The Design blog |
- e-QBO public art installation showcases how smart cities and historic locations can go together
- AeroPad Two iPod, iPad and iPhone Dock Speaker brings portable music home again
- 999Bottle whips out statistics about your green impact
- Mobilysis makes living with kidney diseases easier
- The 'blinding' spark of will led a visionless man to build his own car
- MIT Media Lab develops DIY Cellphone Kit that offers minimum features for over $100
- WeBike pedal-to-power pod helps offices go green and employees get lean
- Bloom TV stand lets your telly stand out and blossom
- Aliante Bookshelf, a sturdy design crafted from carbon fiber
- The Wind Challenger: Nextgen fuel efficient sea craft
| e-QBO public art installation showcases how smart cities and historic locations can go together Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:45 AM PDT Asmita Prasad: Measuring a stunning 5×5x5 meters, the e-QBO is a clever new urban public art installation that demonstrates what smart cities of the future could feel like. The project was developed under the scientific supervision of the Italian agency RSE (Ricerca Sistema Energetico/Energetic Research System). The first off-grid island in the world stands at Milano's Piazza San Fedele as a part of the SD4SC (smart design for smart cities) intuitive and will be displayed from April 17th to May 5th 2012. The independent installation features videomapping and street art from V3rbo and is designed by Romolo Stanco.
 e-QBO Picture Gallery  e-QBO concept conceived and designed by Romolo Stanco, street art and videomapping of V3rbo The contemporary architectural installation serves as a photovoltaic accumulator that feeds energy gathered from renewable sources into 60kWh zero impact batteries. The whole idea behind the installation is to create a free standing structure that is not only completely independent of the grid but can also serve as a charging hub for electronic and electrical devices, a lighting hub as well as an installation that can be used to present and view videomapping, street art and other artistic endeavors that form a part of the modern urban culture. The e-QBO is also designed to give back the accumulated energy to the general public. The free-standing structure also re-designs the historical plaza via LED light and the luminous design object sitting in the middle of the city center. The e-QBO can be used as a recharging station, a meeting place, a Wi-Fi hotspot, a public lighting installation or a place where communication systems and videomapping can be accessed. Via: SD4SC
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| AeroPad Two iPod, iPad and iPhone Dock Speaker brings portable music home again Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:45 AM PDT Asmita Prasad: Created by designer Jean Michel Jarre of JarreTechnologies®, the AeroPad Two is a unique iPod, iPad & iPhone Dock Speaker that makes sharing and experiencing home-entertainment fuss-free. The dock speaker is designer for allowing users to experience vision and sound very seamlessly right from the comfort of one's home. The dock comes with a 30-pin port to make it suitable to the iPad, the iPhone, the iPod and the iPod Touch with a mini-jack 3.5 mm auxiliary input.
 AeroPad Two
The dock comes with USB connectivity and is fitted with an MP3 decoder and supports formats like WMA, AIFF and WAVE. The AeroPad Two iPod, iPad & iPhone Dock Speaker comes with one 80 W RMS subwoofer and four 30 W RMS speakers. The AeroPad Two iPod, iPad & iPhone Dock Speaker comes with aptx wireless functions and is offered in black and white bamboo wood finish in the front and chromium finishing on stainless steel at the back and bottom. The 33.86 x 11.81 in AeroPad Two iPod, iPad & iPhone Dock Speaker weighs 22 lbs and retails for € 699 when you book it on pre-order. The dock is designed to restore one's emotional bond with their portable music players. The affordable yet high-end dock speaker is designed for optimal performance and simplicity and embodies contemporary style suited to all décor styles. Source: Jarre
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| 999Bottle whips out statistics about your green impact Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:44 AM PDT Radhicka S Saxena: An eco friendly water bottle that actually tells you how many plastic bottles you saved is truly an ingenious creation. Not only does this exploit inform you about the good turn you are doing, but it also goads you to take the same exemplary step in the future. The innovative concept will make all ecosavvy people more aware about their actions prodding them further to stick to their ethical life choices. The superb idea to quantify the number of plastic bottles one is saving is the brainchild of Fernd Van Engelen, an industrial designer from Artefact.
 999Bottles
This merchandise, actually known as 999Bottle, is a simple reusable bottle that retails for $29. The bottle looks quite dapper as it has a metallic top half and a rubber base. Its wide mouth supports cleaning while its cap has a lanyard. Moreover, the eco friendly propaganda it supports is truly endearing. Every time you refill this bottle, you just have to move the dial forward by one notch, and the unique mechanism attached to the bottle will churn out amazing facts for you. Its rubberized base bears a three digit dial that lets you know how many plastic bottles you saved by using this green tagged water container instead. An app attached to this piece actually converts all your environment conscious actions into useful and easy to understand statistics. Quite savvy, what say? The message is conveyed using catchy graphics and fun messages. Take a look at this one for instance - "You've saved 1,063 bottles! That's equivalent to the height of the Eiffel Tower. Oui, oui!" Via: Fastcodesign
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| Mobilysis makes living with kidney diseases easier Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:44 AM PDT Asmita Prasad: Living with kidney diseases that require patients to undergo dialysis several times a week is certainly not easy. The massive medical bill and the trips to the hospital make the affliction even more taxing for people who do not have the resources to be able to afford skipping work for long duration a few times a week. The Mobilysis Portable Dialysis Machine is a great new innovation that can liberate people with kidney diseases from the trauma of being hooked to a dialysis machine for long durations.
 Mobilysis
Winner of the Distinction Award at the 2011 National Design Prize of Austria, the Mobilysis Portable Dialysis Machine was created in by a team comprising of designers Nico Strobel, Stefan Silberfeld, Dimitar Genov and Maria Gartner. The system allows patients to decide when and where they want to have a life-saving blood cleansing session. The Mobilysis Portable Dialysis Machine features an infrared cleansing unit and a catheter connection integrated into a flexible belt that comes with a hard shell front and membrane compartments that contain dialysis fluid. The device can be controlled via a smartphone app which makes it even more customized and intuitive and easy to use. Hard buttons located on the device itself allow it to be used manually as well. The dialysis fluid is filtered in the technical section of the Mobilysis Portable Dialysis Machine after each peritoneal dialysis cycle to make it ready for the next cycle. Source: Stefan Silberfeld
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| The 'blinding' spark of will led a visionless man to build his own car Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:44 AM PDT Shallu Sharma: So finally the cure for blindness has arrived! What's more, it comes inbuilt in varying quantities in every human and we call it "will-power." Absurd you say? Well, Mr. Pete Golsby of Suffolk, England might address your prejudice with the argument. At the age of 68, the blind Mr. Golsby has hand built himself a car. Yes, it's a case akin to a bald person found in possession of a comb but what is noteworthy here is the gentleman's undaunted desire and will which even surpassed the merit and use of the gift of sight.
 Silver Pembleton Brooklands sports car
Tragedy struck Pete Golsby a decade and 2 years ago when he lost his sight owing to an immune system malady. Like it would affect any average person, Golsby felt like his life was falling apart with all his affairs in disarray. He's always nurtured the dream of building an automobile with his own two hands. The dream seemed farfetched now but the moral courage in Mr. Golsby motivated him to go for it anyway. His resilience and courage yielded and nicely, when he amazingly managed to assemble into one the silver Pembleton Brooklands sports car. He did however have to resort to the use of magnifiers and visual aids. His other set of eyes was his patient and loving wife Hazel who stood by Pete during the intricate operations and ensured that they went off nicely. The car's engine was borrowed from a motorbike. The parts were bestowed by Golsby's friends. The entire piping was obtained from an old shower which had to be dismantled and cleaned before installation. In the words of Mr. Golsby, the car is a matter of pride for him and is a reminder and symbol of his moral courage. Now the car only awaits its Single Vehicle Assessment before it can roll of the road with Hazel on the wheel and her proud husband by her side as zephyrs of accomplishment graze their hair.
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| MIT Media Lab develops DIY Cellphone Kit that offers minimum features for over $100 Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:43 AM PDT Asmita Prasad: Making your own homegrown cellphone or communication device will get in serious trouble with the law unless you're stuck in a dire emergency and cannot get the necessary licenses before you start using it. However, a team from the MIT Media Lab thought it would be a good idea to create a Do-It-Yourself Cellphone kit that would allow the general public to fashion their own mobile phones. The device exists just as a prototype for now and the wood-based mobile kit features a monochrome LCD, an oversized antenna, a control pad and a circuit board.
 DIY Cellphone
Of course the amateur kit doesn't allow you to surf the net, receive and sent emails, store phone numbers or even send out text messages, but it does let you experience the same thrill as graham bell might first have when he got his telephone prototype working or the euphoria kids experience when they find out that their plastic cup and string phones work! However, the fully functional DIY cellphone cam help you place and receive calls and even has caller ID so no one can punk you. And it does a bang up job of looking like a DIY contraption too with its lack of a rechargeable battery and a basic laser-cut plywood case. With a slot for a SIM card inside, the phone lets you choose the carrier and service you want though it will still cost you up to $150 to make one sans the cost of lawsuits that having and operating an illegitimate cellphone, bail and lawyer money will incur. Via: Engadget
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| WeBike pedal-to-power pod helps offices go green and employees get lean Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:43 AM PDT Asmita Prasad: Health and environmental advisories are issues left, right and center all the time though no one really pays much heed to them. However, Belgian company We-Watt decided not to ignore a few of these reports and used the findings published in two such reports to create one very functional and very useful product that benefits office employees and the environment as well.
 WeBike
Commissioned by the European Parliament, a report recently found that physical inactivity in offices has led to the rise of many health issues linked to obesity like type II diabetes, coronary heart disease and even a certain forms of cancer. Used in conjunction with the report by TNO, a Dutch research organization states that the gentle cycling helps people use their mental faculties better and improves certain functions like speed reading. Thus, the WeBike pedal-to-power pod was born. The gizmo consists of a round table and three seats with a pair of pedals each. As users indulge in gentle cycling, the motion converts kinetic energy into electricity that in turn powers mobile gadgets generating around 30Watts /230Vac of output per seat. An interactive LED ring around the diameter of the table indicates available electricity backup while a high pressure Trespa laminated table to, reclaimed cedar wood construction and aluminum and steel bits make the pedal pod sturdy to work on. We-Watt has already installed units of the WeBike pedal-to-power pod at the Brussels, Belgium-based ECKi restaurant and the Cameleon Shopping Mall and plan on installing such units at the Brussels Airport soon. The company has rental schemes for the pods on offer at the moment though individual units of the WeBike pedal-to-power pod can be bought for €9,950 (approximately $13,154) each. Via: Gizmag
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| Bloom TV stand lets your telly stand out and blossom Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:42 AM PDT Asmita Prasad: Unlike most entertainment solutions, the form of the television has remained largely unchanged throughout history. Though it went from boxy and square to super sleek, wide and rectangular, the TV and the entertainment cabinet/stand that goes with it has been forced to maintain strictly rectangular or square shapes to accommodate the ergonomics of the whole ensemble. However, designer Léon van Zanten thinks it doesn't necessarily have to be so and has created a great new TV stand called the Bloom, which looks like a delicate, oversized floor vase and adds a touch of softness to your television also.
 Vase-Shaped Stand
The Bloom TV stand takes the basic outline of the image that most children draw when they are asked to make a flower vase and used the television in place of the flowers and allows the stand to take the place of the vase. The beautiful combination of a flat screen television and an artistic stand is further enhanced by the drastic difference in the plastic/glass/metal of the electronic element and the soft, natural glow of the Birch wood used in creating the smooth, rounded shape of the stand. The curvy stand looks like it may just topple over with a single touch but it is actually very cleverly designed to be optimally stable on the ground, thanks to a low center of gravity. A hole in the back allows cables and cords to be easily fitted into the stand and stay neatly away from sight. Via: Gizmodo
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| Aliante Bookshelf, a sturdy design crafted from carbon fiber Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:42 AM PDT Jaspreet Kaur Walia: Every house has at least one person who loves books and this love forces booklovers to introduce a bookshelf in the homes, which has become an important piece of furniture when it comes to decorating interiors. Giving these bookshelves an all new existence is designer Davide Anzalone with Aliante Bookshelf, which bagged the first price at the Carbon Fiber Design Contest.
 Aerodynamic Bookshelf
The designer wanted to come up with a furniture piece that had low air resistance. For this, Davide fetched a lot of inspiration from aeronautics while fashioning the bookshelf from carbon fiber. The design of the aerodynamic bookshelf comes draped in minimalism and its simple shape will blend with just any kind of decor. The shelves have been made to look like wings of an aircraft, while the ends will act as bookends to keep all your priced possessions from falling down. Aliante bookshelf has a thicker middle at 32 cm and the upturned ends are 22 cm thick. This gives it structural stability and also brings down the use of material. The thicker middle will easily bear the heavy load at the middle making the structure quite firm. Two molds were used that pumped up the efficiency of the mode of productions. One mold will be used for modular shelves while the other will be exploited as the center support. Aliante Bookshelf gets lightweight characteristics because of the use of carbon fiber, which also gives the design some strong traits. Via: Fastcodesign
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| The Wind Challenger: Nextgen fuel efficient sea craft Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:41 AM PDT Nikonian Bar: In a move to reduce the consumption of fuel by large merchant vessel fleets in the oceans, the Wind Challenger Project has been developed by a group which includes members from the University of Tokyo. Utilizing giant retractable sails that measure 50 meters high and 20 meters wide, annual fuel consumption can be lowered by as much as 30 percent. This idea has been considered for a long time now but was impractical as controlling sails became very cumbersome. Motor technology combined with the ability to forecast weather and gather maritime information has made the project look feasible today.
 Next generation cargo ship
Picture Gallery  Next generation cargo ship with 50m high sails uses 30% less fuel A lot of hard work has gone into the development. To obtain the maximum propulsion, the sails are controlled individually and each sail has been constructed in five telescoping tiers, which helps to contract the sails when the weather gets too rough. The sails are hollow and curved and are made of aluminum or fiber reinforced plastic. This makes them more like wings. Computer simulations and wind-tunnel testing have shown that this idea in itself will save a lot of energy in times of crosswinds. Thus, the Wind Challenger is literally an "air"craft on water. There is a lot of intelligence built into the system and the Wind Challenger will be able to take a route of least fuel consumption rather than the shortest one. Like all grand ideas, this wind-powered ship too comes at a price. The sails cost about $2.5 million each. But the durability and speed of the ship will help recover the cost within 5-6 years and the time after that will be savings in terms of fuel, time and energy. Plans for the first sea-voyage in 2016 after elaborate prototype testing are set, so let's keep our fingers crossed. Via: Diginfo
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