Here's one of the more interesting green initiatives I've seen recently, enacted by Denmark's Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers hotel earlier this year: Guest-powered electricity, with rewards. The hotel will actually feed you for free if you generate some juice for them.

The 366-room Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers, one of the world's greenest hotels, is taking efficient energy production one step further by installing electricity producing bicycles in its gym for guests to use. Anyone producing 10 watt hours of electricity or more for the hotel will be given a locally produced complimentary meal encouraging guests to not only get fit but also reduce their carbon footprint and save electricity and money.

Guests using the new electric bicycles will be able to monitor how much electricity they're producing via iPhones mounted on the handle bars. Avid fitness fans can also race against the hotel's solar panel system in a bid to produce the most electricity.

This reminds me of the Netherlands' Sustainable Dance Club, whose exportable Sustainable Dance Floor, you guessed it, generates juice from boogeying club-goers:

It's pretty ingenious, and the only gripe I have with it is that in its current iteration, it generates electricity whether you dance well or dance badly. And that just doesn't seem right.

John Travoltage

The brand new Art of the Americas Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston threw open its glass doors last weekend. We were excited to attend opening day on Saturday and stepped into the new 121,307-square-foot "giant jewelry box" addition, and took in all that Foster + Partners had to offer. The glass-enclosed Shapiro Family Courtyard was designed as a focal gathering point for visitors to meet, relax, and bathe in natural light. Composed of double- and triple-glazed glass supported by a steel frame, the space is also lined with twenty 6-by-4-foot MDF light-diffusing panels that are installed in the facade. Arranged chronologically on four floors, the galleries lead visitors to travel through time as they rise vertically.

While the courtyard was absolutely teeming on Community Opening Day with Bostonian families and eager museum-trotters, the lingering question is: will the Courtyard space be a vivacious or uninhabited connecting space between the new wing to the rest of the museum? Unlike their famous canopied Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian in DC, Foster + Partners designed the MFA's to be freestanding with open-air landcapes on either side, in order to comply with Boston's seismic codes. The 'floating' staircase serves as an elegant passageway to the galleries, and also provides delicately articulated landings from which to view the entire space at three different levels. It houses a new Ken Oringer restaurant as well, which takes on a very dominant role in the center and will create themed menus to go with different art exhibitions. The tables and chairs may keep the space from looking empty when crowds are thin, but could take away from the open space necessary for the serendipitous acts of resting and gathering.

Nonetheless, the MFA is transforming the way it embraces contemporary art and modern design, and it is blazing a trail that would behoove the rest of Boston to follow.

More photos after the jump.

It's always interesting to take a look back at a year's worth of books, particularly from an industry still reeling from assaults to its very existence. This year, certain clear themes emerged from writers looking at the worlds of innovation and design.

Most clearly, we have entered the age of the individual. Emphasizing every person's ability to have an effect or make a difference was a theme touched on by many. The importance of cross-disciplinary innovation was another, with many outlining the powerful idea that innovation simply won't emerge from staring into a world you already know inside and out.

And even while many admitted that there are no easy answers to our time of global turmoil, there was an overarching sense of optimism too. Perhaps that's not entirely surprising--after all, who's going to buy a book in which an author stacks up the depressing evidence that we're doomed, doomed? But the cumulative effect was also somewhat inspiring.

Finally, this year's award for the Innovation Author's Preferred Hero of Choice goes to.... Johannes Guttenberg. Yes, some 560 years after the introduction of the printing press, it turns out that citing the German goldsmith is still seen as the best way to back up a theory about innovation.

Here then, in no particular order, are eleven books that made me stop and think this year.

To commemorate the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Milan Furniture Fair, I Saloni Milano NY kicks off a 6 week cultural series of events in NYC celebrating the best of Italian Design and Culture.

Tonight, 20 showrooms open their doors for festive gatherings with one-night only exclusive promotions starting at 6pm EST. Enjoy Italian delicacies from Eataly, Mario Batali's recently opened Italian food mega mart, and cocktails while enjoying the latest from Artemide, B&B Italia, Boffi, Cesana, Flos, Flou, Kartell and so many more.

For a complete map and details visit I Saloni Milano NY

Here's an attractive replacement for your old office standard with years' worth of unerasable stains: SkyPaper Dry Erase from Belgrave Trust. Inspired by artist Jason Griffin and using reclaimed wood, the material was hand cut, silkscreened, and individually assembled. Belgrave Trust is a membership based carbon offset service specializing in climate change solutions, and they've released a set of office products combining design and carbon neutrality. "With each dry erase board, Belgrave Trust will fund carbon credits through our actively managed portfolio of projects, retiring an amount equivalent a typical office (or home office) heating and cooling energy usage over the span of a year."

While we wholeheartedly believe in good-looking whiteboards and the reduction of carbon footprints, we're not quite so sure about the idea of manufacturing $10 laptop stickers to support the carbon-neutral cause.

Via PSFK

Director, Interaction Design
Lunar
San Francisco, CA

The Interaction Design team at LUNAR creates delightful and usable products and customer experiences. As the leader of this capability, you will create a competitive offering, capture market mindshare and build a talented team that can design imaginative and competent interfaces - from conceptual story down to the last pixel.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Inventor, entrepreneur, and environmental activist Saul Griffith's Onya Cycles came about after he took a hard look "at every single joule of energy I've used in my whole life," then figured out where to trim the fat, so to speak. Replacing cars with electric bicycles for short-haul trips, even to carry loads of cargo, was the obvious solution.

The recently-launched Maker Pioneers video series takes a look at Griffith's design process (check out those awesome tilting wheels):

Scott Wilson & MNML have experienced insane numerical success on Kickstarter for their kit that turns iPod Nanos into wristwatches. When we announced their pledge-seeking for the TikTok and LunaTik Multitouch Watch Kits on November 18th, we had no idea just how far they'd go; the initial target was a paltry $15,000, but as of this morning the current pledged amount is $461,788--and there's still more than two weeks left in the pledging period!

Wilson managed to separate himself from the hecticness long enough to give Core77 a brief interview on the phenomenon.

Core77: How do your initial expectations for the project compare to the current reality?
Scott Wilson: Well, I wouldn't have designed these if I didn't think there was a market for them but the response is overwhelming especially for online. These are retail numbers for a product that is not in production yet. It is also very global. Backers roll in 24 hours a day from all over the planet. China, Russia, India, etc. And the backers are unbelievably supportive and positive once they have invested. It is quite exciting.

We initially hoped to get enough pre-orders to pay for tooling, some initial inventory and create a little buzz and validation in order to help us get into small retailers and distributors more easily. Now everyone is calling us.

Where is the project going next?
The first thing is to make it through the next 17 days and see how many backers we have and fulfill their orders. We far surpassed our minimum order quantities from the factory so I have had to place a much bigger purchase order. After the Kickstarter period ends we will have an eCommerce site set up for additional online orders and from there we will probably offload the fulfillment and distribution to a 3PL (third party logistics) partner.

After that, I am not quite sure. I know personally I would like to have a small Bluetooth adaptor to plug into the side so I could run with wireless stereo headphones. So I am going to talk to a few former suppliers about this. But I am not sure if I will turn this into a brand or product line, that wasn't the point of the effort. I wanted to see how powerful the Kickstarter platform could be.

What does this amount of funding, which is currently through the roof, mean you can do with the project?
Well, it makes buying the inventory and thinking about retail a lot easier. Typically this is a huge risk with retailers all wanting your product on consignment or buy-back terms. I am still not sure we will go to big-box retail but it takes the pressure off if we do. It also allows us to pay for the eCommerce website and some hired help in managing the operations and day-to-day so we can focus on MINIMAL clients. And most importantly it gives us a little freedom to maybe invest in some other ideas we may have.

Let's talk big picture. Can you tell us what Kickstarter might mean for you and other designers?
Kickstarter was an experiment to see if it could work on another level. That is what I am excited about. It allows designers and entrepreneurs to launch an idea without giving up half their equity. For the right designers I think this is very empowering and a great way for some to finally get after that passion or idea that has eluded them. But everyone should also know that running a product company is a full-time job so make sure you are ready for that or have someone that likes to do it otherwise you will be doing a lot less designing.

Going forward, I would love to see if the platform could work to solve a global environmental or social need. A project where backers pay for a product or service that solves someone else's need.

Of course, the thing that still needs testing is people's tolerance for delivery. TikTok and LunaTik are very quick-to-execute products that we are doing even faster than most companies could. My question is "What happens when the timeframe goes from 1 to 2 months to 6, 9, or 12 months?" Maybe it could work.

Backers are generally in it not only for the product but to see you succeed, it seems. It's great to feel so much positivity vs. the typical snarky and hater mentality you often see on the blogs. I think that if the right story, solution and design were presented on this platform, and the creator had open dialog via the blog during development, it could fuel some solutions that could have a positive social impact.

Thanks for your time Scott, and congratulations again! We feel like we're looking at the numbers for a Hollywood sleeper hit that turned into a blockbuster.
Thanks man. It is pretty unbelievable. I have gotten a ton of emails from designers everywhere that are super enthusiastic and excited about the potential of Kickstarter. It will be interesting to see where the platform goes next.

Amber will be presenting "Cyborg Anthropology and the Future of the Interface" tonight at 5:30 in our shop at 23 NW 4th Avenue in Portland Oregon. We hope you can stop by and join us!

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and tech consultant researching prosthetic culture. She studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. Case wrote her thesis on cell phones and their technosocial sites of engagement. She founded CyborgCamp, an unconference on the future of humans and computers and has spoken at various industry conferences including MIT's Futures of Entertainment.

If you are a cyborg yourself, please jack-in to our cyber-cast of the presentation tonight. Right here in this very metaspace.

Check out the Curiosity Club for more infos!

We're always interested to see creative types exploring the culture of objects; taking an oblique look at the physical manifestations of our society.

NYC based artist Justin Gignac is attempting to do just that with his newly released "Security!" pins. Best know for the Need (and Wants) for Sale collections, Gignac has teamed up with jewellery designer Max Steiner to create this 18k gold-plated "opulent interpretation of the shoplifter's worst enemy".

Much of Gignac's work celebrates the banality of such objects; elevating them momemtarily from their lowly positions (see for example his quite genius "NYC Garbage")—but one has to wonder whether such sumptuousness is the only way to go about this:

"[the security tag] is one of those things that I've ignored for years. What better way to call attention to it than make it gold and throw some diamonds on it"

slap these things on a few rappers and consider shoplifting duly glamourised!

"Security!" pins are now available for sale from NY retailers Reed Space and Poundcake—as well as the dedicated e-store. A veritable steal at $700 a piece—$550 if your willing to forgo the point diamonds.

(via Cool Hunting)

Check out more here

Big news! Small Time, the 5th annual Core77 Ultimate Gift Guide, is now live, with 77 perfect gifts under $77.

This holiday season, we're considering the potential of the small things in life, from bottle openers to wristwatches, campfires to bubble wrap. Though compact in size or understated in gesture, the gifts we've chosen will enrich the day-to-day experience of your loved ones in big ways, clearing room to relish the ordinary with creativity, thought, and delight.

It's the little things that count: a woodfire candle, a monthly delivery of fine bacon, and some time spent with Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson make life grand in ways not much else can. Imagine the anticipation of turning over leaf after leaf of sartorial kitties in United Bamboo's Cat Calendar or the blithe lakefront outing possible with a set of perfectly engineered skipping stones. The eye clock encourages us to disregard the time, the firestarter kit brings us closer to the material realities of heat, and the 33 Beers Notebook will send us well on the way to expertise. All notions of the small (and. therefore, the big) are touched on, to be enjoyed daily for years to come.

Much gratitude to this year's contributors: Rob Giampietro, Martine Syms, Alex Lin, Jessica Charlesworth, Tim Parsons, James Tichenor, Matt Brown, Hand Eye Supply, Sara Jacobson and Lisa Smith.

Browse Small Time here!

And...Happy Holidays from Core77.

3D printing company i.materialise has produced some beautiful user-designed lamps using their RP methods, like the three above (designed by Tom Cluckers, Oleg Kurtsev, and the duo of Pieter-Jan Debuyst & Laurens Dekeyser, respectively). Now they're selling a lamp that provides user customization within their own design: The Appear Lamp.

Made from polyamide, a material that's like nylon laid down with SLS, the $99 Appear features text of your choosing atop the lamp, and hidden within the lampshade itself; choose the font, type your own phrase, and i.materialise does the rest. The lampshade appears blank until the light's turned on. Check it out here.

Hey rabble-rousers! Seeking a little global prestige for your latest design project? D&AD's call for entries for their 2011 Awards is open. With new submission categories in furniture design and interactive design for product, you could be one of the first industrial designers to claim a yellow pencil award in these yet-to-be recognized disciplines.

View last year's product design winners online, and learn more about entering this year's awards before the January 31st deadline.

In this video, D&AD president Sanky describes the virtues of entering for students and professionals alike. Enjoy.

Principal UX Designer, Digital and Mobile Platforms and Applications, Interaction Design
Amazon
Seattle, WA

As Principal UX Designer in the Digital and Mobile Platforms and Applications group, you will define and build future digital products and applications for Amazon. You will be responsible for developing best-in-class consumer experiences (user interface designs, interaction models, prototypes, etc.) in a fast-paced, agile, startup-like environment. You will work closely with engineering, product management, industrial design, marketing, and company leaders to successfully go from early stage product concepts to launch. You are a pragmatic visionary that can translate business needs into a fantastic customer-focused solution. You must be responsive, flexible, and able to succeed within an open and collaborative peer environment. The ideal candidate for this position will be at ease visualizing an experience in the abstract and then being able to drive that vision into solid design deliverables.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Last year's Salone was all abuzz with Ventura Lambrate, a new experimental design district in an industrial area in the northeast side of Milan. Due to its success, Zona Ventura Lambrate has announced that it will be back again this year!

For the Milan virgins out there, the Milan Furniture Fair is not only about the main fairgrounds at Rho, (the focal event of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile), but it also encompasses the countless 'satellite' concurrent events all over the city. The Zona Tortona area had been previously known as the nucleus of independent events from emerging designers, but even this perception is changing (and to some, becoming much more 'commercial' and way too expensive) with the entrance of larger, established names.

Ventura Lambrate aimed to be area for younger and fresher design minds, from Royal College of Art and Design Academy Eindhoven to Tord Boontje and Maarten Baas. Sparked by Utrecht-based Organisation in Design, Ventura Lambrate is located slightly further from the center of Milan and requires a hike to a suburb-like industrial area -- so they must curate very carefully for the content to be worth it.

Even though it's a few months away, Ventura Lambrate's exhibitor list is growing and our April excitement is a-rustling. For a review of last year's Salone, be sure to peruse our favorite picks here.

For the past 18 years, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has hosted a student design competition through Collab, a group that supports the modern and contemporary design collections at the museum. For
each competition, Collab chooses a distinguished designer to celebrate and poses a design prompt in the spirit of that designer. This year, Collab chose Alberto Alessi, and invited students to design a series of four tabletop accessories.

The winning prize for this year's competition is James Hughes for "Flow Series." James is currently a junior studying Industrial Design at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and he designed a series of porcelain dipping plates for oil and vinegar. Whimsically, he designed the form of a relief at the bottom of each plate, which uses the natural properties of each liquid to create a pattern that reveals itself during use. They are also stackable and feature a lip for pouring and draining excess liquid.

According to the designer, "The Flow Series is in line with both the history and aesthetics of Alessi's design sensibilities and American realities. The plates are simple yet elegant and heighten the experience of the user. A sense of thoughtfulness and tranquility is revealed during use, introducing a delicate sub-narrative to the dining experience. This subtlety epitomizes Alessi's playful attention to detail and speaks to the future of straightforward, honest design."

Congratulations James!

This year's Autodesk University Keynote was delivered in a massive arena within the Mandalay Bay Hotel; thousands were in attendance. The scale of the space and the sheer amount of bodies filling it really drove home what a massive event this is, underscored by overheard snippets of conversation in every regional American accent and a myriad of foreign languages.

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass took the stage and asked the audience, "Why do we do what we do? Whether we're designers, engineers, architects?"

The answer comes down to a single word: Impact. We want our work to have a positive impact on our communities and our customers. So today we're presenting a goup of people who have had an incredible impact, or soon will, through their groundbreaking work.

The subsequent roster of speakers, all of whom use Autodesk products for their projects, was impressive: Core77 fave Emily Pilloton took the stage to talk about her new project (giving us enough good quotes that we're going to break her out into a separate entry, stay tuned). Cliff Plummer, CEO of effects house Digital Domain, talked about the years spent working on the forthcoming Tron and showed the internal pitch clip that sealed the deal. Escape Dynamics co-founder Dmitriy Tseliakhovich delivered an impassioned speech about his wicked, lightweight and low-cost space vehicle, powered by microwave beams fired at the vehicle from the ground, rather than using on-board chemical propulsion systems.

Of all the speakers we saw that morning, Tseliakhovich was the most mesmerizing, speaking like a man possessed by the notion of going into space on the cheap. The plan is for Escape Dynamics to ultimately engage in awesomely futuristic-sounding Space Mining. "Think of it," Tseliakhovich said. "A single nickel-iron asteroid in the vicinity of Earth's orbit has more platinum-group elements than have ever been mined in the full industrial history of humankind!"

Today, small teams of dedicated, passionate people are capable of accomplishing things that previously were possible only for governments and large corporations. With exponential developments in digital prototyping and the extreme evolution in software design development tools, we are able to take our dreams and put them into reality. We are able to develop our future.

A very cool moment came when Bass introduced Franz von Holzhausen, Senior Design Executive from Tesla Motors, who seemed to be a no-show as no one appeared; but then two large panels opened up and Von Holzhausen drove onto the stage, in Tesla's gorgeous Model S. The car is of course all-electric, so his entrance was jarringly whisper-quiet, as if the car was gliding across the stage by magic; the silence lasted just a few moments, as applause then drowned it out.

We were also excited to see Scott Summit, whom we posted about just a few days ago, also take the stage to talk about his work with Bespoke Innovations. We're currently trying to score an on-site interview with Summit, so stay tuned!

It's always interesting to take a look back at a year's worth of books, particularly from an industry still reeling from assaults to its very existence. This year, certain clear themes emerged from writers looking at the worlds of innovation and design.

Most clearly, we have entered the age of the individual. Emphasizing every person's ability to have an effect or make a difference was a theme touched on by many. The importance of cross-disciplinary innovation was another, with many outlining the powerful idea that innovation simply won't emerge from staring into a world you already know inside and out.

And even while many admitted that there are no easy answers to our time of global turmoil, there was an overarching sense of optimism too. Perhaps that's not entirely surprising--after all, who's going to buy a book in which an author stacks up the depressing evidence that we're doomed, doomed? But the cumulative effect was also somewhat inspiring.

Finally, this year's award for the Innovation Author's Preferred Hero of Choice goes to.... Johannes Guttenberg. Yes, some 560 years after the introduction of the printing press, it turns out that citing the German goldsmith is still seen as the best way to back up a theory about innovation.

Here then, in no particular order, are eleven books that made me stop and think this year.

Emily Pilloton of Project H was one of the speakers at this year's Autodesk University Keynote, and she delivered a fantastic speech that boldly touched on something we rarely hear designers speak on: Failure, and what we can salvage from that.

I founded Project H Design to take on projects that had social value. Our first project was the Hippo Roller redesign. The Hippo Roller was a device used and manufactured in South Africa to transport water efficiently. We took it on as a partnership with the company, Hippo Roller, to increase the shipping efficiency and lower the pricepoint.

This project was a massive failure on our part. We were sitting in San Francisco, designing for South Africa. We were disconnected from the user, from the manufacturing, from the context and the economics. And ultimately the redesigned version did not get made.

So it was a big failure, but in a way it was a success because we were able to pinpoint what not to do. And to write our future from there, [devising a set of principles, including] "Design with, not for." We don't want to just design for clients, we want to design with people and have a shared stake in the process with them. [Also] to start locally and scale globally so we will only take on projects in our own backyard that we understand and are invested in.

Pilloton then described Studio H, the new, and frankly ballsy, project that she and partner Matthew Miller have embarked on: Using design to teach kids, in a very hands-on way, a sort of shop class, in a failing school district in rural Bertie, North Carolina.

We realized really quickly that design for education only goes so far. And that to really bring design impact to public education, we felt like we needed to teach. And that there was something very unique that design could offer as an instructional framework; so we became high school teachers.

...Looking back to the Hippo Roller and where we started, I think the differences are pretty clear. For me design is not just about a product; it should be about a process. And not just about production and consumption but about education. And this is where design has real power. Where we're able to build creative capital in places where it did not exist before--outside of the design world, by the hands of underestimated individuals.

...For me, design doesn't get much better than this.