The latest offering to the "private space in public environment" trend is from industrial designer David Tsai, who has created the rather intense 1:1 Box at Houston Community College, Texas. Located in a large hallway on the campus, the timber construction is lined with soft acoustic materials to drown out noise, and was commissioned as part of an artist-in-residence programme. “Our attention is easily fractured by constant updates, tweets, alerts and texts,” says Tsai. “Short bursts of text can be useful, but serve as a poor substitute for a conversation.”