The glass-shatter sound effect has been a mainstay of classic comedy routines for a long time. Whenever a lightweight prop object flies off-screen or stage, it inevitably smashes through glass a beat later. Right now, it’s still amusing, if harmlessly ludicrous, but before long, the idea of a rogue schoolchild’s rogue football shattering through a neighbor’s window will be met only with query and disdain.

Space partitioning can often be dismissed as a bland, acoustic-only solution. But projects show how space can be artfully divided while adding color, character, and personality.

At its heart, extreme-minimalism is a rebellion against consumerism, it’s a cathartic process of learning to live without. But it’s also a decorative style in its own right – a clean world for a clean mind.

Staircases can seem like an unalterable part of a building’s DNA. Whether part of a new build or a refurbishment, it can be difficult to imagine changing the angle, direction, or even the placement of the stairs, so choosing the right type can be key. Here are ten different ways to unlock that dream interior.

Adaptive reuse is the sustainable face of architecture. This visionary process of architectural alchemy allows cities to thrive and remain relevant, without forgetting their past.

We love to fill our houses with wonderful creative decoration that brings us pleasure every time we enter a room. It’s these decorative features that transform a house into a home. But for those houses lucky enough to be surrounded by captivating landscapes, why shut out all that natural decoration only to replace it with interior imitations?

Using either glass partitions or ground-flush, floor-to-ceiling sliding glass panels, by inviting the environment in, specifiers can connect interior and exterior spaces for a deeper connection with nature, allowing the local landscape itself to become the largest interior in the home. Here is a selection of residential projects that use the latest innovations in sliding windows to form a relationship with the surrounding landscape:

Steeped in history, culture, and tradition, Switzerland is a country with a lot of pride. The famous Swiss exports of watches, financial services, chocolate, and cheese are all synonymous with ‘quality’, but perhaps Switzerland’s greatest export of all is its landscape.

Home workspaces must combine all the tools of the shared office with the user's personality for an inspirational and creative solitary environment. Many new home offices are unplanned additions to the family floorplan. Often, with no space for a dedicated office room, they’re hustled into a corner, a dark cave under the stairs or a thin, cold alcove, instead. So, home-workers are forced to squeeze in all their professional needs, such as printers, storage, and task lighting, into this small multi-functional area.

With contemporary lifestyles meaning more entertaining from home, forward-facing kitchen islands with integrated seating make staying in the new going out. But what makes the perfect kitchen island?

With walls and ceilings a long way away, often the most practical way to control the placement of a light source and the positioning of light, is to drop it into the exact position where it’s required, with a pendant light.

Even designer pendant lighting can be as simple or as complex as the project’s parameters call for. From the most intricate sculptures of glass or mechanical puppetry to a single bulb on a cord, here are seven types of pendant light, and the purposes and projects for which they’re best suited:

As a room everyone needs to visit, no matter what their social standing (or sitting), bathrooms can be one of the best ways to add character to a project. Used when we are at our most vulnerable, bathrooms are calm, solitary arenas, giving a few minutes of peace in an otherwise hectic environment. So the originality of the user experience can really stand out.

Whether they bring relaxation to hospitality, individuality to residential or drama, and culture to public space, bathrooms can both surprise and delight users, while allowing them to rest. Here are eight projects where a designer bathroom is an integral part of interior architecture.

With every household need catered for automatically, the Internet of Things promised us an easy life. Now smart home living can automate our daily lives, but what’s it really like?

The style and atmosphere of an interior literally rest on one product more than any other: the floor. When selecting the perfect flooring or carpet to suit a project, specifiers need to consider a range of questions for the room. Various colors, patterns, and styles are available across all materials, so requirements like coverage, traffic, maintenance, and durability —rather than aesthetic— really dictate the answer to which flooring type is right for your project.

Polyvinyl Butyral (PVB) is a resin known for its strength, flexibility, and optical clarity. When inserted and bonded between two panes of glass, the combination —known as laminated glass— provides a tough, acoustic, glare-, UV- and solar-protective barrier with no loss of transparency. So much so, that its main use is in car windscreens.

By inserting and layering various sheets of colored PVB, glass can be transformed with a kaleidoscope of color and a range of opacity. The whole effect gives interiors specifiers a palette of light and color tools when adding personalities to interior environments. Here are six examples of projects that use PVB-laminated glass to great effect:

Office work used to only be done one way. You would sit at a desk all morning, then try not to fall asleep in the afternoon meeting. However, from continent-crossing video chats to team meetings in the park, modern workplaces are using flexible workspaces and practices to lower costs but raise creativity, production, and morale in the workforce.

Employees are now able to choose which working style does the business for them, and product manufacturers are creating simple but ingenious collections of modular, flexible furniture to suit any style and type of workspace including:

Commercial spaces must be enticing enough to pull people in, and comforting enough to keep them there. It’s this balance that makes the utilization of technical lighting so important to master.

It can be hard for spaces such as hospitality venues, offices, and retail environments to create comfortable, functional, and eye-catching lighting networks. But with venues, companies, and brands fighting harder than ever for the attention of shoppers, buyers, and workers, ensuring they present the perfect combination of ambiance, comfort, and aesthetic, all while staying completely on brand, is even harder than it appears.

As material technology becomes more advanced and the importance of health and wellbeing is taken more seriously, sculpting sound is now a consistent part of specifiers’ briefs in all sectors, from echo-free hospitality to clear and functional meeting rooms, and even transforming home offices or music rooms into headache-free sound vaults.