The innovative Brush Mouse is a clever twist on the classic smooth-top peripheral device. Unlike the continuous surface of the regular mouse, the pegged design keeps hands from getting sticky and hot. The ergonomic solution also prevents hand fatigue by distributing pressure evenly and giving the hand a mini-massage as it moves! With less material, it’s also thinner, lighter and easier to keep clean. See both prototypes in action after the jump —>
Architecture office FREAKS freearchitects has revamped the Paris tattoo and piercing parlour TribalAct to include a system of curtain tracks printed with Hieronymus Bosch paintings (+ slideshow).
Parisian trio FREAKS freearchitects has overhauled the busy parlour’s two floors to rearrange a jewellery shop and studios for tattoo and piercing artists.
The TribalAct parlour has been reordered to accommodate a busy roster of visiting international tattoo artists and to make the space more efficient, with a reception on the ground floor and dedicated space for the tattooists to work on the first floor.
“If you go through the internet looking for tattoo parlour design, you will basically find nothing designed by architects or interior architects,” Guillaume Aubry, partner at FREAKS Freearchitects, told Dezeen.
“The culture of tattoo and piercing, a mix of street style, underground sub-cultures, and high trend influences, most of the time end up with a busy, messy, cheesy aesthetic where skulls, mermaids, dolphins and I-love-mum-roses share the room equivalently.”
“It all started when I personally was at the parlour to get tattooed myself,” explained Aubry. “Just like when you sit at your hairdresser’s, you get to talk about this and that. Their concern was about renewing the parlour but along our talk it came quickly obvious that they also were in need of a stronger reconfiguration of the whole space.”
The architects have turned the ground floor into an airy open-plan reception where visitors can browse artist portfolios or wait for appointments with segregated public and private sections.
One wall is covered with a foliage pattern wallpaper, while the rest have been white washed. Furniture and cabinets were sourced for the space from French flea markets.
“Our ambition was just to be able to provide the most neutral but yet efficient context to allow all styles to re-invest the space. Walls are not white but blank, meaning that they might get slowly covered with drawings, pictures, posters along the upcoming years,” said Aubrey.
A concrete-clad staircase now leads directly to the first floor studios, with steel hook-anchored cords sectioning the stairway off.
On the first floor, the parlour has been merged into one open-plan studio wrapped around a glass sterilisation room.
A private piercing room has been relocated to the rear of the building, as Aubry explains “intimacy is highly required because people are not only getting their noses and ears pierced.”
Curtains suspended on track rails are able to dissect the studio into two, three, or four cubicles to provide privacy for clients. The fabric for these is printed with scenes from Hieronymus Bosch paintings.
“It’s a mix of excitation, fear, pain,” Aubrey told Dezeen. “Having something to look at helps a lot to forget our tortured body. Think of how great it would be to have a picture to look at on the ceiling when sitting at the dentist’s!”
“And talking about torture we found Hieronymus Bosch paintings were so contemporarily up-to-date in a way, and so amazingly busy that you would always discover new details here and there. It’s also in a way the only place where we really proposed something visually engaging.”
Dye-soaked sections of timber create colourful three-dimensional patterns across these furniture pieces by London design studio Raw Edges.
After many years of trying to fully soak pigment into pieces of timber, Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay of Raw Edges finally found the right combination of dye and wood types to obtain colour all the way through the sections.
“We had to find a wood that would absorb the stain properly,” Alkalay told Dezeen. “We tried over 20 different species until we realised which one would work best for us.”
Finally settling on jelutong timber, the designers arranged the natural and coloured blocks of wood into patterns.
Pieces were then glued together with the grains facing vertically – similar to the make up of a butcher’s block.
“Usually a butcher’s block has the end grain facing up, because it’s the stronger surface of the timber to withstand chopping meat with a big knife,” said Alkalay.
These large blocks were then shaped in a computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine to form table tops, shelves, stools and other smaller objects for a collection titled Endgrain.
The resulting forms have variation across their surfaces, with curving sides revealing different pattern effects to the flatter tops.
“The project is about how the three-dimensional shapes of the objects affect the pattern of the timber,” Alkalay said.
The designers were keen to show that the patterns weren’t created using marquetry or veneer, so the table top is slightly domed to demonstrate that the colours run all the way through the wood.
Raw Edges’ idea for the collection came after failed attempts to permanently stain floors in the stores of British fashion designer Stella McCartney.
“We used to stain the oak parquet, but with high footfall especially at the entrance to the shops the colour would fade away after a year or so,” said Alkalay. “We wanted to find a way to keep the colour permanent.”
The collection was launched to coincide with Brussels Design September, an annual month-long event in the Belgian capital.
Endgrain was commissioned by a private collector, who will keep the pieces after the exhibition at his Senne gallery space.
Raw Edges plans to extend the collection with new designs over the coming years.
Everytime we have new items in store, we feel it is a need and also a public service to share the goodies. Whether it’s buying a gift for someone else, or for yourself (we all deserve a treat now and again.. all the time..), we try to stock the Bloesem store, both off and online with items that we ourselves would buy or think are perfect gifts for friends and family.
After our last batch of egg press cards flew off the shelf ( nice cards are hard to come by nowadays so eggpress is our go-to) we ordered a whole new batch, including cards for Halloween and these social preparedness kits. A great gift for the stationery lover, the set comes with 4 thank you cards and 4 blank cards, which they say ” equals 8 opportunities to make someone’s day”. We couldn’t agree more.
Another brand new in store is &Klevering, bringing us their beautiful dainty tea light candle holders. They come in a range of designs and can also be used as cups or even to put small plants, we put some cactuses in them and tweeted a picture. Another item from their collection are the animal wall hooks, perfect for the kids room or by the door to hang coats and bags.
If you are a regular reader of the blog, you would know that we have a love affair with Tas-ka. We already have quite a number of their items in store (it’s mini Tas-ka shop in Singapore) but this time we also brought in their felt cushions which are a dream.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
