[ Filed under Urban Design or in the Architecture category ] Shanty towns are nothing new in large cities with little (enforced) regulation, but this is something you have to see to believe: everything from small shacks to multi-story structures, individual buildings to entire villages, all spread out in organic mazes over the rooftops of apartment structures and skyscrapers throughout Hong Kong – a set of smaller communities within the... 

[ Filed under Kitchenware or in the Furnishings category ] An apple a day is a lot easier to eat if our reminder is an amazing metal design object – hanging, perhaps, right from the ceiling by wires and dispensing each piece from a shiny swirling spiral one at a time (a concept from designers Michael Andersson + Maria Axelqvist) If you would rather rack them up for a more dynamic game,  the triangle shown above by Danilo Calvache is a... 

[ Filed under Lamps & Lights or in the Furnishings category ] So wait, how big is that little white house-shaped box? Hard to say at first, but the camera angle and horizon line are big clues. This miniature model home lights up the landscape from about a foot off the ground, illuminating its surroundings with a soft glow. But wait, there are more! One could really have a lot of …  Read More →

[ Filed under Contemporary or in the Architecture category ] It is tough enough to find ocean view property to buy – but building a 4500 square-foot dream home on a 30 by 60 sf. property is even trickier, particularly with space left for a back patio, interior garden and various front-yard tropical plants to keep the site green around the edges. Broken lines and surfaces make the design dynamic on all fronts, both inside and out –... 

[ Filed under Tableware or in the Furnishings category ] Modern kitchens have so much technology, one has to wonder sometimes how people lived without all this cookware – yet they did. These sleek and sharp-looking stainless-steel knives are an attempt to go back to a simpler, less-cluttered kitchen without compromising contemporary conveniences to which we have become accustomed. Using the flat of the blade and/or the handle, …  Read More →

[ Filed under Furnishings or in the Decorative category ] This is do-it-yourself decor at its best: wallpapers that provide a framework to let children get creative and adults customize their interior design. More like peal-away borders than traditional wallpaper per say, this idea lets home owners blend the best of stylish professional design with unique, personal and artistic decorative touches. So easy a kid could do it (and does in the photos... 

[ Filed under Fixtures or in the Appliances category ] This pedal-powered cylinder has just one wash cycle – the one your power in order to shrink your appliance (and not your clothes). It looks like anything by a manual laundry machine, more like a hamper perhaps or most like, well, a trash can for your clothes. However, this odd little design packs a lot of innovative technological ideas and functional concepts into a very small-space... 

[ Filed under House Boats or in the Architecture category ] Less like a leisure craft and more like a 10,000 square-foot, three-level villa on the water, this incredible (and expensive) floating home can hardly be called a houseboat. After all, it is the opposite of the typical built-to-the-borders model of immobile houseboat – and looks like anything but a converted ship of the sea. Think it, perhaps, like a personal cruise ship –... 

[ Filed under Various Rooms or in the Interiors category ] Like a hidden secret room in a haunted house or the trap-door in some evil genius mansion, this seems like something Hollywood would cook up – not a real-life design you can have installed in your own home. Watch the video below as what looks like a ceramic tile floor slips below the water’s surface. Vertical mobility takes on a whole new meaning as these Hydrofloors move... 

[ Filed under More or in the Gadgets & Tech category ] How about a portable desktop printer that prints out pages you can erase? Beyond being a great, green and cheap alternative to buying endless colored ink cartridges, the prints themselves have a hand-made feel that only comes from that traditional graphite we all associate with hand-written letters and memos. Like the idea so far? Time to mix it up a bit: there is also a section of... 

[ Filed under Kitchens or in the Interiors category ] Worms composting food right in your kitchen sounds kind of scary, right? In this strange but compelling all-in-one kitchen concept, drained water is reused, other waste is a recycled and energy consumption is reduced. The idea is that the flow of cooking becomes fundamentally integrated with the natural cycles of the environment – herb garden meets trash compactor meets space-age style.... 

[ Filed under Contemporary or in the Architecture category ] There are small homes, then there are smaller homes … then there are super-skinny, ultra-mini houses inside of homes. The strange starts on the outside but quickly works its way to the interior. For starters, the whole (larger) home is sandwiched between thick and solid concrete slabs that rise straight up on either side of an extremely narrow building site. But step inside,... 

[ Filed under Offbeat or in the Architecture category ] You would have to multiple the “ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall” from the old tune by six hundred thousand to make this whole glass home. It took one artistic builder nearly two decades to complete this eclectic project, constructing it piece by piece – as much a never-ending work of sculpture or do-it-yourself scrap-pile as a house. Some of the wall work is structural... 

[ Filed under More or in the Gadgets & Tech category ] Imagine someone rolling out what looks like a blueprint … only the buildings begin to literally pop off the page, showing you like never before what the structure will look like before it is even built. There is no way to describe how amazing this architectural innovation is – you have to see it to believe it (video below)! Forget the physical: you can now generate high-speed,... 

[ Filed under Storage & Shelves or in the Furniture category ] Modernism at its best, this simple shelving system is made up of white wood boxes with black-highlighted slits and front surfaces. These elemental color choices highlight different functions show off the sleek twist to this practical do-it-yourself furniture design. The basic building blocks of this crafty storage unit series called Konnex is a set of three different boxes …  Read More →