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In breaking bathroom news: Dutch designers have come up with a 4-person female urinal. Molly blogged about porta potty alternatives for women after enduring Great Restroom Challenge that is the Bonaroo music festival. But unlike the PortaJane, “first portable restroom designed specifically ‘For Women Only,’” the new Pollee urinal (via Dezeen) seats four gals at a time.
I recently checked out an excellent TED talk from Alex Steffen of Worldchanging.com. In the clip below, Alex addresses the subject of a sustainable future (and what it will take to achieve one). This wide-reaching presentation touches on numerous issues, from the emergence of megacities to patterns of technology adoption and brilliant inventions built to empower [...]
Tower of Nests: The Smelly Apartment of the Future
by Josh Clark | April 26, 2011
If you’ve ever wanted to step out on the balcony of your ¥3300-a-month high-rise apartment in downtown Shanghai and inhale deeply the smell of bird poop right next to your face and maybe get a wasp caught in your hair, then, mister, are you going to be happy with this post. As a web log posting on Design Addict tells it, the people at Swedish firm Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture have designed a green high rise that tackles the issue of balancing urban density and nature in the same spot.
If there is one thing that Digg and Gawker have taught us with their redesigns, it’s this: If you run a major website, you should consider making changes to the design carefully, incrementally and with audience permission/buy-in. If you don’t do this, you risk losing your audience. This article tells the tale for Gawker, which [...]
Baja SAE is a competition for college students – the goal is to design, build and race a Baja-style car, as shown here: Power comes from a 10 HP overhead valve Briggs&Stratton engine Building a typical Baja SAE car from the frame up: Why is Baja SAE important? This video is a long explanation of [...]
Public Design: That bridge is putting you in a bad mood
by Josh Clark | February 7, 2011
Sometimes what will surely be dull turns out to be entralling, (which, as we’ve learned, is a word derived from the Old Norse word thrall, or slave), as was the case when we recorded a podcast on urban planning. We were surprised to learn the topic was of great interest. It also landed SYSK a copy of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, which proves the converse of what the urban planning podcast did and may end up being one of those rare subjects where the movie is better than the book.
Every escalator you have ever seen in your life has been straight. Now, thanks to a new invention from Britain, it is possible to build curving escalators that include moving sidewalks, landings, etc. as a bonus, as shown here: It’s like a merge between the traditional escalator and the curving moving sidewalk (also see in [...]
A different way to build a house #59 – Making the most of small apartment spaces
by Marshall Brain | September 27, 2010
You may recall the amazing “transformer apartment”:
A tiny apartment with moving walls becomes 24 different spaces
Now there is a new take on this idea using rolling walls on tracks, similar to the mechanism seen here…
The poor in Oceania get cool, functional design
by Josh Clark | September 23, 2010
If you ever find yourself down and out in East Timor or the Marshall Islands, look for this gigantic structure and you’ll know you’ve found a place with food and water. The people over at DesignAddict posted a cool article about a new communal shelter by Australian designer Esan Rahmani. The structure is made entirely of bamboo, which was a good choice by Rahmani, since it was designed for impoverished groups in the Pacific Rim, where bamboo grows aplenty.
After doing this post…
Unbelievable double-decker 225MPH train proposed for Britain
…I was poking around in the train space and came across the following video, which blew my mind. It blows my mind because I don’t think I ever would have thought to reverse the concept of a train like this. Maybe it will blow your mind as well…
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