Who will build the world’s first 3-D printed house? The answer gets less certain with each passing month. Just this week, a third team, Dutch architecture firm DUS, announced that it was tossing its hat into the ring, revealing plans to break ground on a design for a 3-D printed house on one of Amsterdam’s iconic canals within the next six months.

The firm will be competing to finish its design before two other firms get there first: including Dutchman Janjaap Ruijssenaars’s Möbius-strip shaped Landscape House, and London-based Softkill Design’s fibrous, naturalistic ProtoHouse.

A Softkill architect had gone on the record saying that the Landscape House shouldn’t be thought of as the first 3-D printed house, even if it were successful, since so much of the house’s construction relies on poured concrete. But it doesn’t seem like the same criticism could be leveled at the DUS house; it plans to print all the home components onsite, using a massive printer called the KamerMaker, which rests inside a shipping container. On their website, they describe the machine as "a real architectural pavilion" that could play host to events. "In other words: The KamerMaker itself is a pavilion, that can reproduce small pavilions!"

"This year we want to print the entire facade and the first room bit by bit," DUS architect Hedwig Heinsman told Dezeen. "Then in the following months and years we will print other rooms."

The house will function as an event space and 3-D printing laboratory to explore new techniques and showcase them to the public.

Who will build the world’s first 3-D printed house? The answer gets less certain with each passing month. Just this week, a third team, Dutch architecture firm DUS, announced that it was tossing its hat into the ring, revealing plans to break ground on a design for a 3-D printed house on one of Amsterdam’s iconic canals within the next six months.

The firm will be competing to finish its design before two other firms get there first: including Dutchman Janjaap Ruijssenaars’s Möbius-strip shaped Landscape House, and London-based Softkill Design’s fibrous, naturalistic ProtoHouse.

A Softkill architect had gone on the record saying that the Landscape House shouldn’t be thought of as the first 3-D printed house, even if it were successful, since so much of the house’s construction relies on poured concrete. But it doesn’t seem like the same criticism could be leveled at the DUS house; it plans to print all the home components onsite, using a massive printer called the KamerMaker, which rests inside a shipping container. On their website, they describe the machine as "a real architectural pavilion" that could play host to events. "In other words: The KamerMaker itself is a pavilion, that can reproduce small pavilions!"

"This year we want to print the entire facade and the first room bit by bit," DUS architect Hedwig Heinsman told Dezeen. "Then in the following months and years we will print other rooms."

The house will function as an event space and 3-D printing laboratory to explore new techniques and showcase them to the public.

This concept hotel is built around "the underlying principle of local food": selling it, eating it, growing it, learning about it. Visualized by Netherlands-based designer Dean Moran, it includes a market, restaurant, rooftop garden, mini-greenhouses, and several other food-related elements. It won top prize in a recent competition from Tablet, a hotel magazine.

Moran imagines the hotel in downtown New York City, with guests, food sellers, and locals sharing common spaces, like the lobby and courtyard. Food is a way to get people talking. "For me it wasn’t so much a question of 'what can I think of to make an interesting hotel’, but more 'what would be an interesting theme to bring tourists and New Yorkers, or people in general, together’," he says, in an email.

Moran sees guests buying food in the market, and supplementing meals in the restaurant, or taking lessons in the open-kitchen teaching area, doing a bit of gardening on the rooftop, or venturing out on food tours around Manhattan. But he says the concept is more than "just another themed boutique hotel." It is "tweaking what a hotel already has and focusing it towards a food theme."

The magical lighting isn’t completely imaginary. It comes from the twice-yearly "Manhattanhenge": when the setting sun aligns with the street grid, giving everything a particularly golden glow. The "courtyard is shaped to catch as much daylight as possible for the projected location," Moran adds, to provide additional lighting, and ventilation, for rooms coming off it.

Asked when we’re going to see the hotel in the flesh, he replies: "Who knows? At the moment there are no concrete plans to build it, so if any of your readers are interested …"

Kerosene stoves are popular with the rural folks, especially in Africa and India. Although they provide a cheaper option to cooking, most of the stove designs have this danger of bursting into flames or causing an explosion. The Indaba Kerosene Stove is a sleeker and safer cooking stove that employs several safety mechanisms.

Features:

• The Indaba stove has multiple safety features to ensure a safer cooking experience including a safety mechanism that shuts off the flame if the stove is ever knocked over.
• It has double walled steel walls that prevent the outer surface from getting hot, preventing accidental burns.
• It also feature handles for the user to safely transport to stove without touching the outer surface.
• It has a child proof safety fuel cap that is made out of plastic so that if in the event of a house fire the fuel cap will melt off preventing the stove from exploding.
• The main feature is the safety mechanism that shuts off the flame if it is knocked over or picked up preventing the possibility of the stove starting a fire and causing injuries.
• The safety feature works on a rack and pinion system with suspension springs that will pull the wicks down if the stove is knocked over shutting off the flame. The stove also includes a pressure fit cooking pot that creates a complete cooking experience for the user.

Designer: Dean Loock

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(Safer Cooking With Kerosene was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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Unilever, in its bid to contribute to the ‘green’ cause and reduce its carbon footprint, has come out with a new aerosol deodorant can that can now be found on the shelves of supermarkets.  This new can would have 75 mL worth of deodorant as opposed to the earlier 150 mL, however it will still last just as much as its predecessor.

The catch here is that the aerosol cans in the new version by Unilever would be manufactured by using 2% less aluminium and around half of the propellant of its predecessor.  This new technology by the company has taken the industry by storm as it is even being termed as a groundbreaking creation in the designing of aerosols.  This innovation can actually present a refreshing change to the way in which deodorant cans are being manufactured as Unilever has managed to produce a can of deodorant that is almost 50% of the size and can reduce the company’s carbon footprint by about 25%.  This is thus being viewed as  a step change and Unilever is being credited with this innovative technique.

Unilever has most certainly hopped onto the green bandwagon with its release of sustainable products which would reduce the adverse impact on the environment and would also boost the business significantly.

Aerosol deodorants are majorly preferred by women around the world as opposed to the stick or roll on variety and this latest design by Unilever will see the innovative technology being applied to brands such as Vaseline, Dove and Sure.

By doing so, Unilever would be preserving aluminium worth around 24 tons, which can be equated to the quantity that would be required to make 1, 846,000 cans of soft drink.  Furthermore, it would also save up on 283 tons of carbon emissions which would equate to the emissions that are produced by a car if it were to travel across the worth 51 times!

Unilever’s innovation has brought to the forefront the need to change the manufacturing pattern of these aerosol cans in order to make them more eco-friendly in certain ways.  This is perhaps not the first green initiative taken by Unilever, as the company had earlier made a significant initiative in 2007 when it introduced laundry detergents – Mighty and Persil Small- in which the size of the bottle was reduced by 1/3 but the quantity of the liquid per bottle was kept the same.

Unilever has other green plans which comprise of its determination to reduce the impact of their products to the greenhouse effect by 50% as well as to reduce the waste produced upon disposing their products.

Design Indaba 2013: glow-in-the-dark roads and responsive street lamps were among the concepts to make highways safer while saving money and energy presented by Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town earlier this month. (more...)

In an era of ultra-casual office dress codes, socks are the new tie for many men-- an easy way to personalize slacks and a shirt. Unsurprisingly, a barrage of mid- to high-end sock companies have sprung up in the past few years to feed the demand for stylish socks.

But sock startup Nice Laundry isn’t just interested in selling new socks--they want to help customers get rid of their old ones. “Prepaid shipping labels come with every order," says Co-Founder Phil Moldavski. “Send us your old socks and we’ll recycle them.” Some of those textiles will be repurposed into new socks; others will be recycled through a professional textile recycling company.

The founders point out that the U.S. wastes 21 billion pounds worth of textiles annually. Moldavski adds, “We want to do our part to help get that number to zero.”

The socks come in the wide range of colors and patterns you’d expect to find at any menswear store that’s attempted to stay relevant the past half-decade-- but at a fraction of the price. "We work with the same factories as top brands like J. Crew," says co-founder Ricky Choi. But a pack of six socks sells for $39, unlike fancier brands which sell for $12 to $40 per pair.

Nice Laundry claims to have modeled their sock design on a $38 design from a department store. The socks will be produced in South Korea, and are currently being pre-sold on Kickstarter.

The V-Tent is an elegant collapsible canopy that envelopes an electric vehicle as it’s being charged. Developed by Designnobis, a consultancy from Turkey, it is designed to protect the car from sunlight, rain, or other elements, and acts as an extra precaution against theft.

"It is hard to find shade to park your car, so we decided to develop a tent that protects the car, and produces energy in the meantime," says product designer Nur Yildirim. "With V-Tent, your car is protected from environmental effects, safe, and getting charged."

The material has three layers. On the outside, flexible solar panels generate electricity to charge the car. A second layer is composed of reflective material. And a third has "a pattern with micro ventilation tubes" to prevent build up of excess heat, and protect the EV’s integrity.

The design was recognized at last year’s Green Dot Awards. There are no immediate plans to commercialize it--though Yildirim says there have been "some offers" that "we will be discussing.

Dutch designer Hella Jongerius has created a new cabin interior for Dutch airline KLM, including textiles inspired by the Milky Way and carpets made from recycled uniforms. (more...)