The Dyson air multiplier is no ordinary fan,.It doesn’t look anything even remotely like a fan either with a magnifying glass-esque appearance which does away with blades altogether.
Doesn’t it look like the portal in Stargate?
Mytho is an innovative and interesting private and public transportation idea focused on creating a better urban commuting for future. The design of this car is inspired mainly by all the iconic and traditional figures of SF. The very “American” design has a perfect touch of elegance and sophistication with a deep black and shiny silver color combination and a unique appearance from both front and rear end. The lightweight construction of Mytho has been achieved through using recyclable materials. The car features modern technologies like GPS and high speed internet connectivity that ensures the rider a safer and more convenient driving experience in new places.
Victor says about Mytho :
The MYtho, is a concept car designed to be simple, but at the same time sophisticated. With inspiration from vintage cars, like the woodies, i was able to find a sustainable design solution for the side panels, which are made of compressed wood also the whole body is made of aluminum, in order to be recyclable.
The “tech” factor is in it’s OLED displays, build-in solar cells, and HUD display’s for the driver.
The form of the car is very simple, like the hot rods from the 30’s. The open wheel design, the huge front grill, and the low profile of the car, are just some indicators of this.
Designer : Victor Uribe Chacon
GlucoGrip is a high-tech concept kit for detecting blood sugar, specially designed to avoid additional medical instrumentation expenses by combining agronomy and technology in a simple and easily manageable way. This single device incorporates lancing and blood analyzer, reducing the timing and gestures for the collection through one object at your fingertips. The smart needles that are used to get the required blood drop are optimized by interchangeable disks which leave no scratches on the skin. The intuitive interface of GlucoGrip allows the user to manage it easily and get results through pictogram status tracking system. It features a logbook where users can store their day to day readings for further review of their health condition progress.
(Click the image for bigger view)
Designer : Giulio Sbarigia
LifeLine is a modular bracelet shaped health tracking system that can monitor heart rate, temperature, blood sugar levels, and wirelessly synchronize and display this information into a mobile phone or a computer. This device will create graphs according to the data it gathered from the user and encourage them to remain active by providing week to week feedback. The power source of the stylish bracelet is the human body itself. Moreover, it can be charged through wireless power pad or USB cable. All data accumulated through LifeLine can be shared through social media by using its dedicated application or website that will encourage spirited challenges with others.
Designer : Mikhail St-Denis
The U3-X is an experimental personal mobility device concept by Honda, that can provide free movement to the rider in all directions, backward, forward, side-to-side and transversely by implementing Honda’s balance control technology and latest omni-directional driving wheel system. The users will be able to adjust speed, moving directions and stop anyhow they want by leaning their upper body. The one-wheel-drive compact mobility device allows the rider to seat at just around the same eye level as he or she is standing on the gourd and let them easily land on the ground from the footrest. The device remains in an upright position by implementing the precise control technology, which allows for agile and smooth movements and straightforward operation.
From : Honda
Dd your mother ever say you these words ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ in an attempt to curb your profligate ways? Well, maybe she was wrong. There are places in England where money apparently does just that.
Perhaps it is to simply good luck or perhaps people believe that by leaving a coin in the bark of the tree they may have it returned to them many times over. Whatever the origins of this strange habit, there are a number of trees in the United Kingdom that bear the financial hopes of many. Perhaps they found it difficult to reconcile their gross habits with their net income. The people of Yorkshire, in the north of England are renowned for being careful with their money. While this localized stereotype may not always be fair there is evidence that on occasion they are willing to throw caution to the wind and hammer their low denomination coinage in to trees.
Close up it seems as if the coins have almost merged with the wood, but that is the effect of the weather upon the metal. Some suggest that the reason money is pushed in to the bark is more than just a desire to increase one’s wealth. It is thought that the amount of coins pushed in by an individual may result in them producing the same amount of children when their natural fecundity discovers a partner. The tree itself, though long since alive, has come to bear a marked resemblance to the torso of some sort of lizard, the coins becoming its scales. It is almost Arthurian in its strangeness.
When old billboards, fire towers and grain silos outlive their old purposes, there’s no need to tear them down – especially since they can be transformed into surprisingly modern, livable homes with views to die for. These 15 innovative conversion projects turn the unlikeliest of abandoned structures into dazzling contemporary residences while still preserving their historic features.
Modern Home Made from a Barn & Farm Buildings
Old barns and farm buildings often fall into unsightly disuse, but this project by Bjarne Mastenbroek and his Amsterdam-based architecture firm SeARCH proves that such buildings can be not only rescued from ruin, but transformed into stunning hybrids of traditional and modern architecture. The this farmhouse and its outbuildings in Zutphen, Netherlands were given a sleek makeover with vast expanses of glass and an airy, bright interior.
From Decaying Warehouse to Dazzling Design Office
A rusting hulk of an old warehouse in an industrial district doesn’t exactly strike one as likely digs for a design and architecture team. As the top photo depicts, this warehouse in Atlanta, Georgia didn’t look like much before bldgs got a hold of it and turned it into a combined residence and office space, leaving the old rusted beams and paint-chipped bricks in place to preserve a sense of age and history.
Fire Towers Turned Modern Mountain Homes
Raise the alarm: these homes transformed from old fire towers are ablaze with beauty and eco-conscious creativity. The height gives them a treehouse feel, not to mention the amazing views afforded by their lofty locations. They’re already built to withstand the elements, so it doesn’t take much to make them ready for habitation.
Religious Conversions: Old Train Cars are Now Churches
With the addition of steeples and, in some cases, facades, train cars can be turned into places of worship with surprising ease. Many of these unusual conversions can be found in Russia, where abandoned railway cars are a common sight. It may be a long way from the grandeur of other Russian Orthodox churches, but it’s certainly an innovative way to upcycle these old structures.
Grain Silos Upcycled into Homes and Hotels
Grain silos dot the countryside, a symbol of simple rural living with their simple shapes and metal-clad exteriors. But they aren’t just for storing grain – they can be marvelous homes and hotels as well. The Silo at the Gruene Homestead Inn has been transformed into a 1 bedroom loft apartment, while the Abbey Road Farm Bed & Breakfast has three grain silos incorporated into one large structure.
Factory Turned Modern Condo Complex
All too often, old factories are allowed to sit and rot for years after they’re abandoned, but as this conversion shows, these locations can provide the perfect skeleton for modern housing. Located in Philadelphia, this condominium complex not only takes advantage of the bones of the factory buildings, but incorporates new eco-friendly features like rainwater harvesting and solar power.
Romantic Countryside Church Makes a Luxurious Home
You might have a graveyard instead of a front lawn, but that’s a small price to pay for the vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows that come with living in an old church. This restructured church in the English countryside still looks like an aging place of worship on the outside, but the inside is now a luxurious residence.
Classic School House to Contemporary Home
Another stunning blend of old and new architecture is this classic-schoolhouse-turned-home in Denver. The original stone structure dates back to the late 1800s, but an ultra-contemporary addition and modern interior make this home anything but quaint.
Compact Modern Living – In Recycled Billboards
While billboards aren’t likely to be on most people’s radar as potential dwellings, they do have the advantage of being in prime locations, especially in urban environments. One proposal by Front Architects transforms these structures from advertisements to tiny modern homes made of wood, concrete and steel. Exchanging extra space for dazzling views and incredibly convenient locations isn’t such a big sacrifice, is it?
Trailerwrap: Turning Old Trailers into Attractive Homes
Single-wide trailers aren’t exactly the height of modern residential architecture. But, that doesn’t mean they don’t have potential. Architect Michael Hughes is the brains behind Trailerwrap, a project that reinvents old trailers by preserving their portability but making them far more aesthetically pleasing.
Home Made from Salvaged Highway Sections
“It’s kind of like Junkyard Wars meets Habitat for Humanity,” says homeowner Paul Pedini of his one-of-a-kind upcycled residence, which incorporates 600,000 pounds of recycled materials – including an entire section of an old highway. The highway panels were used to form the core structural center of the home, creating an interior that’s industrial, yet warm and welcoming.
Water Tower Creatively Converted into Sky House
This water-tower-turned-house didn’t start out as an ordinary water tower. It was made to look like a house in the sky, just for kicks – but once it was no longer needed to store water, the new owners turned it into an actual house, albeit a very tall one.
Once a Pig Barn, Now a Modern House
Few people would want to live in an old pig sty that’s falling apart at the seams, but the owners of this building saw potential in its historic shell. However, most conventional attempts to transform this pig barn into a home would have spoiled its architectural state. Amazingly enough, their solution was to drop an entire prefabricated home into the shell through the roof, with openings that correspond to those in the existing structure.
Standard Car Garage Becomes Small Home
It’s a quirky and charming A-frame home from the outside, but the origins of this cute little residence are pretty unexpected: it was once a standard car garage. The owners fought with the city to get a permit and were finally allowed to transform the garage into a tiny but adorable home with lots of natural light, a space-saving alternating staircase and warm wood accents.
Abandoned Oil Rigs Could be Luxury Homes and Hotels
There are thousands of abandoned oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, just waiting for some new purpose to save them from being scrapped or merely decaying into the sea. One architecture firm, Morris Architects, believes that these remote structures could be the perfect locations for upcycled luxury hotels and condos on the water. Combined, they could provide an astonishing 80,000 square feet of space, reachable only by boat or aircraft.
7 More Abandoned Cities and Towns of the World
Check out these urban abandonments of the modern world.
Comfy chairs, ergonomic chairs, posture correcting chairs, all well and good – but like everyone, designers sometimes like to bend the rules and be bad, oh so bad! These 13 uncomfortable chairs show that even the best furniture designers take (and give) pains to stretch the limits of their art.
The Pencil Chair: Get The Point?
(images via: Design Boom and Techeblog)
You could say German artist Kerstin Schulz might not be the sharpest pencil in the box, but that’s understandable as she’s worn out every sharpener within reach to create a suite of furniture only a lovesick porcupine could love. Just looking at her graphic graphite Pencil Chair is giving me lead poisoning… and don’t even ask what she did with all the shavings. Schulz was commissioned to craft something special for Faber Castell’s 100th anniversary exhibition in 2005; we can bet she’s looking forward to doing something similar for Bic.
The Concrete Chair: Heavyset Seat
(images via: Crunch22 and Dornob)
Here’s the perfect chair to have when you need a friend to help you move… and you happen to really hate your friend. Stefan Zwicky’s 1980 homage to the classic 1929 Le Corbusier Petite Chair has little to recommend it besides rock-solid durability – and one ton of mass. Comfort zone? More like Twilight Zone. Plunk this concrete chair in the middle of the Sahara Desert at high noon and it’ll STILL be cold & clammy.
The Panda Chair: For Your Bear Bum
(images via: Geekologie and Moss Online)
The Banquete Chair with Pandas by Fernando and Humberto Campana is said to be a limited edition – no surprise, there aren’t that many pandas left after all. Especially after the Brothers Campana cobbled together 25 of these somewhat disturbing chairs. OK, they’re not made of REAL pandas but they’re still uncomfortable, at least to look at. Actually sitting on the Banquette Chair is probably extremely soothing for your body, just not for your soul.
The Stick Chair: It’s The Wood That Makes It Bad
(images via: Core77 and Scandinavian Design Online)
The Stick Chair comes to us courtesy of Carlo Volf of Danish design firm Volfdesign, though from the looks of it “courtesy” isn’t one of Volf’s better qualities. It’s doubtful he has a soft spot for comfort either, since YOUR soft spot will never forgive you for sitting in this chair. Designed for the 2005 Carpenter’s Autumn Exhibition, “Stick”, as Volf calls it, will definitely stick it to you… where the sun don’t shine.
The Cheese Chair: What’s That Smell?
(images via: InventorSpot and Cosimo Cavallaro)
Like a little Limburger with your La-Z-Boy? Maybe a lot? Step right up and sit right down. Cosimo Cavallaro’s Cheese Chair is either cool, or it stinks. Literally. When you design a chair covered in cheese there just isn’t any room for compromise. Compro-mice, maybe, but I digress. The 1999 curvaceous curd-aceous cheesy chair is just one example of Cavallaro’s specialty, food art. Looking to visit the artist’s studio? Book a flight to Montreal, Quebec, and follow your nose.
Anti-Homeless Benches: Sit, Now Git!
(image via: Oh My News)
Cities around the world have begun to make public seating uncomfortable – by design! The intent is not to annoy visitors to parks, trains stations and so on, but to discourage those who habitually use such seating for much longer than the usual few minutes. Take the fiendishly artistic bench above, located in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro West Park. Built from stainless steel, the bench gets hot in summer and cold in winter. Its rounded, smooth surface is slippery and anti-ergonomic. According to the local parks office, the benches are intended for short-term use and “people should take the utmost care when sitting on them.”
The Radiator Chair: Steam Heat Seat
(images via: Design Lines and Stylenorth)
“Made from 80 year old radiators, this chair is surprisingly comfortable.” That just may be the case, since the Radiator Chair looks unsurprisingly UNcomfortable. It also looks somewhat out of place among the traditionally styled offerings at the Barrymore Furniture Galleries in Toronto… until you glance at the $1,430 written on the price tag. The Radiator Chair comes with an optional companion piece: a $1,200 end table that sports a red valve handle on one front leg. Don’t turn it, whatever you do!
Cactus Couch: Me So Thorny!
(images via: Dark Roasted Blend and China Chair Project)
Not just merely uncomfortable, it’s Sofa King uncomfortable! Looking like a gag gift for Wile E. Coyote, the “Ouch Couch” is (thankfully) not real, but a processed graphic image. The diabolic divan starred in a series of ads for Sony’s AXN pay television, cable and satellite television channel in conjunction with the tag line “Relax. If you can”. Just below the ultimate tough-love seat is a hand-molded silicone chair & footstool combo modeled after a prickly pear – and what a prickly pair they are! It was featured at the China Chair Project art exhibit and is the work of artist (and sadist, obviously) Xiang Yun.
The Clutch Chair: Sip Right Down
(images via: Scott Jarvie)
The Clutch Chair by Scott Jarvie was made out of 10,000 plastic drinking straws as a commentary on our throwaway disposable culture and was selected by Zaha Hadid as for the Curators Choice award at Noise Festival 2008. A winning design, thus, but a loser when it comes to practical, comfortable seating. On a positive note, at least The Clutch Chair is well-ventilated though if comfort was a concern, the designers should have used 10,000 bendy straws
The Steel Bean Bag Chair: Heavy Metal Wonder
(images via: Bedzine and The Design Blog)
Rick Ivey’s “1825″ steel beanbag chair displays the rough-edged, riveted look of an Industrial Revolution boilerplate steam engine – just the thing you DON’T want to sink into at the end of a hard day’s night. The $4,500 price tag, however, WILL make you weak at the knees.
The Venus Chair: Sitting On The Edge
(images via: Oh Gizmo! and Core77)
Going green, getting back to nature, growing your own… it all sounds comfy & cozy, doesn’t it? Well, not always – as the Venus Chair by Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka illustrates. Grown in a tank filled with a supersaturated solution, the Venus Chair slowly takes shape as tiny crystals precipitate out of the solution and onto a prepared chair form. Tiny SHARP-EDGED crystals, growing bigger, sharper, pointier by the minute. Just the thing you’d like to plop down on – which is perhaps the reason the Venus Chair is in the running for this year’s Brit Insurance Furniture Award. No dummies, those guys.
The Skeleton Chair: Bad To The Bone
(images via: Michael Aram and Neiman Marcus)
Commenting on his polished aluminum and steel Skeleton Chair, designer Michael Aram states “The shape of the human body is a great source of inspiration. Stripped of its skin, it becomes an arresting and unexpected natural form.” Sure Mikey, but this arresting and unexpected chair is the last thing most people would look to when they need to take a load off their feet. If “adding drama to your living space” is your thing, however, prepare to bone up $650 for the privilege.
The Electric Chair: The Original Hot Seat
(images via: Roadside UK and Biogant)
To close this baker’s dozen of deceitful seats, we present the most infernal piece of furniture ever created, built for speed and not for comfort: the Electric Chair. Though many replicas of Ol’ Sparky and others of its ilk now cool their heels in various state prison museums scattered across the US of A, there doesn’t seem to be a “home version” available for horror freaks & geeks to set up in their rec rooms. Yet…
Bookshelves: Best Bookcases, Bookshelf & Bookcase Designs
If you or a book-lover you know are stuck on how to redecorate your urban dwelling and store your favorite volumes here are twenty unusually clever shelving solutions.
Del The Funky Homosapien & Tame One- “I’m A…” unreleased track from Parallel Uni-Verses sessions, is avaliable as a FREE MP3.
Parallel Uni-Verses is streaming in it’s entirety on Del’s myspace. Not every great track can make the album, but that’s what gives us juicy material for your hungry ears.
“I’m A…” is a banger of a track recorded during the same sessions as the material for Parallel Uni-Verses and produced by Parallel Thought. A liberal Quantic Soul Orchestra sample lays the foundation for the two supa emcees to get buckwild and do what they do best.
Album out October 13th on Gold Dust “Flashback” digital single available now.
