One Nordic, a Finnish design brand, has introduced a collection united by its smart attention to the real-life logistics of shipping and handling.
As fun as it is to scroll (and scroll and scroll) through the endless abundance of good design online, sometimes--if you’re lucky--you’re actually looking to buy. Unlike the pretty pictures, however, furnishings can be big, heavy, unwieldy, and an all-around force to be reckoned with when physical shipping and handling is involved--and that’s to say nothing of the cost of coordinating a fully formed item to arrive at your doorstep.
In order to minimize unnecessary bulk, Helsinki-based One Nordic has introduced a new collection of products that stack, fold, lock, and flex--smart but beautiful, clever without compromising quality. This dedicated attention to easy assembly is one of the emerging brand’s hallmarks, which reveals its keen understanding of the modern marketplace and logistics of online retail.
Each of the pieces in the latest range is ultra-minimal, with a twist. Swedish studio Form Us With Love contributed three editions: The spun-metal shades of Levels nest when at rest but form a tiered lamp when suspended from above--and, charmingly, wouldn’t look out of place as a hat for any one of the dudes from Devo--while the Bento series of tables and chairs all come (nearly) completely flat, ready to slip together in a few simple steps, sans bolts or screws.
Luca Nichetto’s Hai lounger is astonishingly limber, with a backrest that can completely collapse forward, then provide perfectly comfortable lumber support once erect again. Everything from skateboards to extendable scissor-lift trucks provided further inspiration for the rest of the collection, which made its debut at Stockholm Design Week.
Design firm Vitamins worked years on the elusive folding wheel, but they couldn’t predict where it’d end up.
We’ve all dreamed at least once about getting one of those neat folding bikes. The problem is, a bike’s wheels can’t possibly fold. So you either have to shrink the wheels, clown-style, or you carry around a “portable” bike with a pair of massive wheels. Within a few milliseconds, logic disenchants the urban commuting dream, and we slam the SkyMall catalog closed in disgust. (Can you slam a catalog shut? Sure you can.)
But working since 2007, London design studio Vitamins has created a real, folding wheel that can fit on perfectly normal bikes. “Starting with the tire first, not the mechanism, was definitely the ‘eureka’ moment on this project,” lead designer Duncan Fitzsimons tells Co.Design.
After several failed prototypes, in which inflatable tires would explode under weight and contortion, they realized the question was not “how do you make a wheel fold?” but “how do you make a tire fold?” And the answer to that question was a solid tire. With the new tire in place, the way the Folding Wheel works could be relatively simple: A pair of spokes folds out like a Hoberman sphere, giving the wheel shape and bearing weight, while a third, solid spoke actually serves as a lock to guarantee the wheel stays open.
What the studio didn’t expect was that their wheel might have a purpose beyond the high-end bike industry.
“Suddenly we started getting emails from wheelchair users,” Vitamins Director Adrian Westaway recounts. “They were asking if the wheel could be modified to be used on wheelchairs. The emails kept coming in, and we decided to research how we could start creating a design solution.”
Many of the people who’d reached out to Vitamins actually began working with the design firm on a modified folding wheel that would be suitable for wheelchairs. The solid tire wasn’t an issue--while Vitamins had developed an inflatable version that worked, wheelchairs use standard solid tires. Vitamins added a comfortable, folding handrim, and they found a manufacturing partner to produce it in lightweight glass-fiber reinforced plastic. So while their original bike wheel was an expensive, aluminum performance accessory that never entered mass manufacture, the new wheelchair wheel, in production by Maddak now, should be priced for the masses. It’s pretty amazing that it was Vitamins’ secondary product--the one they never even imagined--that will have the most impact.
“It turns out that, while a folding wheel is useful for cyclists, it can actually be life changing for wheelchair users,” Westaway writes. “There are so many problems associated with storing and transporting wheelchairs, and the biggest problem is the wheel size. For example, many wheelchair users have to store their precious wheelchair in the hold of a plane when flying, because the wheels just can’t fit in the overhead lockers. Wheelchair users often have a very limited choice when it comes to choosing a new car, because many are just too small to fit a wheelchair. “
Even if you’re not working on a folding wheel of your own, there’s a good innovation lesson here for us all: Sometimes our own interests can vastly limit our scope, when there’s actually a much bigger population (and market) eager for your creativity’s attention.
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2013-02-07 18:50:08 UTC
Bees are having a tough time at the moment, and it’s largely down to their relationship with us humans. Not only are they combating pollutants affecting the quality and color of their honey, but studies are also linking pesticide use to what is known as Colony Collapse Disorder. French architecture studio AtelierD has designed a pavilion for both bees and humans alike, that whimsically hopes to redress the delicate balance between the two species.
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Continue Reading K-abeilles Hotel is a shelter for bees – and humans
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2013-02-08 06:07:44 UTC
Following the first flight of its Phantom Eye in June of last year, Boeing has performed software and hardware upgrades in preparation for its second flight that will see it climb to higher altitudes. This week, the hydrogen-powered unmanned aircraft system made a significant step towards such a second flight with the completion of taxi testing at Edwards Air Force Base in California...
Continue Reading Boeing’s hydrogen-powered Phantom Eye taxis closer to second flight
Float Wall Desk is a minimal design created by California-based design firm Orange22. The founder of the company believes that well-designed objects elicit strong emotions, starting with a sensory experience at its core. He states, “That’s what interests us about design—that capacity to affect the emotions of those who experience it.”
The Float Wall Desk was designed to easily mount onto any existing wall space, creating in itself a flat surface that has multi-functional utility. The desk takes up minimal space due to the slide-out tray, which can be used as both drawer to hide peripheral accessories or as a surface for the mouse and keyboard.
I love that every detail involving the desk’s functionality was taken into consideration such as the pull-out tray and slots for wire management. Too often do I see desk designs that completely ignore the fact that the majority of our population has to deal with superfluous wires. What I hope to see in the near future is a well-designed workstation, such as Float Wall Desk, which seamlessly accommodates our tech-heavy lifestyles.
Following yesterday's spelling lesson, here's a quick tip to remember the difference between the three homophonous words that are pronounced "PAL-it": palate, which most closely resembles 'plate,' refers to the sense of taste; palette denotes a mixing board for paints, as in several early 20th-c. French art movements; and a pallet is a portable platform for moving goods, as in "pal, let me move those for you."
As of last May, I happen to be a bit more familiar with pallets than I ever would have anticipated: several members of our NYC team were on build-out duty for last year's "All City All-Stars" exhibition, which incorporated some 300 pallets in Laurence Sazarin's exhibition design. (You can check out the largely unseen raw making-of footage here.) All of those pallets were the standard North American dimensions of 48”×40” (1219mm×1016mm), but we did encounter a EUR-pallet (also known as a "Euro pallet") in the early stages of the build, which is how I learned that they use slightly smaller ones overseas. EPAL—the European Pallet Association, of course—specifies not only its 1200mm×800mm×144mm (47.2”×31.5”×5.7”) dimensions but the prescribed pattern of the 78 special nails that hold them together.
However, EPAL has no jurisdiction over young German designers Yanik Balzer and Max Kuwertz, who recently sent us an upcycling project in which they transformed a Euro pallet into a set of three chairs "with almost no waste of material."
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-27 18:00:13 UTC
Initiated by Droog, UP is an investigative economic model that aims to increase the value of dead stock through re-design. An alternative to recycling ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-23 06:10:49 UTC
Over 5 million people in South Africa are living with HIV and the country has the highest burden of TB-HIV co-infection. TB treatment completion and ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-19 14:49:50 UTC
They remind me of the old milk packs which where little bags and could not hold their shape by themselves after opening. This changed, these stand ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-16 14:54:59 UTC
FEIT was founded in 2005 as a response to a mass produced, bottom line driven industry. An industry disconnected from the traditional art of shoe making. ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-15 11:39:42 UTC
The Cortiça lounge chair is made out of wast cork from the bottle industry. The chair show the materials unique 3 dimensional bending and absorption ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-14 18:11:10 UTC
How much thought can go into a bathroom collection? And how much heart? How can we make life in the bathroom a bit better and improve our quality of ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-13 16:56:09 UTC
I love the fact that Black + Blum use an old japanese technique, to filter water from all stuff the Britta does as well only for 6 months instead of ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-12 16:37:20 UTC
There is a world in apps on energy saving. Apps that are also commercial like the, EPA awarded, Philips apps on how much energy you can save by changing ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-11 09:30:44 UTC
I was at an interesting presentation by Jan Wurm, Arups European Research Leader, organized by "Materia":http://www.materia.nl at the international ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-02-08 12:31:58 UTC
"Interface Biophilia Design Contest":http://www.interfacereconnect.com/competition/index.php?c=us closing date April first 2013.
This contest for ...
This custom-made desk brings out the best of low-maintenance indoor gardening in a thoughtful design.
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