Hasta La Ideas

This design is basically a giant air purifier that meets a bus stop and BOOM, we have a chance at cleaner, greener cities. CAPS 2.0 is a smart bus shelter that filters polluted air, rids it of airborne allergens while killing viruses, bacteria, and fungi within seconds. Designed by Charis NG in collaboration with Sino Inno Lab and Arup, this city air purification system can be swiftly integrated into our new normal. It has been proven to reduce pollution exposure by half, remove 99.95% of PM0.1 airborne allergens, and kill viruses, bacteria, and fungi within seconds!

The first prototype was made in 2015 and then the second-generation system (patented) is now on a mission to protect the city folk with advanced spatial filtration and sanitization technologies. The improvement in air quality will have a direct impact on the health if the city’s residents while also encouraging more people to use public transport because of increased cleanliness around the entire experience. CAPS 2.0 is essentially a purifier that takes the form of a bus shelter so that it can draw in large quantities of surrounding polluted air to work with. It creates an air curtain from the underside of the canopy which shields the people while simultaneously generating air currents within that space to purify the air. The polluted air is internally purified thanks to its dual protection technology, Plascide air sanitizer, and multi-HEPA filters that all work together to removing harmful suspended particles and eliminates coronaviruses.

CAPS 2.0 is a smart city solution that aesthetically fits with urban architecture. It incorporates all the technological innovations in a modern and sleek design like multiple air purification and sanitization systems, real-time display panels, solar panels, and more while also serving as a bus shelter. CAPS 2.0 is a testament to how connecting like-minded partners, designers and developers can accelerate innovative solutions for real-life challenges!

Designer: Charis NG

It’s a common belief that a pillow’s only role is to provide comfort and support. However, the pillow has more than one job. It needs to maintain posture, optimal temperature, and keep your skin healthy. Most pillows, while comfortable, become cesspools for germs and bacteria from constant skin contact, sweat, drool (yes, that’s right), and your breath. These germs fester in your pillow, causing them to get dirtier over time, so much so that your pillow can be the leading cause of your acne. While it isn’t particularly feasible to wash your pillow ever 2-3 days, the Alpha Pillow has a better solution.

Realizing that there’s more to a pillow than just being a soft bag with cotton inside, Ivana Lowchareonkul designed the Alpha Pillow. In its second iteration (after a pretty popular 1st version on Kickstarter), the Alpha Pillow 2 tackles the various parameters a pillow must maintain to give you ‘healthy sleep’ – this includes support, softness, breathability, cooling, and the ability to self-sanitize. The Alpha Pillow 2’s design starts with a bamboo-charcoal-infused foam mass, which apart from providing the benefits of memory foam, also uses activated carbon to neutralize microorganisms and toxins. The foam pillow comes with ergonomically placed air-cells that promote breathability, and an aqua-gel membrane on one side of the pillow allows it to function as the ‘perpetually cool side’, keeping your face cool as you sleep. While the carbon-infused foam does a pretty standup job of keeping your pillow free of germs and microorganisms, the Alpha Pillow’s silver-fabric cover forms the first line of defense, destroying bacteria, viruses, and molds before they can even propagate. The pillow itself comes with a bamboo fabric cover, followed by a unique fabric made from silver fibers that are lab-tested to be incredibly efficient at self-sanitizing the pillow. Silver emits ions that have the ability to break down micro-organisms (a feature that’s been extensively used to battle the pandemic). The pillow’s outer fabric comes with actual silver fibers, woven together to give the soft, comfortable effect of satin, resulting in a pillow that’s comfortable as well as healthy.

The Alpha Pillow 2 accommodates a variety of sleep postures. Whether you’re a back, side, or stomach-sleeper, the pillow’s foam construction gives you the softness and support you need, while helping keep your spine aligned as you sleep. It comes with a reversible design too, offering a warm side for the winters, and a cool side for the rest of the year, and the ergonomically placed air-cells that enable airflow. No matter which side you choose, the Alpha Pillow 2 gives you a clean and comfortable experience. Along with the traditional pillow’s softness and support, it wicks moisture, keeping you sweat-free, and actively self-sanitizes, remaining clean and germ-free at all times. The Alpha Pillow 2 ships in two sizes (a regular and a king-size), and you can even grab yourself optional silver-infused bedsheets and pillowcases too… just in case you’re not a fan of changing and washing bed-linen!

Designer: Ivana T. Lowchareonkul

Click Here to Buy Now: $99 $179 ($80 off). Hurry, less than 72 hours left! Raised over $300,000.

Alpha Pillow 2.0 – Aqua Cooling Membrane

Alpha Pillow 2.0 is a carbon-infused memory foam pillow, with air cell breathability, aqua gel cooling membrane, ultra-soft bamboo, and pure silver fibers on micron-scale for a effective self cleaning effect (certified and lab tested).

Pure Silver Fibers – Silver has been used by NASA, US Special Forces, and Olympic athletes to create germ-free textiles. Their certified and lab-tested Pure Silver Fibers has reached 99.9% effectiveness.

Aqua Cooling Gel Membrane – Aqua Gel Cooling Membrane technology helps wick away body heat to help you feel cooler so that you can fall asleep faster. Providing instant coolness and ultimate comfort.

Carbon Foam and Air Cell – Carbon and Alpha’s ergonomically placed Air Cells increase comfort and breathability that is linked to sweating and snoring.

Premium Bamboo – Bamboo charcoal’s activated carbon absorb toxins, prevents mould growth and purifies air by absorbing harmful gasses.

Benefits

For Every Sleep

Supports sensitive pressure areas to help with sleep postures. Impinged nerves can trigger migraines, ensuring that your spine is aligned correctly in its natural position it will minimize nerve irritation. It will also help to relieve muscle tension around the neck area.

Alpha allows your spine to be more aligned than traditional cotton pillows. It elevates your upper body, helps unblock airways and nasal passages so you can breathe easier.

The Coolest Sleep

Alpha’s Aqua Gel Cooling Membrane provides instant coolness and ultimate comfort. If you require a warmer or softer side, simply flip the pillow upside-down and enjoy your new experience.

The Science

Most common bacteria found in bedding is gram-negative rods ~42 percent, gram-positive rods ~27%, both bacilli ~ 25 % and gram-positive cocci ~12 percent. The power of silver technology will act as a shield so that your bedding remains fresh.

Alpha Pillow 2.0 only needs to be washed 7X less frequently than the standard cotton pillow. Alpha’s silver is fully coated onto the fibers for a more permanent effect.

Fall Asleep Faster

Alpha’s bamboo charcoal infused memory foam allows the pillow to mold into the shape of your head and neck, supporting the sensitive pressure areas to help you relax and help you fall asleep faster.

Lab Tested

Click Here to Buy Now: $99 $179 ($80 off). Hurry, less than 72 hours left! Raised over $300,000.

Recently, repurposed shipping containers have gained immense popularity in architecture! They are being used to build homes, offices, and other architectural structures. It’s a sustainable trend that gives birth to compact, modular, and easily portable structures that can serve as almost anything – from tiny homes to even ICU pods! This trend basically eliminates the process of construction, hence reducing greenhouse emissions, and contributing to designs that are not only ecological but economical as well. And, we’ve curated some of the best architectural structures for you, that have been created from shipping containers. Sustainable, compact, and surprisingly good-looking, these designs could be the future of modern architecture!

One of Handcrafted Movement’s projects that I absolutely loved was the Pacific Harbor model. Built from a shipping container, the details truly show the team’s wanderlust and craftsmanship. It is built on a 30’x8.5’ triple axel Iron Eagle trailer – compact, convenient, and classy. The interiors are kept light and breezy to manifest the feeling of spaciousness. The tiny home includes a downstairs flex area that can be turned into a bedroom or home office, a sleeping loft in the back, stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, and a Mini-Split System for air conditioning and heating. The exterior features Board & Batt, black-framed windows, cedar accents, a cedar post & deck system.

Containerwek transformed old shipping containers into 21 micro-apartments for people who visit the town of Wertheim, Germany. Deemed, My Home, all the apartments have been placed in decommissioned shipping containers. The containers have been clad in timber and organized in groups of three. The 26 square meter micro-apartments showcase an open-plan space, amped with a kitchenette, dining table, television, a bed, and a bathroom.

‘Bureau Agreste’ is a modern shipping container office that provides professionals with a dedicated working space. The contemporary aesthetic masks the fact that it is an eco-friendly space. It has two levels with an open floor plan that makes it feel roomier and encourages productivity. It also features solar panels on the roof along with a rainwater harvesting system which makes it perfect for off-grid locations – this way businesses can save on the high rent they would usually pay in big cities. The container suspension frees up the ground space for organizing recreational outdoor activities (or even parking!) and gives the elevation needed for natural light.

These ICU pods are called CURA (Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments) which means “cure” in Latin (doesn’t that make you feel a little better?) and these will help take some load off the hospitals, especially in Italy. Ratti’s Studio, Carlo Ratti Associati, and MIT’s Senseable City Lab are creating mobile field hospitals with these CURA Intensive Care pods that serve as a biocontainment unit for two patients at a time. The pods can be assembled and disassembled very quickly, and because it is a shipping container, they can be moved from epicenter to epicenter by road, rail, and ship, around the world to address the need for more ICUs. The units are designed in repurposed 6.1-meter-long (approximately 8 feet x 8.5 feet) shipping containers with a ventilation system that generates negative pressure inside – this prevents the contaminated air from escaping thus reducing the risk of infecting health professionals who are more vulnerable because of a shortage of protective gear.

 This two-story home crafted from shipping container materials and sapele wood is designed to rise and fall with the natural changes in sea level as we battle climate change. Kairu is a variation of the Japanese word for frog which is an homage to the water-based home. The area is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy even after a decade and could use innovative reconstruction. That is where Kairu House comes in as an affordable, sustainable, and resilient home. It will become the primary residence for the founder and principal architect of Rekstur and his family. The main building is made of two 40-feet-tall shipping containers.

Grillagh Water House by Patrick Bradley is made up of four stacked shipping containers! A balcony shaded by steel fins projects from the upper story of this house in Northern Ireland, which this architect and farmer built using four used shipping containers. “I didn’t want to change the idea or the aesthetics of the design but I had to come up with an alternative that was more affordable and that’s where the idea for shipping containers came from,” says Bradley.

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has stacked 29 recycled shipping containers to make a Starbucks coffee shop alongside a shopping center in Hualien, Taiwan. The white containers have been put together to create a 320-square-meter cafe!

London architect James Whitaker depicts a proposal for a low-cost studio space in Germany comprising a cluster of shipping containers, which are arranged to allow direct sunlight into the interior at different times of the day.

 ‘Flowers in the Garden’ was designed to be a hybrid of communal workspace and a garden. The project challenges traditional office settings by integrating the natural environment as a part of the whole workspace. It is an organic but playful structure with soft screens and in-between green-buffering spaces that creates a diverse ecosystem of perforated mass that is always ‘breathing’. This office design lets you stay healthily distanced but not socially separated and provides a refreshing break from staring at your screens.

Cat Person provides ‘whole cat care,’ as they call it, which means they’ve considered everything, even giving the shipping containers a second purpose. The team at Cat Person knows that your cat will inevitably find its way to a cardboard box in the recycling corner, so they’ve made their shipping containers convertible into feline-friendly toys. Cat Person looked to industrial design to make further use of cardboard boxes and found transformation possible in corrugated cardboard and seams. Chris Granneberg, a California-based industrial designer, SLATE, a San Francisco-based strategic design studio, and Paul Davis, a UK-based illustrator, were all called on by Cat Person to seamlessly turn their cardboard shipping boxes into playhouses fit for felines.

What happens inside Apple’s design studio remains one of the world’s most closely guarded secrets… it’s bad for consumers (because they’re often taken by surprise), but it’s great for concept designers who get tonnes of leeway when it comes to making experimental versions of their favorite gadgets. Meet the iPhone 14 concept from the mind of Max Burgos – for the most part, it looks just like a normal iPhone, except for the unique secondary display located on the back, wrapping around the camera module.

The iPhone 14 concept shows the unique symbiotic relationship displays have with cameras. On the front, the camera results in a notched display, on the back, however, the camera causes the display to take on an L-shaped design! As unusual as this secondary display may be, it actually serves as a way to reinforce Apple’s app ecosystem – here’s how. The secondary display could be prime real estate for interacting with Apple’s OWN apps. Apple’s clock would show up on the back, iMessage notifications could pop up on the screen, and it could even serve as a dashboard for AirTag tracking. The L shape provides a lot of freedom as far as interfaces go – Burgos even demonstrates how a rear-facing camera app would look, allowing you to click wide-angle selfies using the iPhone’s main camera!

While entirely conceptual (the iPhone 14 isn’t due for another 16 months), Max Burgos’ iPhone 14 exists as a fan-made design that reinforces HIS OWN wants and aspirations from an iPhone. It’s rare that the execs at Apple ever reach out for customer feedback, so these concepts are perhaps the only way in which consumers can actually express interest in new features or visual details. I’d even throw a 3.5mm jack into the concept, just for kicks!

Designer: Max Burgos Morjaen for ConceptsiPhone

In this week’s comments update, readers are debating an inflatable puffer jacket and sharing their views on other top stories.

Italian designer Andrew Kostman has created a metallic inflatable jacket that is filled with helium instead of down.

The coat is inflated by the wearer using a valve near the hem and an accompanying canister of helium gas.

When not being worn, the garment can be carried around like a balloon using a long dangling tag or left to float on the ceiling in lieu of being hung on a coat rack.

“Will it keep you warm?”

Readers are divided. “Nonsense but love it!” said Pierre.

“Will it keep you warm like a jacket is supposed to do or is it just a balloon?” asked Bobby Dazzler. “Answer: it is just a balloon.”

Sim had other concerns: “Helium is a non-renewable material that is sorely needed for certain applications. What escapes into the atmosphere is lost forever. We should not be screwing around with helium in this way.”

“Helium is a finite resource and has become increasingly expensive in the last decade as its need has greatly accelerated in medical and industrial uses,” agreed Egad. “It’s disappearing from parties etc as it is becoming cost-prohibitive. Fun idea for a one-off but hardly feasible for this application.”

Would you wear Helium-10000? Join the discussion ›

Commenter jokes that Obama and Bono are “world-renowned architecture experts”

Some readers aren’t convinced that David Adjaye was the right person to receive the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, which was presented in a virtual ceremony featuring video messages from Bono and Barack Obama.

“Of course,” said Alfred Hitchcock, “those world-renowned architecture experts, Obama and Bono!”

“Can’t get more overrated than this guy,” added Trewus.

“There can be no doubt about the level of success he has achieved in his pursuit of personal accolades,” replied Angelo, “but if the worth of an architect were singularly contingent on the quality of his or her work, Adjaye would be considered as little more than above average.”

Are commenters being harsh? Join the discussion ›

Tower looks like it’s “wrapped in the Scottish flag” says reader

Commenters are intrigued by Scottish architecture practice Kettle Collective’s design for a supertall skyscraper in St Petersburg, Russia. If built, it would be the second tallest building in the world.

“They’re not fooling anyone,” said Louis Heatlie. “That’s clearly the Scottish flag wrapped around a tower!”

“Looks like an NFT,” continued Mirqus.

Corporate Overlords thought the tower resembled something else: “Death Star krystal christmas tree .”

What do you think Lakhta Centre II looks like? Join the discussion ›

“Apple is like a religion” says commenter

Readers are discussing the latest Apple store, which Fosters + Partners has built within the historic Palazzo Marignoli in Rome. The studio uncovered the building’s historic features and opened up a central courtyard.

“This is fantastic!” said MKE Tom. “Can’t wait for the Vatican to get converted into an Apple store.”

“In a way,” replied Le Canal Hertzien, “Apple is like a religion.”

“I was worried this would be yet another historic building being turned into a Scandinavian-inspired place,” concluded Zea Newland. “But the result is a delight. I know Apple isn’t everybody’s favourite brand, but another store might not have had the funds to pull off a restoration like that.”

Are you impressed by Apple Via del Corso? Join the discussion ›

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