Author Archive
Archetypal House to the Extreme
I’ve recently been working on this project in Berkeley where we’ve abstracted the archetypal house in a modern way. You can see our design for this cottage here shrouded by the palm trees.
Herzog and DeMeuron take this archetypal house to the extreme by extruding the form out like house “logs’ and stacking the logs up [...]
Hacking and Cracking the Leapfrog Tag Junior
Recently, my mother in law gave my son a tag junior from leapfrog. This toy is magic. You just set the device down on a leapfrog book, and it will read the text of the book or identify any of the images in the book. For instance, if you place the device over a picture [...]
Gift Guide: Sex Toys
Christmas is just around the corner, and it recently occurred to me that a wonderful gift you might consider giving to your lady-friend is a device that can produce ecstasy. I must admit to you, I have not tried any of these stimulating devices myself. In fact, I’ve only chosen them based upon their innovative [...]
Gift Guide 1: A Blast from the Past
Below is one of my first holiday gift guides from 2007. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed re-reading it. Oh, the opulence! This will be gift guide number uno, but I hope to do ten this year and make them fun. Please feel free to comment and leave some gift [...]
ora watch by alexandros stasinopoulos
This really is one of the freshest and most novel concepts for a watch I’ve seen in a while. The watch by Alexandros Stasinopoulos portrays three intertwined tape measures that move with the time. I have not quite figured how to describe the relation between time and space, but I’m sure there is one.
I’ve always [...]
Table garden brings new perception to the dining table.
I saw this at Yatzer, and I really appreciated the above piece for where it brought my imagination. The piece by metal garden furniture DeCastelli is not meant to be a dining table, I don’t think. I think it’s meant as pure vision of landscape on a miniature scale. But it occurred to me that [...]
Clock by Simon Lumb Not Fully Baked
I saw this clock on one of the design blogs, and I fell for it. The simplicity is commendable. The clock face is soothing in it’s movements. Then, I watched the you tube video on Mr. Lumb’s site, and I developed a slightly different opinion of this time piece. Here’s my insignificant complaint: at certain [...]
CHINA DESIGN NOW at PAM
China Design Now is a broad review of China’s contemporary design, fashion, and architecture which is on exhibit at PAM in Portland, OR through the next few months.
The show is broken into three categories which revolve around the three major cities: Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing. From what i’ve seen, there is no real opportunity to [...]
Temporary Architecture: A Palio Dinner
I’ve been bored lately with just talking about design objects. I’m an architect, and I’ve recently been obsessed with what I’m calling “temporary architecture”. Temporary architecture , to me, is simply the space created and removed over a short period of time, like for an event.
So I ask you all, dear readers, to tell me [...]
Osloh Jeans: Cycling Becomes Truly Fashionable
i apologize in advance for sending out so many bicycle obsessed links, but i really like how thoughtful these new cycling jeans are. There are so many design decisions made here which advance the cyclist’s sensibilities into actual clothing. Please have a look at the link below, and you will see the various good ideas [...]
urbanSHED International Design Competition
NYC is sponsoring a design competition focused on re-inventing the construction sheds that cover sidewalks all over New York. The competition brief claims that over a million linear feet of the shed structures exist at any given time around the city. I’m really looking forward to the entrants simply because this is one design problem [...]
chris chapman: roll-out vegetable garden
I do not have a green thumb. However, i love trying to grow plants. I’m very thoughtless with my planting. I just stick some seeds in the ground whenever without any sense of how many and how far aart the seeds need to be. Now, Chris Chapman has invented a way that I can plant [...]
sungho lee: LED pin
I saw the clothespin light, and I wondered to myself, “OK, it’s a clothespin and a light. So what?”. Now it all makes sense after seeing this image.
sungho lee: LED pin.
Surgical Masks with Flair (Scary!)
With the recent outbreak of swine flu, I’ve seen more proposals for re-inventing the surgical mask to be more fashion conscious. This mask, on the other hand, is just downright disturbing. And the mask really don’t give me confidence in my dentist’s ability to work on my teeth. Sure, this may be to calm children, [...]
Architecture for wine addicts to lust over
Most people’s wine cellars have been relegated to the garage, but if you have the cash I would suggest you go for the super sexy trap door wine cellar. Why do this? because you can.
Cool Hidden Spiral Wine Cellars.
Items – Kavellaris Urban Design
I’ve see this beautiful house around the internet, and I know right off that it is one of the freshest combinations of graphic design and architecture that I’ve see in a long time. There used to be a time when graphics went hand in hand with the structure itself such as the sistine chapel’s paintings. [...]
