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)

All over London, table tennis tables are popping up. There are 100 in all, and they’ll be there for the next month – completely free of charge. So you can simply wander up and play any time you feel like it.

The idea is to encourage people to take up the game, as the Olympic Committee have resolved to get 1,000,000 more people playing sport by 2012. And Table tennis is the perfect choice as summed up quite brilliantly by our dear Mayor BoJo at the Beijing Olympics closing ceremony:

“There you have, I think, the essential difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations such as the French looked at the dining table and saw the opportunity to have dinner. We looked at the dining table and saw an opportunity to play whiff whaff.”

And who can argue with that?!

(source: TreeHugger)

These glasses from the lovely The Way We See The World have the rather excellent quality of being totally edible. They are made from agar agar, and come in flavours including lemon-basil, ginger-mint, or rosemary-beet, so you can match the glass to your drink.  We love the idea of Pimms in a ginger-mint glass, for example…

The other brilliant thing about them being edible is that they are of course also completely biodegradable. In fact, they actually aid plant growth. So when you’ve finished (or just when you inevitably break a glass) you can throw it in to the flower bed and feel good about it.

(via ifitshipitshere)

This is one of those times. “K99″ (K-9 = Canine – get it?) is an ice-cream van dedicated to dogs. Flavours include a delicious sounding “gammon and chicken ice cream, a traditional wafer cone with the ultimate finishing touch – a crunchy canine biscuit bone.” Apparently the temperature and consistency are specially suited to dogs, having being tested extensively…

The van is due to appear for the first time in Regent’s Park on July 24th for the pets & owners Boomerang Party. So if Pedigree Chum just doesn’t cut it for your (spoiled) pooch, then get yourself over there…

(source: Metro)

We stumbled upon this amazing proposal by the architecture firm Ozel Office for the Izmir Opera House in Turkey. And we must say, it’s mind-blowing. They have defined it as “a catalyst that reinforces the relationship between the old city, the new city, the waterfront, and urban culture. In short, our vision is a synergy of spatial, cultural, as well as practical and contextual aesthetics”. Whatever that means.

This all sounds rather obscure to us, but the little diagram helped us figure out what they actually mean by their architectural gibberish: building around and covering the existing tower and amphitheatre to create a sense of unity and continuity between the different aspects of the landscape. Or something like that. We reckon they have done a pretty good job at it, and who knows, we might get to see it as the symbol of the 2040 Olympics?

(source: ArchDaily)

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)

This creation was given by the wife-to-be of a Microsoft game developer to celebrate his love of all things computer. The USB stick is sadly not functional, but as a design it’s pretty spot on.

The inscription around the inside reads “For a lifetime of memories”. We’re sure you get the pun – words fail us.

(via Design Fetish)

The book’s cover is made from silver birch seed – meaning that when you’re done with reading the novel, you can not just recycle it but actually plant it – giving you a lovely little silver birch tree a few years later.

This admittedly sounds like a gimick, but the author clearly does take this stuff fairly seriously. His publicity tour (across 1900 miles from LA to Vancouver) will be done entirely by bicycle, and along the route he will be staying in organic farms and eating mainly vegan power bars.

It just remains to see whether he can actually write…

(source: TreeHugger)

Each poster features some little-known fact about the London underground, some of which are actually quite interesting.

What we really love however is that each fact is set on a background of fabric from a tube seat. Admittedly they are hideous, but we still recognised them and it made us smile…

(via Notcot)

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)