The GazeBox is an Italian-made shell for your car. The iron framework automatically opens with the push of a button and is fitted out with anti-UV polycarbonate paneling. The structure also has LED lights to allow for easy parking at night, and can be outfitted with options like automatic openers, air conditioners, fans, alarms, vacuum cleaners, and even solar panels. The price is not yet available.(Read…)
The CydeKick Pro converts a cyclist’s motion into electrical energy for charging phones via USB, as well as powering the bike’s lights. This idea looks cool, but why not add a battery to store energy? Head over to the gizmo’s Kickstarter page to preorder.(Read…)
This Alien Wood Burner made by doddieszoomer (instructables user). It’s shaped like the head of the xenomorph from Alien. He comments on Facebook that “this should keep the neighbors cat out of the garden.”(Read…)
A travers un tableau intitulé The Face of War, l’artiste ukrainienne Dariya Marchenko a voulu représenter le président russe Vladimir Poutine avec un visage composé de 5000 douilles de balles récupérées lors des conflits entre l’armée ukrainienne et les séparatistes pro-russes. En 4 mois, l’artiste a récolté toutes ces balles de Kalachnikov avec l’aide de bénévoles qui ont ciblé leurs recherches sur l’aéroport de Donetsk et dans la région du Donbass. Elle prévoit également de sortir un livre à propos des bénévoles qui ont participé à son projet et leurs vies chamboulées par la guerre.
Photos by Gleb Garanich/Reuters.
Interlinking stone slabs form this collection of side tables by multi-disciplinary studio AMOO, which set out to create furniture that clients would chose over Ikea products (+ slideshow).
AMOO originally designed the Juanola(s) tables to be made from lacquered MDF, imitating stone, for the interior of a concept store in Barcelona.
When the client rejected the pieces in favour of using off-the-shelf tables from Swedish furniture giant Ikea, the designers were forced to rethink their approach.
“It made us think about the way in which we face new designs, so we could become more attractive than Ikea, or others, in every aspect,” said Aureli Mora, who co-founded AMOO with Omar Ornaque.
The final collection is made of re-used marble and granite slabs, which form both the vertical and horizontal surfaces. These materials create a variety of colours and patterns across the tables.
“We needed weight in order that our idea could become a successful design; stone allowed us that,” Mora told Dezeen.
“We needed stones with a huge range of colours and hues – and marble and granite are marvellous noble materials, and it is always a pleasure to work with them.”
The range is named Juanola after the diamond-shaped Spanish liquorice pastilles, which the tabletops resemble in plan. When arranged together, they form geometric groupings.
Their geometric forms play tricks on the eye when negative spaces seem to complete three-dimensional forms.
“We knew the visual potential of the combination of more than one unit, and knew that the different finishes and stones would create different sensations,” Mora said. “But you always get surprised when the work is done and in front of you for the first time!”
Marble has been used to create tables for centuries, but contemporary designers are still coming up with new ways to use the material.
Joe Doucet created a limited-edition collection of “snap fit” flat-pack marble tables for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum last year, while Sweden’s Note Design Studio collaborated with Denmark’s Norm Architects to design a collection of tables with mixed-and-matched marble tops for Menu.
Photography is by Albert Gifreu.
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Fritz Hansen has commissioned seven architects including Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel and Snøhetta to reimagine the Series 7 chair by Danish Modernist Arne Jacobsen, to celebrate the iconic product’s 60th anniversary.
BIG, Carlos Ott and Carlos Ponce de León, Jean Nouvel Design, Jun Igarashi, Neri & Hu, Snøhetta and Zaha Hadid Design all answered the call from Danish furniture brand Fritz Hansen to create versions of Jacobsen’s original 1955 plywood chair.
The project, named 7 Cool Architects, debuted at Clerkenwell Design Week earlier this year and will be presented at Fritz Hansen’s showroom during London Design Festival 2015 in September.
Formed from two continuous steel rods, the sculptural base of Zaha Hadid’s bright green design “sweeps down to the ground and reaches up to embrace the undulating shape of the iconic plywood seat,” according to the studio.
The shapes were influenced by the organic and fluid forms that typify her buildings, such as the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku and the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul.
Bjarke Ingels’ firm BIG has repeated the curved form of the seat as a vertical stack – from its original height right down to floor level. The seat layers gradually flatten out towards the bottom, and are connected by four springs in the place of legs.
Oslo practice Snøhetta removed the chair’s chromed-steel legs and placed the Series 7 seat among plants and bark that form a small garden.
“Since we set the chair free, we felt that the chair could be used for a large number of our projects,” they said. “We try to maintain a good link to the outdoors throughout all our work and that’s why an outdoor chair is perfect for our projects.”
The Yin and Yang chair by Jean Nouvel Design comprises two connected chairs – side by side but facing in opposite directions – decorated with the ancient black and white Chinese symbols of duality.
“I see no difference between when I design a chair and when I imagine a building,” said French architect Jean Nouvel, who recently unveiled new images of his skyscraper in New York.
“For every challenge posed, I seek the ‘elementary’ object whose finished form corresponds to an idea,” he added. “It’s always a fitting and unique answer that bears witness, culturally and technically, to our times and to our civilisation.”
Related story: Paul Smith upholsters classic furniture designs by Hans J. Wegner in his signature stripes
Chinese studio Neri & Hu’s concept is similar in that two chairs face in opposite directions. In this case they are connected by one S-shaped arm, which wraps around them both and supports a small table between the two.
It was influenced by the studio’s Waterhouse project – a 19-room boutique hotel built into a 1930s Japanese Army headquarters in Shanghai – and designed for communal spaces.
“The idea of a replica, a double, a variation, a re-edition, hinges on the duality between the original and the re-design,” said the designers. “Our take on this project is to embrace this exact idea of duality and create an actual ‘double’. The double as one set is an emphasis on the communal aspect of sitting.”
Uruguayan architects Carlos Ott and Carlos Ponce de León designed a version of the Series 7 for a restaurant in Celebra, the flagship building of technological campus Zonamerica that they designed in Montevideo.
The pair – who regularly collaborate on architectural projects – took their design cues from a 250-square-metre vertical garden by Spanish landscape designer Ignacio Solano Cabello.
This is reflected in the camouflage-effect upholstery in multiple shades of green. “The upholstery climbs and settles peacefully on the shell of the chair,” said the designers. “The curved lines which compose the foundation of the different areas in the garden are mimicked and adapted to the anatomy of the chair.”
Finally, Japanese architecture studio Jun Igarashi’s iteration of the Series 7 replaces the original laminated moulded sliced veneer with oriented strand board (OSB) – a type of chipboard made of compressed wooden flakes. The legs and edges of the chair are picked out in the colour most prominent in the timber flakes, which were formed, in this case, from reclaimed scrap wood sourced from earthquake disasters.
This project is not the first time the Series 7 chair has been given a new look. In 2009, Fritz Hansen collaborated with designers Maarten Baas, Arik Levy, Fabio Novembre, Jaime Hayon, Sebastian Bergne, Nendo and Autoban to release the chair in seven new colours – and Japanese designer Hironori Tsukue has even added a set of rockers.
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Le 22 juillet dernier, le photographe Rick Bowmer, travaillant pour AP Photo, a immortalisé les paysages du Bonneville Salt Flats, le désert salé d’Utah, où a lieu (en temps normal) le Salt Flats Speed Week. Chaque année, des milliers de visiteurs viennent du monde entier pour contempler des voitures et des motos rouler à toute vitesse sur ces terres salées. Pour la deuxième année consécutive, ce rassemblement a été annulé à cause de l’humidité qui interdit les courses.
Troy Moth est un photographe qui, lorsqu’il avait 6 ans, s’est blessé assez grièvement en pleine séance d’équitation avec son cheval Flicka. Depuis, l’artiste recherche à travers ses clichés pris en Amérique du Nord à capturer toute la beauté des chevaux sauvages, montrant ainsi tout le respect et l’admiration qu’il cultive pour cet animal si cher à ses yeux.
Triendl und Fessler Architekten has completed an affordable home in an Austrian village, featuring a hole in its centre that provides residents with a secluded garden courtyard (+ slideshow).
The Vienna studio designed the property for a family with three children who had requested a low-cost home in the village of Bisamberg, approximately 18 kilometres north of the capital.
The building’s lop-sided profile hints at the configuration of its interior, with the taller side housing the main living spaces over two storeys. The roof slopes gradually from its apex and is punctuated by a large opening directly over the central garden.
Inside, the living spaces occupy an L-shaped block that is positioned on the opposite side of the courtyard from the functional service areas.
“The clients wished for an inexpensive house with a maximum of spatial qualities,” explained architect Karin Triendl.
“The L-shaped floor plan offers diverse spatial relationships and creates an exciting space continuum around the patio together with the garage and workshop.”
Low-cost materials used in their raw state feature throughout the interior, including the plywood sheets covering the kitchen ceiling and the board-marked concrete slab of the upper storey, which forms a ceiling in the rest of the ground floor.
The structure was built from bricks with a thickness of 50 centimetres, ensuring a suitable interior climate without the need for additional insulation, while galvanised steels sheets create a homogenous surface across the roof.
The street-facing facade is completely windowless, with two timber doors indicating the position of the garage and the main entrance.
“We wanted to create various outdoor spaces of diverse qualities and to create privacy without using fences and hedges,” explained Triendl. “Garage and storage spaces are built along the border of the plot as we wanted the house to occupy the whole front facade.”
The entrance leads to a decked walkway that extends around the pebble-filled planted bed towards the main garden and swimming pool at the rear of the plot.
A doorway to the right of the decking opens onto a hall next to a staircase. The upper level houses two bedrooms and a playroom that can be closed off using a partition.
The hallway is brightly lit by a window that extends from the floor and looks onto the courtyard. At the far end is the dining area and kitchen, which open onto a terrace sheltered beneath the lowest section of the roof.
The kitchen’s double-height ceiling slants upwards to meet the projecting volume of one of the bedrooms on the upper floor.
A workshop next to the garage has the potential to accommodate bedrooms on the first floor, forming a self-contained apartment should the needs of the family change as the children grow up.
The project was completed for approximately €1,660 per square metre – around three quarters of the average house price in Austria, according to the architects.
It follows several other low-cost houses completed recently, including a timber-clad home in Denmark and a series of residences built from cheap materials in South Korea.
Photography is by Ditz Fejer.
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