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Where Pinterest and Polar Vortex Meet: DIY Crampons

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Last week Portland got hit by what the locals fearfully called a "snowpocalypse" and which was in fact eight inches of snow and a day of freezing sleet. In solidarity with places plagued by real winter or surprising bouts of icy climate change, I present an excellent solution to your outdoor woes: DIY crampons.

Crampons, for those of you too urbane to scale mountains in your free time, are the pronged device strapped to your feet to provide traction over ice or difficult ground. It's what you wish you had every time you accidentally skate down the sidewalk while your life flashes before your eyes. They've been used in some form since ye old Roman days, and really picked up steam in the 18th century when the idea of climbing dangerous ice covered peaks caught on as an enjoyable hobby for bored aristocrats.

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Flotspotting: Kibum Park's Awesome Urban Residences

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You undoubtedly remember those slick renderings for the Lowline, the still-in-progress underground NYC park tentatively scheduled for a 2018 opening. The renderings were done by architect Kibum Park, a partner at James Ramsey's RAAD, a firm that "[focuses] on single and multi-family residential, commercial and hospitality projects." Well, turns out Park's got a Coroflot page, loaded up with renders of some bee-yootiful hotels, restaurants, houses and apartments, the latter being the ones that most caught our eye.

The clients are of course anonymous and text descriptions are largely absent, but the images do most of the talking. Check out this NYC penthouse with its crazy, sun-dappled, yurt-like master bedroom with elevated library:

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This Week in Acrophilia: In Observance of Chinese New Year, Russian Daredevils Scale 2,000-ft. Shanghai Tower, and Man on Wire on Hot Air Balloons

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As a first generation Chinese-American living in NYC (the fabled Greater New York Combined Statistical Area has the largest concentration in the States), I have no excuse for not celebrating my cultural heritage during the most important holiday of the year. A low-key Chinese New Year party fit the bill for me, but a pair of Russian "sky-walkers" took it to the next level and then some. It turns out that the major holiday was the perfect window to infiltrate and summit the tallest building in China—and, of course, to document it with photos and GoPros.

ShanghaiTower-COMP-1.jpgL: Rendering of the finished tower; R: Photo by Vitaliy Raskalov

Currently under construction, the Gensler-designed Shanghai Tower was topped out at 2,073 ft (632m) just six months ago and is on track to open in 2015. Along with the Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center (a.k.a. the Bottle Opener), the new supertall will anchor the city's Pudong business district—which was farmland 25 years ago, until it was declared a "Special Economic Zone" in 1993—and is second to only the Burj Khalifa in the international playing field.

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It reportedly took Vitaliy Raskalov, 20, of Novosibirsk, and his Moscow-based buddy Vadim Makhorov, 24, about two hours to climb the 121 stories of the edifice itself; they spent 18 hours there, waiting for the skies to clear before free-climbing the crane to its apex of 2,132 ft (650m). Makhorov told the Telegraph that "we didn't get any sleep for over 24 hours, it was physically and mentally challenging for the both of us."

We had to wait for hours for the clouds to part, but it was well worth the wait, the view was like something from an aircraft window. As soon as we saw a gap in the clouds were climbed right to the top of the crane and were able to get some great shots of the city below. We were not afraid at all and we have never had any injuries as a result of our sky walking.
As a result of our 'mission,' Our target was to climb the highest tower in China and the seconds highest in the world, it felt amazing to accomplish it, the sky is the limit.

Wow. Such Great Heights. Very vertiginous. Much machismo. So epic.

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Elisa Insua's Assemblage Mosaics Turn Everyday Junk Into Giant Games of 'I Spy'

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If you were one of those kids who grew up thumbing through "I Spy" books until the pages were worn and torn (or bedtime came around—whichever came first), you'll definitely appreciate the found objects in Elsa Insua's assemblage mosaics. Insua's work puts all kinds of junk to good use, from miniature rubber ducks to plastic toy dinosaurs.

AssemblageMosaic-Dino.jpg"Jurassic Punk"

A 22-year-old self-taught artist hailing from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Insua has taken the notion of "mixed media" to heart. This particular series features a range of pop culture icons like Darth Vader and Barbie all the way to more common eye candy like sticky sweet donuts and pearl-adorned ice cream cones.

AssemblageMosaic-Comp2copy.jpg"The Great Temptation" (left) and "Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice" (right)

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Washing Machines Can Be Strangely Confusing, But Peter Fabor is Here to Save the Day (And Our Clothes)

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We've all been there—befuddled by the many options the washing machine has to offer and envisioning the possible horrors that could arise with the push of a wrong button. It's a scenario that's generally resolved with a quick phone call to mom or a web search. Convinced that there had to be a better way, Peter Fabor, UX designer at Avast Antivirus and founder of The Surf Office, has come up with the straight-forward washing machine design we've all been Google searching for.

WashingMachine-Confusion.jpgFrom digital to dials, there isn't anything easy about cleaning your clothes the "right way"

After a bit of personal research into the realm of washing machine confusion, Fabor found a fact from the Daily Mail that put his project into motion: "58% of British men can't use a washing machine properly because they find the household appliance confusing." Even more, the headline on the Daily Mail's coverage states that a quarter of British men can't even mange turning the machine on. I'm sure that statistic reaches much further than the British—I for one have been known to tie-die many white shirts while trying to wash them and I'm an American lady.

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Face the Ice with Style

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Everyone gets a bit stir crazy during the winter, but the least we can do is use it to our advantage. Some of us make elaborate travel plans for warmer days, some compulsively reorganize our possessions and workspaces, most of us spend a lot of time researching large quantities of alcohol. And then there are people like Baku Maeda, an artist whose frustration with the cold leaves ours in the slush.

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To Serve and Protect (Hot Drinks): The RoboCup

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Sure, it's just a coffee mug with an extra piece of ceramic stuck to it, and two squiggly lines representing a stern mouth. But with a catchphrase like "DEAD OR ALIVE, YOU'RE DRINKING A TEA," the RoboCup aims to win over those of us raised in the '80s with its persuasive copy:

- Generously sized crime-fighting vessel—half man, half mug
- Drink away those haunting submerged memories
- Made from a superhuman hybrid of flesh, steel and ceramics
- Produced by OmniCup
- I'd buy that for a dollar! But for you, a mere £12.99

That's US $21.59, which we recognize is kinda steep (no pun intended) for a mug, and twice the price of a ticket to see the new Joel Kinnaman version. But unlike that 49%-on-Rotten-Tomatoes reboot, this mug will actually hold water (pun intended). It's for sale on Firebox.

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Nike to Release Marty McFly's Back to the Future 2 MAGs--With Power Lace Feature!

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In 2011 Nike released the Nike MAGs, based on the design of the kicks Michael J. Fox wore in Back to the Future 2. Supply of the limited-edition sneakers were constrained to boost value, as proceeds were sent to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, netting some $6 million.

While the production MAGs looked like what McFly wore in the movie, they lacked the cool self-lacing feature dreamt up by an imaginative designer (possibly the movie's Costume Designer Joanna Johnston, Production Designer Rick Carter or Art Director Margie Stone McShirley). However, the sneakerhead corner of the blogosphere is currently abuzz with fresh news: Nike designer Tinker Hatfield was quoted at a recent event on whether the MAGs would be re-released for 2015, the year that McFly wore the kicks in the movie. Here's the one sentence of Hatfield's making the rounds:

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Design File 007: François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne

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In this series, Matthew Sullivan (AQQ Design) highlights some designers that you should know, but might not. Previously, he looked at the work of Dan Friedman.

François-Xavier Lalanne: Born in Agen, France, 1927. Died in Ury, France, 2008. Claude Lalanne: Born in Paris, France, 1924.

Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne are part of a long, brilliant tradition of Western dilettantes. That is, they are part of a stream of the thoroughly interested sort, who, having deeply submerged themselves in literature, the fine arts and various histories—ancient, lateral and celestial—surfaced with delight and an impish sense of how things aren't. For the Lalannes, in the company of other folly-makers like Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Prince Pier Francesco Orsini, Piero Fornasetti and Jean Cocteau, were not concerned with bolstering existing conventions of how we eat or how we sit or ultimately how we see and think, but playfully inverting norms and exaggerating ordinary aspects to fantastic effect.

Claude and François-Xavier met in Paris in the early 1950s, at an exhibition of François-Xavier's paintings. They were together until his death in 2008. Their working practice was fairly unique, as they always kept separate studios—Claude preferring to express flora in hers and François-Xavier giving form to strange fauna in his. But quite early on they eschewed first names, and all subsequent work (no matter the creator) was to bear the mark of only "Lelanne." They were close friends, personally and idealistically, with many of the leading artists of midcentury Paris (Yves Tinguely, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Salvador Dali). François-Xavier's first studio was even adjacent to Constantin Brâncusi's—interestingly enough, he took the studio as a painter and left a sculptor.

DesignFile-Lalannes-2.jpgAbove: François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne. Top image: sheep stools from 1974

DesignFile-Lalannes-3.jpgMore sheep stools in the Lalannes' Gae Aulenti–designed apartment, seen in 1966 (left) and 1969

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One Nation, Under Ice

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The jury is out on the practice of raising the windshield wipers during snowy/icy conditions: it's intended to prevent the blades from freezing to the glass, but some say that it's not worth the trouble. Raised like antennae, they could well be sensors activated by atmospheric conditions, or insect legs, a gesture of beseeching the firmament for respite or simply resigning to a snowy fate.

It's been a rough winter by any measure, what with the salt shortages and architecture fails, but I only recently learned that the entire country of Slovenia was essentially covered in ice for several days. The freak storm struck two weeks ago and lasted three days, blanketing the some 8,000 square miles (20,000 km2) with 10cm of ice, causing upwards of €66 milliion in damage, including widespread power outages and ravaging half of the alpine nation's forests.

"Extreme weather chaser" Marko Korosec documented the havoc, as did Reuters' Srdjan Zivulovic; here's a drones's-eye view of Postojna, which was devastated by the storm:

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Bring Your Love of Packaging Design to Soulsight, Where Every Brand Has a Soul

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Work for Soulsight!

The team at Soulsight believe that every brand has a soul. It's what separates Brand X from Brand Y. It's what animates and brings a brand to life because the more soul a brand has, the more it vibrates with an authenticity that is hard to fake. It's also what you'll help them create when you join their team as a Mid-Level Package Designer!

What describes the perfect hire for this role in Chicago, IL? Self starter. Attention to detail. Proficient in Illustrator and Photoshop. Understanding of printing process and production. Most importantly, a LOVE of package design. Being cheerful, a strong leader and having 3 to 7 years of experience helps too! Apply Now.

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Three Olympic Logo Controversies You Probably Didn't Know About

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The Olympics, at bienniale intervals, has slowly but surely grown more digitized. We're not talking about the event broadcasts, slo-mo gymnastic feat gifs or controversial political coverage in the host country—no, we mean the logo design. In an Olympic Games first, the symbol designed for the 2014 Winter Games includes a web address, Sochi.ru, which is home to all things Olympics—stats, event schedules, winners, medal counts, photos; you get the idea.

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If anything, though, this year's logo (which was designed by Interbrand), has been relatively uncontroversial, if not outright bland, compared to some of the other more vibrant Olympic logos through the years.

OlympicLogos-Paris1924.jpgThe Summer 1924 Games in Paris was the first Olympics

Maps of the World has an in-depth look at past logos, but here are some things you probably didn't know about some of the logos in recent memory. The Olympic Games have been through the wringer when it comes to branding, now more than ever before.

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Breaking Down the Core77 Design Awards Student Categories

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We've always been keen to keep students in mind when it comes to our Design Awards program—after all, today's design students are tomorrow's world-changing innovators, entrepreneurs and design superstars, and recognizing them as such has been part of Core's mission since day one. Your fresh, new ideas are exciting to us, so show us what you got! We also know that competing with professionals is tough, so we've created student sections for 15 of our 17 categories. And since we know your budget is tight—we've been there—we're offering a discounted student entry fee of $50 as opposed to the professional fee of $150.

From Consumer Products and Equipment to Interaction and Social Impact, we can't wait to see what you've been working on this year. Submit your work and we might be featuring you next year! Not to mention you'll get this awesome DIY trophy if you're a student winner in your category:

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To give you an idea of just what it takes to get your hands on that sweet precision-milled block of aluminum, here's a closer look at two student designs that were honored in last year's program.

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Misha Kahn on Avoiding Rulers, Letting Design Be Greedy, and Finding the Perfect Equilibrium Between Passion and Flippancy

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This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Karim Rashid.

Name:Misha Kahn

Occupation: Designer

Location: Brooklyn

Current projects: Right now I'm producing a series of lamps for a room made by Bjarne Melgaard for the Whitney Biennial.

Mission: I think that, especially in the U.S., we have such a rigid aesthetic view of how things get built and constructed, and it can be very constraining. So I'm hoping to help infuse the material culture with a little more looseness and an easier, more accessible way of making things.

MishaKahn-QA-2.jpgAbove: Misha Kahn. Top image: Kahn's Neon Table

MishaKahn-QA-3.jpgKahn's Pig Bench, made with urethane resin and layers of trash

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I think, for most people, you kind of stumble into it, because there's not much else that you could be. I dabbled in a lot of things. As a kid, I liked to make Claymation films, with lots of miniature furniture. I also like making clothes a lot, and I segued into making furniture at school. For me, furniture is a really nice scale to work on. You can make it by yourself or with a few people—it's kind of the largest thing that's possible to realize in a very tangible way.

Education: I mostly went to RISD—that's where I got my furniture degree. I also did a Fulbright right after school and took some classes at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.

First design job: My first internship was doing windows at Bergdorf's, which I think had a weird amount of influence on me.

Who is your design hero? I promised my roommate/partner-in-crime Katie Stout that I would say it's her. We're both working in a similar vein, so it's very consoling that there's someone else who sees things in much the same way.

MishaKahn-QA-4.jpgA table from Kahn's Geometric Figures and Solids series

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Production Methods: What's the Difference Between Selective Laser Sintering, Direct Metal Laser Sintering, Laser Melting and LaserCusing?

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As an industrial designer, if you confuse extruding with embossing during a job interview or at an engineering meeting, you'll get some funny looks. But if you screw up the difference between laser sintering and laser melting, you're likely to be given a bit more slack. That's because there's a lot of confusion about the difference between Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and LaserCusing (no sexy acronym), and in fact, some vendors of these technologies themselves do not always draw clear distinctions between their capabilities. As conflicting information is being circulated, here we will attempt to explain the difference between the terms. (And hopefully those of you in our readership directly experienced with these technologies will sound off in the comments.)

First off, all four procedures follow the same basics:

1. A designer/engineer designs a part
2. Software cuts that part up into virtual slices on the horizontal plane
3. A chamber in the production machine is filled with powder
4. A laser runs over the powder, solidifying it and building up a thin layer of material
5. Layer after layer is built up from bottom to top, until the part is finished
6. The leftover powder is re-usable, leaving no waste

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The Joy of Objects That Fit Together Perfectly For No Good Reason

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There's only a slight satisfaction that comes from snapping your smartphone into its case. As designers we know that the case was injection-molded specifically for that phone, with a 0.005" tolerance and some draft angle; in other words, the damn thing is supposed to fit perfectly. Similarly, a diner will enjoy the concept of a turducken more than the chef who put in the elbow grease to cram all of those meats in there.

However, there's a huge amount of satisfaction that comes from slipping one object inside of a second, unrelated object and finding out they fit together perfectly by pure accident. It pushes our OCD buttons and our brain's pleasure centers light up on the MRI. I have no idea why this is, only that it is, and now there's a Tumblr I can't stop looking at called Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things.

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Live and Direct from London: Made in Brunel's 24-Hour Design Challenge

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As we announced last week, Brunel University's top design students have been preparing for a 24-hour design-a-thon, which kicks off right now, at 6pm GMT.

The Made in Brunel 24hr Design Challenge sees 157 students tackle briefs from world renowned companies including Lego, Rolls Royce, IDEO and Seymour Powell. Working under pressure this is an opportunity for us to prove what Brunel designers are capable of.

Tune in below and join the conversation with @MadeinBrunel on Twitter and Vine.

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Frank Collective is Looking for a Design Intern with a Blue Collar Work Ethic and Art School Ideals

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Work for Frank Collective!

Frank Collective is the merging of an agency and a production company. That means they can create a concept (or take an existing concept) and carry it through from production to launch. Pretty cool, eh? This fun, lovely, talented and creative group of people is looking for a Design Intern to round out their Brooklyn, NY team.

This is your chance to dive into the integrated branding and production work they do for a variety of global clients such as Tourneau, Blue Apron, 16 Handles, and Conde Nast. You could be working on anything from a website to web films to mobile apps to motion graphics to installations and ad campaigns. If you have proficiency in the programs/skills listed on the next page, want to work hard and experience life at a very cool agency, you should definitely Apply Right Now.

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Rethinking Personal Mobility: The Ziesel Designer Jan Dornig Shares the Story & Process Behind the New All-Terrain Electric Vehicle

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On paper, the Ziesel simply sounds like a well-conceived alternative mobility solution, something like an off-road version of Professor Xavier's wheelchair. But the rugged electric vehicle is more than just a mere conveyance: The Ziesel can also be used for recreation and industrial purposes and was designed expressly to strike a balance between sustainability and performance without compromising on either count. Designer Jan Dornig offered detailed insight into the thinking behind the Ziesel.

Core77: What was the original project brief or inspiration for the Ziesel? And what does the name mean?

Jan Dornig: Our company, Mattro Mobility Revolutions, was involved in a research project that focused on developing an automated battery exchange system for vehicles and one of our tasks was to build test vehicles. We basically took the battery system, two electric motors and some tracks we had from another project to build the first prototype. Some friends noted that an easily drivable vehicle that can conquer difficult terrain would be great for wheelchair users, which got us seriously interested in developing the Ziesel further. Thus, the innovation of the Ziesel is rooted firmly in its technology. From the beginning, we used powerful, high quality components. While it is a great use to enable people to do more, we always wanted to do more as well and create the Ziesel as an electric, compact and powerful ATV.

"Ziesel" is the German name for a species of ground squirrel—a very agile little thing, which is why we thought it fitting. This use of animal names originated from my first vehicle project, the design of the vehicle while I was at the FH Salzburg, the Steinbock [alpine ibex, a species of mountain goat]. At the time, I was still a student at the university and that was how I got involved with the company. (The final decision was between the wolf and the steinbock, by the way.)

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From the UK, the World's First 3D-Printed Bike Frame

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We've seen 3D-printed bike parts before, but now two British firms have advanced into printing out the entire frame (albeit not in a single piece, presumably because no laser sintering machine yet has that kind of footprint). Additive manufacturing firm Renishaw has joined forces with Empire Cycles to create a one-off version of Empire's MX6-EVO, which typically comes in aluminum; the one-off, however, was done with titanium alloy, and the duo reckon this is the world's first to be 3D-printed.

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