In an ideal world, we’d all have the proper space and budget to have one of the sublime swimming pools we featured recently. But the reality is, not all of us can. Some homes have soil issues that make digging and excavation impossible. Or perhaps the yard area is small. Quite often, however, an above ground swimming pool is the only […]
Beauty On A Budget
Infusing Technology Into Workplace Furnitures
Its new Live OS is not really a furniture piece but a smart system. It’s designed by Yves Béhar, whose clients over the years have included Apple, Samsung and Prada. The Live OS system connects some of Herman Miller’s select furniture pieces, such as the fixed-height and sit-to-stand desks, to the cloud and acts like a fitness tracker for your desk. The […]
Aquapaw
Daniel Lentz, an industrial designer and pet lover, reached out today about his new company and product: the Aquapaw. The Aquapaw is a wearable sprayer/scrubber combination that can be turned on and off by simply making a fist, the first product of its kind and something I’m super stoked about! This intuitive bathing glove, which just launched on Kickstarter today, offers such a great […]
Making Water Potable Again
The ability to transform contaminated water into safe drinking water has advantages all around the world: for backpacking trips, in impoverished countries, and in the wake of natural disasters. LifeStraw‘s mission has always been to provide clean drinking water in the most portable form. The only disadvantage was having to purchase and use its proprietary water bottles — but the recent […]
No More Food Wastage?
OLIO is an online app designed to reduce food waste through social networking. After creating an account, OLIO users can upload photos and descriptions of foods, such as extra vegetables, surplus canned goods, or leftover meals, that they wish to share. Since launching in the United Kingdom in early 2016, OLIO has gained 322,000 users, with more than 400,000 food transactions made on the […]
Smart Roof Extension
Brussels practice Notan Office completed a roof extension and water tank project in a crowded urban area of Beirut, Lebanon. The unconventional extension has a total surface of 250 square meters (2,691 square feet). “In Beirut roofs are inhabited, private or shared, terraces or technical roofs,” the architects explained. “The extension was built on a flat roof that had to host water […]
Tube House No Longer A Dream
Here’s one of the more unusual housing ideas we’ve come across in a while. The OPod Tube House, by James Law Cybertecture, is a micro house made from concrete water piping that measures just 2.5 m (8.2 ft) in diameter. Its snug interior features an apartment-style layout suitable for one or two people. Access is gained by a glazed door and […]
Big Tech In Sphero
Sphero Mini doesn’t have anywhere near the same wow factor as the company’s Star Wars line, but on the plus side it also doesn’t have a $300 price tag. The new addition joins Sphero’s original lineup of round robots, packing many features found in its bigger siblings into a ball just 42 mm (1.7 in) wide. Inside that tiny shell is a gyroscope, accelerometer, […]
Libby The Online Library
When was the last time you thought about going to your local library to check out a book? The Libby app connects local libraries and the thousands of eBooks and audiobooks on their digital bookshelves 24/7. The Libby app is developed by OverDrive. To date, more than 39,000 libraries and schools in 70 countries are part of the service. A catalog […]
Innovative Tetra Shed Hotel
Years ago, the modular Tetra Shed took the design world by storm with its beautiful angular design. Today, the award-winning concept has been reborn as a full-scale hotel. Using David Ajasa-Adekunle’s original shed concept as a guide, Studio X designed the futuristic Tetra Hotel as a series of autonomous diamond-shaped timber pods set in a stunning landscape. The hotel design builds on the award-winning Tetra Shed concept, which was unveiled in 2011. At the time, the shed was created to provide […]