Hasta La Ideas

Gunther Holtorf, a former German airline executive, embarked on a roadtrip with his wife in a humble 85-horsepower diesel Mercedes G-Wagen. The plan was to do 18 months in Africa. But after the trip ended, they decided to keep driving. And driving. And driving. When they ran out of road, they put the car on a ship until they landed somewhere with more road. The trip started in 1989 (after the fall of the Berlin wall), it’s now 2012, and Gunther’s never stopped.

Sadly, his wife Christine passed away in 2010, but as per her wishes he has continued to travel. The G-Wagen has taken him to over 200 countries and clocked more than 500,000 miles, or 800,000 kilometers. The bad-ass part: The odometer only has five digits, so every time Gunther closes in on a new 100,000-kilometer-mark, he swings by a Mercedes dealership in Europe; they crack the dial open and manually add a new digit.

Gunther and the missus set out on their trip well before this thing called the internet became popular, which is why you won’t see him Facebooking, Tweeting or blogging. But thankfully, he ran into a photographer named David Lemke in Vietnam, and Lemke has shared Gunther’s tale with the rest of the world:

Read about what specific gear self-sufficient Gunther travels with here.

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Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Teagueduino

Designers: Adam Krumpf, Matt Wolfe
Location: Seattle, USA
Category: Interaction Design
Award: Professional Winner

Whether it was when you tore your parents vacuum apart or took apart your iPhone, building and making things was at the heart of it. Teagueduino taps into this ideology which makes it so universal and a great jumping off point.

Teagueduino is an open source electronic board and interface that allows you to realize creative ideas without soldering or knowing how to code, while teaching you the ropes of programming and embedded development (like Arduino). Teagueduino is designed to help you discover your inner techno-geek and embrace the awesomeness of making things in realtime—even if you’ve only ever programmed your VCR.

Teagueduino is an open source hardware platform that makes building interactive things—from experiments and games, to classroom projects and prototypes—easier. Teagueduino makes digital electronics more accessible by offering solderless assembly, fail-proof coding and a community of resources for support.

Check out the details and support the project on Kickstarter to get your very own kit. More info on the Teagueduino website.

How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

We tuned into the live broadcast to find out we were awarded the Professional Interaction Winner.

What’s the latest news or development with your project?

Since it’s original launch, the Teagueduino site has seen hundreds of users sign-up and browse/contribute to the library of projects. We’ve added a handful of features to make the site and software more interactive (such as voting, the ability to host contests, and featuring new/exciting projects). We’ve also looked for partners to help with production of circuit boards and software development and have made all software and hardware specifications open source to facilitate it’s evolution. Currently there are a handful of people in the community producing their own boards, including someone looking to do a second generation Teagueduino as a successor to the original.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?

Filling 300+ kits with Teagueduino boards, sensors, outputs, etc. seemed like a fairly simple task at first, but as soon as we started stacking up empty boxes to begin fulfillment we immediately became overwhelmed. Just doing the math based on the time-per-box led to enormous numbers that we knew would push us far beyond the timeline we were hoping for. But what we didn’t expect was a studio full of TEAGUE designers to jump in and spend their spare moments in the afternoons and evenings working to make it all happen. It was awesome to see so many people want to help (without pay) because they believed in the cause: we all wanted to get Teagueduino out in the world to let others make awesome things.

What was an “a-ha” moment from this project?

Early on, we became excited about ways to simplify Arduino and make it more accessible. But with every decision came a trade-off; less memory meant smaller programs, realtime updates meant slower execution, plug-and-play connectors meant specialized hardware. We kept looking for workarounds and substitutes (which was itself a good exercise), but eventually realized that those difficult decisions were actually the most important contributions. Where there is no simple fix (yet) is exactly where you’re helping to move the conversation and enable new possibilities.

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Gorgeous weather with Hollr’s new iPhone app

Mobile development house
Hollr follows up last year’s
GO HD, a GPS-based app that lets users explore a new dimension of their neighborhood in real time by posting pictures and videos of their daily activities while neighbors do the same. This month the company distinguishes itself yet again with Solar, a simple and visually appealing weather app that turns checking the forecast into a surprisingly enjoyable experience. In the onslaught of recent apps designed to reveal the climate’s intentions for the day, Solar outranks its competitors by shying away from complex interfaces and confusing vector polygons and instead chooses to make high design a priority by sticking to the basics.

The rain-or-shine experience begins by selecting a city of origin, and Solar lets you view the weather for up to four destinations simultaneously with an intuitive double tap or pinch—a winning feature for travelers. The true genius behind the app’s design reveals itself once you hone in on a single location, with a home screen that displays on the time, date, weather condition (rainy, sunny, partly cloudy) and temperature in the upper lefthand corner while a beautiful, hyper-sensorial colorscape fills the background in gradient hues that reflect the time of day. When applicable, an understated animation will fill the display with soft raindrops, dewy fog or snowflakes, but Hollr’s take on this now-standard weather app feature doesn’t go over the top.

Solar’s most winning element comes in the form of its 24-hour forecast: scrolling up prompts the appearance of a simple clock in the screen’s upper righthand corner, its hands advancing through the day as your finger moves northward. The time, date and weather update in corresponding real time as the hours flash by and the aurora-like background undergoes a series of dazzling changes in color combinations. The effect is pleasantly subtle, giving you a more artistic vision of what the day has in store. In the other direction, swiping down brings a three-day forecast into view at the top of the screen, while swiping left-to-right allows you to sift between chosen cities.

Hollr’s newest creation wins out with its minimalist design and unwillingness to burden users with unnecessary information. Though the app doesn’t delve into the technical information required by a sailor or mountain climber, it emerges as the perfect digital addition to any city dweller’s cadre of innovative, simplified applications.

Solar is available for 99¢ in the
iTunes App Store.

Ahead of the London 2012 Olympics opening on Friday, here’s a slideshow of images from photographer Edmund Sumner documenting architecture created for the games.

Sumner captured buildings including the Aquatics Centre by Zaha Hadid and Velodrome by Hopkins Architects plus infrastructure and the athletes’ village for two books published by Wiley: The Architecture of London 2012 by Tom Dyckhoff and Claire Barrett, and London 2012 Sustainable Design by Hattie Hartman.

See all our stories about Sumner’s photographs here.

The post Slideshow feature: London 2012 Olympic
architecture photographed by Edmund Sumner appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects studioMDA have completed an aluminium-clad gallery in New York where all the artworks on show are visible from outside (photographs by Roland Halbe).

As the second Paul Kasmin Gallery to open in Chelsea, the building has a simple rectangular layout with white walls and a concrete floor.

A gabled skylight is screened behind parapet walls and allows light to filter into the gallery through a louvred ceiling.

When the gallery is closed, a grid of metal shutters slides down over the glazed facade for security.

Click above for larger image

Other New York galleries we’ve featured include one by Foster + Partners that has just been nominated for the 2012 RIBA Lubetkin Prize.

See more galleries on Dezeen »

Here’s some information from architect Markus Dochantschi:

Paul Kasmin Gallery

Located in the densely populated gallery neighborhood of Chelsea in Manhattan, the Paul Kasmin Gallery seeks to create a new dialogue between pedestrian, visitor, and art. The design of the gallery creates a clean open space connecting the street to the inside. The gallery features a floor to ceiling glass façade, allowing over sized pieces of art to be delivered. The interior space benefits from a large skylight, flooding the space with natural light.

The façade has two defined architectural attributes: the storefront glazing system and the full height aluminum façade. While the perforated gate of the aluminum loading dock gate provides security, the open design allows art to be showcased even when the gallery is closed.

This is the first Chelsea Gallery to open its façade in its entirety to the public, breaking the typology of the traditionally visually disconnected gallery.

studioMDA has also redesigned the entrance of Paul Kasmin’s Gallery at 293 Tenth Avenue, as well as the new store on 27th Street. This is the third location in Chelsea for Paul Kasmin Galleries.

The post Paul Kasmin Gallery, 27th Street
by studioMDA appeared first on Dezeen.