Hasta La Ideas

Atlantic Collectibles has released an awesome T-Rex Dinosaur Wine Bottle Holder. It look like a deadly Tyrannosaurus rex is lying on its back, chugging your wine. They come in two varieties: alive ($24), and dead ($32). It is available to purchase from Amazon…(Read…)

This small device allows users to talk to, play with and watch their pets when apart, for the reassurance that they are happy and safe at home.

Petcube Play is an indoor camera compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones. It features a built-in laser toy and two-way audio, as well as more advanced features to monitor a pet’s activity.

Petcube Play launched at the Wearable Technology Show in London last month, following a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter last year.

“Our co-founder Alex had a chihuahua with severe anxiety issues and leaving this dog home alone wasn’t really an option” Petcube co-founder Andrey Klen told Dezeen. “Obviously he needed a distraction, and that’s when Alex came up with the idea.”

Play’s laser toy and two-way audio are designed for users to talk and play with their pets at anytime. There is also the option of autoplay if the user is too busy to manually control the device.

The three-inch-wide device also has advanced camera features, including 24/7 video recording and night vision, along with sound and motion detection that notifies users of any prominent movements or disturbances. Petcube believes that collectively these features have the potential to save a pet’s life, should it be in danger in an owner’s absence.

The other major concern for the company is creating devices that look good in a pet owner’s home.

“The thing about many pet products is that they are designed carelessly,” Klen said. “Our design work balances things up.”

“Humans can now enjoy interacting with hardware and software that is easy to use, while our furry friends are benefitting from extra attention they totally deserve,’ he added. “Our cameras blend in modern interior, they are worth parading on a shelf and people feel comfortable with seeing them daily due to the clean aesthetic.”

Petcube Play is available in three colours: matt silver, carbon black and rose gold. The camera is finished with a rubber bottom to ensure it sits securely on any flat surface. An optional tripod can also be used to place the device in a higher position.

Petcube works to improve pets’ lives with technology. Play is the next generation of its original pet cam product, and follows on from Bites, an all-in-one camera with built-in treat dispenser.

New Deal Design has also explored similar terrain, launching the wearable Whistle – an activity-tracking device for dogs that tells owners if their pet is getting enough exercise.

The post Petcube Play lets you interact with your pet remotely from a smartphone appeared first on Dezeen.

For Milan design week, Spanish designer Xavier Mañosa has created an installation that sees an entire kitchen and its utensils all made from Cosentino’s clay-like material Dekton.

The Dektonclay installation was designed by Mañosa – who heads up a studio Apparatu – for surface materials company Cosentino‘s presentation on Via Cesare Correnti.

Mañosa was keen to use the project to explore the concept of the kitchen, aiming to “gather cooking and eating together through one material” by using the Dekton material.

Dekton is made from a mixture of the raw materials used to manufacture glass, porcelain materials and quartz surfaces. It has a high resistance to UV rays, scratches, stains and heat.

“The aim of the ceramist was to discover new ways of working with Dekton, to find out how the material behaved under different temperatures or conditions of density,” said Cosentino.

“After that time, new and varied questions arose about the creative process. How could the industrialised production of the material be combined with Mañosa’s artisanal way of working?”

“How could it be enhanced with a three-dimensional quality? How could Dekton be designed to achieve different contrasts, textures or ranges of colour?” Cosentino added.

The result is a collection of table and kitchenware, furniture pieces and even a kitchen itself – all made from glossy or matt grey-coloured Dekton.

As well as plates and cups, this includes the ovens, kitchen top and cupboard handles – each of which were formed using a number of different processes.

The Dektonclay installation will be on show at the Ladies and Gentlemen exhibition on Via Cesare Correnti during Milan Design Week, taking place this year from 4 to 9 April.

The post Xavier Mañosa sculpts entire kitchen from Cosentino’s clay-like Dekton appeared first on Dezeen.

In the age of the multiplex cinema, photographer Matt Lambros has scoped out the older, lavishly decorated movie theatres to capture what was left behind after the credits rolled for the last time.

Many of the theatres in Lambros‘ series started life as live performance venues, but were converted to show motion pictures as demand grew for screening Hollywood blockbusters.

However, as multiplex theatres – which more conveniently show many films at once – proliferated towards the end of the 20th century, the boutique spaces were abandoned and left in various states of decay.

Lambros recently released a book titled After the Final Curtain: The Fall of the American Movie Theater, which brings together the best images from his visits to over 100 of these forgotten spaces.

The photographer describes his fascination with abandoned buildings in this exclusive essay for Dezeen:

My grandmother looked after me a lot when I was growing up. She has always been an inquisitive, somewhat nosy person, and she exhibited those traits most clearly when she took my younger brother and I into old barns she had found while driving around my hometown in Dutchess County, New York.

Sure, it was trespassing, and had the barns’ owners happened upon us while we were exploring the old buildings, I doubt they would have been pleased. As a five-year-old kid, none of those worries crossed my mind.

Even then, I was fascinated by my grandma’s wonder. She would run her hands along the weather-worn wood and ask us how old we thought the building was, and what it had seen in its lifetime.

She told us to try to see the story behind the rotting bales of hay that sat, unused, for what must have been years, and in the rusted farming equipment that was somehow left behind. She was fascinated by all this lost history, and her curiosity made a lasting impression on me.

Sure, it was trespassing

Growing up in Dutchess County, I had plenty of opportunities to continue to investigate abandoned buildings. For a time, abandoned state hospitals like Hudson River State Hospital held my interest, being one of the most well known (and supposedly “haunted”) abandoned buildings in the area.

Eventually, I began to carry a camera when I explored abandoned buildings, and what was once a casual, passing interest became a vehicle for artistic expression. I enrolled in Boston University’s photography and imaging program, and began to see abandoned photography as less of an interest than a way of life.

Sad and shockingly beautiful

After years of photographing primarily abandoned state hospitals, prisons and churches, my focus shifted again.

In 2008, I went to see a movie at the Village East Cinemas in Manhattan. Like most people who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, I thought that movies were only shown in small, dark, nondescript theatres.

I had never seen one that was at all distinguishable from the multiplex in the next town, and the town after that, and so on. I couldn’t tell you what movie I saw that day at the Village East, because I couldn’t have watched more than ten minutes of it.

I was too busy looking around at the beautiful architecture and interior design. I didn’t think that there was any way that a theatre that beautiful could have been used for showing movies. As it turns out, I was right. The Village East opened in 1926 as the Yiddish Art Theater and was converted to show films in 1992.

A chance for restoration and reuse

I was hooked. Since that day, I have visited and photographed almost 100 theatres, from the sad and shockingly beautiful Loew’s Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, to the almost completely decayed Proctor’s Palace in Newark, New Jersey.

I have dedicated almost 10 years to the further exploration and documentation of the history and architecture of the great 20th century American movie palaces. In late 2015 I began to put together my first book, After the Final Curtain: The Fall of the American Movie Theater, as a showcase of the beginning of the project as well as to help increase public knowledge of these buildings plight.

As more awareness is raised, I have more and more hope that some light will be shed on these forgotten buildings, perhaps giving them a chance for restoration and reuse.

The post Matt Lambros’ After the Final Curtain photographs show America’s forgotten movie theatres appeared first on Dezeen.

Here’s the second look at Tom Cruise in The Mummy, an upcoming 2017 action-adventure horror film directed by Alex Kurtzman. The film is a reboot of the classic The Mummy film franchise and the first installment in the Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe. The Mummy, which also stars Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Sofia Boutella, and Russell Crowe, awakens in theaters on June 9th, 2017.”Thought safely entombed deep beneath the unforgiving desert, an ancient princess whose destiny was unjustly taken from her is awakened in our current day, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia and terrors that defy human comprehension.”..(Read…)