Hamburg-based product designer Anne Lorenz was recently at the home interiors conference IMM Cologne 2011 showing off “Home Traveller,” a portable storage device. Constructed from soft, supple leather and measuring 28″ x 24″ x 16″, is “Home Traveller” a clever comment on the size of women’s purses today or a creative and functional piece of furniture? Whatever Lorenz’s intentions, the bag is actually quite practical, sitting on a lightweight wooden base that’s easy to lift and carry, perfect for extra linens or clothing. And it’s a far more striking piece than the ubiquitous storage stool – not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s no handbag/storage chest/portable furniture.
designer: anne lorenz
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the form series, form really does meet function.
The Form series is not a typical entry-level series speaker system. Made by high-end Marten in Sweden form remains true to the open, airy and detailed signature sound of Marten and fits into the interior of any contemporary home.
the formfloor, a genuinely high-end 2-way floor speaker.
the formcentre shares the same tweeter as the formfloor, making the two speakers a perfect match, and allowing you to expand your system to 3.1 or 5.1.
the mighty formsub can be added to, and combined with, any of the speakers in the form and heritage series.
producer: marten
a new eBook available for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Kindle, Nook, Android, Mac and PC.
KieranTimberlake is pleased to announce the release of
Cellophane House™. Cellophane House™ chronicles the conception, assembly, display and disassembly of a five-story, off-site fabricated dwelling made of transparent, recyclable materials commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for the exhibition Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.
Designed by Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake and their architecture firm KieranTimberlake, Cellophane House™ takes a radically different approach to off-site fabrication, reinventing the way buildings are assembled, what they are made of, and the experience of living in them. It demonstrates an end-of-life strategy that, enabled by an innovative structural frame and variety of connectors, makes disassembly and waste-divergence inherent in the building’s construction.
The book contains a detailed discussion of the house and 105 color photographs and illustrations. The iBooks version contains a time-lapse video of the assembly process.
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this snow bicycle made the guinness world record for the longest vertical drop of 107,400′ in 11 hours – going 66 mph.
Featuring powder-coated galvanized steel frame, a unique front elastomer/spring suspension, an adjustable t-bar steering column, a padded saddle with leaf spring cushioning, adjustable-binding, mini skis for your feet, and it looks to be – fast.
retailer: hammacher ( $1,950 usd )
centenary trolley suitcase.
If your favorite part of THE DARJEELING LIMITED was the custom made Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton luggage, then you may just want to return all your Christmas presents and cash in on the Centenary trolley suitcase. Shown above in Hermes orange with brown straps (and also available in red, shown below), the Centenary, like all the luggage from Globe-Trotter, is made entirely by hand with their trademarked Vulcan Fibre, “an incredibly durable material made of compressed layers of paper,” the same since its invention
in 1850.
Even the suitcases themselves are made in England on original Victorian machinery. Who knew a million layers of paper was more durable than leather? If you think that $1,580 is a lot to pay for a suitcase, well you’re right, but consider that other luggage series from Globe-Trotters are so pricey the number is too big to list online – you have to send an official inquiry.
producer: globe-trotter
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if the last time you raised your hand in mrs. murphy’s third grade classroom was a couple of decades ago, it’s hard to imagine the grade school experience with laptops playing just as vital a role as pencils and wide-ruled paper.
But imagine your day now. How many hours do you use your laptop? Just like the rest of the world, schools are becoming increasingly reliant on laptops, but as learning tools, not to YouTube the Double-Rainbow guy for the third time this week. Lots of schools around the world can hardly afford the roof over their heads, let alone laptops. That’s why One Laptop Per Child is an important, socially impactful charity that uses donations to get real results.
They even developed their own laptop, the XO “rugged, low-cost, low-power” laptop that’s easy to read outside for those schools that don’t have buildings to operate from. In countries where libraries are small and outdated, or, in some cases, nonexistent, access to the Internet is an invaluable resource for children who would otherwise have no contact with the world outside their own. Children in many developing nations are already becoming more educated than their parents’ generation, meaning they will be the first crop of young adults with the knowledge and ingenuity to pull their struggling economies out of a slump, and these laptops are the first step. All donations are accepted. $199 buys a laptop.
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it’s no secret: i get excited about bikes.
From techie to old fashioned, my head turns at almost everything on two wheels that rolls by. But I’m really excited about this bike, the UrbanMover Electric Bike. For those who use their bikes for more than just errands or trips to the beach, there’s nothing like a little electrical boost to speed you along your commute to work, sweat free, because really, is there anything grosser than starting off the day with a body dripping wet and bound to reek?
What’s great about the UrbanMover is that it gives you the option to use to pedal power or switch to electric when you need an extra push on a hill or against heavy winds. The battery fully charges in just five hours and the bike folds up. If I’m using a lot of italics here it’s just so the awesomeness of this bike isn’t lost on anyone. Folding bikes have been looked down in the past, but that’s because they used to be lame excuses for bikes whose primary function was their ability to become small. In the city, having an obviously expensive bike that you don’t have to leave locked up outside and can take with you indoors, on an elevator, into any office building, is priceless. The UrbanMover, however, does have a price, but it’s lower now, $1,099 (normally $1,699), plus a $400 battery pack. Available at Real Goods.
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for some people watches are a status symbol – the bigger and blingier the better.
For others they merely tell the time. We’re not concerned with either group, only with those who consider a watch like any other design element in their life, as something that’s functional but also interesting, designed to make life both easier and better. For those people there is & Design, a Japanese studio with four bold watches, the Pentagon, the Hexagon, the Icon and the LED. Let all those who can’t read time without a little help (like actual numbers on a watch face) be warned. These timepieces are stripped away of all extraneous information and rely on simple geometric shapes and basic yet striking color combinations. The first one to grab my eye was the Icon, which, with “a nod to the era of 8-bit computer graphics” has a face like an old Mac icon. The Hexagon and Pentagon take similar design cues, and the LED rounds out the bunch with a pop of color. ($75, at the MoMA store)
designer: & design
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handcrafted with wooden legs and a ceramic chalk surface, this ain’t your average rec room ping-pong table.
Made for PUMA by aruliden, a firm that approaches branding through product design, the “Chalk Table” aims to enhance the playful side of the highly competitive sports industry and to bring about a different kind of athlete. Here, they explain what they mean.
“When did sports become so serious? When did being an athlete require you to sacrifice your life? Shouldn’t playing a sport actually involve playing? Let’s bring back the social aspects of sports. Capturing joyful, active moments of life for a different kind of athlete: The After Hours Athlete.”
The chalk surface adds a fun element, allowing players to map out ideal moves or leave threatening notes to their competitors, and the under table storage is one of those amazingly simple, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that-first design solutions. The equipment is stowed away in protective cases with simple, magnetic closures to prevent weathering and runaway ping-pong balls. Game on! ($4,750)
designer: aruliden
producer: puma
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