The modular hotel rooms were first developed for travellers taking naps in busy urban environments, but have also allowed Arch Group to convert an awkward building in the city centre into a functioning hotel.

Conceived as a midpoint between a hotel and a hostel, the four-storey building contains units for up to two people on its first and second floors, while the top floor is filled with single-person capsules.

Each Sleepbox is mobile and can be placed anywhere, provided it can be connected to a power source. As well as beds, the rooms are equipped with LED reading lamps, plus sockets for charging laptops and mobile phones.

A lobby and reception occupy the ground floor and includes an information zone where guests can use iPads to access the internet, plus a storage area filled with lockers.

Showers and toilet cabins are located on each floor and have bright green circular lights on the outside to indicate when they are occupied.

The building also contains a handful of regular hotel rooms, which were added to the top floor in spaces where the ceiling heights were too low for a Sleepbox.

Arch Group developed the concept for the Sleepbox in 2009 and the first capsule opened at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport two years later.

See more stories about sleeping on Dezeen »

Here's a project description from Sleepbox:

Sleepbox Hotel Tverskaya

The first Sleepbox Hotel creates a special niche in hospitality services between hostels and common hotels. Hostels are mostly cheap, which directly affects service quality.

Traditional hotels have high level of comfort that it conditioned by high prices. Sleepbox Hotel Tverskaya is partly based on hostel principles to keep price low, but it offers considerably different quality of hotel services.

Every guest has an opportunity to live in his own module that has no comparison with any other type of hotel room. The hotel is a totally new and unique experience for every traveler, however it can boast low prices and excellent location.

Sleepbox hotel is located in Moscow downtown in the immediate vicinity of Kremlin. The hotel doors open to 1-st Trevskaya Yamskaya Street and it is only 3 minutes away from Belorusskiy Railway Station, where Aeroexpress trains arrive from Sheremetyevo International Airport. Hotels with such location are mostly expensive, but staying in Sleepbox Hotel is 3 times cheaper than in nearby hotels.

This is owing to the use of Sleepbox modules created by architectural bureau Arch Group that allow organizing in only 4 sq.m. a proper place for rest and relax in a variety of buildings from airport terminals to offices. These modules are mobile, can be installed anywhere inside the building and just need to be connected to the power supply. These features give an opportunity to open a hotel in a building that has never been intended for a hotel.

Sleepbox Hotel has 4 floors. On 1st floor you can find reception, information zone, lobby, individual lockers for visitors and management. Snow-white seamless reception desk with sleepboxish design is made of Corian. The desk can be seen from the street though glass doors. A visitor finds himself in a futuristic space that underlines unusual idea of the Sleepbox hotel. By the entrance there is an information zone that helps visitors to orient themselves or to find out railway schedule. For this purpose besides the maps there are iPads with Internet connection affixed to the wall.

While working on the design of this hotel we aimed to create something absolutely different from the rest of Russian hotels. We wanted to make it so that even experienced European visitors make a booking here without hesitation. As for the expenses we sought to ensure that technical realization of this project was cheap so that the lodging cost could remain on minimum level as planned.

The design of Sleepboxes is supplemented with a structure, which represents lighting and forms a part of ceiling and walls at the same time flowing by the boxes from the ceiling to the walls. It is made of transparent stretch sheet with LED spot lights behind. We have used this piece of design at all floors and even at the staircase, which gives a feeling of consistent space uniting all the floors of the hotel. To reduce the price of finishing works is was decided to leave the existing ceramic granite on the floor covering it with rubber. The floor pattern is similar to the ceiling pattern so each group of boxes is visually separated from walls and floor with black zones, which underlines boxes design and helps to combine wooden surface with general monochrome background.

Wooden double Sleepboxes are located on floors 2 and 3, and single black and white boxes are located on floor 4. These boxes are equipped with an inbuilt TV set. There are common hotel rooms on the same floor with attached washrooms and dormer windows. This was made to use effectively the space under the inclined roof, where ceiling height in not enough to install a Sleepbox.

Showers and toilet cabins are located on every floor and made in the general futuristic style. Toilet cabins look like separate capsules fixed in a row. Joints between them are illuminated with LED. There is a big round occupancy indicator, which shines green when the cabin is free and red when it is occupied.

Area: over 800 m2
Architectural bureau: Arch group
Architects: Mikhail Krymov, Alexey Goryainov, Alexey Poliakov
Project and building: 2011 - 2012

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by Arch Group appeared first on Dezeen.

Created for office furniture brand Haworth, the booth comes equipped with preset lighting cycles and soundtracks designed to make it easier to fall asleep and then slowly wake back up.

Entitled CalmSpace, it contains a single mattress where users can make themselves comfortable and can be programmed for naps of between and 10 and 20 minutes long. "Never more because after 30 minutes you can fall into a deep sleep, so the awakening is hard and you lose the benefit of a nap," Berbet told Dezeen.

The design team claim that midday naps can help to improve cognitive ability, reduce stress and decrease the risk of heart disease. "Making the idea of sleeping at work acceptable and even obvious thanks to cumulated scientific data and a relevant sound and light device was crucial to overcome cultural barriers," said Berbet.

The product was launched at the Orgatec trade fair in Cologne last week, where Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec also presented stackable chairs and tables designed for a Danish university and KiBiSi showed a mechanical desk that can be cranked up and down.

It seems there's a growing trend for booths and products enabling naps in public and we've previously featured sleeping booths at airports and a squishy hat that lets you sleep at your desk. See more stories about sleeping.

Here's a project description from Haworth:

CalmSpace – Effective recovery in power nap capsule

Haworth joins designer Marie-Virginie Berbet to present CalmSpace, a stand alone, "plug & play" power nap capsule for the office, at Orgatec 2012. Individuals searching for rest enter through an acoustic curtain and lay down on a fabric-upholstered mattress. The user is able to select a power nap period – from 10 to 20 minutes – that includes preset sound and light cycles, which helps the individual fall asleep and wake up smoothly.

CalmSpace allows individuals to refresh, relax, and reenergize to be ready for productive activity. In times of high-speed work and a demanding economy, many companies offer their employees collaborative relaxation areas like lounges and cafeterias, but few are exploring the benefits of calm, individual relaxation. With an unusual background in neuropharmacology, Marie-Virginie Berbet used her scientific knowledge in her CalmSpace design. The short- and long-term benefits of mid-day naps include improved cognitive abilities (e.g., alertness, memory, learning, and creativity), improved mood, stress prevention, better nightly sleep, and can even lower the likelihood of heart disease.

In 2011, Haworth tested a prototype of the CalmSpace concept at the call centre of France Telecom Orange in Lyon. Now, Haworth is extending CalmSpace’s innovative approach to lifestyle at work to all companies. CalmSpace is a helpful retreat area for people who do intense work, have demanding schedules or are subject to jet lag.

Developed by Haworth in cooperation with Zyken, who provided scientifically-validated light and sound technologies, CalmSpace is made of dark grey-blue coloured composite material. Acoustic foam is used between the internal and external skin.

The post CalmSpace by Marie-Virginie Berbet
for Haworth appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen archive: recently we've featured a huge wearable duvet for two and a squishy pillow helmet that's perfect for power naps (bottom right), so we decided to bring together all our stories about snoozing. See all the stories »

See all our archive stories »

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Pistekova sewed fabric and duvets into a complex, adjustable structure to create a portable environment for two people that's meant to be halfway between clothing and housing.

"The project is something in between," Pistekova told Dezeen. "Between fashion and architecture, small and big, private and public, intuitive and logical."

"For me, dress is only another state of architecture," she added.

Pistekova graduated from architecture at the University of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava this year.

We recently featured a collection of folded paper dresses made by another architecture graduate.

See all our stories about fashion »
See all our stories about blankets »
See all our stories about houses »

Here's some more text from the designer:

The result of the practical part of my diploma thesis is a set of dresses/houses. These objects blur the classic definitions of architecture ('firmitas, utilitas, venustas') to reveal the hidden ones.

If, as Zevi says, architecture is an object where I am able to come in, my clothing-house does that. If, as Rossi says, architecture is theatre for life, my soft house offers conditions for different situations by constantly changing the clothes and location in one system.

And if architecture is only the system of transits and boundaries, this process also provides them. For Tschumi, architecture is an event, a turning point, a place of shock.

The clothing-house is also trying to surprise by paradoxical behaviour, discovering in-between spaces or moments where the boundary between interior and exterior is changing with every movement.

The result is architecture as an intellectual and sensual experience. It was created by an architect with the hands of a tailor and wants to remind us that architecture is the way of thinking standing before any built reality.

The post Sewn as a Site
by Danica Pistekova appeared first on Dezeen.

The Ostrich Pillow's padded sides allow the wearer to take a warm and comfortable nap. The eyes and ears are covered while pockets provide a cosy space for hands when leaning on a desk.

"Seeing as we all spend more and more time at work, in front of a computer screen or in transit, we thought why not create something that helps us nap, disconnect and dream?" explains designer Ali Ganjavian in the movie.

The studio has attracted hundreds of backers so far on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter. Ganjavian and co-founder Key Portilla Kawamura are also founding members of the multidisciplinary creative platform Studio Banana.

Other projects by Kawamura-Ganjavian we've featured on Dezeen include screens made of velcro-covered sticks and a padded reading room in a bookshop.

Here's more information from Studio Banana:

Ostrich Pillow offers a micro-environment in which to take a warm and comfortable power nap at ease. It is neither a pillow nor cushion, bed or garment, but a bit of each, all at the same time. Its soothing cave-like interior shelters and isolates both your head and hands, perfect for a power nap.

You can use the Ostrich Pillow at your desk, on a bench, on the train or while you wait at the airport to catch a flight. In fact, you can use the Ostrich Pillow whenever and wherever you feel like a nap is needed.

The Ostrich Pillow's ergonomic design and comfort makes it both very easy to use and store. Designed to fit every head, it’s made from light materials that make it easy to take with you wherever you go.

"We released our prototype online and discovered that everyone loves the Ostrich Pillow just as much as we do, so we decided to make Ostrich Pillow a reality. We chose Kickstarter – a funding platform for innovative designs to support our dream and produce our product. We designed the Ostrich Pillow with our users in mind and we wanted to use a platform where our fans can help build and share the dream with us."

Movie: Ostrich Pillow by Kawamura-Ganjavian
.

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Kawamura-Ganjavian appeared first on Dezeen.