This car charger is a lifesaver. No, not because it’ll power your phone when you’re desperately low on battery and you need to use Google Maps… but actually because this bad-boy is your ticket to surviving a car crash. While the Ztylus Stinger serves its purpose as a car charger with two 2.4 ampere USB ports , it also includes a spring-loaded glass breaker and a seat-belt cutter hidden away in its incredible design. The spring-loaded glass breaker is actually concealed within the charging pin itself. Just grab the charger tightly and press it firmly against the glass. The spring triggers the breaking pin and the glass shatters instantly without the need of any force or even repeated striking. The Seat-belt cutter’s blade is placed strategically to ensure you just cut the belt and not yourself. The blade is incredibly sharp and slices through the belt’s fabric like a knife through butter.
It’s incredible how a simple idea can give a product a dual purpose, and quite a useful one that too. The magic is that the charger is ergonomically perfect and always accessible. Wonderful!
Designed to avoid entrapment within a vehicle after experiencing a car accident. The spring loaded punch works easily and quickly to give you the best chance for escaping your vehicle.
Razor Sharp Seat Belt Cutter
Designed to help you cut your seat belt if you find yourself unable to release it normally. The blade is protected to prevent accidental injury to yourself and has been tested on a 5000 lbs towing strap so you can be sure it works if you are in an emergency.
Quick Charge USB
Their unique innovation doubles as a dual USB port charger, which plugs into your car charger for high speed charging. It features an intelligent circuit design to protect against short circuiting, over-heating, over-currents and over-charging.
Mlkk Studio used reclaimed red bricks to fashion the snug interiors of this Aesop store, which lies behind the intimidating dark-grey facade of a building in Seoul.
The two-floor Aesop store – which is longlisted in the 2019 Dezeen Awards –is situated south of central Seoul inside a mixed-used development named Sounds Hannam, which is almost entirely clad in slate-grey bricks.
This became the starting point for Hong Kong-based Mlkk Studio, which was keen to design a warm and inviting shop interior that would contrast the host building’s “cold” facade.
The studio was also hoping that the material palette would help the branch appear as a cosy retreat to shoppers passing by during Seoul’s harsh winters, when temperatures can drop to minus 10 degrees.
“It gave an exciting opportunity to do something just the opposite with the same material,” the studio explained.
“The choice of material also creates a dialogue with the architecture and effortlessly blends the interior and the exterior.”
Reclaimed red bricks have thus been laid across the ceiling, floor and walls of the store’s ground level.
The bricks have also been used to form a chunky service counter and the base of a sink where customers can test skincare products.
“The bricks add colour variety and enrich the sense of time and history of the space,” added the studio.
Two arched niches have been punctuated in a rear wall where products are displayed on copper shelves.
Their curved form is meant to nod to traditional Korean Mangdaengi kilns, which feature domed ceilings.
Chocolate-coloured surfaces and rich brown cabinetry appear upstairs on the store’s second floor, which accommodates a small lounge, back-of-house area for staff and a treatment room where facial treatments are offered.
Customers can also opt to relax on the store’s private outdoor terrace that overlooks the surrounding city of Hannam.
Mlkk Studio’s office is located in Hong Kong’s To Kwa Wan neighbourhood and is headed up by architects Mavis Yip Ho Kwan, Lans Ng Sing Lam, Kwanho Li and Kian Yam Hiu Lan.
This isn’t the first time that bricks have been used in Aesop’s design-focused retail spaces.
Dezeen promotion: Film director Francesca Molteni has created a movie for Ceramics of Italy that spotlights the story of Italian ceramics.
Created by Molteni with architectural historian Fulvio Irace, the short film artistically celebrates the character and versatility of Italian tile. The film features three Italian buildings that each demonstrate innovative and interesting ways that the locally-produced tiles can be used.
The Ceramics of Italy film showcases the character and versatility italian ceramics
The film begins following a seagull flying over the mediterranean, before focusing on three buildings that make extensive use of ceramics – Hotel Parco dei Principi by Gio Ponti, Dallara educational and exhibition complex by 5+1AA and the Teatro dell’Opera by ABDR.
Each building’s varied use of tiles demonstrates the “versatility of Italian ceramics” that have been used for hundreds of years by architects and designers to realise their individual visions.
It features three Italian ceramic tile-clad buildings from different eras
Interspersed between the architectural shots, viewers are also given glimpses of Italian countryside and mountainscapes, which Ceramics of Italy describes as “an enduring muse for Italian tile producers”.
The juxtaposition of architecture and Italian landscape show that those using ceramics from the country “are taking a piece of Italy home with them”.
There are also glimpses of the Italian countryside that offers inspiration to local tile producers
The film ends with the quote “Ahead of our Time” – a summation of Ceramics of Italy’s belief that the country’s ceramic industry has always been a step ahead. It will be used by all businesses under the Ceramics of Italy trademark – which is used by Italian manufacturers of ceramic tiles, sanitaryware and tableware.
“Italian ceramics bring generations of craftsmanship and creativity into conversation with the needs of modern day,” said Cristina Faedi, promotional manager of Ceramics of Italy. “It represents equal parts beauty and state-of-the-art innovation.”
“A pioneer that has been leading the industry in the arena of design, style, technological advanced performance, sustainability standards, and production methods, the companies represented by Ceramics of Italy are consistently ahead of their time and truly leading the world,” Faedi continued.
It is designed for promotional use of all of businesses under the Ceramics of Italy trademark
Ceramics of Italy is a trademark reserved exclusively for Italian-made ceramic products. It came into effect at the beginning of 2009 to safeguard and promote Italian ceramic products manufactured at factories in Italy.
The movie is the second film for the Ceramics of Italy produced by Francesca Molteni, following he documentary film Timeless Tiles: The Italian Legacy from last year.
Find out more about Ceramics of Italy on its website.
Fifteen leading textile designers have created their own interpretation of Robin Day’s iconic 675 chair, which will be auctioned in aid of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation.
The 675 chair by Robin Day has been upholstered with textiles by 15 designers, including Hannah Waldron
The 15 chairs will be exhibited at Heal’s on London’s Tottenham Court Road from today before being auctioned online between 1 and 21 August 2019.
All proceeds from the auction will go to the foundation, which promotes the legacies of designers Robin and Lucienne Day. The charity also supports design education through an awards programme, educational projects and a digital design archive.
Margo Selby is among designers who have upholstered a chair for the auction
Several of the contributors, including David Irwin and Eleanor Pritchard, have previously designed products for British brand Case Furniture, which began reproducing the 675 Chair in 2014.
Paula Day, who heads the foundation set up in the name of her parents, spoke to Dezeen at the launch of the new 675 chair, and explained the importance of protecting their designs from counterfeiters.
The chair, which was originally created in 1952 and is considered a classic example of midcentury design, features a curved walnut-veneered plywood back with integrated armrests.
Textile seats by Cristian Zuzunaga, Charlene Mullen, Eleanor Pritchard, Christopher Farr and Margo Selby
Most of the designers who contributed to the charity project chose to upholster the chair’s seat in a fabric that reflects their signature style or was developed to complement the product’s features.
The only designer to adopt a different approach is Bill Amberg, who used his studio’s expertise in bespoke leather products to emphasise the relationship between the chair’s backrest and seat by covering them both in hand-stitched leather.
East London design brand Darkroom has contributed to the auction
Textile designer and artist Margo Selby created a fabric informed by Lucienne Day’s silk mosaics.
Lucienne Day’s compositions of geometric forms and linear elements also influenced the woven fabric created for the seat by Wallace Sewell, which is based on the London textile design studio’s signature pinstripe throw collection.
Leather specialist Bill Amberg upholstered the backrest as well as the seat
As part of the exhibition, designer David Irwin is presenting his first range of textiles developed in collaboration with Bute Fabrics.
The fabric chose for the 675 chair is part of the new collection, which celebrates the connection between people and machine production by basing the pattern on the fingerprints of members of the company’s production staff.
Christopher Farr has contributed a chair with a geometric seat to the set of fifteen
Other participants in the project include: Donna Wilson, Charlene Mullen, Cristian Zuzunaga, Wallace Sewell, Eley Kishimoto, Hannah Waldron, Beatrice Larkin, Catherine MacGruer, Darkroom, Stitch by Stitch, and Christopher Farr.
Robin Day is one of Britain’s most revered furniture designers, and was behind several products that have achieved iconic status since they were created in the mid 20th-century.
Designs by Wallace Sewell, Stitch by Stitch, Bill Amberg, Darkroom and David Irwin
The same year, Turner Prize-winning architecture collective Assemble designed an exhibition at London’s V&A museum that presented a selection of his mass-manufactured wooden objects.
If you are looking for reasons to justify your need to fidget and acquire more things to play with, then the Spin Bottle Opener is the right toy for you. Designed to resemble the classic spin top, which we all have grown-up to and loved – this metal beauty notches up the appeal by being an efficient bottle opener. I love the way Nicholas Baker integrates a groove to accommodate the bottle-opener niche. Milled out of aluminum, Spin is built to last and to amuse you endlessly, every time you spin it!
“I’d been wanting to design a bottle opener for about 3 years at this point. I’d come up with previous designs, but found them to be extraneous and they didn’t seem to push the idea of a bottle opener. While exploring bottle opener ideas in VR, I thought it would be interesting to constrain my design by using the revolve tool. This gradually led me to create a spun form and add a handle. The resulting form resembled the classic spinning top toy. It felt like a perfect juxtaposition of functional object and a playful fidget toy,” Nicholas Baker tells YD.
A dynamic screen of illuminated, rotating polycarbonate discs shield the upper level of this home in Melbourne, completed by Layan for the director of local lighting design practice The Flaming Beacon.
Layan has extended and renovated a heritage-protected worker’s cottage to create Light House. The Melbourne studio added new spaces to the rear and above the original structure and introducing a central courtyard to bring light and ventilation deep into the home, while preserving the original rooms at the home’s front.
As the client was the director of a lighting design studio, light was considered extremely carefully within the project’s design.
“The lighting for this project was considered more than most, and the client worked meticulously in selecting and designing the lighting system and fittings,” explained the architecture studio.
A key part of this strategy was installing a screen surrounding the upper level bedroom, constructed from a total of 907 polycarbonate disks attached to 67 rotating steel tubes.
“The screen provided and opportunity to not only modulate the character of light throughout the year, but to also become the primary illuminated space at night for the internal spaces”, explained the architects.
Set back from the front of the home to minimise its visual impact on the area, this new lantern-like upper level provides a bright counterpoint to the more intimate lower-level spaces.
During the day, the rotating screen casts patterns of shadow across the interiors, and at night, the single, low-level LEDs housed in each disc switch on to illuminate the interior.
At ground floor level, a large living, dining and kitchen space surrounds the courtyard, with more private living and studio spaces at the rear of the house overlooking a small winder garden.
“The various living spaces were oriented around the central courtyard to take full advantage of its natural light and ventilation benefits,” said the studio.
“Full-height, glazed sliding doors play an important role in facilitating the building occupants’ control over the cross flow ventilation.”
Two bedrooms sit at the front of the home in the original structure of the worker’s cottage, opening onto a veranda and garden spaces.
The ground floor draws on the original building’s materiality, with thin white glazed bricks and American oak panelling lining the interiors.
Terrazzo flooring throughout the living spaces and travertine tiles in wet areas are designed to appear “both current and timeless at the same time”, say the architects.
Dynamic elements are often used in the design of facades to control privacy, sunlight or ventilation. We rounded up ten moving and shape-changing projects.
Photography is by Peter Bennetts.
Project credits:
Architecture and interior design: Layan Lighting design: The Flaming Beacon Builder: Moreprime Constructions Interior fitout: The Zimmermann Oz
Practically defying the laws of physics, the Millo is perhaps the most futuristic blender I’ve seen. For starters, it’s sleek, and is dominated by aesthetic, flat surfaces, with absolutely no exposed mechanical parts. The blender is divided into two units. The base, a pristine, flat dock with no control panel or even a driving socket (that black bit that locks into the blade and rotates it); and its second part, the glass, a stylish Nutribullet-esque container made from BPA free Tritan, with yet again, a flat top.
Designed like something out of Apple’s or Dyson’s design studio, the Millo is a smart, sophisticated, and silent blender, that makes 4x lesser noise than your conventional blender, generates twice as less heat, and 2x more energy efficient. Moreover, using it is bafflingly futuristic. Just load your smoothie ingredients into the Millo, screw the top on, and rest it inverted on the base… and just like a phone starts charging the moment you rest it on a wireless-charging surface, the Millo begins whirring and blitzing all your ingredients into a fine smoothie. You can control the Millo’s intensity by sliding your finger around the rim of the base, as lights under the surface come to life, letting you see what power you’re running the blender at. When you’re done, lift the blender up and the blade magically stops spinning. It’s a sight to absolutely admire!
Millo’s design breaks new ground for quite a few reasons. Unlike most smoothie-makers on the market, Millo is relatively quiet, and absolutely wireless. The smoothie-maker’s base has a built-in battery (capable of making 10 smoothies on a full charge), which means you could literally make your smoothie outside the supermarket, fresh after buying your fruits, or in your car as you drive to work. Its wireless nature means the blender works without interference, or interlocking parts that whirr together to move the blade. Both the motor in the base, and the blade in the upper compartment, are driven magnetically, drastically cutting down on the cacophony that blenders usually make. Millo’s design is even made to operate remotely. The container snaps securely to the base via magnets, so you don’t need to hold it down, or in place as it blends. In fact, the designers and engineers at Millo have so much confidence in the blender’s abilities, it can be remote-controlled through your phone via Bluetooth! Yes, this blender is everything Jonathan Ive would love. It’s sleek, wireless, quiet, and removes any ugly mechanical details that would blemish the blender’s pristine design. Oh, and the base is made out of Aluminium too!!
Designer: Moses Kang & Ruslanas Adam Trakselis for Millo
Diamond-shaped metal panels will wrap this oval sports venue that AECOM has designed for the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.
The Inglewood Basketball and Entertainment Center will provide the new home for the NBA basketball team, including an arena alongside other training facilities, offices, community spaces and shops.
As revealed by Los Angeles Clippers yesterday, it will be built on a parcel along the West Century Boulevard, between South Prairie Avenue and South Yukon Avenue. Facilities will be housed in an oval building covered by a grid of metallic panels that are “inspired by the concept of a basketball swishing through a net”.
A spiral-shaped opening will puncture the exterior shell to create pockets of natural light deep inside.
AECOM‘s panels are also designed “to provide solar benefit for maximum energy efficiency”, a feature that was created in response to developer’s Wilson Meany brief “to create a landmark facility that exceeds current environmental standards”.
“The new Clippers arena demonstrates that environmental protection and economic development need not be mutually exclusive,” said Wilson Meany’s partner Chris Meany.
The design team’s goal is to earn LEED GOLD certification for the Clippers campus – which marks the highest score for a building’s energy efficiency – with plans to offset its carbon credits and other sustainable elements included as well.
The Inglewood Basketball and Entertainment Center will include a range of facilities beyond the NBA arena, headquarters for the team and business operations. Among these are a series of indoor-outdoor “sky gardens” for visitors to enjoy food and drinks.
Other facilities include a multi-purpose plaza featuring a concert stage, community basketball courts and outdoor space with a large LED screen to watch Clippers Playoff games and movie premieres.
“I want the Clippers to have the best home in all of sports,” said Clippers Chairman Steve Ballmer. “What that means to me is an unparalleled environment for players, for fans, for sponsors and for the community of Inglewood.”
“Our goal is to build a facility that re-sets fans’ expectations while having a transformative impact on the city we will call home,” he added.
The centre is slated for completion in 2024 to coincide with the expiration of the Clippers’ lease at its current home at the STAPLES Center in Downtown Los Angeles.
The privately-financed project is expected to revitalise its plot on a vacant land under the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport, and bolster the economic activity of Inglewood, a city in southwest Los Angeles County with thousands of new jobs. These include an estimated 10,000 construction jobs, as well as more than 1,500 permanent jobs.
The complex is expected to generate $268 million (£220 million) in economic activity for Inglewood annually, and more than $190 million (£156 million) in new tax revenue for the first 25 year, which will be used for the development of schools, parks, libraries and police and fire stations in the area.
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