Hasta La Ideas

Even for the fact that it’s literally the second-most popular beverage in the world after water, tea (or Chai as hipsters and Indians call it) is quite a hassle to make. It requires boiling, steeping, straining, and even one of those steps going slightly wrong can result in a cup that just doesn’t taste the same. It’s sort of a testament to how amazing tea is that people still go through these lengths to have their cup full of its goodness.

For people who don’t really go through the ritual of making their own tea, chai-lattes are often easily found at most baristas, but anyone will attest that a quick-grab version of the beverage is average at best… and relatively expensive. This provided Gaurav Chawla with the perfect opportunity to develop a machine that performed the tea-brewing ritual on behalf of its user, and was as simple to operate as a Nespresso… but for chai.

Meet Chime. Tea-drinking is a slow, elaborate, thoroughly enjoyed process, but tea-brewing often isn’t. Chime simplifies how you brew your tea by allowing you to simply load a tea-pod (or cap, as Chime likes to call it) into the machine, selecting your size, strength and milk ratio and letting the machine do the rest of the work. The brewer extracts the unique blend of tea-leaves and fresh spices from within the cap, steeps it in water for the right time at the right temperature, and then pours it into a carafe below, filled with the boiling milk of your choice. Once done, all you do is clean the strainer by throwing the leaf-residue into compost, and taking the pod/cap out of the Chime’s inlet and recycling it.

Chime’s design ‘boils down’ to its single-button interface that makes it incredibly easy to brew tea without worrying about over-boiling, under-boiling, over-steeping or under-steeping. The machine cleanly ejects the contents of the pods out into its top boiler, where the tea brews in hot water for 3 to 5 minutes based on the setting. At the bottom is Chime’s induction heater and frother that prepares your milk as your tea boils.

You can use any milk you choose, opting for anything from full-fat milk to plant-based alternatives. The milk gets automatically heated to the right temperature and creamy consistency, and when your chai is ready, all you need to do is pour the tea-brew into your milk and savor your perfectly brewed cup!

Chime’s tea-pod system utilizes the highest quality tea-leaves from plantations in Darjeeling and Assam in north-east India, and spices from Kerala, India’s southern spice hub. Each chai-pod is nitrogen-flushed to ensure the tea-leaves and spices remain fresh for long periods of time while inside the pod because there’s really no room for compromise when it comes to your daily dose of chai!

My only personal pain-point would be the use of plastic pods, something that’s proven to be a problem for the environment in the past. Chime says they use single-layer PET plastic in their pods that are known for being both food-grade and easy-to-recycle, but replacing the pod system for something akin to a tea-bag would be pretty easy for the company to do in the long-run. Here’s to a future where enjoying your daily cup of tea is fast, sustainable, incredibly tasty, and rewarding!

Designers: Gaurav Chawla & Samip Bhavsar

Click Here to Buy Now: $199 $399 (50% off). Hurry, only 12 left!

Chime: Fresh, Authentic Chai in 3 Minutes

The only device in the world designed to brew authentic chai from real tea leaves at the push of a button without compromising ingredients or taste.

Chime combines the traditional, hand-crafted process of making chai with their passion for product design and technology. They made chai preparation made easy and quick and with the Chime smart app, you can customize, store and share your very own chai recipes.

Just 3 Minutes to Brew and 20 Seconds to Clean

Chime’s unique brewing chamber carefully extracts tea and spices and simmers them in milk to create the harmony of aromas only found in authentic, homemade chai.

How It Works

Step 1: Add Chai Cap and Choice of Milk
Step 2: Choose Size, Strength, Milk Ratio and Frothiness
Step 3: Press Go

Pour and Enjoy

Count on Chime for a fully customizable cup of chai, tailored to your liking in the comfort of your home or office.

Details

Origins are everything, which is why the team has selectively sourced the tea from the best tea gardens of upper Assam and Darjeeling. 10 Chime Caps come in each box, with two caps each of Assam, Cardamom, Ginger, Masala and Cardamom-Ginger. The team has used single layer food-grade PET in our Chime Caps for recyclability and to ensure freshness. The Chime process extracts ingredients, leaving no waste or residue in the container. No added steps need to be taken to recycle the cap.

Use the app to brew your perfect cup of tea.

Click Here to Buy Now: $199 $399 (50% off). Hurry, only 12 left!

Dans une série de photos intitulée « A New Chapter of Urban Geometry », Andres Gallardo Albajar explore l’architecture moderne sur ce que l’artiste appelle un « voyage de développement personnel ».

Le projet a débuté à l’automne 2013 dans la capitale estonienne de Tallinn, mais il s’est rendu dans les d’autres grandes villes d’Europe et d’Asie afin de prendre toutes les photos de la série. Copenhague, Helsinki, Bruxelles, Milan, Hambourg, Prague, Paris, Berlin, Séoul, Taipei, Beijing et bien d’autres encore.

Dans cette série, le photographe semble avoir mis l’accent sur l’espace, les formes et la symétrie.

Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde has covered advertising billboards in Monterrey, Mexico in an air-purifying resin that can eat up the city’s smog.

The billboard advertisements are coated with a special resin that, when hit by sunlight, prompts a photocatalytic process to turn smog into clean air.

“This project proposes to take advantage of existing city panoramic structures to clean up polluting particles through an intelligent coating process that involves sunlight and wind,” Studio Roosegaarde told Dezeen.

“It offers an additional alternative solution to mitigate air pollution and generate a real impact.”

The photocatalytic process is similar to photosynthesis in which plants convert carbon dioxide and water into food. Furniture brand IKEA also used a photocatalyst mineral in its air-purifying Gunrid curtain.

In Roosegaarde’s project, a material called Pollu-Mesh is activated by natural light and used to separate oxygen from carbon dioxide.

“The smog-eating billboard uses a nanotechnology coating that is activated with sunlight, making a photocatalysis process in which, when in contact with the contaminating particles, it neutralises them, releasing oxygen,” the studio added.

Pollu-Mesh is Roosegaarde’s latest effort to tackle pollution in cities, following on from a series of smog-eating towers installed in Rotterdam and Beijing.

Monterrey is very susceptible to smog – it has limited space for trees and is situated in a valley surrounded by mountains, all of which are circumstances known to trap pollution.

He created the material as visiting professor on the University of Monterrey’s (UDEM) new environmental design course, with a group that included industrial design students Frida Fernanda Leal and Karen Tellez, architecture student Ana Cecilia Álvarez and sustainable innovation and energy engineer Ana María Peñúñuri.

Pollu-Mesh boards are installed in strategic locations in the city, where there is high vehicular flow and therefore a greater concentration of pollution.

Each roadside advertisement measures 12.7 by 7.2 metres and provides the same amount of oxygen that 30 trees can provide over a six-hour period, according to the studio.

Monterrey has 9,760 billboards, which could together do the work of 292,800 trees in six hours. One billboard can function for up to five years, according to the team.

A graphic on each advertisement shows an image of a local mountain and is accompanied by text that translates to “This panoramic is now cleaning the air.”

Daan Roosegaarde founded Studio Roosegaarde in 2007. In addition to its smog-eating towers, the studio has designed other products and installations that focus on the environment.

These include a light show that illustrates the location of floating space junk and an interactive exhibition designed to show visitors their environmental impact.

The post Daan Roosegaarde and design students create a “smog-eating billboard” in Mexico appeared first on Dezeen.

Predating the next oldest depiction of a human/animal hunting scene by 4,000 years, this 43,900-year-old scene painted on cave walls on Sulawesi (an island in central Indonesia) is now believed to be the oldest—and includes one of the most complex discoveries yet. It reshapes our long-held conceptions about the practice of hunting by depicting therianthropes, predominantly human figures with a distinguishing animal feature. In this scene, eight therianthropes approach wild pigs and dwarf buffaloes. But researchers are uncertain if this is part of a grander chase and ambush scheme or a shamanic ritual led by “animal helpers,” prominent figures in such practices. Also a significant discovery for the timeline of modern art, this discovery proves that figurative painting originated outside of Europe, contradicting the long-held belief amongst academics. Read more at The New York Times.

Are you passionate about building premium devices and experiences? The Advanced Prototyping Center focuses on creating devices that help people do more and get done what they need. We are currently building Microsoft’s premium devices such as Xbox, and category changing devices like Surface and HoloLens. Creating these devices involves a close partnership between hardware and software engineers, designers, and manufacturing. The Advanced Prototyping team is looking for a highly skilled, curious, and creative person to directly contribute to the realization of our future products.

View the full design job here