Dezeen has launched Dezeen Lookbooks, a new section featuring roundups of home interiors and decor trends to help designers and design lovers plan their projects.
Published each Saturday, the visually driven Dezeen Lookbooks present roundups of images of contemporary interiors selected from our vast archive of over 750,000 images.
Each roundup is curated by the Dezeen editorial team and addresses a different room and theme.
Top: an image from our cosy living rooms lookbook. Above: a project from the peaceful bedrooms lookbook
Lookbooks published so far feature living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms.
Dezeen Lookbooks is a response to the surge of interest in home design since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen people spending much more time at home.
As a result, web traffic to Dezeen posts about home interiors has soared.
This Barcelona apartment features in our colourful kitchens lookbook
Popular Lookbook stories we’ve published over the last few months include our showcases of living rooms with calm interiors, bold bathroom designs and thirty kitchens designed by architects.
We’ll be adding more image-led roundups over the coming weeks and plan to expand the section to include other types of interiors plus trend reports in future.
Interior design fans can also check out our sections on residential interiors, apartments and houses.
Thinking of using stone in your project? Our latest Dezeen guide includes 15 popular types of natural rock used in architecture, interiors and design with links to hundreds of examples to inspire your own work.
Alabaster
Alabaster is a soft, fine-grained stone that has been used for centuries to carve elaborate forms and ornaments. However, its solubility in water means that it is best suited for indoor use.
In its pure form, alabaster is white and translucent, which makes it ideally suited to lighting design.
Studio Tack used tubular light shades made from alabaster to softly illuminate a cosy Japanese restaurant in New York (above), while lighting studio Allied Maker used the stone to create ornate totemic floor lamps.
Amarist Studio showcased the sculptural possibilities of the stone in its Aqua Fossil collection, which includes a coffee table with swooping, curved legs.
See projects featuring alabaster ›
Basalt
Basalt is a dark-coloured igneous rock that is formed when lava cools rapidly. It is most frequently used as an aggregate for concrete as it is low-cost and high-strength, but it is also a popular cladding and flooring material, especially when polished.
Examples of this include the facade of a small gallery in Amsterdam by Barend Koolhaas and a Hawaiian holiday home by Walker Warner Architects in which slender basalt cladding tiles are contrasted with cedar detailing (above).
Icelandic studio Innriinnri used two sculpted slabs of basalt stone to create a sculptural table that doubles as a stool or a piece of art, while South Korean artist Byung Hoon Choi polished the stone to create oversized outdoor furniture.
See projects featuring basalt ›
Flint
Flint is a highly durable stone found in abundance as irregular-shaped nodules in sedimentary rocks such as chalk. It has been used as a construction material since the Roman era, though it is not often seen in contemporary architecture.
Flint varies in colour, but it is commonly glassy black with a white crust. In architecture, it is usually knapped – split to expose its glossy inner face – before being laid in mortar.
Skene Catling de la Peña used a combination of knapped and unknapped flint to cover a wedge-shaped house in Buckinghamshire (above), which creates a subtle colour gradient across its facade.
See projects featuring flint ›
Gneiss
Gneiss, a robust metamorphic stone composed of alternating layers of different coloured minerals, is popular to use for flooring and worktops. Hues can range from pinks and golds to greens and dark greys.
Peter Pichler sourced grey gneiss with black-and-white bands from Passeier Valley in South Tyrol to create a large counter in the bar of an Italian Alpine hotel (above).
It can also be used as a cladding material, such as in Bernardo Bader Architekten’s ski resort office in Austria and a radio broadcasting station in Nepal by Archium.
Granite
Granite is one of the most widely used stones in architecture and design. It forms from the slow crystallisation of magma beneath the Earth’s crust. It is used for everything from load-bearing structures to cladding, worktops and furniture.
Its popularity is down to its high compressive strength, durability and low porosity. Granite is also found in an array of colours, making it suitable for a range of spaces and styles.
Heatherwick Studio recently used green granite to make a trio of its sculptural Spun chairs (above), while Snøhetta has used a grey variety to cover almost every surface of an Aesop store to emulate a rocky coastline.
Architecture studio NOARQ tested the material’s strength by elevating a cabin on thick blocks of granite over the entrance to a stone villa in Portugal.
See projects featuring granite ›
Laterite
Rusty-red laterite stone is formed from the leaching of rocks and soil during alternating periods of high temperature and heavy rainfall in tropical areas. This process leaves behind a high concentration of insoluble iron oxides, which gives the rock its colour.
Laterite is typically used in construction in Africa and Asia in the form of bricks, which have excellent thermal mass and a low embodied energy. These bricks are made by cutting the rock out from below the water table when it is moist and leaving it to harden in the air.
Architect Francis Kéré used locally sourced laterite to build the walls of a school in Burkina Faso and Studio Lotus has used it to create the pedestal of a government building in India (above).
Limestone
There are many different types of limestone, a sedimentary rock composed mainly of calcium carbonate. It is considered a good all-round building material as it is easy to cut and carve and usually has a uniform texture and colour.
Popular limestone varieties include travertine (see below) and Portland stone, which is used on notable buildings in London such as St Paul’s Cathedral and Buckingham Palace.
David Chipperfield Architects recently used limestone to clad the Kunsthaus Zurich museum extension in Switzerland and John Pawson used it to line the surfaces of a minimalist flagship store in Japan for fashion label Jil Sander.
Design projects that utilise limestone include a blocky furniture collection called Dig Where You Stand by students from the Estonian Academy of Arts (above).
See projects featuring limestone ›
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock with veins of calcite crystal. It forms from limestone that has been exposed to heat and pressure and is found in many colours. Marble is strong but easily carved and polishes well, making it suitable for numerous applications.
It is most popularly used in kitchen and bathroom designs, but it is often used as cladding too, such as in Alexander Owen Architecture’s garden room in London (above).
Onyx is a translucent gemstone composed of parallel bands of quartz, found in almost every colour. It has a long history of use in sculpture and jewellery but is less commonly found in architecture and design. However, onyx is sometimes used as a facing or lighting.
Projects that use onyx include a mausoleum in Minneapolis by HGA and an office by Anne Claus Interiors where it has been used to clad a multi-coloured bar (above).
Porphyry is a strong and hard-wearing igneous stone that comes in reddish-brown to purple hues. It is composed of large-grained crystals embedded in a fine-grained groundmass.
It has been used in architecture and design since antiquity, though it is rarely seen in contemporary architecture and design. Today it is mostly used as aggregate in the construction of roads in places where cars require studded winter tires.
Pedevilla Architects used a block of porphyry as a kitchen island for a cookery school in South Tyrol, while architect Claudio Silvestrin used it to line the walls of a Milanese fashion boutique.
Quartzite
Formed from sandstone exposed to high heat and pressure, quartzite is a very hard and durable metamorphic rock. It is usually found in white and grey shades.
Quartzite is a popular material for kitchen countertops as it is resistant to staining, but is most commonly used as a decorative cladding or flooring.
Examples of this include a dwelling in Utah by Klima Architecture, Peter Zumthor’s Therme Vals spa (above) and a monolithic Parisian library by Agence Pascale Guédot.
See projects featuring quartzite ›
Sandstone
Sandstone is composed of fine silicate grains that have eroded from other rocks, giving it either a warm red, yellow or orange colouration.
Used for construction since prehistoric times, sandstone continues to be a popular choice in architecture and design as it is abundant, durable and easy to handle.
Recent architectural projects that use the material include a cathedral extension by Feilden Fowles, a museum by Álvaro Siza, and an oval-shaped all-girls school in India (above) that is designed to blend into its desert surroundings.
See projects featuring sandstone ›
Shale
This grey fine-grained stone is one of the most common sedimentary rocks on earth. It is formed from the compaction of silt and mud into thin, fissile layers. In architecture and design, shale is usually crushed and processed into bricks, tiles and pottery, or heated with limestone to make cement.
Aketuri Architektai used shale tiles to clad a pointy woodland house in Lithuania (above), while Spaceworkers wrapped the stone around the basement of a Portuguese house to provide it with a raw, rugged aesthetic.
See projects featuring shale ›
Slate
Slate is a dark fine-grained stone that is formed when a sedimentary rock, such as shale, is subjected to high pressure. It is a foliated rock, meaning it is made up of thin sedimentary layers, which allows it to be split – or riven – into thin slabs.
Slate is durable and weather- and frost-resistant, making it a popular material choice for cladding, roofing and paving.
In interior projects, the material is often also used as floor tiles, hearths and kitchen worktops. Natalie Weinmann sanded and polished the stone to create a blocky furniture collection.
TRIAS used it to clad a small writer’s retreat in a Welsh valley while Austin Maynard Architects diamond, scalloped and brick-shaped slate shingles to cover a Melbourne house (above).
See projects featuring slate ›
Travertine
One of the most commonly used forms of limestone is travertine, which has been sourced from mineral springs for use as a building material for centuries. The largest building in the world made from this stone is the Colosseum in Rome.
Today, travertine is mostly processed into tiles for internal and external surface coverings, but it is also a popular material for bathroom fit-outs. As it is found with troughs on its surface, processing travertine usually involves polishing its surface.
Projects that use travertine include an extension to a German museum by Bez + Kock Architekten (above), an apartment renovation in Lithuania by 2XJ, and a furniture collection by David/Nicolas.
See projects featuring travertine ›
Recent popular stone projects on Dezeen include an inconspicuous house on the island of Serifos, a monolithic spa by Smartvoll, a collection of luxury lodges on England’s Jurassic Coast and a coffee table by Studio Twenty Seven.
The main image is of Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls’ School by Diana Kellogg Architects taken by Vinay Panjwani.
Dezeen has partnered with Design Shanghai to present a cafe and bar designed by Michael Young at the 2021 edition of the trade show, which opened in Shanghai this week.
The cafe and bar is located at booth K207 in Hall 2 at Design Shanghai 2021, which takes place at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, China, until 6 June.
The space features grey corrugated walls with splashes of colour and is furnished with previews of furniture pieces designed by Young that will be launched later in the year.
Dezeen has partnered with Design Shanghai to present a cafe and bar designed by Michael Young
According to Young, the concept for the space is loosely based on a bar he created last year at his office in Shekou, Shenzhen.
“I ended up with an opportunity to create a bar last year beneath our studio but with only a few weeks to build the concept I decided to throw in anything I could get hold of – samples, prototypes and things from the studio that we have collected from around the world,” the Hong Kong-based British designer told Dezeen.
“I basically scavenged the studio together like a magpie so it became a real beer shack and a place that was not designed but created organically.”
The bar features ribbed walls with splashes of colour and pattern
Citta Design has contributed pieces of Young’s new Acre Chair for the New Zealand brand, which will be launched in Auckland in September. The space is also furnished with new editions of Young’s Stool 4a for EOQ Design, which will be launched in December.
The bar is being used to launch Young’s new drinks brand Beer Buddy, which developed a new pilsner called House for the event.
The beer brand is specifically designed to connect creatives at events, trade shows and gatherings around Asia. Drinkers can scan a QR code on the beer packaging to connect with other creatives attending the event.
Young is launching his new Beer Buddy drinks brand at the bar
The dark grey exterior walls of the space are decorated with swirling patterns based on the graphics on the Beer Buddy cans and bottles.
Colourful versions of this pattern have been used to add splashes of colour to the interior walls and enclose private seating areas.
The space is co-branded with Young’s studio logo and the Chinese version of Dezeen’s logo. The walls also feature the QR code for people to follow Dezeen’s official WeChat account, which features news and features about the latest architecture, design and interiors written in Simplified Chinese.
The interior and exterior of the bar features swirling patterns based on the Beer Buddy packaging
The show presents over 400 local and international brands across eight different sections alongside a programme of installations, exhibitions and the return of its annual talks programme, which this year explores the topic of regenerative design.
Design Shanghai takes place from 3 to 6 June at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
