Hasta La Ideas

One of the smartest conventions urban planners have adopted in recent years is protecting bike lanes with rows of parked cars. It increases both safety and bicycle uptake. However, here’s a prime example of how good design can be undone by a lack of coordination and communication.

In downtown Los Angeles, a protected bike lane was recently added–along a stretch of Grand Avenue that already had curbside EV charging stations installed. That has resulted in this incredibly foolhardy arrangement, spotted by Reddit user TezzDonut:

On the thread, fellow Redditor and good Samaritan maskdmirag wrote “Thanks for the post and the location, I got this to the attention of some people who run the car charger program and will get it moved.”

Good on him, but the question is, move it how?

What is your suggested fix for this situation, assuming we’d like to keep both the protected bike lane and the EV charging station? My first thought (assuming digging into the asphalt and/or physically moving the post is untenable) was an overhead lamppost-type object that suspends the cable and hangs it down closer to where it needs to go, but I realize that brings a host of new problems. Am hoping one of you can do better.

Basée au Canada, à Toronto, Rosa est la créatrice du Rosie’s Sketchbook. Comme son nom l’indique, elle peint des paysages sous différentes formes comme des rectangles, ou des tranches de bois, par exemple, sur les pages de son célèbre carnet de croquis ou sur des papiers.  Parfois, sa peau remplace les supports habituels et devient sa toile. En utilisant l’aquarelle, le médium dont elle est « rapidement tombée amoureuse » comme elle l’explique, Rosa utilise et transmet les couleurs et les tons que l’on peut trouver dans la nature.

Parfois, sur son compte Instagram, elle partage des vidéos time-lapse qui lui permettent de suivre son processus et de laisser celui qui les regarde pénétrer au cœur de sa création. Sans avoir besoin de voyager, il est possible, grâce à son art, de voir différents angles de la forêt ou de la montagne et de ressentir l’atmosphère ambiante grâce au travail effectué sur la texture et les différentes nuances. Sur son compte Etsy, Rosa propose des impressions et des autocollants dans le même esprit.

Pour en voir plus et suivre son travail, rendez-vous sur sa page Instagram

Pod-free and precise, a high-quality coffee machine for bean enthusiasts

Brooklyn-based company Terra Kaffe aims to make the ritual of home-brewing coffee more accessible and sustainable. The brand’s 23-pound debut machine, the TK-01, is capable of grinding, tamping, extracting, crafting, and even cleaning up after itself. Existing between the high-end manual espresso machine and the most entry-level pod-pouring product, the TK-01 costs $775—more expensive than the latter but far more affordable than the former. Designed by Terra Kaffe founder and CEO Sahand Dilmaghani, but brought to life with the help of friends across industries, it’s an appealing appliance to look at and one that’s a delight to use.

For Terra Kaffe Dilmaghani, the quest for the perfect coffee machine became personal while he was living in Berlin. His family used coffee as a bonding force, a moment for reunion. “We’re all very different, but coffee is one of these things we all connect around,” he tells us. And while Dilmaghani’s family members favored their own specific styles, he became infatuated by espresso. “I ended up getting a lot deeper into coffee science, specifically espresso extraction and just learning that it’s much more of a moving target than people think it is. Instead of thinking that there is a clear-cut definition, [I got into] exactly what espresso qualities are, how its extracted, what are the parameters and so on.”

When Dilmaghani would ask others about their daily coffee habits and their home machines, he was even more excited to venture into the realm. “I thought that that was really, really interesting territory: to build a new brand that was grounded in rituals, grounded in intention, in the sense that it is literally very often the first thing you will interact with outside of your bed. You might go from your bed to the machine and I just couldn’t imagine that people are starting their day using a product that they actually genuinely dislike or are annoyed with. I absolutely love the morning. I love this category. And then I just saw a huge opportunity.”

Thus, Dilmaghani’s passion (or his “ritual,” as he calls it) turned into his profession. He found data that revealed Americans were drinking more espresso, with orders for lattes, cappuccinos and the ilk outnumbering those for black coffee. This change was “not one of these things that happened overnight,” he says. “It wasn’t like we don’t drink it and then we drink it. It’s been three decades of transition. And as much as people love to hate it, you can look to Starbucks as the catalyst behind that.”

Keurig brought the same processes Starbucks had popularized into homes. Then, Nespresso capitalized on the growing number of people who preferred espresso pulls. But, while Dilmaghani was trying to pitch buyers on his new innovation, he uncovered an overwhelming majority of pod-based coffee machine users that despised their appliance, citing waste, lack of variability in flavor, and aesthetics as the most common complaints.

The TK-01 quells all of these concerns by providing users the option of buying beans of their choice, nearly a dozen coffee drink options (from latte to americano and beyond), plus transparent customizability of their prepared their cup.

Despite its many actions, the machine is simple to use. An LED touchscreen provides updates on the water tank’s levels, whether or not the coffee waste chamber is full and if you have enough beans in the top storage container for your selected order; and a milk attachment wires tubing into the point of extraction to make espresso-based drinks with ease. Their website also provides waste-saving data and the amount of money you’ve saved by making drinks at home versus going out. We also appreciate the machine’s start-up sequence, as it begins with a steam-cleaning of the machine’s tubing, and finishes with the rinsing of the front nozzle.

Not only practical, the machine is minimal and attractive. Dilmaghani’s friends—who worked at Tesla and Apple—helped him with the design. “I felt like I would look left and look right, and it was the most crazy group of people,” he tells us. “They’re so good and wholesome and they just happen to be friends and I would help them in some ways they would help me.”

“We wanted to strike a balance, too, by making something that’s incredibly easy to use out of the box so that you could almost make this a turnkey solution for people that want to graduate away from pod-based systems,” he says. “We found also that sometimes people were switching to our product not because they had a pod-based system like a Nespresso but they actually were just kind of forgoing having home coffee and wanted to have an alternative.”

Not only does the TK-01 bring cafe-quality drinks home, but it also empowers users to buy beans from their local roaster—or one from across the country they’ve been meaning to try. They’re no longer tied to the nameless grounds and blends they were forced to use on pod-based machines.

“We had to think like customers: if you want to bring that coffee shop experience home, how can you do it? It’s our machine. Plus, it’s really interesting for me now because we are all of a sudden in a position where we can be an advocate for coffee roasters that we’re friends with. It’s a very old economy world, but they’re all transitioning over to e-commerce because they’ve lost all their wholesale business. And for us, it’s like, ‘OK, let’s just pay for a bag for everybody that gets a machine now because it helps the roaster’—it gets their name out there and they’re going to hopefully get a few people hooked on their subscription model. This is a new channel for them. And for us, it gets people started on great coffees. That’s never a bad thing. Fresh good coffee is how you’re going to have a great experience with the machine.”

Images courtesy of Terra Kaffe

I know treehouses were a thing of our childhoods but it doesn’t have to be! Get ready to take a beautiful virtual tour of the O2 Treehouse by Treewalkers that blend the best of our childhood imagination with glamping reality while keeping it all an eco-friendly experience! Treewalkers is one of the leading players in the world of treetop construction – they actually make treehouses that adults cannot reason out of.

The treehouses have unique geodesic domes and can be connected to create entire villages. The houses are modular so it enables franchisees to start their own village setups with one or more units – this can be a sustainable hotel, unusual Airbnb getaway, or simply a camping site that offers a different kind of stay. The innovative modular lattice design is what makes this a flexible accommodation — while catering to the individual’s needs and it also allows them to customize details. The units come with a standard a bug-proof outer socket, interior furniture, and canvas canopy roofing. As part of the franchise program, hosts have the option to open up their Treewalker to other hosts in exchange for points that can be used towards other stays – sustainable community tourism! There are many intriguing shapes but the most iconic one has to be the A-shaped floating tent because that is something we have all tried to create with a blanket in our living rooms. The interiors are warm + woody and have a plush bed with a seating area. As you can imagine there will be plenty of natural light and ventilation. While there is no clear indication of the bathroom being in-unit, I assume that will be a separate pod in itself or have other arrangements like porta-potty if its a campsite.

The California-based design studio has extended its realm with a franchise-hospitality brand to make it possible for anyone to own one of the O2 Treehouses. “Treewalkers is a franchise-based treehouse hospitality brand that lends homeowners a way to launch into the home-sharing market with low risk and a high ROI, and lends travelers an easily accessible network of eco experiences,” says founder Dustin Feider. Finally, O2 Treehouse estimates a 1-3 year return on investment based on a rate of $150 per night, occupied for 30-60% of the year and they have broken down the math for you on their website should you decide to go that route. The ultimate mission of the brand is to design architectural structures that heal the bond between humans and nature so they can coexist peacefully!

Designer: Treewalkers

Sheets of paper are layered with glue and then moulded by hand to create London designer Ying Chang‘s Malleable State collection of furniture and homeware.

The series is continually expanding and so far includes a number of shelves, mirrors and waterproof vases, as well as structural tables and stools.

“I chose paper as my medium because it is one of the most commonly used and discarded materials,” Chang told Dezeen.

“By applying a craft approach to paper, I was able to explore and expand its charismatic limits. The results reflect and play on our perception of value.”

Much like with papier-mache, the wet amalgam of glue and paper becomes a malleable, clay-like composite, which can be shaped into various organic forms.

But rather than mashing smaller pieces of paper together to create a pulp, Chang’s technique sees large sheets left intact and stacked on top of each other to create a smooth surface.

The silhouettes of the pieces respond to paper’s unique texture. Chang’s furniture often features crumpled details, as in the base of the mirrors or the carefully folded strips that make up the frame of the stools.

Once dried, Chang claims the strength of the material can rival that of wood.

“One piece of paper has limited strength. However, like many other materials, it becomes stronger if bonded together 20 or 30 times,” said the designer.

When she first started working with this technique, Chang primarily used brown paper in a shade similar to that of cardboard, in order to let the material itself shine.

But since then she has introduced a rainbow of different colours as well as digitally printed patterns into the mix.

“The aim is to use the objects to pose a question about what our expectations are of different materials and their affective value,” said Chang.

“To make us reassess the way we value things, which heavily depends on their materiality and the context in which we come across them, from the museum to the domestic.”

Part of the Malleable State collection is currently on display in the Kleureyck: Van Eyck’s Colours in Design exhibition at the Design Museum Gent.

Previously, Chang has developed a modular table based on the grid system used by architects and graphic designers, which was showcased in her Royal College of Art graduate show in 2014.

Other experiments in crafting furniture using paper include a duo of tables by Charlotte Jonckheer, which is made from stone dust and recycled paper, as well as Thomas Barger’s cartoonish paper pulp chairs.

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