Hasta La Ideas

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pI had a friend who was a caretaker for an extremely wealthy family in Westchester, New York. The family had been rich for generations, and everything they owned was “the best” and was brand-new. One of my friends’ tasks was keeping the family’s considerable fleet of cars filled with gas, and one day when he was returning with the family SUV, he carelessly let a tree branch on the estate gouge the paint on one side. When he confessed his crime to the family patriarch, he couldn’t have been more surprised at the response: “Oh,” said Rich Dad, “that’s too bad. I guess we better get a new one.”/p

p”Uh…what?” my friend said. The truck was less than a year old./p

p”We’ll get rid of the truck and get a new one. It’s no good, right?” /p

pIn short, the patriarch had been raised the same way he was raising his kids–to believe that only new, pristine things were good, and when you needed something, you went out and bought it./p

pIn contrast, I remember Karim Rashid recounting that his father was a set designer who had built many of the things in Karim’s childhood home. He had thus had impressed upon him from a young age that if you wanted or needed something, you designed and built it. (The philosophy’s certainly served him well, as the man has something like 3,000 designs in production.)/p

pObviously these are not binary choices in how to raise children, but if I had kids I’d certainly lean towards the latter philosophy rather than the former, and not just out of my eternal indigence./p

pA good place to start might be Brooklyn-based author Heather Swain’s “A HREF=”http://www.amazon.com/Make-These-Toys-Creations-Everyday/dp/0399535918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1280331729sr=8-1″ Make These Toys: 101 Clever Creations Using Everyday Items/A,” recently covered A HREF=”http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/07/27/unassigned/AP-US-FEA-Crafts-Toys.html?_r=1hp” in the INew York Times/I/A:/p

blockquoteKids who spend hours communing with technology — plugged into televisions, computers and iPods — may benefit from some good, old-fashioned arts and crafts fun. Especially if they can then play with what they make.

p…”The process of picking out the project, getting stuff together and making it” is only half of it, she says. “Then they go play with it. It’s not over. That’s what I like.”/p

p…The toys aren’t intended to last forever. After all, they’re made from cardboard tubes and glue./p

p”It’s going to break. It’s going to go away,” Swain says. “But they can make it again. They can change it and innovate.”/blockquote/p

pAmen to that. If my kid scratches the family car, I won’t learn about it because he told me to get a new one; he’ll just show up to the dinner table with paint under his fingernails and a respirator-impression on his face.br /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/education/impressing_creativity_upon_your_kids_heather_swains_make_these_toys_17030.asp”(more…)/a
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pWe like seeing big-name design firms throwing their weight behind green technology. Last month we showed you A HREF=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/fuseprojects_electric_vehicle_charging_station_for_ge__16935.asp” fuseproject’s electric vehicle charging station for GE/A, and now frogdesign has designed the A HREF=”http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/ev-drivers-get-charged.html” Blink, an EV charging station/A that comes in both commercial and residential flavors. /p

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blockquoteThe evolving nature and adoption of EV technologies means that our design has to be fail-proof in order to build trust among early adopters. That’s why we created a design language for Blink that echoes current driving behaviors to make the transition to an electric vehicle as easy as possible. The driver instinctively knows how to use the charger thanks to the recognizable cable wrap design. This was purposefully designed not to have moving parts that could break down over time, or complex mechanisms that might confuse users, ultimately complicating the experience.

p…Every garage is different, but for most consumers, restricted space and keeping things organized are major issues. We specifically designed the connector so it would not stick out from its mount, to avoid the possibility that the user could knock it off or be scratched by inadvertently brushing against it. The taper of the housing was designed so rain will run off, and the driver won’t be tempted to place their coffee cup on top of the unit, a potential hazard for the electronics it contains. /p

pAnother challenge for the design of the residential version of Blink was the fact that the location of charging points varies on different EV’s. We purposefully separated the cable wrap and charger to allow the user to place it more conveniently within the garage. This ensures that if a consumer buys one electric vehicle now, the design of Blink can adapt if they purchase another brand in five or ten years./blockquote/p

pThe Blink is being produced by A HREF=”http://www.ecotality.com/” ECOtality/A, a clean electric transportation and storage technology company, who plans to begin rolling them out this year./p

pHere’s a video of Andy Hooper, frog’s Director of Biz-Dev, breaking down the blink:/p

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p[image credit: A HREF=”http://www.pointdistribution.com/hardgoods/skateboard-deck-manufacturer/” Point Distribution/A]/p

pI first learned about plywood and its properties not through the Eameses or design school, but as a teenaged skateboarder. We built ramps and surfaced them with two layers of 1/4″ ply, and our boards themselves were made of seven layers laminated together, cross-hatched for strength. The way skateboards are constructed became obvious to me after I shredded the tail of my John Lucero deck, worn down after months of abuse; the tail “de-lammed” or delaminated unevenly, and as the glue failed you could see the different profiles of individual layers and their alternating directions of grain./p

pI wasn’t the only one riding a raggedy-ass skateboard, as it wasn’t something you were meant to keep nice; it was Isupposed to/I be abused, and you’d keep riding it until you wore it down to an unworkable nub. /p

pWhich makes me wonder if Mechanical Engineering and Design student A HREF=”http://www.louisbradier.com/Projects/projects.php” Louis Bradier’s carbon fiber skateboard/A will be a hit or not. It’s a downhill longboard deck as opposed to a more thrashable street deck, but will skaters take to a material and technology more likely associated with skiing than skating? /p

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pWhether or not it takes off, it’s impressive that that’s no rendering, above–Bradier designed and built the thing himself. “It features a foam core construction with a torsion box,” he writes, “an impact tough injected polyurethane edge and load distributors.” You can see more of Bradier’s projects A HREF=”http://www.louisbradier.com/Projects/projects.php” here/A./p

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/2010/07/0cfskate005.jpg” width=”468″ height=”334″ alt=”0cfskate005.jpg”//diva href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/louis_bradiers_skateboard_ditches_plywood_for_carbon_fiber_will_it_thrash_17028.asp”(more…)/a
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It’s been months since we checked in with the progress on the World Trade Center building efforts, so why not do that now? At last we left things, 60 Minutes was calling the number of delays over the years “a national disgrace.” The New Yorker‘s Paul Goldberger got into that discussion too. The only positive note around that time was finally seeing a working test of Michael Arad‘s “Reflecting Absence” memorial. So what’s happening now that we’re in the thick of summer, inching ever more quickly to the 10 year anniversary? John Hill‘s always excellent A Daily Dose of Architecture has checked in on the site again via an aerial photo taken by Daniel Acker for Bloomberg. He follows this up with a great rundown on what exactly we’re looking at, where there’s been progress made (which is mostly just a bit more of the Freedom Tower). It’s a short and sweet update, and well-worth checking out if you’re curious to see how far along everything is.

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