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Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts · Furniture, Pt. 1 · Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire · Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future · Food & Drink
Materials, Pt. 1: Wood · Materials, Pt. 2: Creative Repurposing · Materials, Pt. 3: The New Stuff
True I.D. Stories · High-Tech Headlines

If industrial designers are unsung, materials scientists are even more unsung. You don’t know the name of the person who shaped the handle on your coffeepot, and you darn sure don’t know who invented the plastic it’s made out of.

We don’t always know their names, but we know the fruits of their labor. So what stuff did the guys in white lab coats come up with that made the news this year? The hands-down Materials traffic winner was “Kinetic Sand,” which results from mixing regular sand with an ingredient from Silly Putty. If you haven’t already seen it, peep the video, be amazed.

A material nearly as humble as sand, cement, also caught rec’ this year. Not regular cement of course, but the pollution-killing, smog-eating variety first developed by Italian manufacturer Italcementi. Once the magic ingredient of titanium oxide is added to the mix, everything from Roman churches to sidewalks in Chicago to Dutch roads do the environment a good turn—while remaining self-cleaning, as mere rainwater rinses them off.

Speaking of rainwater, it never seems to fall in a consistent schedule, which farmers know only too well. That’s why Mexican engineer Sergio Jesus Vaelasco created Solid Rain, which is essentially instant water. Vaelasco’s invention can let farmers dodge droughts, and make greenery possible in environments where it was not previously viable.

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We wrap up our review of this year’s architecture and design news with December, when our top stories were all about wearable technology including 3D-printed shoes that could repair themselves overnight.

Wearable Futures

At the Wearable Futures event in London we picked out inks that change colour in different climatic conditions, and accessories that would deceive neuroimaging devices by diverting thoughts using electric shocks and flashing lights.

Also presented were clothes with built-in solar panels for charging mobile phones and devices that cause unpleasant sensations when the wearer becomes inactive or stops concentrating.

Most popular

Photographs depicting a flat in Lyon after a messy party were most popular in December.

An energy-efficient home in a glazed box raised above the Dutch landscape came in second place.

Number three was a timber-clad seaside house with concrete interior walls formed against wooden boards.

Herzog & de Meuron’s skyscraper proposed for east London was fourth most clicked.

Finally, PearsonLloyd’s signage system for hospitals that was found to “reduce violence by 50 percent” rounded off our top five.

Dezeen’s month

Our final Dezeen and MINI World Tour stop was Miami, where Jacques Herzog spoke to us about his firm’s Pérez Art Museum and the work the studio is doing to deconstruct the city’s “stupid architecture”.

Also on show during the Design Miami exhibition was a series of hand-blown glass vessels that turn data from wind movement into projected patterns of light and a previously unrealised beach house by Modernist architect Charlotte Perriand.

Throughout December we featured an architect or firm every day as part of our A-Zdvent calendar, which started with A for David Adjaye and ended with Z for Zaha Hadid.

Before the year finished we were delighted to announce that we topped 100,000,000 pageviews in 2013!

See all our stories from December 2013 »

The post Dezeen’s review of the year: December 2013 appeared first on Dezeen.

I don’t have a failsafe solution for meeting your 2014 resolutions, but I have a few suggestions for tech gadgets and online resources to help you stay organized while trying to achieve your goals.

The following is a list of common New Year’s resolutions and related gadgets or Internet tools to help you track and/or be organized in your pursuit to achieve each one:

1. Get fit and/or lose weight. Gym managers around the world await January 1 with great anticipation, as that is when newly-determined customers show up to buy memberships. With or without a gym membership, you can track your day-to-day march toward better health with a Fitbit. It tracks your movement, records your stats, and helps to chart your progress toward fitness goals. Compared to wearing a pedometer and heart monitor and logging and charting your daily steps and constantly fluctuating heart rate by hand, the device is extremely convenient.
2. Drink less alcohol. If you’re a social drinker who wants to cut down a bit, check out some of the tips at Drinkaware. In addition to helpful articles, the site offers a browser-based app to let you keep track your intake and notice trends.
3. Learn something new. There are so many great options for this resolution. I love the site Instructables, which has tutorials on making everything from a hockey jersey to a garden bench to an outdoor fire pit. Monkeysee is a similar site with a focus on video tutorials. If you’re keen to learn a foreign language, consider the Rosetta Stone system (I used an extended trial of Japanese and loved it) or any of the tools from Innovative Language Learning (again, I used it with much success for Japanese).
4. Improved work/life balance. As a person who works from home, I’m very familiar with this daily dance. Something I’ve used is FocusBooster. This browser-based tool lets you set timed, alternating work and break periods. Set it up and when the timer sounds, take a break. After the break period ends, get back to work. It’s similar to the Pomodoro Technique. But in my experience, the best thing to do is commit to work hours and that’s that.
5. Volunteer. This is definitely a worthwhile resolution, but can be hard to find opportunities in your area. VolunteerMatch.org is a great place to start if you don’t already have a specific project or organization in mind. Enter your location and the type of volunteer work you like to do, and the service will present you the best matches it can find.
6. Save money. How many times have you said, “That’s it, this year I’m going to increase my savings by [x]”? I’ve said it quite a bit. You Need A Budget has helped me. It’s more than software, though that is a big part of the product. “YNAB,” as it’s called, is a budget-focused software management application for your computer or mobile device. The company also has a very informative blog and hosts frequent webcasts, which I’ve found helpful.
7. Get organized. My first instinct is to say, “Read Unclutterer,” but you knew that. Since the site is deep with archives, you can find help for organizing pretty much every area of your life. Specifically, one of my favorite data organizing tools is Evernote, which I use as an electronic filing cabinet; a filing cabinet that is almost always available, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. There are many gadgets that work with Evernote, extending its usefulness. To get the most out of the service, check out this ebook, Evernote Essentials.
8. Read More. My first suggestion is to consider an electronic book reader to help keep book clutter at bay. The current Kindle Paperwhite is a fantastic little device that makes it easy to get books and carry them around. Also consider Scribd, which is described as “Netflix for books.” For less than nine bucks a month, you can read unlimited digital books on your computer or mobile device.

Good luck with whatever New Year’s resolutions you set for 2014.

Let Unclutterer help you get your home or office organized. Subscribe to our helpful product shipments from Quarterly today.

As 2013 comes to a close, we take a moment to reflect upon the hundreds of songs that hit our headphones, had us dancing and influenced daily life throughout the year, many of which we reported on in our weekly feature, ListenUp. Below are 12 of our favorite singles…

Continue Reading…

News: London retailer and furniture designer Zeev Aram (pictured) is among figures from the design world awarded in the New Year Honours 2014.

Others on the list of those to be honoured include interior designer Ilse Crawford for services to interior design and Kevin McCloud, presenter of the television programme Grand Designs and founder of eco-housing development company Hab Housing, for services to sustainable design and energy saving property refurbishment. Both will become a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE).

Sculptor Antony Gormley is to become one of the Knights Bachelor for services to the arts and Erica Bolton of PR firm Bolton and Quinn will be awarded an OBE for services to the arts. Unusually, this is the second year in a row that no architects have been honoured.

Zeev Aram will become an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), a title in the British honours system that recognises “a distinguished regional or county-wide role in any field”, for services to design and architecture.

The founder of the Aram Store, now located in London’s Covent Garden, moved from Israel to London in 1957 and studied design at the Central School of Art and Design. In 1964 he opened a showroom on fashionable Kings Road in London where he became the first to introduce pieces by iconic designers including Achille Castiglioni, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray to the UK.

He holds the worldwide license to produce work by Irish modernist Gray, a contemporary of Le Corbusier who was revered for her work at the time but almost forgotten until Aram rediscovered her. He’s recently launched a website about her work and extraordinary life, which is now being made into a feature film.

The New Year Honours are presented on 1 January each year “in recognition of the achievements and service of extraordinary people right across the United Kingdom”. This is the first year that more women than men have been awarded.

Last year industrial designer Kenneth Grange received a knighthood and in 2012 Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson were both honoured, along with architect John McAslan.

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