Concrete

The bathrooms feature the same polished concrete flooring and poured concrete counters found elsewhere in the home. A honed granite recessed shower provides a visual counterpoint to the sea of white and steel.

A minimalist approach to design can make spaces feel thoughtful, bright, and more spacious than they really are—qualities that are paramount to a recent project in Poznań by Polish architecture firm mode:lina. The architects employed several tricks to make the home feel more spacious. Among them, mirrors were installed to visually enlarge the room, and smart storage spaces—even a recessed dog house—were built directly into the home’s walls. “The less visible [storage is], the better,” they say.

Concrete stairs leading up to a sleeping loft are illuminated with wall sconces.

A spacious deck was created as part of the addition. A cantilevered concrete bench stretches out to the rear garden and complements the adjacent concrete wall.

Acoustic Shells (Flanagan Lawrence: Littlehampton, United Kingdom) A visual response to the sand dunes and sea near the shore, these whisper-thin concrete curves were shaped with material sprayed on mesh, measuring merely 100 millimeters in spots. The twin bell curves function as a bandstand on one side, and a larger version of a seashell on the other—it plays back the sea’s gentle rhythms.

Show your workspace you mean business with this weighty, monochromatic set of desktop pieces designed by Magnus Petterson for Areaware.

Sofia von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo’s reinforced concrete home in Chile stacks rooms for working in a vertical column atop horizontally-oriented spaces for living.

Julia: How to Make a Concrete Camera Are you looking for a creative project for the weekend? Well look no further! Why not make a pinhole camera out of concrete? I came across this DIY tutorial and was surprised that this unlikely material was being used to make a camera. How wonderful!

The Perth residence of Renee Coleman via the Design Files.

Wrk-Shp “Part of our ethos is that we are not fashion designers. We aren’t furniture designers. We aren’t architects. We are designers, and we can apply our vision to any medium and put our spin on it,” says Wrk-Shp co-founder Airi Isoda. Demonstrating that flexibility, this simple concrete planter can lie flush against the wall, hang independently, or be dropped into a table.

The horizontal orientation of the cement board, painted black, creates a line of vision that leads to the forest, while its deep overhangs help shield the sun. A small lawn, gravel, and native grass weave the wooded setting in the residence’s landscape design.

A mesh steel bridge sits above a cast concrete outdoor canopy on the patio. Concrete floors are polished on the inside, and kept rough on the outside. A pine door leading to a lower level bedroom adds warmth.

The Bare Bones Domino Set is cast from concrete, giving the classic game a fabricated enhancement. Completely rethought from traditional dominoes, this grainy set features an angled shape, subtle numbering system, and a weightiness that gives the dominoes an undeniably substantial quality.

@concretecollaborative shared a shot of their colorful concrete tiles.

Concrete Collaborative demonstrated their polished concrete tiles, decked out in vibrant aquamarine colors.

The Coleman Bar Stool is a sophisticated design that blends mixed materials, color, and geometry to create a distinctive seating option for a kitchen bar. This stool is comprised of a sculptural powder-coated steel base that is met with a hand-cast concrete seat. Shown in Aspen Green.

For the desktop itself, there's the Merge Concrete Desk Set (from $48 to $178 for the entire set). Made from stainless steel and concrete, these coloful designs unite function with a fun take on form.

Turning aggression into art, Israeli designer Itay Ohaly's Fracture Bench explores the effects of smashing materials.

Strata Bench for Landscape Forms It's hard to believe this sleek bench was fashioned from concrete. But according to designer Jess Sorel, a proprietary material blend and new molding technique gave him the freedom to play with the material. "I wanted to take the perceptions about what [concrete] should be and counter that," he said. "I wanted to create something with a visual edge and have it float like a cantilever. How do we push concrete so it's not a brutalist chunk of material, but instead something elegant?"