Completed in 1912, Portland’s Steel Bridge is the only double-deck bridge with independent lifts in the world and the second oldest vertical-lift bridge in North America – after the nearby Hawthorne Bridge just a stone’s throw down the Willamette River. For his 3rd-grade son’s recent school project, our woodworking YouTuber Frank Howarth of Frank Makes recently took on the task of building a scale model of the iconic Portland bridge– well, helping his son build a scale model using AutoCAD and his shop’s CNC router. Unsurprisingly, the result is rather clean for a 3rd-graders project, but what else would you expect from a dad that has a woodshop like Frank’s? https://youtu.be/c-ImV8Sb3UI…

As athletes that rely wholeheartedly on nature to make or break a good day in the water, the surfing community has consistently been among the most active when it comes to preserving our oceans and keeping environmental threats at bay. Ironically, the materials used to produce the very boards they ride on also contain some of the most harmful pollutants known to man. As both a surfer and a designer with a strong sustainability and material science background, João Teixeira of Portugal recently set out to design a better surfboard that was more in line with the environmental concerns of eco-conscious surfers. The result – which was done in collaboration with…

My parents often joke that there were five things I was holding in my hand at birth. I have no idea why it was only five, or what they all were, but one of them was a crane cabin joystick. That’s right, a joystick you would see in a flippin’ tower crane.

If you’ve never been across the pond, then you have probably never seen of The ArcelorMittal Orbit. Looking like a sort of towering behemoth from an H.P. Lovecraft story, the ArcelorMittal Orbit is a 376 foot sculpture and observation tower in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London. At 115 meters (22 meters taller than the Statue of Liberty), it’s the largest piece of public art in Great Britain and was erected to represent the lasting legacy of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. The sculpture is already breathtaking in itself, but now the piece is about to get even more amazing. It’s getting a slide.

As the latest in digital fabrication technologies – such as 3D printing in multiple materials – become more affordable and widespread, the promise of a supply chain-disrupting distributed manufacturing future – at least, for some products – continues to look more promising. As we continue to navigate the landscape of 3D printing and other digital fabrication technologies making their way into the consumer market, more often than not we’re finding that the limitations aren’t so much rooted in the technology itself but rather, are the designs even marketable and desirable regardless of how they are manufactured? Founded by New York-based designers Joe Doucet, Dean Disimone and Evan Clabots, OTHR is a…

While their parents may have invested in furniture sets that are designed to last decades, many of today’s young urban dwellers are turning down purchasing heirloom-quality goods that require moving trucks and in favor of functional and cheap solutions that can be packed easily for a somewhat nomadic and unpredictable lifestyle. For recent Falmouth University graduate Sam Wrigley, this shift in consumer mindset resulted in an idea that he’s spent the last year developing in the form of CRISSCROSS. The range of modular furniture – which is designed to “adapt to people’s lives rather than tie them down” – consists of a simple ecosystem of parts that can be used…