Hasta La Ideas

pI’m digging A HREF=”http://www.arthurkenzo.com/” Arthur Kenzo’s/A Parenthese sink, though I couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to do when I saw the first shot:/p

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pI thought maybe the under-sink section was a Dyson-style hand dryer, which would be cool. But it’s something more surprising:/p

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pWhy have a sink-seat? Kenzo explains:/p

blockquote The Parenthese project was our participation in the Decotec Young Designers Competition organised during the Summer 2009. The purpose of this competition was to “give the opportunity to young designers to propose their own vision of 21st century bathroom furniture.” Among the three different themes, we decided to centre our project around the subject “The small but effective bathroom sink”.

pOur work was based on the research of a casual relaxation space and our answer to this problem was the creation of a seat under a compact bathroom sink. The seat had to be light and perfectly integrated with the rest of the furniture. For this reason its shape matches the sink’s shape, creating a real harmony./blockquote/p

pCheck out more of Kenzo’s cool projects A HREF=”http://www.arthurkenzo.com/” over at his website/A.br /
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Late last month, talking about his first foray into exhibition curating, we were saying that 2010 was quickly turning out to be all Yves Behar‘s. Now we’re absolutely certain of it. Late yesterday, the designer and his fuseproject company announced a partnership with General Electric‘s unfortunately-named GE Ecomagniation group, on a project called the WattStation. Looking like a cross between a very large electric razor or a pay phone for the ample-eared, it’s an electric car charger, which will begin shipping either late this year or early next, for between $1,000 to $7000 (depending on models and features), according to Forbes. GE is trying to plan ahead for a market driven by electric cars in the future and wants in on the ground floor. Nice to see they had the good sense to hire a top notch product designer from the start. Here’s some description from fuseproject about the chargers and a video of the project after the jump:

The WattStation comes imbedded with GE’s Smart Grid technology which enables the station to charge a vehicle in 4-8 hours compared to the typical 12-18. By communicating wirelessly with digital platforms and mobile devices, users will be able to remotely locate, operate and monitor the unit. The WattStation is also the very first charging station with a self-retractable charging cable, keeping streets tidy while protecting the cable from weather elements. All of these innovations are jammed tight into a compact metal shell, which is solidly constructed to withstand any harsh weather and usage conditions. It even has a built-in heater to defrost the snow!

A video of the project after the jump.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

pIn the sexily named IErgonomics Today,/I Ian Chong has posted an article entitled “A HREF=”http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=2478″ Design from an Ergonomist’s Perspective; Ergonomics from a Designer’s Perspective – Perhaps It Should be Both/A.” Chong is a professional hybrid that you’d think would be common, but is actually quite rare: He’s both a professional ergonomicist and an industrial designer. “But currently [in the design industry],” he writes, “the two as far apart as the Twilight characters and daylight…I have a box full of things labeled as ergonomic [and] some of these things are pathetic, most are laughable.”/p

pChong sounds off on the obvious need for these disciplines to work more closely together, and provides an example of where to start:/p

blockquoteWhen I was teaching grad school I brought two classes together, one from the NYU ergonomics school combined with another from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute design school. I paired up the students into project teams; each team had at least one from Pratt and one from NYU. The goal was to introduce the disciplines to each other and to expose each of them to each others way of thinking. And guess what? The final projects evolved from the input of each team member and resulted in changing the way of thinking for each of the students. Needless to say that I was pleased with their interaction and found that each student readily accepted another viewpoint and resulting in a final project reflective of appropriate solutions and creative thinking. As I saw some of these students in following years, I was constantly reminded by them what a great class this was, mostly from the varying opinions, input and collaborations. Truly this was successful in combining the two disciplines in a harmonious and creative way. /blockquote

pGive the whole article a read A HREF=”http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=2478″ here/A.br /
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New CH content now available in our favorite note-taking app

We’re excited to announce that Cool Hunting has partnered with Evernote to provide exclusive content for their brand new Evernote Trunk. We often use Evernote to catalog and organize our research because it syncs across the web, computers and devices so this collaboration makes perfect sense to us. In our notebook we offer products and insights across a variety of topics. Our first set is travel focused and rounds up handy products, apps and sites useful for the occasional hiatus or the regular business trip.

If you’re already an Evernote user you can access our notebook from the Trunk section inside the latest version of the app or you can access it here.