Design Stuff

NatureMill accepts even dairy, meat, and fish, thanks to a sealed reactor and true "hot composting" temperatures.

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Source : NatureMill 

No more worries in using iPod in your bathroom. TearDrop is a water resistant speakers that you can use to enjoy your iPod anywhere !

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Source : TearDrop iPod Speakers 

Spoons are so last year. Who has time to find a clean one, lift your hand, swirl your wrist to mix in sugar with your tea or coffee, tap the spoon dry or lick it and then place it back on the plate? I mean really, are we animals!? No, most of us are not. So that is why Florian Dussopt, Jérémie Reneau & Julie Girard got together and created the “Ceramix For Mix” saucer and cup design. All sarcasm aside, this is a elegant and simple design. Incorporating a molded glass groove (resembling a roulette wheel) that acts as a track for a ceramic ball as well as keep you from choking to death on it, the user is inclined to swirl the cup using centrifugal force to mix your beverage. I applaud the design and am still pondering its need over my premixed vanilla latte.

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Via : ceramix for mix 

Even today, they still work with full-scale models sculptured in clay.

However, the carving and shaping process is now carried out at the speed of light by a highly computerized, purpose built machine which can not only create a full-size clay vehicle in a matter of hours, it can also perform this with a precision that was previously unheard of.

Of course, before any design evolves to that stage, it has to have been thought up, drawn out, and decided upon.

This is perhaps where the design process has changed the most in recent years.

Yes, Ford’s design teams still draw out their ideas.

However, the stylus has now largely replaced the pen, and paper has taken a back seat to the computer screen.

Yes, the design department at Ford has become seriously high-tech, in fact, so high-tech that it is now within their capabilities to completely design a vehicle, view it full scale on a gigantic monitor, and then take that vehicle for a quick test-drive before it is even assembled.

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Source : Dexigner 

Morph, a joint nanotechnology concept, developed by Nokia Research Center (NRC) and the University of Cambridge (UK) - was launched today alongside the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition, on view from February 24 to May 12, 2008, at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Morph features in both the exhibition catalog and on MoMA’s official website.

Morph is a concept that demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform their mobile device into radically different shapes. It demonstrates the ultimate functionality that nanotechnology might be capable of delivering: flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces.

Source : Nokia Morph Concept Phone 

Herzog & de Meuron partner Jacques Herzog has selected 100 up-and-coming architects from around the world to design 100 homes in 100 days for one of the most remote corners of the globe.

The groundbreaking scheme, in Ordos in Chinese Inner Mongolia, aims to foster architectural diversity but features only one British architect, Simon Conder.

The list of young emerging talent, drawn up by RIBA Gold Medal winner Herzog on behalf of a Chinese developer, is dominated by the US with 22 practices and Switzerland with 14 — all bar one from Herzog & de Meuron’s home town of Basle — Mexico with nine and France with seven. Eyal Weizman, an Israeli designer who works as a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths College, is also representing Britain.

Although the territory is part of China, no Chinese architects are involved.

Elias Redstone, curator of the Architecture Foundation, described the selection as a “wake-up call” for British designers: “The UK produces great architects. While [the list] does not necessarily reflect the breadth of talent here, we have to take into account what is happening overseas.”

Conder expressed surprise at the lack of home talent involved and said he was “very surprised” to learn Herzog was aware of his firm, Simon Conder Associates. “It’s really surreal… a wonderful step into the unknown,” he said. “All we’ve had so far is an email last summer from Jacques Herzog asking if we’d be interested in designing a house in Mongolia. Then just after Christmas we got an email with the contract.”

Herzog’s involvement has come about through his connection with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who is co-ordinating the project for client Ordos Jiang Yuan Water Supplies.

The project is divided into two groups of 50 architects, with the first batch already in China. Conder’s group is due to begin work in May.

Conder added: “We just got this Google Earth reference which is a dot in the middle of the China- Mongolia land mass. It’s really remote, although in China that doesn’t mean it won’t be a big city.”

Ordos city has a population of 1.4 million but the 197ha site is in an emerging residential district which “mainly consists of sand dunes, sparsely populated by wetlands”, according to official maps of the area.

Herzog refused to comment, but a spokeswoman said: “Ai Weiwei initiated the contact and

Herzog & de Meuron accepted the role of adviser. The final decision about the selection process is entirely up to the developer, so Herzog & de Meuron cannot comment on any practices currently on the list.”

The houses are scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.

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Source : bdonline 

Researchers believe early illustrations of how to play the game of chess, found in a long-lost Italian manuscript, may have been drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci was a close friend of Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli, who wrote the manuscript.

Pacioli wrote the book - a collection of puzzles called "De ludo scacchorum" found in a private library last year - around the year 1500, experts say.

The puzzles are very similar to those found in daily newspapers today.

So far, three pages of the manuscript have been published, showing carefully drawn diagrams, each representing a possible chess scenario, to which Pacioli offered his solutions - checkmate in a set number of moves.

It was not the first of its kind, but one of the most striking things about it, aside from the practical demonstrations of the game, is the novelty and beauty of its illustrations.

The king, queen, bishop and knight are all represented by elegant and distinctive symbols, coloured in black and red ink; so finely drawn that it soon became clear these must be the hand of another artist.

Independent assessment

The researchers say they are confident these are the drawings of Leonardo and they have asked experts in the United States to make a second, independent assessment.

The manuscript was discovered last year among thousands of volumes in a private library in Gorizzia, north-east Italy.

Pacioli and Leonardo were working and collaborating on each other’s works around the year 1500.

Leonardo is thought to have understood chess and maybe he even played it.

He made a reference to a technical term from the game in one of his many manuscripts.

This is thought to be the only surviving copy of the De ludo scacchorum.

And if it does indeed contain drawings by the hand of Leonardo, then of course, it will be priceless.

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Source : BBC