Junior Mechanical Designer
Heavy Industries
Calgary, Canada

Heavy Industries is seeking a Junior Mechanical Designer to complement our existing Design Team. This is your opportunity to turn concepts from Public Artists, Architects, & Professional Designers from a variety of industries into one-of-a-kind art & architectural elements. In Heavy's world, iconic design & creative places are built without compromise.

On a darkened on-ramp to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I once hit a pothole so deep that it dented the rim of my Integra. Years later, on a stretch of Lafayette Street near City Hall, I hit another pothole with so much force that the Golf I was driving freaking deployed the passenger-side airbag. Google the word "pothole" and the number one link is to Wikipedia's description. The number two link is to New York City's Department of Transportation website.

The NYC DOT's Pothole Gang (probably not their official name) fixes up to 4,000 potholes a day. Their goal is to fix them as fast as they find them. And to find them, they rely on agitated motorists like me taking the time out of our day to report a pothole's location to the DOT's website.

Designer Ajay Rao doesn't live in New York (he hails from India), but he's proposed an interesting way to passively create a pothole database. As an entrant in Local Motors' BMW Urban Driving Experience Challenge, a design competition seeking ways to turn BMWs and MINIs into "a socially responsible machine that contributes to our global well-being," Rao conceptualized a system whereby drivers intentionally aim to hit potholes.

The idea behind Rao's "Beamer" concept is that the car's suspension is specifically designed to cope with pothole impacts, and once the pothole event occurs, a sensor goes off and your car radios the pothole's coordinates in to the authorities. For performing this service, the driver receives some type of tax credit or points on a BMW debit card.

Imagine you had to build four towers, one of them nearly the tallest in Manhattan, on top of nearly a dozen active train tracks—without disrupting the daily train traffic. That's the challenge faced by Brookfield Properties, the developers of the Manhattan West project a block west of Penn Station, and their team: The architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, mechanical engineering firm Laros, Baum & Bolles and railroad & civil engineering outfit Parsons Transportation.

Here's the wicked proposed solution:

I found the proposal fascinating, even as I asked myself: Who the hell wants to live in the west 30s?

Who's the sexier guy/gal in the furniture making process: The artsy designer furiously scribbling in their overstuffed sketchbook, or the sawdust-covered craftsperson with their array of amazing tools?

I'll tell you who it ain't: The finisher. You can probably name tons of designers and craftspeople, but not one famous finisher. No one brags that they own a chair that was finished by Lynn C. Doyle. The finisher is the most slept-on person in the furniture process, yet provides that crucial protective coat and determines the final texture and color of the piece.

Here's a video of furniture finishing vet Brian Miller, an instructor at the William Ng School of Fine Woodworking, a well-regarded institution in Southern California. Miller explains how to apply a simple but effective hand-rubbed finish using stuff you can get at the local hardware store. (He also advises you on the proper way to dispose of those troublesome oily rags. I like to throw mine in the corner near a stack of old newspapers next to the furnace, but I guess Miller's way makes sense too.)

The curse of the designer: You sit at the bar quaffing your favorite brew after a long day at the studio, then the light hits the stein just right... and you start wondering what the C, M, Y and K numbers are of this particular beer. Well, wonder no more—the Beertone color reference guide aims to do for beer what Pantone has done for everything else in the world: Assign it a specific color value.

For now the Swiss-based venture has only quantified Swiss-made brews, but they've got plans to expand beyond their borders and are taking suggestions. There's no word on when the 200-plus swatch booklet will begin shipping, but they're taking pre-orders right here.

Simplehuman's new stainless steel Sensor Mirror is designed for individual makeup application, featuring a circular LED illuminator that "simulates natural sunlight," by which I assume they mean it's daylight-rated. The 5× mirror's light source is wireless, and interestingly they've designed it to be recharged via USB; perhaps the rise of YouTube makeup tutorials means more people are putting their face on next to their PC?

As for the product's name, there's no on/off switch—the little detector up top senses your mug and powers up. Step out of frame and it powers down. The light is reportedly "super bright," yet will last an estimated one month between charges. And yes, the mirror's tiltable.

Simplehuman dipped their foot in the pool by selling the Sensor Mirror online starting last month, and it quickly sold out. But it's projected to hit store shelves this March.

It's been a while since we looked in on woodworker/inventor Matthias Wandel, and the man has not been idle. One of his recent contraptions that caught our eye is his Router Copy Carver, an ingenious sliding mount that you can use with a palm router to trace 3D objects; it's essentially a pantograph with a Bosch Colt as the copying head.

The best part is that Wandel shows you how he built the thing, step by step, and you're bound to be impressed by some of his solutions, like a trio of rollerblade bearings arranged in a triangle to hold the crossbar in position while allowing smooth travel. He's even designed a box to hold counterweights opposite the router to prevent fatigue during extended use.

Here's Part 1, where he builds the router-holding carriage that will handle the X- and Z-axes:

Core77's Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club kicks off our first meeting in 2013 with very special guest Matt Reed of Bee Thinking, whose expertise in beekeeping, hive construction and honey bee behavior is celebrated by both Portland's beekeepers and the international beekeeping community.

Tonight's talk starts at 6 at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with us online for the live broadcast!

Matt Reed
Bee Thinking: "Natural Beekeeping with Top Bar and Warré Hives"
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209
Tuesday, January 22nd, 6PM PST

A backyard hive can be a simple, fun and manageable addition to your yard, garden, or roof! Both the Top Bar and Warré are foundationless hives that allow bees to build their own combs as they would in nature. Matt will talk about the advantages of choosing foundationless, and treatment free beekeeping by including information on honeybee biology, management techniques and seasonal recommendations. Honeybees are an opportunistic species that Matt loves to demystify through his stories, facts and research. His presentation style is informative and relaxed, where the audience will undoubtedly glean applicable knowledge for new or existing hives. After listening, you may fall in love with honeybees as Matt did years ago, or at the very least, earn a new appreciation for the species and its work.

Matt's philosophy is simple. The chief end of beekeeping should be to provide the bees with the ideal environment in which to thrive. To do this, the beekeeper must engross his or her mind with a wide range of bee-related information detailing the bee life cycle, history, hive design, management and innumerable other topics of importance. Without this knowledge, it is unlikely that the bees or the keeper will have success in their endeavors.

Matt Reed is the owner of Bee Thinking, a sustainable beekeeping supply store for backyard beekeepers located in SE Portland. Bee Thinking was founded in 2008 as an internet resource for beekeepers throughout the world. At the same time he began mass-producing foundationless Top Bar and Warre hives for his own apiary. Soon he had a great deal of interest from many people who were getting involved in foundationless beekeeping, so he began selling the same hives that he uses to those in the beekeeping community. Today, he sells these hives to people all over the world.

The NYC Mayor's Office has just announced the winner of the adAPT NYC design competition, which sought designs for liveable micro-apartments. nARCHITECTS' "My Micro NY" design, which specifies modular units from 250 to 370 square feet, has beaten out 33 other submissions to take the top prize. A building assembled from 55 of these units will be erected in Manhattan at an unspecified date in the future, and when it does, it will be Manhattan's first multiunit modular building.

While no project page for the "MY Micro NY" design was available at press time, the apartment plans will go on exhibit tomorrow as part of the Museum of the City of New York's "Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers" exhibit.

Stratasys, whose Objet printers we checked out here, and fellow digital manufacturing company Materialise have teamed up with fashion designer Iris van Herpen to create some unusual clothes for Paris Fashion Week. Van Herpen's "Voltage" show featured two rapid-prototyped dresses: The first was a cape and skirt created with the help of MIT Media Lab's Neri Oxman and 3D printed by Stratasys. The second, created with the help of Austrian architect Julia Koerner, was laser sintered by Materialise.

The 3D printed skirt and cape were produced using Stratasys' unique Objet Connex multi-material 3D printing technology, which allows a variety of material properties to be printed in a single build. This allowed both hard and soft materials to be incorporated within the design, crucial to the movement and texture of the piece.

"The ability to vary softness and elasticity inspired us to design a "second skin" for the body acting as armor-in-motion; in this way we were able to design not only the garment's form but also its motion," explains Oxman. "The incredible possibilities afforded by these new technologies allowed us to reinterpret the tradition of couture as "tech-couture" where delicate hand-made embroidery and needlework is replaced by code."

Director, User Experience
Comcast
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Comcast UX team is seeking a passionate and innovative Creative Director with expertise in user-centered design principles and experience with industrial and package design. The ideal candidate will lead ideation and create UX strategies across multiple platforms and drive activities related to interaction and industrial design of hardware products related to the many efforts the Comcast UX team supports.

There are people who want to own a truck, and people who need to own a truck. I'm of the opinion that you can get rid of the former, but not the latter; while American truck sales are slowing down for the first time in years, either due to the high cost of gas or the stigma of owning an environmentally-unfriendly vehicle, my theory is that the wannabes are simply being weeded out while the need-to-bes are standing firm. If you work in one of the trades, or feed your family by doing something that requires you have a strong back, chances are you need a truck. The green movement is not going to sway you and you just curse more at the gas pump.

Since the trades aren't going away (God willing), how can we resolve environmental responsibility with the need to drive big-ass vehicles? One promising answer comes from Via Motors, a sort of automotive co-developer that takes Detroit's existing machines and renders them, through technical wizardry, electrified.

Because Via modifies existing trucks, that means you can get the big-ass Silverado with the Crew Cab, or a GMC Suburban if you need to haul enclosed loads, or a GMC cargo van if you need to abduct shrill environmentalists, and still clock about 100 miles per gallon. Via vehicles will go for 40 miles before the gas engine even kicks in, making it the perfect local runabout; should you need to travel further distances, the gas engine will carry you another 300 miles before you need to tank up.

As for power, Via's Vtrux (the hacked Silverado) produces 402 horsepower, so you can throw both Little Sal and Big Sal in the crew cab while still hauling a half-ton in the bed. But here's the real killer app: For those working in remote locations without electricity--you've undoubtedly seen utility trucks hauling those wheeled generators behind them--the vehicle doubles as a generator. That means you can leave the gennie in the garage and plug your power tools directly into the truck. You can also, in a blackout, use the vehicle to power your house.

The only thing that will prevent individuals from jumping on the Via bandwagon right away is the asking price, which is estimated to start at 79 large. You can make that up in fuel savings over time, depending on how much you drive, but that's a big nut for a lone tradesperson to cover. I'm hoping Via sets up a financing branch with attractive rates, at least until their manufacturing costs come down enough for the regular Joe to buy in.

In the meantime they're targeting the people who can cover the nut and will realize the long-term savings: Fleet owners.

Via is currently taking pre-orders for $1,000 a pop. Deliveries are estimated for mid-2013.

Here's a look at their vehicles (and a test drive) taken by Jay Leno and featuring Via CEO Bob Lutz, of GM and Chrysler fame:

Philadelphia-based James McNabb, who runs furniture design/build studio McNabb & Co., doesn't let wood cut-offs go to waste; instead he goes at them with the bandsaw. The resultant forms, produced from the process he calls "sketching with a band saw," resemble buildings:

Thus was born McNabb's City Series...

...a collection of wood sculptures that represent a woodworker's journey from the suburbs to the city. Each piece depicts the outsider's perspective of the urban landscape. Made entirely of scrap wood, this work is an interpretation of making something out of nothing. Each piece is cut intuitively on a band saw. The result is a collection of architectural forms, each distinctly different from the next.

In a surprising article from yesterday, Forbes contributor Peter Cohan, an author, former management consultant and former venture capitalist, has suggested that Apple's Tim Cook should step down. Falling profits, Cohan writes, suggest Cook is not up to the task of helming the company; he goes on to suggest that Jonathan Ive would be a good replacement. "Now it's time," Cohan writes, "for Apple's board to put the person with design skill in the CEO job."

My first thought was no. And I say that out of appreciation for Ive and his skill set. Ive's impact on the current product landscape cannot be underestimated, and he was able to do those things because he was doing his thing—designing.

The late Steve Jobs made it clear, in his Walter-Isaacson-penned biography, that he had set things up so that Ive would have uncontested design power following Jobs' departure; that is to say, no one, not even Cook, would have the power to challenge Ive's designs. So why on Earth would we want to tie the man up in a managerial position?

With the current headaches Apple faces—patent trolls, a market nearing saturation—they'll surely need a new generation of innovative products to break out of their profits slump. They're going to need good design, and they've already got the perfect man for that job.

Your thoughts?

It's time to get cracking on those entries because the Earlybird deadline is right around the corner!

Submit your work by next Thursday, January 31st and you'll not only be putting your best work in front of an exciting lineup of talented Jury Captains, but you'll also get the nifty Earlybird discount of 20% off your entry fee! With 17 great categories and an option to create a video testimonial, there's an opportunity for everyone to share their story with the world. And of course, all winners will receive the awesome trophy.

The Core77 Design Awards is open to Professionals, Students and DIYers all around the globe, so don't delay—prepare and submit your best work now!

Despite me being sick of sawdust, I'm aware that my annoyance is trivial; other people have it much worse. Steampunk object fabricator Jake von Slatt, for instance, discovered that he had developed an adult-onset allergy to pine sawdust--not good when you spend a lot of time working pine on the table saw and sander.

Complicating things, "I can't use a conventional respirator," von Slatt explains, "because I sport a beard and a normal respirator or nuisance dust mask will not properly seal to my face. For painting I've always used a Pro-Air Supplied Air Respirator that deliveres fresh air to me via its 50 foot hose. However, walking around the wood shop dragging a 50 foot hose gets old real quick."

In search of the raw materials for a hackaround, von Slatt snagged this gas mask on eBay.

Trying it on, he found the face seal accommodated his beard, but there was another problem. "The temples of my glasses would not fit past the seals," he writes. Hence hack #1: He found an older pair of glasses, took the stems off, and mounted them inside the respirator using a cable hold down and piano wire. "The glasses are allowed to slide up and down on the piano wire so they rest comfortably on my nose," he explains.

Remember the wicked Ludovico Office space-saving desk and chair? It was designed by Uruguayan industrial designer Claudio Sibille. We just came across Sensei, another of Sibille's space-saving designs, this one even more heavily Modernist-looking.

The chairs, which you can break out when you've got company, also serve as a nifty table:

No word on if these will see production or if they're just a concept. If you're reading this, Sibille, hit us up with some facts (and shore up that Coroflot page!).

Boston-based architecture firm NADAAA designed the residence above in the Modernist style, but using lots of wood where I'd have expected concrete and glass, if I'd only seen line drawings. What most caught my eye are the subtle ways they've chosen to detail the otherwise plain boards:

I wanted to see more, but photos of the property are sparse. On NADAAA's website, however, they've got more innovative takes on wood construction, like their interesting Oro Bookshelf. A traditional bookshelf has a panel on the back that squares up the frame, but NADAAA wanted a pass-through bookshelf, meaning they needed to build extra strength into the corners. And rather than shoring them up with traditional joinery, they incorporated these bent plywood braces:

Sometimes when you come home drunk, it's all you can do to get your keys in the door. I'm guessing YouTube user Oggfaba never comes home drunk, or she would not have added this additional challenge to her house:

There's no word on why she did it, though she did list the materials she used to build it, and even links to some of the products:

- Standard fiberglass exterior door.

- Red cedar (won't rot, but lighter than pressure treated). Three 2x4s, ripped to 3" to form a frame to offset the siding, mounted to the door using 3" lag screws and fender washers (fender washers used to prevent the bolts from tearing through the fiberglass door).

- HardiPlank siding.

- Morning Industry Keypad and Remote Deadbolt.

- Ball Catch (holds the door shut without needing a turn-able doorknob).

- Richelieu 1-1/2-in x 1-1/2-in Satin Nickel Surface Cabinet Hinge (two).

- Hose bib (used as as the exterior door handle... no working plumbing connected).

- Interior doorknob is a dummy knob (used for pulling the door open but doesn't actually latch).

My knee-jerk reaction was that posting video of a secret entrance on the internet makes it not so secret, as dozens of YouTube commenters were quick to point out. But one commenter puts us all in our place: "All of you are retards," s/he writes. "You don't even know where this house is located. You don't even have the remote and I'm pretty sure that the code they used on the video was changed."

When we first spotted NADAAA Architects' Bob Sidetable and Edna Desk, we thought ah, sure, we've seen plywood stacked to create solid forms before.

It gets a little more interesting with their Gomez Coffee Table, where the stacked sheets unexpectedly give birth to a flowing lower shelf: