I like to think I have a pretty good fashion sense, but after watching Put This On, I might have to step my game up. ‘A web series about dressing like a grownup’, Put This On (with host Jesse Thorn) features interviews with interesting people (a denim manufacturer, a master shoemaker, Hollywood director Paul Feig), and a segment aptly called ‘Rudiments’ (with Adam Lisagor) that offers advice on seemingly mundane tasks like say, tying your shoe laces. Put This On is very well produced, endlessly entertaining, has a brilliant logo, and Lisagor’s deadpan delivery is pure comedy. What’s not to like?
DEWS is an upstanding toothbrush that incorporates a weight within its rounded handle base to keep the bristles away from dirty surfaces. DEWS does away with concerns about whether your toothbrush is resting on an unhygienic surface. This upstanding toothbrush makes use of a weight at the end of its rounded handle to create a centre of gravity at the handle base. When the toothbrush is set down, it will sway momentarily until it reaches a position of balance, much like a tumble doll. DEWS has been designed with ergonomic considerations, and its weight allows for comfortable brushing.
Being somewhat of a hygiene nut, a weeble wobble toothbrush sounds right up my alley.
Kolelinia is a concept for riding our own bikes on a new type of bicycle-lane, based on steel wires. It aims to create a new type of transportation experience, and to be installed using a minimal amount of resources.
The Kolelinia midair bike lanes consist of steel cables suspended above city streets at a maximum of 4.5 meters and over pedestrian zones at between 2.5 to 3 meters. Commuters’ bike tires are slotted into a steel furrow up to 14 cm deep and anchored to the two horizontal steel cables, with a third safety cable strung at about saddle height. The butt of one handlebar is also clipped to this third cable. Riders are clipped into the cable system via a special mechanism and a safety harness. The system is not intended to replace ordinary biking, only to relieve congested zones. Of course it is too early to talk about mass use. At the beginning it could be a special designed adventure line or a touristic line in the city.
As someone who rides his bike daily through the treacherous streets of San Francisco, I’m loving this idea.
Easily one of the best collections of industrial design we’ve encountered, Extra-ORdinary is a series of everyday objects designed by Jennifer Rabatel and inspired by functional tools such as putty knives, wrenches, try squares, and um… envelopes. Check out the full collection HERE.
The Envelope Bag, a leather laptop bag. I want one.
LA-based electronic artist Flying Lotus will release a 7-song EP titled Pattern+Grid World on September 21st, only four short months after the release of his highly acclaimed (and completely amazing) record Cosmogramma. Below is the first single, Camera Day.
The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us.
Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology defined by its ability to overlay physical space with information. It is part of a paradigm shift that succeeds Virtual Reality; instead of disembodied occupation of virtual worlds, the physical and virtual are seen together as a contiguous, layered and dynamic whole. It may lead to a world where media is indistinguishable from ‘reality’. The spatial organisation of data has important implications for architecture, as we re-evaluate the city as an immersive human-computer interface.
Hope you’ve still got those 3D glasses leftover from Avatar.
Boeing engineer Steve Sauer spent 7 years turning his 182-square-foot basement condo in Seattle into a compact, hyper efficient, three-level loft.
What I really wanted was one place with exactly what I needed and wanted. Quality is more important than quantity for me, and extra space only a problem. I tend to like things in their place.
The space contains two beds, a bathroom with a shower, a soaking tub (set into the floor underneath the entrance doorway), a full kitchen with a dishwasher, dining table, storage for two bikes, and a TV lounge. Sort of a low-tech (and even smaller) version of Gary Chang’s Domestic Transformer in Hong Kong, this type of dwelling might become the norm as more and more people move to already crowded cities around the world.
We absolutely love this packaging concept by Rethink Communications. Created as a promotional tool to show off their packaging chops, the back of each bottle contains copy equating the type of table to their view of great package design. Clean, simple, great typography, and fantastic color selections.
There’s a really cool video of Bjarke Ingels riding a bicycle through the folded planes and spirals of the Danish Pavilion, his studio’s entry into the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. I thought this was a really interesting way to give a first-person tour of the architecture, and wanted to share it, but then I came across his TED Talk. It might be 18 minutes long, but it plays like an awe-inspiring and very informative architecture stand-up comedy set (no joke, Ingels is hilarious!). Sorry Joshua Prince-Ramus, but Bjarke Ingels just became my new favorite speaker.
Check out the video (it’s better fullscreen), then hit the jump to see Ingels riding through the Danish Pavilion. View More »
Say you’re a DJ. How do you get to and from shows without lugging all that heavy (not to mention expensive) equipment? Simple, just get a Multi Touch Light Table. By graphic designer Gerg Kaufman, it allows DJs to control their music with hand gestures on a (beautifully designed) touch interface, much the same as they would on a traditional turntable. The project was completed in three months as his Senior Degree Project at the Kansas City Art Institute.
A concept by German designer Cornelius Comanns, the ‘Bufalino’ is a conversion of the Piaggio APE50, a rickshaw or tuk-tuk, typically seen on the streets of Thailand, India, and other Asian countries. A mini-RV of sorts, the Bufalino seats two, contains a folding bed, a cooking area, refrigeration, a water tank and lots of storage.
My aim was to give people a better understanding of the country, the surrounding, and the range they have travelled. The travelling vehicle is always with you like some kind of a base camp, while also being used for moving on in an easygoing and spontaneous way.
