Hasta La Ideas

The better iPad solution for the classroom and beyond

If you find yourself balancing your iPad on top of folders and notebooks, the BinderPad is for you. The latest from tablet case specialists ZooGue, the case fits neatly inside of a three-ring binder. It’s the first to secure an iPad this way, designed for students to keep papers, folders and other accessories all in one place, or use the reinforced holes to easily hang it nearly anywhere.

The accessory has a lightweight yet durable frame and, at only half an inch thick with an iPad, won’t take up precious space in your Trapper Keeper. The only loss is plot lines about dropping your books.

Available in dark grey and black, buy the BinderPad on ZooGue for $30.

Senior Industrial Designer/Project Manager
Nottingham Spirk
Cleveland, OH

Nottingham Spirk Design is a leading product design and innovation firm that works with major consumer, medical, and capital goods manufacturers and retailers to bring new products to market.

We are seeking a creative and experienced Senior Industrial Designer with Project Management Skills to join our team.

Working closely between product management, R&D, engineering and sales, the industrial designer is responsible for driving and managing all aspects of new product design and the client relationship.

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These clothes by Montreal fashion designer Ying Gao curl and unfurl in reaction to light. 

Watch more movies by Ying Gao on Dezeen Screen »

Called Living Pod, the first dress contains light sensors that activate tiny electric motors sewn into the fabric folds.

Ruffles in the second dress copy and exaggerate this movement, spilling out from a slash in a leather coat.

The project is on show at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Canada, entitled Ying Gao: Art, Fashion and Technology, alongside Gao’s dresses that look like they’re breathing – see our earlier story.

The exhibition continues until 28 August.

Photographs are by Dominique Lafond.

Here are some more details from Ying Gao:

Living pod

Coats in the series Living Pod were developed in tribute to the British architectural collective Archigram. In the 1960s, Archigram conceived mobile, ephemeral and inflatable structure-dwellings.

Light, shape variations and mimicry meet in Living Pod. In front of the false twin pieces, the user can slowly set garment A in motion using a light source.

Garment B then imitates piece A in an exaggerated and unbalanced fashion, changing structure through miniature electric motors activated by light sensors that are sewn through the garment.

Using flat-pattern cutting techniques, Ying Gao was able to give the process fluidity and flexibility. In addition to the mechanical movements of the garments, Living Pods underlines two fundamental aspects of today’s fashion system: confrontation and imitation.

The garment plays a mediating role between man and his environment. By using light, Living Pod is similar to project Walking City, which uses air to make the pieces look like they are breathing.

2 interactive coats. Leather, super organza and electronic devices

See also:

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Walking City dresses by Ying Gao	Catalytic Clothing by Helen Storey and Tony Ryan	When Gravity Fails by Sruli Recht

Following our story about Shigeru Ban’s apartments secured by rolling metal shutters, here’s a concrete house near Stuttgart that can be sealed with sliding screens.

Located in the Esslingen district, the three-storey House KW by German architects Käß Hauschildt is nestled against a sloping meadow overlooking an orchard.

A concrete staircase connects multipurpose ground floor rooms with first floor living areas and second floor bedrooms.

Concrete ceilings are exposed throughout the house.

See also: our earlier story about a house that becomes a fortress by night.

Photography is by Antje Quiram.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

Home for a family of 4, the house is located on the outskirts of the development area “Mittlere Rosselen” in Esslingen near Stuttgart, Germany.

Sloping down in east-west orientation, the hillside property is merging into the surrounding meadow orchards with their old trees.

Being three-storey facing the residential road, the building is two-storey only on the garden side.

The house is entered on ground floor level.

Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the living area on the first floor where kitchen, living and dining room are arranged as a round trip around the central staircase.

The large windows offer superb views over the surrounding meadows and allow nature into the rooms.

The second floor accommodates bedroom, children’s rooms and bathroom.

Despite the compact floor plan, vista across the complete building length create a generous impression of the rooms.

Building construction has been implemented using a minimum of trades and materials.

On the outside the building shows a rough concrete skin with precisely cut in openings.

As such a self-supporting facade it is, in comparison to alternative materials, particularly sturdy and timeless.

The interior is defined by white plaster block walls and exposed concrete ceilings and stairs.

Doors, build-in furniture and kitchen are white and blend in unobtrusively with the rooms.

See also:

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Safe House by Robert Konieczny	House in Kohgo by Yutaka Yoshida	Hiedaira House by Thomas Daniell