Hasta La Ideas

image via Nick’s Teardrop Trailer

Here’s an item from America’s past I would not have imagined would make a comeback: The teardrop trailer. First produced during the Great Depression and designed in the Streamline Moderne style, the towable campers were lightweight, economical alternatives to full-sized trailers. They typically offered sleeping/lounging space, storage, and a makeshift cooking/food prep surface. Gas prices being what they are these days, teardrop trailers are back in vogue; some models are so light they can be towed by microcars and even motorcycles.

images via Little Guy Trailers

Ohio-based Little Guy Trailers employs Amish craftsman to produce seven different models, ranging from diminutive 4-foot-wide models to larger 6-footers:

images via Little Guy Trailers

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Lexus has been getting a lot of press for their LF-LC concept vehicle, pictured here, which had the sheets yanked off of it at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit and subsequently snapped up the EyesOn Design Awards Best Concept prize. But while the snazzy exterior has everyone a’Twitter, it’s the design of the interior that caught our eye.

The graphics on the dashboard seen up top might be a bit much, seemingly intended to dazzle rather than convey information, but we’re digging the way the center console unfurls in a leather-wrapped spiral.

Lexus execs claim the LF-LC, which was designed at parent company Toyota’s CALTY design studio in California, is indicative of the design direction the company will pursue in the immediate future.

Hit the jump for aforementioned snazzy exterior shots.

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More mag-lev madness, or quantum levitation as it’s being called here: The miniature track and vehicles constructed for the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s quant-lev demonstration wins cool points for being modeled after the PlayStation game Wipe’out:

“Maybe in [the] near future we could assist [with] a real Wipe’out race,” writes the JAIST team. Presumably they mean without the power-ups and missiles, though I’d pay good money to see that.

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Inventor Brian Russell’s Energy Return Wheel is another non-pneumatic tire, but whereas Resilient Technologies’ NPT is passive, this one active absorbs and releases energy. As its name implies, the ERW spins shock absorption events into a modicum of forward motion. And interestingly enough Russell came up with the idea while designing sneakers whose soles would deliver energy returns.

Here’s the intro video, which is too long by half, but scanning through it will give you the basic idea:

The following video, which I’m guessing was produced by tire and rubber manufacturer Britek after they licensed the ERW technology, uses a little more CG to give you an idea of how the thing actually works:

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If you’ve been reading Core with any sort of regularity over the past year, you’ve probably noticed that 2011 was quite the year for bicycles and the broader domain of cycling culture. In addition to the requisite “bike porn,” funny bikes, viral eye-candy and big-name designs, we saw a everything from parts and labor to an eye-popping best-of anthology, not to mention a bit of mystery and mayhem.

Oregon Manifest 2011: Creativity & Collaboration

The year in bicycles more or less started with a brief history of bicycle innovations, a clip from Engineering.com’s Product Design Show, a serendipitous lead-in to the 2011 Oregon Manifest. The following month saw the launch of the biennial competition to build the ultimate utility bike, which attracted builders from across the nation. A trio of ‘creative collaborations’ complemented the Constructors Design Challenge, and we were happy to host the three “design-build” diaries over the course of the seven-month build process: IDEO × Rock Lobster, fuseproject × SyCip Designs and Ziba × Signal Cycles.

The results surpassed all expectations, and if it was difficult to discern a narrative arc from the ongoing chronicle as it unfolded over from month to month during the summer, we were pleased to find that the each chapter fit nicely into a coherent story in retrospect. All three bikes remained remarkably true to both the design firms’ approaches and the builders’ aesthetics: IDEO × Rock Lobster’s elegant “Faraday” e-bike; fuseproject × SyCip’s “LOCAL”, a “bike version of the practical pick-up truck”; and Ziba × Signal’s classy-yet-functional “Fremont”.

The three collaborations collectively represented nearly every trick in the book (U of O‘s retractable kickstand notwithstanding), though the various requirements—lights, lock, stand and cargo capacity—came in entirely disparate permutations among the ~30 builders. In fact, the most interesting aspect of the entries was how each one reflected the personality of the builder.

Thus, it was anyone’s game as to who would be taking home a prizeribbon (and, in the case of the top three, a bit of money for their effort), even after the grueling 50-mile field test. In fact, the competition was so close that the decision ultimately came down to (2009 winner) Tony Pereira’s integration of electric assist.

E-Bikes: Not Just for Delivery Guys Any More

Indeed, the defending (and as yet undefeated) Oregon Manifest champ Tony Pereira declared that 2012 would be the year of the electric bike, a hypothesis that is supported by a couple student designs that we saw this year: the University of Cincinnati’s double-time slideshow and Stefan Reichert’s (Flotspotted) “E-Motion” concept. Meanwhile, a team of UPenn mechanical engineering students proposed that electronic enhancements might be as important as electric assist with the purportedly superlative “Alpha.”

Let There Be Light

If 2012 will be the Year of the Electric Bike, 2011 might be considered the Year of the Bicycle Light: no one could have expected the overwhelming response we received when we first posted about “Project Aura” back in May. The hub-powered, rim-mounted LEDs impart a Tron-like illumination that has captured the imaginations of some 230K+ cyclists (according to Vimeo) and counting; congratulations again to Ethan Frier and Jonathan Ota, the otherwise unassuming Carnegie Mellon undergrads who have since won a Core77 Design Award and applied for a patent on their SURG (Small Undergraduate Research Grant) -funded project.

In fact, the ‘Aura’ effect would resonate with designers the world over, several of whom set out to address the same issue—”nighttime urban bike commuting”—from variations on a ‘light lane’ to cleverly integrated LEDs to Revolights‘ very successfully-Kickstarted rim-mounted illumination… not to mention Knogs’ high-powered USB-powered head- and taillight.

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