Hasta La Ideas

When it rains, it pours: Zürich-based design studio Micasa LAB first showed up on our radar four weeks ago, with the iRock rocking chair, followed by the Cocoon1 just a week later. This week sees the launch of the “Nebula 12,” which can only be described as a WiFi-enhanced combination of a lamp and a fog machine, a device that gives new meaning to “cloud computing.”

The Nebula 12 gathers meteorlogical data via the Internet (specifically, a weather service called MetOff) and translates that into atmospheric conditions indoors: “the Nebula 12 can change in colour and brightness and thus can be used as a variable source of light for romantic evening meals, when doing homework, when reading or just chatting… wake up to a flooding yellow light on a sunny day, or below a real cloud on that overcast winter morning.” The artificial cumulus is conjured from thin air though “some peculiar techniques, liquid nitrogen, WiFi, and high-powered vacuum suction.”

That last bit might obliquely underscore the device’s passing resemblance to a certain article of paraphernalia, but the first thing that came to mind, for me, was actually a birdfeeder (not least because it hangs from the ceiling). In this sense, the Nebula 12 is essentially the inverse of the Nest learning thermostat: instead of adapting to user behavior (as the Nest does), Micasa LAB’s concept is operates based on the forces of nature—sublimated into an attentuated household weather pattern:

In the standard mode, Nebula 12 predicts the weather for the next 48 hours. A threatening low-pressure area is announced by a red cloud, and sunshine is shown in yellow. At the same time, the user can adjust the settings and define the source of information themselves. And the best is: regardless of how dark the cloud is, Nebula 12 never brings rain. At least, not within one’s own four walls.

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