Finally, someone has taken their designer hands to the ugliest thing in my bathroom: the toilet plunger. You might have seen Josh Owen‘s new WC Line at Accent on Design at NYIGF last week as part of Kontextur, the go-to source for all those seeking a sleeker, more refined bathroom. Owen’s three-part WC series includes a waste bin, toilet brush and plunger. The former has a handy wooden dowel attached to lid to keep your used tissues from being an eyesore, and the plunger and brush are hidden from view in a clever little rubber container.

“These products exude clarity by blending utility, usability, materiality and engineering with careful attention to the concerns of space limitations often accompanying their context in the bath.”

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Kuhn Rikon, however, has just released a beauty-meets-brains kind of grinder. Created by in-house designer, Philipp Beyeler, an avid cook himself, the Ratchet Grinder is playful-looking (it also chirps when you use it) but, made from sturdy ceramic, it gets the job done. Easily adjustable from fine to course, this baby even grinds flax and chia seeds (meaning you can avoid those they-only-have-unmilled-flax-seed moments in the supermarket).

Check out Beyeler’s other kitchen gadgets for Kuhn Rikon. Any designer who got their start making a working “Chocolate Milk Maker” out of LEGOs has a special place in my heart.

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Before NikeFuel there was the sensor you inserted in the bottom of your shoes. It kept track of your steps and synced that information to your iPhone or iPod. When I first started running more seriously I used this system, but I found that my distance was always a half mile off from what the treadmill read or what Google Maps told me was, for example, a three mile route. The feature to customize your sensor to your specific footfalls never worked and it oftentimes dropped data so I couldn’t track my progress online.

The NikeFuel band also communicates your training to your Apple devices, but it just seems like a fancy, $150 pedometer. It doesn’t track your heart rate, but the real advantage here is that it tracks all the activity you do, whether it’s swimming laps, running, training in the gym, walking up a flight of stairs or dancing. The thing is, Nike doesn’t tell you how it does this, which makes me think it’s going to be just as off-base in its tracking as the sensor was. You can’t input personal data like sex or weight, so how accurate can it really be? It’s common knowledge that an overweight man is going to burn energy at a different rate than a petite woman, yet their activity is tracked in the same way.

For starters, I’d really love to know how the accelerometer works – how does it the translate the energy expended in skateboarding down a street? What Nike does push are all the bells and whistles, its bluetooth technology, its built-in motivational color system (your band changes from red to green depending on how much activity you’ve completed) and its overall fun factor: life isn’t just boring old life anymore, it’s a sport. But if you don’t buy this wrist band you’ll never know how much sporty fun you’re missing out on.

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Think of A Room for London like a pop-up hotel: it’s in a unique location (atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall) and it has a limited engagement: it’s only open for a year and guests can only stay for one night. It’s exclusive, but it’s not expensive. In fact, at about $185 it’s a pretty darn affordable stay for a London room with a Thames River view. Of course, that only means the wait list is going to run as long as the Thames River itself. If you’re lucky enough to nab a night, you’re invited to open up the room’s log book and “reflect upon what [you] see and hear during [your] one night stay, logging [your[ thoughts, observing cloud patterns, the character of the river and deeper undercurrents.” But if you just want to chuck your diary and get drunk in a cool hotel room, we won’t tell anyone.

Bookings for July through December 2012 go on sale January 19th.

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At Joseph Joseph we put design and functionality before everything else – and we always strive to find the perfect combination of form and function. That’s exactly what we had in mind when we designed our new Spring 2012 collection – items like the Twist and Nest Utensils are appealing to the Joseph Joseph customers: the modern, hip and design-oriented city dwellers, many of whom have limited kitchen space.
 
The innovative, practical and stylish Nest Utensils Set completes an already very successful space-saving line – and is a product you want to show off on your countertop! Twist, on the other hand, turns into a flat whisk that can be neatly and easily stored even in the most packed of drawers.  ~ damon willmott, sales director at joseph joesph

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