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Reader Submitted: Molding Plan: Modern Objects That Rework a Traditional Material 

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Molding Plan is a project that makes use of moulding, the traditional architectural material. Molding, those ready-made strips of wood with unique curvatures, used to play an essential role in home decor in earlier eras of architecture and interior architecture. Through various manufacturing techniques, Moulding Plan rethinks this finishing material and brings out object-based possibilities for the original material. The outcome is a collection of containers, desktop organizers and lights.

The Molding Plan series utilizes the decorative features of moldings.
Three different kinds of moldings are used in the project in order to reveal the full potential of the material.
Original curvature of the molding offers a space for storage purposes while also allowing the containers to be stacked.
Made of molding pieces which are divided at 45 and 60 degree angles.
The container set is one design proposal for Taiwanese brand UTP (Un-Titled-Project).
Bases of the pendant lamps are made of grouped segments of the original molding and are processed by wood turning afterward.
The shapes are inspired by the traditional turned legs of tables and chairs.
This set of desktop organizers are made with oblique incisions so they can be piled up.
View the full project here

Pop-Up Power Outlet Presents Extra Sockets at the Press of a Button

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Here's a neat idea for doubling the sockets on your existing power outlet. For the past two years engineer Jeff Forti and chemist Jeff Martin have been working on the OUTlet, which fits in a standard electrical box but provides two extra sockets at the press of a button:

The OUTlet's merits are obvious, but here's the question I wanted to ask you readers: Is the pop-out functionality needed? In other words, if you had these in your house, would you ever actually find two of the sockets bare, and take the time to press the OUTlet shut?

I ask because I find in my own spaces, I rarely need power temporarily; when I need extra outlets, I need them all the time. If I unplug anything it's typically from the other end of the cord. So I'm wondering if Forti and Martin might be able to produce a less expensive option that is always in the "out" position and doesn't need the hinge and latch mechanism.

The OUTlet's going for $25 a pop on Kickstarter, with discounts offered for buying in bulk. While they haven't yet reached their $40,000 target—they were just under 20 grand at press time—there are still 24 days left to pledge.

The current version is 15-amp and lacks GCFI, but Forti and Martin are working on that for the next version, as well as a 20-amp model and ones with USB ports.


When Cargo Ships Fail

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Many of the goods we buy (and design) travel across the world on container ships, which we've all seen. This is what they look like when things are going right:

However, cargo ship voyages are like Valentine's Day dinners in that they sometimes go catastrophically wrong. (I'm not sure why I reached for the Valentine's Day reference, but I'm not going to backspace over it, so you'd better just deal with it.) Here's what that looks like:

That's the MV Rena, which hit a reef off the coast of New Zealand in 2011 because the captain was reportedly taking an unauthorized shortcut. When it first got stuck, the captain was probably like "Ah, this isn't so bad:"

But things shortly went sideways, literally:

I'm amazed that some of those containers are still hanging on at all.

Unfortunately the ship happened to be carrying oil, diesel and hazardous materials, among other things. It dumped hundreds of tons of oil into the water, devastating local wildlife and making it New Zealand's worst maritime disaster. Salvagers struggled to remove what containers they could and tried to pump as much of the remaining oil out of the ship as possible.

They did a good job getting many of the containers off...

...but eventually the ship broke in two and the stern sank completely. 

Salvaging operations continued for two and a half years.

This here is the MOL Comfort, fully laden with goods.

In 2013, for reasons that have yet to be uncovered, the ship began to crack in the middle as it was traveling off the coast of Yemen:

It took a week to get oceangoing tugboats to the site. Amazingly, they were able to begin towing the bow half of the ship back to shore.

The stern half, however, sank.

Unfortunately, during the towing operation a fire broke out onboard of the bow half, again with unknown causes:

A special firefighting Indian Coast Guard unit was dispatched to fight the fire…

…but ultimately, the bow half sank too.

Sometimes cargo ships can lose containers even without a major structural failure. This is the M/V Bai Chay Bridge.

In 2012 it was hit by a Category 4 "super typhoon" while en route from California to Japan. Some of the containers were reportedly improperly lashed, leading to this:

Running into a patch of bad weather in the Pacific isn't unusual. It's also happened to the CSAV Shenzhen

…and the Ital Florida.

Luckily these latter three ships were able to make it safely to port. For those that are not so lucky and wind up at the bottom, extreme engineering solutions are sometimes needed to salvage the wrecks. Next we'll show you one of the crazier solutions we've seen in this area.

Real Life Cutaways: Here's How You Saw a 50,000-Ton Ship Carrying 2,800 Cars Into Slices (With the Cars Still Inside)

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I just did a Google search for an oceanic salvage periodical called "Tug Magazine" and was surprised to see it didn't return anything filthy. In any case I've been reading about the MV Tricolor, a huge Norwegian freighter carrying 2,800 BMWs, Volvos and Saabs that went down in the English Channel in 2002 after colliding with another ship. 

In a way, this was worse than those cargo ship disasters: Because the Tricolor crashed in a high-traffic shipping lane, it was subsequently hit by not one, not two, but three more freaking ships. 

If this wasn't submerged, you probably would've heard a lot of car alarms going off all at once

The authorities needed to get the ship out of the way. And when you need to remove a 50,000-ton ship that's longer than two football fields, it's not like you call a guy named Lenny who has a tow truck. Instead they turned to Smit International, a Dutch company that specializes in tricky ocean salvage work.

Is there anything the Dutch can't do? Smit's eggheads realized they'd never be able to hoist the ship out in one piece, so the only solution was to slice it up like a loaf of bread and pull the slices out one by one. To accomplish this, they used a trick they'd used two years earlier, when they were hired to salvage Russia's doomed Kursk submarine. What Smit did was to build two platforms on either side of the wreck, then break out a big-ass cable coated in Widia, a type of sintered tungsten carbide. 

If there were two of these ropes, I guess that would make this "Double Dutch" (cue rimshot)

The cable was then connected to one platform, and somehow routed underneath the ship—which was resting on the ocean floor, some 30 meters down—then attached to the other platform. It's true that I have a poor grasp of Dutch sea-salvage methodologies, but I'm willing to bet the guy who had to go under the ship with the cable was The New Guy.

"I said I really don't want to do this, Vincent." —"Shut up, Jens, we've got seniority."
"Jesus, is that a shark? That better not be a shark."
"I am having second thoughts about sending Jens down there--I just remembered he owes me 50 euros. Or was that 30. No, it was 50."

Then the cable was tensioned and pulled back and forth between the two platforms—essentially turning into a huge (Trump pronunciation: "yuge") saw, steadily moving upwards and slicing away. 

By repeating this procedure another seven times, they were able to slice the ship into nine neat pieces. The awesome thing about this is it's not like they knew or cared where the cars were inside, so there were like, BMWs and Saabs just getting ripped in half during the process.

A Volvo XC90 turned into an XC45
"Hello, Mr. Jones? This is Bill from Springfield BMW. I know you said you couldn't afford the 535, but a situation has come up and we may be able to get you into one for significantly less"

Each piece was then hoisted out of the water.

Unable to reach consensus on whether red or yellow looks better, the two crane teams agree to disagree
"Asian Hercules II" sounds like the title of a straight-to-video movie
The ship section is held in place while workers prepare to try kicking a soccer ball through the opening

Then the pieces were placed on barges and towed back to shore, where they were eventually scrapped.

"Yes, Jens, 'a boat on a boat,' it's very meta, I get it. If you say it one more time I'm going to throw you over the side"
Workers carefully position a section of the ship so that it will crush Jens' tent with all of his belongings inside
A pair of Dutch workers reflect on how awesome Dutch problem-solving is while lamenting that no one wants to learn their language
"As I've said before, yes, I do find the red-colored cranes more pleasing to the eye, but I don't see how that's relevant to this interview."

I'm told that as a final prank, the workers gathered all of the crushed cars and left them on Jens' front lawn.

9 Ways to Store a Bike Indoors

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As I've noted before, not everyone has a garage or similar place to store a bicycle; sometimes bikes need to be sorted in apartments, offices or studios. And designers keep developing new ways for end users to do just that.

The industrial bike rack from BLR Design comes with either one or two hooks; the two-hook version allows the bike to be stored either horizontally (if it's a top-tube bike) or vertically. Both approaches keep the bike close to the wall, which is good for end users hanging the bikes in narrow spaces such as hallways. The industrial black gas pipe is wrapped in leather to protect the bike. 

Ensuring proper clearance for handlebars is always a design concern for any wall-mounted bike rack where the bike hans parallel to the wall. BLR Design allows purchasers to note the width of their handlebars and adjusts the distance the hook extends from the wall as needed.

End users with limited wall space will appreciate designs like the Rack from Artifox. The hook is made from powder coated steel; again, there's a leather wrap to protect the bike from scratches. 

As someone who isn't that handy with tools, I was also impressed with how easy the installation seemed to be; the only tool needed is screwdriver. There's no need to worry about leveling, as the rack has a self-leveling mechanism.

Ergo Bike Racks takes a different design approach, using a cradle for the bike rather than a hook. There's a Retention Safety Strap to ensure the bike stays in place. 

An end user who's concerned about lifting a bike into a bike rack (as most designs require) due to physical limitations might find this rack easier to use; you just gently roll the front wheel over the crossbar. (That still requires more coordination and effort than a floor stand would, though.)

Designs that hold the bike horizontally often provide some additional storage  space. The bike clip from Modus Studio has just enough space for a helmet.

The wood bike storage from CB2 has an enclosed storage space, which is nice for keeping things from falling off. However, it might not be big enough for something like a helmet. 

The Urban Wardrobe from Emform, designed by Steffen Schellenberger, provides two types of storage. There's the enclosed felt-lined powder coated steel tray for smaller items. Emform also provides three magnets for attaching notes.

And there are hooks to hold jackets, bags, helmets, etc. Getting to those items will be a bit difficult with the bike in place, but if they are things that are only used along with the bike, that's not a problem—and it makes great use of some space that might otherwise go to waste.

The bike rack from Jung Dynamisch Sylt, designed by Henning Thomas and Thomas Erven, leans against the wall. That means there's no installation to worry about (and no holes in the walls for landlords to complain about), but such a design also raises concerns for those with small children or rambunctious pets—or those who live in earthquake territory.

There's a small amount of additional storage space on the top and the interior of the rack, as well as along the side—those straps are a clever way of adding a bit more storage.

Other designers have incorporated bike storage into other furniture pieces. The resulting products will work for a smaller number of end users, since they are less flexible and take more space. The Velodromo coat rack from Formabilio, designed by Bastian Höges, could be a good entryway piece for those with the floor space for it. The only thing it doesn't have a place for are the small items that other racks accommodate. 

Chol1 combines bike storage with a number of other furniture pieces, such as a sofa and a shelving unit. I'd be a bit concerned about end users knocking things off the shelf as they took the bike up and down. And having a bicycle towering over you while sitting on the sofa won't appeal to everyone.

For those who don't want to lift the bike up into such pieces, Chol1 also has items that don't require as much lifting. But as intriguing as these pieces are, they aren't as practical as some other designs. But they do accommodate 

Hilarious Industrial Design Fails: Weird PCs from the '90s

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Some of you may have forgotten and some of you never lived it, but there were some truly horrific designs for PC towers in the mid to late '90s. Before I say any more, have a look at some of these gems helpfully narrated by Lazy Game Reviews:

Now obviously some of these, like the Corner PC, are just the result of an incompetent industrial designer (or a designer under the thumb of a clueless market research team). But what's interesting is that others essentially have the software used to design them written all over them.

What I mean by that is, CAD was still not widespread in the early '90s. When you went into ID firms of the time, you still saw drafting boards, T-squares and ship's curves. In other words, drafting things with an excessive amount of curves, or things that had compound curves in three dimensions, was a royal pain in the ass.

But once 3D modeling started to work its way in there in the mid-'90s, it was suddenly easy to create organic shapes, whether or not it made any sense to add arbitrary curves to a thing. My theory is that some of the designers of the time could not help themselves, and that "form follows function" went out the window because they were too excited at being able to create forms like…this:

So our industry began cranking out things, I believe, that reflected what the software was newly capable of, rather than sticking with principles of good design. We let the technology get the better of us, and some companies paid the price. So let that serve as a lesson!

The Emerging World of Drone Racing. Also, "Top Gun 2"

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You guys hear they're making Top Gun 2, with Tom Cruise reprising his role? Here's my suggested plot: Maverick, having retired from the Air Force, is now a commercial airline pilot for Delta. Busted down to commuter flight duty in Wisconsin for having too many delayed departures, he must improve his on-time performance to win back the coveted JFK to LAX route. Along the way he must deal with unruly passengers, overbooked flights and passive-aggressive flight attendants.

Seriously though, the scuttlebutt is that the new movie will involve drones.

Presumably the military kind, but if they're trying to capture the youth market, perhaps they should change it to commercial drones. Particularly since FPV (first-person view) drone racing is currently exploding in popularity, with organizations like the International Drone Racing Association and the Drone Racing League setting up races with purses in the five figures. For those of you who've never seen this new "sport," here's what it looks like:

If we look past the bombastic presentation, it actually is kind of cool, something like Formula One on a three-dimensional course. And it appears to be growing rapidly: Last summer a drone racing entertainment company called RotorSports held a race in California with a $25,000 top prize, and this year's will feature higher stakes: The winner will get $100,000.

What's fascinating about drone racing is how technologically isolating it is. The pilots wearing those FPV goggles—which run about a grand a pop—are completely in their own worlds and unable to see their competitors standing directly next to them. 

It also may not make for a good live spectacle, as it is tricky to present the race in real-time to a crowd, who may strain to make out a tiny flying machine zipping past at 70 miles per hour. As The New York Times points out,

This is a reason the future of drone racing may be online rather than in live competitions. Many of the racers here record their drones' acrobatics using an additional camera, like a GoPro, mounted on top, creating video that can be downloaded later off the camera. The best moments can then be edited into a high-resolution video with music and posted online.

Technology has been changing the nature of spectacles for quite some time. In the days of Roman gladiators, heading to the Colosseum to watch it was the only way to experience it. Today if you want to watch, say, the Knicks losing at the Garden, it's better to view it from the comfort of your own home, where you can hear the calls and see the controversial replays that they refuse to show at stadium for fear of inciting fans. You get a far better look at the action via camera than you do in person. From the 300 level, it may look like one of the players simply fell down; but on TV you see a close-up of the nasty crossover that tripped him up.

So what's interesting about drone racing is that in this era of immediate gratification, this event is actually better viewed after the fact, after the editors have gotten their hands on the footage. And it seems it will be viewed not by thousands of roaring fans lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in an arena, but by thousands of individual people sitting alone or with a few friends in front of their computers.

You have to wonder: Is this what Maverick was fighting for?


Design Job: "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams seeks a Digital Media Artist in Pleasanton, CA

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Candidates will support the ongoing art needs for "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams' startup. They'll work on creative projects ranging from comics, to Internet video content, to photography. Talents needed are Photoshop, Illustrator, Photography, Video editing, Drawing on Wacom Cintiq, Graphic design, Social Media skills, Communication skills, Productivity, Personality and energy.

View the full design job here

Canadian Chef Designs the "Ultimate Cutting Board"

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When it comes to newfangled cutting board designs, I'm a fan of the Mocubo, which we covered here. But there's still plenty of room in this market for innovative designs, as evidenced by this Canadian design for the Ultimate Cutting Board:

While I'm not completely sold on this design, pledgers are, as the UCB has racked up nearly $100,000 at press time on a $37,449 goal. The first thing I wondered was whether the magnets are strong enough to draw the knife astray during fine chopping, or if you're meant to avoid cutting near the split.

The second thing I thought is that the drop-in containers seem too small to actually be useful. 

Thirdly, something about having a seam in a cutting board bugs me, I feel like juices and whatnot would collect there during prep work.

However, I'm not a professional chef—and UCB developer Michael Motamedi is (he even competed on MasterChef Canada), so it's safe to assume that what he's come up with is functional enough for those with true kitchen skills.

If you're looking to pick up one of the USD $124 UCBs, you'd better hurry—at press time there was just four days left.

Brilliant New Jersey Family Develops Nature-Powered Snow-Melting System

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Paramus, New Jersey might not seem like Ground Zero for the eco-friendly movement, but perhaps that will change. That's the site, on an unassuming suburban street, of the Zenesis House, a brilliant piece of green architecture, engineering and smart technology. Designed by real estate agent Asit Parikh, his engineer father Raj and architect Eric Velez, the Zenesis House has no boiler, but produces enough hot water not only for the house itself, but to power their snow-melting system.

Best of all, Mother Nature provides all of the resources for the system, which is run through a combination of solar power, geothermal power and rainwater. "What we are doing is using the environment to battle the environment," Asit told local paperThe Paramus Daily Voice.

The home captures rainwater year round and then uses a solar thermal system to heat the water to 105 degrees, which is stored in multiple insulated tanks, explained Asit, who is a Passive House designer and NYC Real Estate broker.
The water then supplements two ground-source heat pumps developed by Raj to constantly supply 100-degree water to the driveway and walkways, which is distributed via a network of heating pipes underneath the concrete.
The melted snow from the driveway and walkway is recycled back into the system, re-heated, and then used for laundry, irrigation, and toilet water.
The home uses excess electricity produced by its solar photovoltaic system to pump the heated water through the snow melt system, Asit said.

Local news station WPIX had the Parikhs show the house on video, below, where Raj confesses the Zenesis design did create some waste: "I threw the shovels out," he says.


Reader Submitted: FORMcard: Fix and Modify the World Around You

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FORMcard is a handy, pocket sized card of strong, meltable biopolastic that you can use to make, fix and modify the world around you. Just drop it in a cup of hot water and it's ready to use. Keep one in your wallet, toolbox or kitchen drawer so that it's always around when you need to fix something.

View the full project here

What We're Reading: On Weaving, the Curious History of the Color Burgundy, LA's Iconic Fast-Food Stands and More

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Core77's editors spend time combing through the news so you don't have to. Here's a weekly roundup of our favorite stories from the World Wide Web.

The World's Longest Weekend

Surely I'm not the only one who regularly resolves to spend less time online—because obviously it would make me calmer, happier, more prone to deep insights, and so on. Well, Internet-addicted journalist Matthew J. X. Malady gave it a try over New Year's, going offline for a full 72 hours. The result? Not what you might expect.

-Mason Currey, Senior Editor

Scarf Season

Watching someone weave is a mesmerizing event. In this short film we get the rare opportunity to see the process from llama to market. Documenting the creation of a scarf over the course of a week, the film captures quiet moments with the Yupanki Mamani family set against the majestic landscape of the highlands of Peru. The natural dyeing process and backstrap loom used by this weaver represent a deep knowledge of both material and craft.

-LinYee Yuan, Managing Editor

Saving Ye Old Taco House

Los Angeles has long been famous for its programmatic roadside architecture, but how about the humble burger stand? There are still approximately twenty historic stands remaining in downtown, and they serve everything from cheeseburgers to tacos, but as this article in The Guardian points out, their days are sadly numbered.

-Rebecca Veit, Columnist "Designing Women"

Spite Houses: An Architectural Phenomenon Built on Rage and Revenge

What happens when people manifest their anger and frustrations into architecture? Whether it's to block a neighbor's views or stand in the way of new construction, this article chronicles the curious typology of "spite houses" across the US, expressly designed to provoke and protest.

-Alexandra Alexa, Editorial Assistant

Meet the Designers Behind the "Ethnically Ambiguous" Bratz Dolls

Like the rest of the world we applaud Barbie's new realistic looks, but still see Bratz as the true totemic condensate of our society's current swirl of cultural values.

-Eric Ludlum, Editorial Director

How Did Burgundy Become the Color of Officialdom?

The mysterious symbolic lore of colors and their function within design is explored in this article for Print Magazine. The article navigates this question via the color burgundy (think of wine, catholic school uniforms, grubby carpets), touted as a "muted, backgrounded, rendered symbolically reverent while graciously ignorable" color—also apparently highly dirt-proof!

- Allison Fonder, Community Manager

Designing for Strength and Beauty

It's fascinating to see how houses were framed prior to the development of modern fastening technology, and the open-plan spaces yielded by timber framing seem perfectly relevant today.

-Rain Noe, Senior Editor

Visiting Modena, Ferrari's Second Home 

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Ferrari's, like most supercars, polarize opinion. Flash and brash, or svelte and stunning…depending on your outlook, or possibly, the cars' vintage. But to any automotive designer or car obsessive, there's no denying Ferrari's hallowed place in history.

Finding myself in Italy visiting family over the Christmas break, I made sure to take the detour to the Ferrari Museum in Modena. It's the smaller of two museums, with the main event being in Maranello. Next to the large futurist mirror-clad main showroom, is the possibly more-interesting Museo dei Motori workshop, where Enzo Ferrari's father had worked.

View towards Museo dei Motori

Alongside the cars, boats, and engines on display was an office room tucked away in the corner of this building: a recreation of Enzo Ferrari's office– an authentic slice of 1950's Madmen chic.

Outside the office a display recounts with pride how Enzo refused what was initially an amicable buy-out by Ford in 1962, despite Enzo approaching Ford first with an offer to sell. When Enzo read in the small print of the contract that he would have to request finance from Ford for any racing operations, the deal was off. Incensed, Henry Ford II poured Ford's considerable resources into beating Ferrari at LeMans, initially unsuccessfully, culminating in an ultimatum note to his racing team in 1966: "You'd better win, Henry Ford II."

Henry Ford II (left) and Enzo Ferrari (right).

The main museum was hosting a curious event: A tribute to Ferrari and Pavarotti, modestly entitled "International celebrities of Modena talent." Essentially a film of Pavarotti and Ferrari's greatest hits, it forms the backdrop to some fascinating and beautiful automotive objects.

GTO (288) 1984
246GT Dino 1970
512BBi 1981

At the heart of any Ferrari is the engine, and in the workshop these machines are stripped and shown in all their sculptural glory.

Engine Detail - F1 V10 1996
Ferrari's first car - 1947 Model 125S powered by a 1.5l V12 engine
1986 Ferrari 288 GTO Evoluzione
Engine Detail - F1 V10 1996
1998 F300 F1 Engine Detail
F40 1987
'Arno XI' Racing Hydroplane 1951 - achieved 150mph on Lake Como in 1953, a class record it still holds today.
1948 Inter Aerlux 166 - Ferrari's first road car
V12 500 Superfast 1964
512BBi 1981
275GTB4 1966
1970 512S
250 GT SWB Berlinetta Competition

Weekly Maker's Roundup

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How to Price Your Work

We've gotta kick this one off with some sound business advice. For those of you that make things and sell them, David Picciuto explains a simple, logical way to calculate how much to charge:

Chess Board with Storage Drawer

Remember all of those chess pieces Jimmy DiResta milled and cast? Those aren't much good without a board to play the game on, so this week Jimmy cranks out a pretty sweet one with a pull-out storage drawer. Building tricks abound here: I'm digging his wedge-based glue-up jig for the squares, using pushpins as detail clamps, and the way he creates those classy corners:

DIY Dog Hole Clamps

Side-action cam clamps that you can drop into dogholes are pretty handy. They're also fiendishly expensive. So Izzy Swan figured out a way you can make your own, for just a few bucks. Here he builds two sets, one out of plywood, the other from oak, to see if there are any performance differences:

Trimming a Mirror with Aluminum

The great thing about aluminum is that you can cut it with common woodworking tools. Here Steve Ramsey continues his bathroom renovation and shows you how easy it is to integrate aluminum into a woodworking project:

Wall-Mounted Jewelry Storage System

Also continuing with her bathroom spruce-up, and coincidentally also incorporating aluminum, here April Wilkerson knocks out a series of DIY wall-mounted jewelry holders. I love the bit at the end when her husband walks in:

A Man of Many Vises

With his new, beefy workbench put together, Jay Bates now needs to kit it out with vises. He's opted for not two, but three: A tail vise, leg vise and an inexpensive, DIY pipe clamp version of a twin screw vise:

A Tiny House for the Alaskan Wilderness

Ana White reveals the design of her and husband Jacob's movable tiny house, specifically designed so that they can execute in-the-wilderness builds while bringing their two kids along, housing them in comfort, and feeding a crew. We get to see some of Ana's design skills here, as she's had to incorporate a couple of features atypical of a tiny house due to their needs. At the end we get a sneak peek of the structure they've already roughed out, and Ana's enthusiasm is contagious!

360-Degree Shop Tour

This is so cool! This week Bob Clagett gives us a tour of his shop, but shot the entire video with his 360-degree camera, so you can look all around his shop at will. If you watch it on your phone, there's no need to click and drag--just rotate your phone around and it's like you're there.

The Paulk Standing Desk is in the Works

Just a teaser video from Ron Paulk this week, who gives us a glimpse of his next project: A standing desk. Can't wait to see how this one turns out, and based on the drawing he shows us, I'm very curious to see how he'll engineer some ridigity into that center section.

One From the Archives: The Samurai Carpenter's Top 10 Woodworking Books

I was surprised to learn that master builder Jesse de Geest learned much of his craft by reading books and then practicing; with his skillset, it seemed more like he'd gone through multiple apprenticeships. Here he runs down his top ten tomes:

Core77 Questionnaire: Yves Béhar

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This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to the information designer Nicholas Felton.

Yves Béhar. Portrait courtesy fuseproject

Name: Yves Béhar

Occupation: I always say I’m a designer. Then people’s first question is if I’m a fashion designer, or what kind of designer I am. For me, being a designer is about design and intent with the widest possible reach, which is always the way I’ve thought about design’s role in the world. That’s not a definition that people understand yet. When you just tell people you’re a designer, it requires a longer explanation.

Location: We have a small office in New York, a presence in London, and then the larger part of the office—which is about 80 people—is in San Francisco. But we work all around the world, in Asia, Europe and Africa as well. With the SPRING incubator we’re running that benefits adolescent girls, we’ve had a presence in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda for the last two and a half years.

Current projects: The range of our projects has always been a major source of creativity and pleasure for me and the team. We work on everything from nonprofit work in Africa and “See Better to Learn Better,” our eyeglass program in Mexico, to technology products and consumer goods. We’re working on robots, the smart home and wearables. We’re always involved in office and residential furniture with Herman Miller, who has been a partner of ours for 15 years. We’re advising and working with an augmented-reality parametric-design startup from Poland; we’re working with Kodak; and, of course, I’m forgetting another 10 or 12 projects.

Mission: From day one, fuseproject has always been about bringing different disciplines together. Disciplines may change over time, but the overarching goal of design for me and the mission of fuseproject is to accelerate the adoption of important ideas. New ideas that show human intent. Since moving to Silicon Valley and San Francisco in the mid-’90s, we have been a part of so many new ideas, and new typologies of products, or new ways that people have experiences that change their lives. Fuseproject is dedicated to putting the human at the center of those experiences.

Hive Thermostat. All project images courtesy fuseproject

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I feel extremely lucky and blessed because I chose design when I was 14 or 15. I loved writing, I loved fiction and I loved telling stories, but I found that through drawing and through creating objects and experiences I could tell stories just as if I was writing them. This seemed to be a very small discovery or a small life-changing moment at the time, but in retrospect, 20 to 30 years later, it feels like that’s always what I wanted to pursue. To be able to do what you love every day is a tremendous gift. I’ve never lived with the doubt of not knowing what I really wanted to do in my life.

Education: When I think back, I really, really wanted to be a designer but I didn’t have any of the background or even any of the skills. I didn’t grow up in an artistic family, and I was never, even in high school, the best draftsman in my class. I didn’t have the natural skill. But I was extremely lucky to know what I wanted to do, and I knew that I had to work really hard. I spent five or six years going to prep school first for design, and then I went to Art Center College of Design. I’ve spent my entire life trying to make my skills better—trying to be a better draftsman and model maker in the beginning, and a better thinker throughout.

Sometimes you have a love and passion for something but you’re not particularly talented at the outset. You just dedicate and work hard at acquiring the skills and the depth of understanding that you need. That’s kind of what happened.

“To be able to do what you love every day is a tremendous gift. I’ve never lived with the doubt of not knowing what I really wanted to do in my life.”

First design job: I worked as a theater stage set and costume maker during Art Center, and I had a few internships, but my first job was with Bruce Burdick. Bruce was an alumnus of the Eames Office in Los Angeles and he was based here in San Francisco. He’s retired now, but he created some classic designs that Herman Miller still produces, and I worked on exhibit and furniture design in that very first job. What was interesting is that I’ve always deeply admired designers that had very diverse practices—George Nelson, Charles Eames—and my first job was in a very diverse practice. Research and strategy, filmmaking, design and brand were all mixed in together.

Kernel diagnostic amulet

What was your big break? I’ve never been a designer that got this incredible big job right from the beginning that set them on a path. In fact, I had lots and lots of small, average projects and I made it a mission to turn every single small opportunity into at least an attempt at doing something great. From 1999, when fuseproject was founded, to 2006, we had lots of small, exciting breaks, but they were always small projects that we turned into big things. And then in 2007, two projects that were very different from each other became really important for me and got us some significant recognition. One was One Laptop Per Child and the other was the Leaf lamp for Herman Miller. Being able to show a completely new experience of a task lamp with a company like Herman Miller that hadn’t shown a lot of tech-based product was certainly a breakthrough. And OLPC was a very inspirational project for everyone involved in design, but also in the nonprofit, social-design world.

I was able to present both of these projects on the TED stage in 2007, which was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, but it was certainly a breakthrough for me. Working in the studio and building the right stories and the right content and the right ideas around projects is very different than telling them on a stage in the 18 minutes that TED gives you. Being Swiss, and with my first language being French, I wasn’t particularly comfortable on-stage. With such high stakes, that’s something I had to work really hard at—and I had to turn all these ideas, all these intentions, into a story that people would want to hear, and that would be interesting to more than just a small group of designers. The TED crowd can be quite an intimidating one as well.

Inside fuseproject's San Francisco headquarters. All studio photos by Mark Mahaney for Herman Miller

Describe your workspace: We’ve moved the fuseproject studio two or three times, but we’re now in a space that we’re extremely happy with and that we’ve been able to design entirely. What's been important throughout our history is a level of creative fusing, openness and horizontality. We’ve always worked in an open space and I’ve personally never had a private office. We always put all the work up on the walls so that everybody can comment or participate to make it better. The studio is really built in this way, and the furniture we have been designing with Herman Miller, an office system called Public Office Landscape, is a system that encourages collaboration, so every desk essentially turns into a meeting space if you need it to.

The other architectural element is we have a large set of bleachers where we have regular speakers come and speak to the fuseproject studio. In the last year and a half we’ve had everyone from David Adjaye and Tom Sachs to Marcel Wanders and John Maeda. All the people we love and admire come for discussions in our studio. We also have a 2,000-square-foot gallery at the entry to our design studio where we present contemporary artists, and that’s a completely different melding and fusing of creativity. We have these art shows and it creates a great dialogue between content creation, the ideas that live in the studio, and then how artists see the world and express it. The space plays a lot of different functions.

The fuseproject bleachers. Different configurations of the Public Office Landscape can be seen throughout the space.

What is your most important tool? Pencil and paper

What is the best part of your job? Using pencil and paper. Sketching, brainstorming with my team, exploring new ideas, exploring new designs—that’s definitely the best part of my job. Obviously we refine and we explore on the computer as well, but all the big ideas are always created initially with pen and paper. It’s so much faster to iterate and it’s so much easier to communicate a quick notion when we use pen and paper.

What is the worst part of your job? There’s certainly no pleasure in dealing with legal issues, or HR, or business negotiations. But I have a great team who keeps me in the loop but doesn’t have to involve me most of the time. I’m a creative and I live a much better life when I can focus on the creative work of my job.

Sketches for the Public Office Landscape

What time do you get up and go to bed? I usually get up at 7:30 a.m., and I’m at work by 9:00. I’m in bed by 11:30 or midnight. That’s a good day. We work internationally a lot, so it does happen that we have really early morning calls or presentations with Europe. We also have calls late in the evening with Asia. We’re in this part of the world where we can work with everyone, but it means stretching in the morning or in the evening.

How do you procrastinate? I procrastinate mostly by looking at information or reading. I don’t watch television. My mindless moments are in front of some kind of digital media, newspapers, and, of course, some social media.

What is your favorite productivity tip or trick? I get a to-do list on Friday from my team with everything I have forgotten to do, or anything that’s due. As far as what I was supposed to accomplish or what’s expected from me, I want to make sure that I don’t completely lose track of it. The weekend is a time where I can do writing or answer questions, review ideas and give feedback.

Creatively speaking, my answer to a problem is always, OK, let’s sit down and sketch. Let’s grab the bull by the horns and wrestle the problem to the ground. You can’t be too impatient, because problems will eventually get solved. So I think it’s a balance between that creative impatience and the patience to let ideas develop naturally or simply to get better because you’re thinking of a problem harder over time.

I think the key balance for me is to have the confidence that we will solve a certain problem and at the same time a certain level of excitement and impatience that you want to see it done. So making sure that it’s circulating in your head, making sure that it’s circulating within the team, and making sure that the challenge is addressed so that eventually our creativity catches up to it.

What is the best-designed object in your home? My home is a quiet mixture of art, sculpture and design. My favorite object—I don’t know if it’s the best designed or not—is a Terrazza couch that was made in 1972 by De Sede. It’s been around for 45 years and works so well. We use it every night when we play games. It’s a great, strange-looking object that’s just a part of my everyday that I’ll probably never be able to get rid of.

Jawbone Mini Jambox prototypes in the fuseproject studio, with the Herman Miller Sayl chair at right

Who is your design hero? I have many. There are such great design personalities who have established our profession. I certainly have some go-tos, whether it’s Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson or Joe Colombo. There’s many well-known and less-well-known designers that when you look at their work, the intelligence—the mechanical, material intelligence, as well as the emotional intelligence—is so obvious in the work 50, 60 years on; it’s still completely relevant.

I’m very lucky because I’ve been working with Herman Miller for 15 years, and when you work with Herman Miller you’re so steeped in that history—in the history of the classics, in the history of those designers—and you have access to archives where you can see firsthand drawings. There are many places and many ways to be continually amazed about the past that was created for us to walk on today.

What is the most important quality in a designer? There are contradictory traits that make good designers, and I think it’s how you resolve them. The ability to be a keen observer of the world and of people, the ability to notice the idiosyncrasies of the life around you in a contemporary way—that sort of listening, observational quality is key. But also direction, vision and conviction. Making the hundreds of small decisions on a project that equate to finding a direction, to convincing others that this direction is the most prescient and relevant for the problem. So there is certainly an aspect of listening to the world but also listening to yourself. At times these can be disparate feelings, but I can see those different traits in a lot of the designers we admire.

“I’ve never been a designer that got this incredible big job right from the beginning that set them on a path. In fact, I had lots and lots of small, average projects and I made it a mission to turn every single small opportunity into at least an attempt at doing something great.”

What is the most widespread misunderstanding about design or designers? I still think that designers are regarded as people who mostly deal with cosmetic, aesthetic problems. In many ways that is one of the net results of our work and that’s a lot of what people see. For me and for many others, design is really a direction of intent. It’s a strategic way to think about an ecosystem in which beauty resides, but it’s surrounded by many influences and needs to be thought of in a much wider context. Design is really a wide, very deep practice that takes many different inputs and turns them into a cohesive experience or whole.

What is exciting you in design right now? I’m very excited about the work we’ve been doing for a few years on robots. Robots aren’t the cyber-humanoid-looking devices that either Hollywood or Japan have been showing us in the last 30 to 40 years. They can be very unique in domestic environments, and they don’t have to be a replica of human behavior or human aesthetics. So I’m excited about robots and what they can truly do for us.

I’m also excited about this notion of the invisible interface. We are way too dependent on physical screens for the information that we receive on them, and also the control that we derive from abusing them. As a designer I’m really excited about moving our everyday lives away from screens rather than toward screens.

The third subject that I’m very passionate about is how technology and design are going to change health and healthcare. I think we haven’t even scratched the surface, both from a human standpoint—the impact of our work—and from an opportunity standpoint, an opportunity to change the way the system of health and healthcare works. I think there’s tremendous promise and tremendous change that’s going to happen in this area.


Design Job: Help Verifly Drones Soar as Their Next Product Designer in NYC

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Help build a suite of consumer mobile apps enabling a killer drone service on iOS/Android. Your role will be to help build the specifications/UI/mockups for Verifly's Android product. You have demonstrated experience developing stunning, developer-ready UI/UX flows and visuals, building and maintaining app workflows, detailed specifications, wireframes, and pixel-perfect mockups.

View the full design job here

This Week in Design: Finding Patterns with David Adjaye, Ellen Lupton Designs Sensation and Timekeeping, Met Style

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Happy Monday! Jumpstart your week with our insider's guide to events in the design world. From must-see exhibitions to insightful lectures and the competitions you need to know about—here's the best of what's going on, right now.

Monday

A long overdue conversation about the future of health in America

Why are some neighborhoods not as healthy as others? In #HarlemFirst: Mapping the Health of a Community—hosted by the MFA Design for Social Innovation Program at SVA—health professionals, politicians, local agencies, designers, community leaders, Harlem residents, and data scientists gather to discuss the ways in which design thinking can address inequalities in our culture of health.

New York, NY. February 1st at 6PM.

Tuesday

Timekeeping through the ages

The historical objects gathered in The Luxury of Time: European Clocks and Watches—on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—go beyond pure functionality. They represent an era in which clockmakers worked alongside cabinetmakers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, enamelers and engravers to create practical timekeeping objects that were imbued with a high level of artistry and a sense of wonder. 

New York, NY. On view through March 27th. 

Wednesday

How does design make us feel?

Esteemed curator and designer Ellen Lupton presents Designing Sensation, a talk exploring the ways in which designers can engage emotions, perceptions and behavioral responses to enhance user experiences. 

New York, NY. February 3rd at 6PM. 

Thursday

Exploring the architecture of pattern

London-based architect David Adjaye was born in Tanzania and has visited each of the continent's 54 nations since then, their forms and patterns often taking center stage in his design work. Adjaye selected 14 textiles from Central and West Africa for the Cooper Hewitt's current edition of the Selects series and he will talk about these and his larger ideas about textiles and design during Finding Patterns with David Adjaye.

New York, NY. January 4th at 7 PM. 

Friday

Homage to one of the most significant collaborations of the 20th century

Peter Fischli/David Weiss: How to Work Better, a retrospective of the artist duo opens at the Guggenheim. The show will feature over 300 of their sculptures, photographs, videos and installations, a body of work "that offers a deceptively casual meditation on how we perceive everyday life."

Saturday/Sunday

Experiments with construction innovation

During the 1960s, architect Walter Segal developed a method for cheap and quick house construction using readily available materials in standard sizes, and without the need for any specialist knowledge, like bricklaying or plastering. The first exhibition of this work, Walter's Way: The Self-Build Revolution, charts the development of his method and presents some contemporary interpretations for its relevance today.

London, England. On view through March 24th. 

Upcoming Deadlines

February 10 - Red Dot Award: Product Design 2016

February 12 - 10th International Outdoor Furniture Design Contest

Plan Ahead

You've heard of the famed Italian manufacturer, Olivetti and seen the iconic typewriters and computers designed for the company by the likes of Ettore Sottsass, Mario Bellini, George Sowden and Michele de Lucchi. Now, undergrads can contribute to the Olivetti line by participating in the first Olivetti Design Contest. Submit designs for a cash register by March 1st for a chance to win cash prizes. Finalists will also have the opportunity to develop prototypes of their designs. 

On February 12th, Design Observer hosts Taste, a one day symposium on the relationship between food and design in LA. The conference will bring together a wide array of practitioners (including Core77's own Linyee Yuan!) to discuss everything from the history of artificial flavoring to the future of permaculture and food waste.

Check out the Core77 Calendar for more design world events, competitions and exhibitions, or submit your own to be considered for our next Week in Design.

Making a Gesture-Inspired Espresso Set

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No matter where you’re from, it’s likely that your culture has a specific ritual around drinking. In Bahrain, it’s customary to drink hot tea from glass cups—and for the Miami-based designer Bradley Bowers, witnessing this simple ritual on a Persian Gulf trip sparked an idea for a set of drinkware that celebrates the universal gestures of drinking.

Featuring a simple “pinched” cup and a saucer with a slightly lifted edge, Bowers’s new Pinch espresso set is meant to draw attention to the way you handle the vessels you drink from, and to encourage a thoughtful meditation on that process. The inspiration for the form came on that same trip to Bahrain, while exploring an anthropological museum. There, he stumbled upon a set of ancient oil lamps made of clay. “They were simple and beautiful,” Bowers says. “I knew I wanted to create something that had the same power as those oil lamps from so long ago. They looked at once contemporary and ancient. My goal was to make a gesture and process tangible and eternal.”

The Pinch cup (above) and saucer (below)

After a few initial sketches, Bowers moved to crude clay models. “There weren?t many sketches, to be honest,” he says. “Since I was chasing a gesture, two-dimensional lines on a page weren’t adequate. I had to feel what I was doing.” After some experiments in clay, he moved to the computer. “We 3D-printed numerous CAD models, and I lived with them—actually drinking from them, cleaning them, dropping them, essentially trying to find their flaws.”

As many a designer before Bowers has learned, perfecting a simple object is one of the most vexing challenges. “To get the pinch just right so that anyone would be able to comfortably hold and lift a full cup of hot espresso or tea was a challenge,” Bowers says. “We went through over two years of clay mock-ups, 3D prints and materials samples, changing a millimeter here, removing material there, until finally balance was achieved.”

An early clay model

In fact, Bowers didn’t even really begin work on the saucer until two years into the design process. “This was due, mostly, to my obsession over details,” Bowers says. “I wanted to make sure that the cup, the centerpiece, was perfectly resolved before creating its counterpart.” Because the final drinkware pieces would be cast in porcelain, a material chosen for its strength and lightness, the pieces would also shrink in the kiln and couldn’t be judged for scale until they were completely fired. “We had a graveyard of mock-ups,” Bowers says.

Testing a later model

After establishing a form language for both pieces—the aforementioned pinched cup and lifted saucer—Bowers worked with the team at the Washington, D.C.–based Middle Kingdom Porcelain to perfect a recipe for a porcelain slip that would highlight the forms and curves of the set. “The recipe for the porcelain came by way of a museum curator I know in Miami,” Bowers says. “I told him I was on a quest to make a porcelain cup that has sexy curves and shadows. He knew a company that made objects in matte porcelain. He put me in touch with them and the second journey began.”

Color was the next consideration, as Bowers scoured Pantone chips to find the ideal hue. “The world has enough ordinary white cups, and Pinch is no ordinary cup, so it couldn’t be an ordinary color,” Bowers says. After about four rounds of testing a variety of colors, Bowers and the team settled on a matte rose tone for the porcelain.

Since the porcelain is a solid color—as opposed to just an external glaze or finish—that added another layer of complexity to production. Each cup is slip cast, a task that varies in difficulty depending on weather conditions like humidity and temperature. For each batch of Pinch cups and saucers, porcelain is mixed and then samples of it are fired in a kiln to ensure that they will produce the intended hue. “This is mostly trial and error, since the same recipe on a different day can yield a different hue than before,” Bowers says. After the color is confirmed, the molds are prepared and a porcelain slip is cast to create the pieces, which are set aside to air-dry. After that, they are cleaned and rubbed down by hand to remove any bumps or nicks. Then they’re ready for the preliminary firing, which sets the color of the pieces, and a second firing for the glaze. And then they’re done. The pieces are sent to Bowers’s studio, where they’re packaged as a set, wrapped and shipped to customers. From start to finish, each piece takes a little over a week to make.

“The biggest challenge along the way is waiting,” Bowers says. “I want things to be immediate, because I see it in my head as it should be, but turning a thought into a reality isn’t as fast as people may think. It is well worth the wait.” Pinch is sold as a single or double set via Bowers’s site, starting at $85.

Reader Submitted: Prisma: A Way to Play with Your Office Supplies

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Prisma is a 3D-printed throwing dart assembled using everyday office items. The project was an exploration in digital manufacturing in conjunction with old-fashioned fun.

View the full project here

From the Archive: A Woodworking Shed from the 1700s Discovered Behind a School

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Behind the Berrybrook School in Duxbury, Massachusetts, stands an old beat-up shed. Teachers were using it for overflow storage in 2012 when Michael Burrey, a restoration carpenter working on a project at the school, came across the building. Inside, looking past the scattered toys and tricycles, he recognized the space for what it was: A woodworking shop. An extremely old one that predated electricity, judging by the "1789" painted on a roof beam and the remains of a treadle-powered lathe.

View the full content here
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