Hasta La Ideas

agIdeas international design week is one of the largest and most
prestigious design festivals in the world. established 20 years ago by
ken cato a..

I have trouble believing it “took an hour” for a bunch of MIT PhD students at dinner to split the check, and that they got it wrong the first time, but that’s the alleged event that inspired Rajat Suri to launch E La Carte, a tablet-based restaurant menu app. After working on it for two years—which included doing research by actually getting jobs waiting tables to observe how people order—Suri and some guys from MIT are ready to launch it.

The app goes way beyond splitting the bill; what they’ve developed is a full restaurant menu that shows you the food and is apparently so compelling that in early testing it’s increased overall sales by 10%. Check it out, and be sure to peep the competing laser-projection/motion-sensor technology shown at 1:18:

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Apparentemente instabile, questo appendiabito disegnato dal designer greco Yiannis Ghikas è in realtà formato da 3 braccia con forma a Y che poggiando una a fianco dell’altra lo rende un’unica identità. E’ stato esposto durante la MDW per Miniform.
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Botanica, by Studio Formafantasma, is the most captivating material project we’ve seen in a while, exploring the world of historical and natural plastics. The Italian foundation Plart, dedicated to the research, recovery and innovation in the plastic arts, invited the dup to explore polymeric materials. Simone Farresin walks us through a small part of the series below.

Instead of reworking the familiar petroleum-based substances we all associate with the word “plastic,” the studio has instead stepped way back, looking at the origins of botany, observing that the discipline arose around the human search for identifiable plants with edible, medicinal or craft-based purposes. The Botanica collection is designed as though petroleum-based plastics were never discovered, and investigates the “unexpected textures, feelings and technical possibilities offered by natural polymers extracted from plants or animal-derivatives.”

The vases, tables, surfaces and lamps in this collection were formed from a combination of rosin, dammar, copal, rubber, shellac and bois durci (a combination of sawdust, animal blood and albumen).

For the studio, the project calls for a movement to a new “post-oil era,” where consumers no longer rely on industry to provide plasticity in artifacts of everyday life.

Read more about their project here.

Lots of shots after the jump.

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Reader Mary submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I’ve noticed that one of the main pieces of advice you give to people looking to reduce or corral sentimental clutter is to photograph it and then toss the original item. I have to admit I am baffled by this. I cannot think of a single “memory” item I have retained where simply having a photograph of it would be as valuable as having the original. This does not include things like photographs and documents, where scanning does make sense to me since it’s about the information, but not the physical object–I’m talking about 3D objects. Could you give me some examples of the types of items you have found photographing useful for? Maybe I’m just not the kind of person who can let go of the sensory experience of holding a memory in my hand.

Mary, my guess is you are better at letting go of things than I am. Your home probably isn’t being overrun with items you deem sentimental. You likely only retain an amount you can manage and honor appropriately. The reason the advice is baffling to you is because you can’t imagine replacing your valuable sentimental items with a less valuable photograph, which is healthy.

The problem I have — and many of our readers, too — is that we want to keep all items with any sentimental attachment, even the stuff we don’t value more than a photograph. Before I started my uncluttering journey, I had every handbill anyone had handed to me on the street when I was on a vacation. They were sentimental, because they reminded me of the vacation, but they weren’t the most valuable trinkets from my vacations. I actually value a photograph of these handbills more than the real objects, so the decision to photograph and get rid of them was simple.

The decision to replace a sentimental object with a photograph should be based on your answers to the following questions:

1. Would an image of the object recall the same memory as the physical object?
2. Would you value an image of the object the same as the object or more than the object?

If “yes” is your answer to both questions, photograph the object and get rid of it. If “no” is your answer to both questions, find a way to feature the object in your home. If your answers are split, take a photograph of the object and store the object in a taped-up box in your garage or storage space for six months. If six months have passed and you’ve never accessed the box to look at the object, you should be fine with just keeping the photograph and getting rid of the original object.

Thank you, Mary, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

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