We’re possibly just suckers for slow motion, but welove this new video to celebrate the 60th birthday (!!) of the IKEA catalogue…
We also think the concept of celebrating the everyday nature of home life is pretty awesome as well, so good stuff all round…
(source: Notcot)
Categories: advertising · creative · home
Tagged: video, ikea, catalogue, hooray, everyday, birthday
We love a bit of quirky design here at Baby, and this mobile office from Tim Vinke certainly fulfils that brief…
Vinke has managed to turn a whole office—and this includes desk, chairs, shelves and bin—into a very playful item. On top of that, we all know how painful and time consuming moving offices can be, and this seems to simplify the whole business.
Once all fitted together, this really doesn’t take up much space, and with the wheels and handles, carrying the whole thing turns into a piece of cake. What we don’t like though is the polystyrene. It might be light, but pretty much unrecyclable at the moment. Plus we doubt it is that comfortable, but it does tend to make funny squeaky noises…
And we don’t really see how this could be truly useful: who would need to walk around with their whole office in their hands? But we must admit, the concept is still pretty cool, and if Tim Vinke comes up with a recyclable version, we will be ordering them by the dozen…
(source: Zeutch)
Categories: creative · design · environment · home
Tagged: mobile, office, polystyrene, Tim Vinke
Guerilla movements, advertising and fashion is all getting a little old, but guerilla architecture is something we never thought we’d see… However, it’s happening in Paris.
This is Paris’ famous Arche de la Défense… with the addition of a guerilla housing installation.
The architect behind this slightly bizarre scheme, Stéphane Malka, is seeking to illustrate what he thinks will be the future of housing.
The idea is that with housing becoming ever-more expensive and new housing becoming increasingly unsustainable, something has to give. And using structures such as the Arche de la Défense as the basis for small ‘modules’ solves both these problems.
Of course, the government and housing companies would never build these things, but Malka thinks that people will turn to this themselves as an option – hence the guerilla bit. As people turn to this, the installation would grow, almost like a parasite, and modules could be connected to create larger dwellings and small communities.
All that aside, we think this is an exceptionally cool piece of architecture. We’re not so sure about the adaptation of major landmark buildings, but the concept is just brilliant.
According to Malka, a module would cost around $3,000… considerably cheaper than a house in Paris. So for that reason alone he might just be on to something…
(source: Inhabitat)
Categories: Conservation · creative · design · environment · home
Tagged: Arche de la Defense, architecture, design, guerilla, Paris, Stephane Malka
Watches have of course become one of the most common status symbols. Rolex, Omega and co. always seem to be striving to out-do each other by fitting one more diamond or ounce of gold onto a very small area. What often goes out of the window is an element of design or creativity. Which is why we want this watch from Rolf Sachs instead.
It is of course based on a blackboard and chalk, which is about as simple as it gets, but really quite cool. The only problem is, we have enough trouble telling the time at the best of times, without all those bits of maths around the edges. Still, we reckon we’d learn for this…
Categories: creative · design · home
Tagged: creative, design, Rolf Sachs, watch, blackboard
Now we know the whole marriage thing can be expensive, but we’d assumed that was just one of those facts of life.
Pete Geyer and Andrea Parrish are however much more ingenious. They set themselves a wedding budget of $4000, and decided to raise it purely by recycling cans. 400,000 cans to be precise.
And they succeeded, in just 197 days, and have even learned something in the process:
When I got further into the research of the impact that the just 400,000 cans would have, I would definitely say that the environmental impacts are equal to, if not more important than the budget friendliness.
So they’ve even learned something in the process.
We’re big fans of this whole recycling thing, but it does seem to lack something by way of romance…
(source: TreeHugger)
Categories: creative · drink · environment · green · home
Tagged: recycling, wedding
We love this new furniture collection from Sebastian Brajkovic.
Each item is a classic piece of furniture, but upholstered in particularly modern style. It’s a brilliant concept to mix the two, giving the option of elegance and cutting edge design in the same item.
We were fans instantly – and then found out that the designs are in fact inspired by Adobe’s Photoshop. Each image is in fact ‘stretched’, with the pixels from the edges “copied and pasted” across the middle of the items to give those massive blurs.
Which of course makes the contrast with the antique nature of the chairs even better…
(source: ifitshipitshere)
Categories: creative · design · home
Tagged: Adobe, chairs, design, Lathe, photoshop, Sebastian Brajkovic
We’ve seen all sorts of weird architecture, but this was a new idea even to us.
This is the Everrich 2 apartment complex in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, designed by DWP Architects.
It has unquestionably been designed to look like a roller coaster, although the architects try to claim otherwise. Apparently the idea is to capture the natural continuous breezes and sunlight and use them to heat and cool the building as appropriate, giving the structure it’s very own eco-friendly climate control. It also has green roofs, to try and make the monstrosity blend with the local hills.
To be honest though, we’re pretty convinced that they should just build a roller coaster around the roof – we’d certainly want to stay there…
(source: Trend Hunter)
Categories: creative · design · environment · home
Tagged: apartments, architecture, DWP, Ho Chi Minh, roller coaster, Vietnam
A straw house sounds like a stupid idea in any modern, wet and windy country like the UK. However, a housing company in Leeds disagrees.
This construction is called the Balehaus, and it has been designed and constructed by the University of Bath’s Centre for Innovative Construction Materials. We have to admit it looks pretty awesome.
More to the point however, it’s actually remarkably sturdy. It’s been tested in winds of 120mph and doesn’t move, has survived flooding (although some of the lower bales did have to be replaced at very low cost) and even set on fire at temperatures of up to 1000°C – for 2 hours. Its designers reckon it’s easily got a 100-year lifespan. Now we reckon that’s pretty impressive for something which is essentially constructed out of straw bales and a bit of hemp and wood pannelling.
However that’s not all. Of course the house is extremely energy efficient to construct, since all the materials are completely renewable. Construction costs are also very low as transport and heavy lifting are significantly reduced. And energy bills are reduced by around 80%, with the walls being excellent insulators. And you can get all this for between £60,000 (for a flat) and £160,000 (for a 4-bedroomed house), which is ridiculously cheap – even for Leeds. We’re pretty much sold…
(source: Treehugger)
Categories: design · environment · green · home
Tagged: bale, balehaus, Bath university, ecological, house, Leeds, renewable, straw
The cafe culture seems to be one of those things that just keeps on growing. And of course alongside this, we therefore have cafes all trying to do something new and different to make sure they get a slice of the pie. Which is why we were a bit mystified by la Boite when we first saw it.
It is, at first glance, an old trailer. Not much threat to Starbucks and co. However, we were slightly missing the point.
The idea of la Boite (designed for designSTUDIO by Mark Meyer) is that it is portable. The cafe comes to wherever it is needed. During the day, it could sit outside a huge office block, and then it could move to sleepy suburbia for the evenings and weekends.
And what’s more,
La Boite is a green, environmentally sensitive cafe with locally baked goods, sandwiches, and coffee, built from an old shipping container. For the project, DesignSTUDIO used Rainwater HOG’s for greywater collection, biobased spray foam insulation, and Forbo linoleum for the floor and one wall.
So all in all we’re rather impressed. We’re just still not sure we’d have coffee in a trailer.
(source: Architecture4Us via Notcot)
Categories: baby creative · design · drink · environment · food · green · home · transport
Tagged: cafe, designSTUDO, la Boite, Mark Meyer
We’ve always been a fan of crazy architecture and schemes. This is however probably the oddest we have come across yet.
This multicoloured monstrosity is a representation of a scheme by the appropriately named Whim Architects from the Netherlands – to collect all the plastic floating around in the sea and turn it into an island. An island the size of Hawaii.
So it’s a little terrifying that there is enough plastic in the sea to do this in the first place. That aside, we love the execution. The idea would be to have beaches, housing made from recycled plastic, farms fertilised with human waste, seaweed grown for biofuels, and power harvested from the sun and sea. Essentially, you take a whole pile of waste and turn it into a green, self-sufficient community.
The plan is to float this thing somewhere between San Fransisco and the current Hawaii – precisely the middle of nowhere. We reckon it should be towed around for people to jump on as their real island chains (The Maldives, etc) sink under the waves.
(via Inhabitat)
Categories: Conservation · Plants · creative · environment · food · home · think tank · transport
Tagged: architects, hawaii, island, recycled, renewable, self-sufficient, Whim
