Beyond the effective thermal insulation provided for the concrete structure, the sensorial properties of this unique material make this architectural object pleasant to the touch," said the architects.

The entire eastern facade is buried beneath the gravel and stone of the man-made hillside, but a series of descending ramps create tunnel-like entrances for residents arriving on foot or by car.

"On the east facade, we don’t perceive the existence of the house," said the architects. "An alternated game of ramps directs to the discrete entrance or to the green roof, which make the house merge with the landscape."

The spine of the house is a simple corridor that stretches north to south, concluding at an open-plan living room with a kitchen on one side and a sheltered terrace on the other.

The swimming pool separates this space from a sequence of bedrooms and bathrooms, whose windows create an alternating pattern of solids and voids on the outside of the building.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here's a project description from the architects:

The Hill Cork House, Leiria, Portugal

This house is a single-family dwelling located in Leiria, designed by Contaminar Arquitetos. With a large area, it develops itself in a single storey, although its impact is reduced.

In the main access, on the east facade, we don’t perceive the existence of the house: an alternated game of ramps directs to the discrete entrance or to the green roof, which make the house merge with the landscape. On these ramps, the floor and walls are covered with gravel and stone, making this part of the house more opaque and closed, retracted towards the main access route and the neighbourhood houses.

On the opposite facade, in the west, the geometry is more clear and the drawing more evident. A sequence of voids and plain volumes allows the inner organisation of the private closed spaces (toilets, closet and wardrobes) conjugated with the openness of the rooms, slightly retracted, to the outside area.

A central volume stands out in the facade as an axis that divides the living area from the more private area of the house. It contains a pool and its interior surface, in concrete, maintains a close relationship with the landscape: the shapes and the light coming from outside are reflected in the water of this rectangle, as in a mirror.

With a very strong image, a cork skin covers the entire north, south and west exterior surfaces of the house, as if the volume were "contaminated" by the natural surroundings. Beyond the effective thermal insulation provided for the concrete structure, the sensorial properties of this unique material make this architectural object pleasant to the touch, by the softness of its texture - the house becomes part of nature. Its earth tone contrasts with the green of the grass and harmonises with the surrounding trees.

Architects: Contaminar Arquitetos – arch. Joel Esperança, arch. Ruben Vaz, designer Romeu Sousa
Collaborators: Frederico Louçano, Hugo Rainho, Margarida Carrilho, Emanuela Quinta

Typology: 4 rooms
Construction area: 653 sqm

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