Nano tanks — small aquariums under 15 gallons in size — are quickly becoming a favorite decor piece among renters and homeowners, especially those who live in urban areas. Not only are these tiny aquariums minimalist in style, they also make for a great way to bring nature’s touch into the house.

Why is Minimalism So Popular?

Perhaps it’s Marie Kondo’s beloved philosophy of tidying up, decluttering, and simplifying interior spaces, or maybe it’s the fact that city and suburban rentals aren’t very spacious to begin with. On top of all that, the newfound popularity of reducing one’s carbon footprint and leading a sustainable lifestyle is likewise encouraging everyone to cut back. Rather than splurging on large things, people are opting for more compact, more convenient designs.

The minimalism aesthetic visually conveys a purposeful cleanliness that’s soothing to any denizen, whether they reside in the heart of concrete jungle or the quaint countryside (though of course, it’s probably most impactful to urban dwellers who regularly need to decompress and de-stress). And with big publications like Vice having previously reported that “staring at a fish tank is like getting the healing benefits of nature on demand,” it’s no wonder that people everywhere are choosing to work small tanks into their own decor schemes.

The Health Benefits of Nano Tanks

A nano tank is like a zen sand garden, providing calming effects to pet owners and promoting serenity in the homespace. There’s also a type of mindfulness and meditation that takes place as you care for an aquarium, tending to the aquascape as a form of mental escape from daily stress.

Pet Central recently shared the views of certified sleep science coach Chris Brantner, who states: “It seems that watching fish, and listening to the trickling water, causes the production of serotonin, which stimulates the brain to increase endorphins. The result? Positive feelings. Such stress reduction translates well to sleep.”

Brantner adds that “We’re learning more and more about how important it is to set calming bedtime routines and creating a relaxing sleep environment in our bedrooms. An aquarium is perfect for both. The trickling sound of the water naturally does what we try to emulate with sound machines. And watching the fish swim around is a perfect meditative precursor to sleep.”

A nano tank can thereby “spark joy” and bring balance to one’s home, much like minimalism. Even better, its a miniature oasis that you get to design and curate, allowing all your creative juices to flow freely. So what are you waiting for? Stop staring out the window all day, and bring this magical little pice of nature into your home.

The post Why the Nano Tank Trend is Making a Splash first appeared on Dornob.

The Headspace app typically requires an annual fee of $70 to $100, offering a host of meditation sessions of varying lengths and topics. According to a press release from Starbucks, “Partners (What Starbucks calls employees) can sign up for a free Headspace subscription and have access to hundreds of themed sessions and easy guided meditations on everything from stress and sleep to focus and anxiety.”

The company’s overarching goal in providing the app is to promote health and wellness within the workplace. Starbucks believes this not only enhances employee satisfaction, but also creates a more positive experience for customers. In today’s corporate world, it’s unusual to hear open discussions about mental health and stress relief. Employees might receive a quarterly newsletter outlining ways to reduce stress or achieve a healthier work/life balance, but actually providing tools for better health speaks volumes about Starbucks’ commitment.

As Chief Partner Officer Lucy Helm says, “Together, we’re on a mission to take a stand, help break the stigma, and get even more partners and their family the support they need.”

Although taking this step undeniably creates positive press for the company, it comes at the end of a long discussion regarding mental health within the organization. Initially, 12,000 store leaders were brought together for training and discussions on the topic. The company then created an online forum where employees (partners) could share their feelings and discuss the issue. Obviously the Mental Health Matters campaign struck a chord, since nearly 5,000 employees have contributed to the discussion to date.

Another aspect of the campaign has provided training to more than 200,000 partners through the Third Place Development Series, itself aimed at topics like loneliness, vulnerability, and the power of human connection.

The company’s perspective is that a focus on mental health is equally as important as any on physical health when it comes to overall employee satisfaction, firmly believing that it’s the responsibility of the employer to offer this type of support to their partners. Helm adds that: “Mental health is a fundamental part of our humanity. We have so much more opportunity ahead, and with each step, we want to ensure that every partner, in every store, feels supported and knows how and where to seek help for themselves and others.”

Critics of the news, including some employees, say that higher pay or the opportunity to work more hours is a more meaningful perk than a free meditation app. Those employees feeling the pressure from notorious understaffing and the struggle to pay rent acknowledge that Starbucks has a history of providing progressive benefits, but that those efforts don’t put food on the table. Of course, appreciation for the added perk is evidenced by over 30,000 employee downloads since the benefit became available.

The post Starbucks Now Offers Employees a Free Meditation App Subscription first appeared on Dornob.

The post Feng Shui Mini-Apartment on Wheels first appeared on Dornob.

This unique structure is the brainchild of Czech designers Jerry Koza and Adam Jirkaand, engineer Tomáš Kalhous, architect Martin Kalhous of Atelier SAD, and mmcité, a noted Czech street furniture designer.

Specs and Materials

The portable gazebo has a 4320-millimeter (14.2 feet) base and a height of 3400 millimeters (11.2 ft), and it even boasts  a covered fireplace and a skylight dome that can easily be opened and closed. The pinecone-like exterior is made from 109 plywood scales, each one of which has been weatherized by a water-resistant glaze that combats the negative effects of the sun, wind, and rain. These scales are securely attached to the frame by galvanized joints, resulting in a sturdy standalone structure with good airflow and pristine acoustics. A comfortable seating bench encircles the structure’s interior border.

David Karasek, an award-winning designer from mmcité, recently shed a little more light on the gazebo’s development: “All over the design procedure, we had been aiming to wreck limitations and transfer ahead. The Pinecone challenge used to be a large problem for us, as it used to be greater than only a one-dimensional product. Above all, this can be a flexible construction, which matches in parks and faculties alike. It’s at the reducing fringe of structure and design, and may also function as a meditation area.”

Limited Only By Imagination

In addition to being easy to transport and set up, the pinecone gazebo is also equally fun for children and adults. For starters, its walls can be used as blackboards, allowing budding artists to truly express themselves. There’s enough room inside to play board games, tell stories, and let imaginations run wild. And since the gazebo can be set up multiple times in one day, kids can enjoy it for daytime activities in the park and then sit around an indoor campfire back at the house.

Adults can also enjoy the seclusion and privacy of the pinecone dome for meditation and yoga — either alone or in small groups. The gazebo’s peaceful, comfortable atmosphere is also ideal for small business meetings. Alternatively, you could set up a few tables and chairs inside and host a wine party for your friends.

Other Pinecone-Inspired Projects

This pinecone-shaped gazebo is the first of its kind, but the pinecone itself has inspired many architectural works in the past. In 2017, architect Claudio Beltrame designed and constructed a pinecone-shaped treehouse in the Italian Alps. He added some drama to the structure by hanging it 10 meters above the ground and providing only a bridge for access. In 2016, Christofer Ödmark designed a curved-wall trail center in Sweden, the shingles of which also resembled pinecones.

The post This Mobile Pinecone Gazebo is the Ideal Play Space for Both Kids and Adults first appeared on Dornob.

The post UNDO: The Cushion that Solves Meditation Struggles first appeared on Dornob.

Few staircases are quite as bold as this bamboo number, which was designed by Cui Shu of the Beijing-based firm Cun Design. Rising from the center of the ground floor like an organic growth and swirling upwards, it’s almost parasitic in its appearance, as if it attached itself to the existing columns in the room and began to feed off of them. Overlapping lengths of bamboo adorn its curving form in a symmetric and orderly fashion in some areas, but their arrangement becomes wilder and looser in others.

The staircase presides over the redesigned headquarters of Elephant Parade, a social enterprise that handles the world’s largest exhibition of decorated elephant statues (which might explain its mammoth proportions). It’s interesting to see how the architects chose to take such a restrained approach to every other aspect of this renovation project, adhering to more or less conventional ideas of how an office should look. By contrast, the fluid bamboo structure feels like an explosion of pent-up creative energy that’s only been allowed to flourish in one spot.

Noting that people have been getting tired of the same old architectural tropes in offices, like an abundance of concrete and glass, Cui Shu deliberately chose bamboo for its warm tones, organic textures, and the visions of nature conjured by its appearance. The staircase itself takes on a sense of vitality, attaching itself to the underside of the lofted second story and giving off the impression that it might not be done spreading through the space. Its lines continue straight up to the ceiling and curve around the wall.

Bamboo is incorporated into other areas of the office, too, lining many of the building’s workspaces. Dark, hunter green bamboo paneling corrals cubicles and lines the walls and ceilings of meeting rooms. Nearly every floor in the office has also been clad in bamboo, including that of a meditation room that overlooks the Beijing skyline.

The aim, according to Cui Shu, was to use the dramatic silhouette of the staircase to establish a sense of flowing rhythm. The staircase represents a shortcut: a means of rapid ascent and descent between states of mind and physical spaces. It connects orderly rows of workspaces to a relaxation room, where employees can let loose on green carpeting and oversized felted wool “stones.”

The firm explains that in a successfully-designed office, there’s space for anyone to work, think, imagine, and collaborate, whether they need cheerful common areas or quiet, private refuge. Modern work life often encourages leaving rigid schedules behind, so maybe we should start leaving rigid structures behind, too.

The post Giant Bamboo Staircase Swirls Through Elephant Parade HQ Like a Parasitic Growth first appeared on Dornob.

The Neuroon Open sleep mask uses a set of built-in sensors to collect data throughout the night, documenting how much time your brain spends emitting alpha, beta, theta, and delta waves. The mask also monitors your heart rate, blood oxygen level, skin temperature, and movement. The system processes this information and converts into an easy-to-read set of sleep analytics, which tells you exactly how much deep, light, and REM sleep you got. If you aren’t using those eight hours as efficiently as you could be, the Neuroon Open will even give you some helpful tips on how to improve your nightly habits.

The mask’s Kickstarter page explains, “After each sleep you will be given a short test in which you estimate your sleep quality and sleepiness after waking on VAS. This self-evaluation system records changes in the subjective reception of your sleep. This is then combined with metabolic and sleep-staging data in order to provide information about the best sleep pattern to suit you.”

“As a voluntary extra option, you will have the possibility to try two short games which measure your mental capacities after sleep. The working memory test will check your perception and working memory condition upon waking. The cognition test will check your cognitive capability. During the first ten days, Neuroon Open will gather data from the tests to personalize its analytic software. After this period, you will be informed about your daily results compared to the average, allowing you to choose the best sleep pattern for your top mental condition.”

To see your “sleep score,” simply put on the mask when you go to bed and check the accompanying smartphone app in the morning. If you’re not a big fan of traditional alarms, you can instruct the Neuroon Open to simulate the light of a natural sunrise when it’s time to wake up. Heavy sleepers needn’t worry, either. Anyone who isn’t awoken by the mask’s lights will be greeted by a set of gentle vibrations and a final audio alert from their phone. The best part is, the Neuroon Open lets you choose which stage of sleep you’d prefer to wake up from, meaning you’ll never have to interrupt you deepest slumbers again!

It’s easy to confuse this gadget for something out of a science fiction movie, but we assure you that the Neuroon Open is the real deal. The mask can also be programmed to emit a series of lights, sounds, and vibrations that help induce lucid dreaming, a metacognitive state in which a person realizes that they’re asleep and is able to control what happens in their dream. If that sounds a little too intense for you, use the mask to guide you through a few mindfulness meditation sessions instead.

The most sci-fi element of them all? Probably the fact that you can connect the Neuroon Open to your smart home system to control your house as you sleep. Set it to automatically turn your bedroom or bathroom lights on if you wake up in the middle of the night, or have the mask lower the temperature when you enter REM sleep.

The Neuroon Open was designed using open-source code, which allows anyone to access it and take a closer look at its inner workings. If you’re particularly tech-savvy, you can even program your own applets for it! The mask is being funded on Kickstarter until July 27th, so be sure to order one for the early bird price of $139 while you still can.

The post Hack Your Sleep with This Dream-Enhancing Mask first appeared on Dornob.

A crystalline volume projects dramatically out into a historic stone plaza in Nanjing, China, creating a juxtaposition of tradition and modernity hidden away from passersby. Minggu Design’s glass addition has been worked into “Lai Yard,” a hidden gem of a building that’s been nestled in an alley near the ancient city wall for hundreds of years. In its courtyard, complex arrangements of pitted brick and stone open up to reveal a brilliant blue sky. It’s a serene retreat and a refuge from the bustle and noise of the modern world.

When Minggu began their renovation project, Lai Yard was in poor condition. Reviving the historic building to its former glory while preserving its original features and time-worn character required a great deal of care and attention to detail. The courtyard itself, in which Minggu placed their transparent meditation room and two other pseudo-classic structures, is hemmed in on all sides by the original residence.

The meditation room is a transitional space between the privacy of the home’s dimly-lit interior and its sunny outdoor courtyard. Minggu used some of the building’s original columns to frame the room’s entryway and positioned the structure to face an abundance of garden greenery, including a sparse line of bamboo stalks. In doing so, they hoped to create a spacious area that was filled with an abundance of natural light. By contrast, Lai Yard’s other rooms have been left in relative darkness to preserve their sense of privacy and practicality.

The word “lai” means “to come” in Chinese, or, more specifically, the transition from there to here. Minggu named the project “Lai Yard” to convey the shift from traditional to contemporary architecture and from the rougher, weathered conditions of the old courtyard to the clean, clear shine of its additions. In this way, the architects have successfully superimposed order onto disorganization, just as meditation can do for a busy mind or a schoolroom can do for unruly children.

While it might not have been initially planned as such, the design team was certainly pleased by all the contrasts they encountered in the home. They explain: “The interior structure is inspired by primary and secondary ranks that correspond to deep and bright colors. The two narrow rooms that are located on the left and right of the enclosed space are indented to ensure a sharp contrast to the master room in the middle. The layout of this project is decent, but also full with surprising details. Contrary elements, such as the old and the new, the interior and the exterior, the light and the dark, the conventional and the contemporary, are found to meet here, and merge into a harmony existence.”

The carefully positioned glass room allows sunlight to travel through the home’s living spaces as the day progresses, transforming them several times over as the angle and intensity of light continue to change. “Just like a couple who is in a love and hatred relationship, ‘light’ and ‘dark’ also involve nexus between worship and loathing, encourage and damage,” says Minggu. “In the darkness’ perspective, the light appears brighter and more attractive.”

The post Historic Home with a Glazed Meditation Room first appeared on Dornob.

The post Waterbed 2.0: Dry Pool Makes You Feel Like You’re Floating first appeared on Dornob.

There is nothing quite as serene as the sight and sound of water. It evokes a sense of peace that is hard to find anywhere else. Thus, when architect Jeffery Poss was asked to design a meditation hut and tea room on a wooded Illinois property, he was immediately drawn to the property’s lake.

The hut was dubbed The Victor. Entrance to the small meditation hut is made by climbing a small ramp and entering a door that is finished in the same cedar strips as the rest of the exterior. The door is not entirely obvious at first, lending a kind of serene mystery to the tiny building.

Inside, the glossy black floor looks like a placid pool of water. The three tatami mats on the raised black floor are islands in this small interior pond.

A miniature tea cabinet just off of the main meditation space features a small window that looks out over the water. Sunlight on the lake is reflected on the hut’s overhanging soffits in different patterns throughout the day.

The pitched roof channels rainwater down and into the lake, lending an even deeper sense of serenity when it rains thanks to the sound of a miniature waterfall.

The hut’s interior is nearly empty, containing only the tatami mats and tea cupboard. This enables the hut’s visitors to block out the distracting objects of the typical home.

A floor-level horizontal window in the meditation space gives a close view of the lake and allows the water to fill the space with warm, relaxing, meditative light.

More from the architect

“The owners of a forested property wanted a quiet space to observe the surrounding nature. A naturalized understory leads to a visually kinetic approach ramp that contrasts to the subtle interior. Entry to the hut is through an obscured door detailed like the cedar walls. Inside an oversized window opposite the entrance immediately pulls the view back outside to a composed view of mature trees. Adjacent to this is a miniature tea cabinet. A raised platform in the main space supports three tatami mats.”

“The location along the north pond edge allowed the development of several effluvial sensations. Throughout the day water reflections are projected onto the soffit. The roof channels rainwater to a central spout over the pond. A horizontal window in the tatami room frames a meditative fragment of water. The floor of glossy ebonized birch has the sensation of a deep still pool – the grass tatami mats become an island within an island. The result is an interior volume that is protective and serene but alive with subtle energy.”

The post Relax by the Water in a Serene Meditation Hut first appeared on Dornob.

The Lotus Position is almost universally recognized as the standard sitting position in which to meditate. This posture aligns the spine, encourages physical stability, and allows for deep meditative breathing.

The Meditation Seatware from Chinese design studio NANOIN Design encourages sitting in this zen-like posture by taking on a form that is only compatible with the Lotus Position.

The chair features places for your feet to rest, ensuring that you won’t have to continually reposition your slipping feet. The places for your bottom and your knees provide similarly foolproof positioning.

Made of bamboo sheets, the Meditation Seatware is soft enough that even hours of meditation will feel comfortable. Even if you don’t use the seat for meditation, your spine will benefit from sitting up straight in this lovely unique chair.

The post Zen Seating: Meditation Chair Makes Proper Sitting Easy first appeared on Dornob.