Marcin Jakubowski and his lovely wife Katarina are leading the Open Building Institute (OBI) to take open-source to a new level with housing. The organization’s mission is to “make affordable, ecological housing accessible to everyone” and enables aspiring homeowners to build a modular starter home for $25,000. Marcin and team have continued over the years developing the Global Village Construction set to build civilization from scratch. The new Eco-Building Tookit project takes this idea to put a sustainable spin on the traditional modular home building through a formula developed for rapid builds. Like modular homes, you can build a home using building materials that fit together like puzzle pieces and…
Use to be, for a little ambiance, we just needed a time-travelling legwax salesman to unbutton the top two-buttons of his disco shirt… WAIT a minute, that would be the opposite of ambiance. That would be the 5th most uncomfortable situation imaginable. If you want ambiance, you need to check out this model created by Tamas Jager, who apparently designs tube benders and pizza oiling stations when he’s not designing uber-cool wall lighting. Tamas has created a simple 3d model for a wall mounted light design that combines sleek and modern with a dash of brilliant. The circular ring light is designed to mount in a corner, around a corner…
According to designers Piergiorgio Robino and Andrea Sanna of Italy-based Studio Nucleo, the best way to learn about an object is to construct it yourself. Frankly, we couldn’t agree more. But what about growing an object yourself? Robino and Sanna’s TERRA! Growing Furniture collection might be a good place to start. Having originally appeared at the Milan Salone Satellite in 2000, the living grass furniture collection since went on tour around the world at various high design events. Now, the industrial designers want everybody to be able to grow their own grass furniture and have turned to Kickstarter to launch their TERRA! Growing Furniture Kits. Made with support from a…
Think of the basic parts to a pen. A tub and some ink. We use to use feather quills and an ink bottle. Now it’s highly engineered mechanisms with an endless choice of ink cartridges. Where’s the happy medium? Looking for a minimal, yet well-design led me to take a look at the Ensso Uno, a no frills writing pen + pencil that’s about as minimal as you can get without tossing the tube to use the ink cartridge alone. If this pen sounds familiar, it’s because this is actually the second iteration of the widely successful Pen Uno. This version features a 5.3mm diameter space-grade aluminum housing with a…
A few weeks ago I started using a SpaceMouse Wireless. It does not disappoint. It’s every bit as quick, responsive, and sensitive as the other 3DConnexion goodness, but it fits in a case about the size of your average bar room beef slider, and look, ma! No wires!
This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist knocks you in the pop sockets with head-boppin’ groove tuneage to help propel you through the work week in style. Whether you find yourself inking markers until they’re dry, grinding material through a bandsaw or working that 3D geometry all day, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week we’ll start things off with “Colored Emotions” from Night Moves and work our way through tracks from Baths, Jape, Javelin, Willy Mason, Hotel Eden and others before wrapping up with “So Weit Wie Noch Nie” from Jürgen Paape. Have suggestions? As always, let us know what you listen to, what you want…