The last few weeks have been exciting for anyone interested in alternative aircraft, as the long awaited Airlander reemerged in the public eye. Dubbed the "Flying Bum" after its enormous hotdog bun body, the Airlander is widely credited as the biggest vehicle of any kind in the world. And it has now officially had the biggest crash in history.

Poor thing. It's a bit like watching a sick whale. 

The ship—now owned by Hybrid Air Vehicles and dubbed the Airlander 10—took what the company is calling "a hard landing" after its second test flight. No one was injured, and the craft's main frame remains usable, but did sustain damage to the front hull and cabin. 

Fans around the world are hoping the crash (though entertaining in a slow motion horror way) won't dent the company's plans. As announced back in 2014, the 300 foot ship is hoped to jumpstart an era of unimaginably fuel efficient travel and transport. Its innovative and behemoth design pairs lighter than air gas with a lift-generating body, and can hover, self propel and land in virtually all conditions. It was originally meant for surveillance use by the US government, and now with enough early successes, could totally change long-distance transportation.

It's an ambitious project, and has needed several years of further development to get to this point, so any setback would feel serious. Until further announcements, nerds like yours truly (and maybe even superfan Bruce "I was totally in Iron Maiden and want to fly an Airlander around the planet" Dickinson) will have to wait with baited breath for the Bum's next moves.

Is Flight Of Icarus a little too on the nose?

Tandem teamed up with Fellow Robots, a Silicon Valley start up, to create a pioneering Telepresence Robot to enhance the lives of all customers and consumers. The Telepresence robot is a high-tech, humanoid machine with wheels to manoeuvre in human environments.

Can this design take credit for fixing the umbrella? You might not be thinking of the gray days to come yet, but take some of your luxurious sweaty summertime to consider the KazBrella. 

The KazBrella was designed by Jenan Kazim, an Aeronautical Engineer who has spent a decade on the project. It updates the biggest design woes of the traditional umbrella: its spiny periphery, large "footprint" when opening, overly delicate structure, and wet dog mess once indoors.

The KazBrella quashes each of these in turn with an elegant inverted design. This style takes the ubiquitous push-to-open mechanism, but starting with the fabric's crown close to the handle and moving up along the shaft, flexing through a full 180 degrees to open into the familiar umbrella profile. You really have to watch it move to appreciate it. 

The inversion allows the wet material to fold tidily inside when closed. This detail makes your umbrella a less gross accessory in tight spaces like subways or cabs, and kinder to floors when parked.

It closes and opens more space-consciously, making it less hazardous to the eyes of bystanders. Is it less unlucky to open indoors? I couldn't say. But the KazBrella canopy is stronger against wind damage, since extreme pressure inside the bell of the umbrella would force it into a normal closing position, not against it. 

I particularly appreciate the nod to integrating traditional umbrella components in the design. Functional innovation is wonderful, but recognizing how to benefit from generations of existing engineering is often beneficial to commercial success.

I should note, it's not the first and only of it's inside-out kind, but it's certainly the sturdiest and most well-developed I've seen yet. I can't say I'd use it personally ("true" Pacific Northwest natives turn up our noses at umbrellas because we believe GoreTex is a hereditary trait) but I'd consider it more than normal. If you feel similarly, the KazBrella's second production run will be available this fall, with an estimated price tag of 45 Euro

Would you use one? Any oversights?

Time is ticking! Today is your last day to enter our "Teach Me Something" competition on Instagram and Twitter—in honor of our audience-led workshops this year at the Core77 Conference, we wanted to see what all of you know. Create an original video under 30 seconds teaching us one of your tips, tricks or life hacks and you'll be in the running for 2 free tickets to our conference in LA! 

Contest ends today August 26th at 11:59 EST, so less than 9 hours left to show us what you've got!

In case you're looking for inspiration, here are a few new and exemplary entries from our semifinalists this week: 

 How to Make Handmade Chopsticks by @skeehanstudio

How to Rig an Automatic Door Closer by @sandeepdev

How to Make a Quick Foam Prototype by @gmay3design

Click here to read the full contest Terms & Conditions—we can't wait to see your tutorials!

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 Hidden Worlds of the National Parks

Advanced technologies like VR can be quite isolating, sometimes making you feel as if you're venturing further and further away from reality (I only tried Google Cardboard for the first time a few days ago and it completely tripped me up). On the other hand, these technological advances in some cases can make us feel even more in touch with our world. In celebration of the National Park Service's 100th anniversary, Google Arts & Culture has created a beautiful series of immersive HD and 360 degree films that give us a hyper-real, almost superhuman look at some of the best and brightest of America's national parks.

—Allison Fonder, community manager

How Design Heals History

This recent profile of the life and work of Alabama-based lawyer and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson is both moving and inspirational—his decades long dedication to bringing justice to prisoners on death row is unparalleled. But it is his most recent project to spark a public conversation around the history of lynchings and its legacy in the American South that highlights the way that design can be a poetic and powerful vehicle for reconciling our relationship with history.

—LinYee Yuan, managing editor

Remembering a Design Legend

This week we're remembering designer, urban planner and editor Jane Thompson, who passed away on August 23rd. Thompson was the founding editor of Industrial Design magazine (later known asI.D.) and a strong advocate for women in the architecture and design fields. Her long career took many interesting turns, and as journalist Alexandra Lange points out in Architect magazine's tribute, "Any one of her careers, as an editor, as a planner, and more recently as an advocate and historian, would have been enough to make her a legend."

—Rebecca Veit, columnist, Designing Women

Instagram 20 Years Ago

Russian designer, Misha Petrick reimagined Instagram as a Windows 95 .exe program, and I couldn't be more intrigued. #foodporn would not have been appealing 20 years ago...

—Emily Engle, editorial assistant

Building a Transformers Prop

Bob Clagett tackles another multifaceted project that resembles an Industrial Design Prototyping 101 project. Here he executes everything from 3D printing to modelmaking to electronics, conjuring up a replica of the "Matrix of Leadership" artifact that fans of the '80s Transformers cartoon will recognize:

Prototyping an Adjustable Circular Saw Crosscutting Guide

This is pretty cool because we get to see prolific inventor Izzy Swan's prototyping process. Here he's making version 1.0 of a gizmo that will let him use a circular saw on a jobsite, rather than having to haul a miter saw:

Homemade Dowel Maker

Izzy Swan shows you the DIY method his father used to use for creating your own dowels:

Shaper Origin Test Drive

Jimmy DiResta received a pre-production Shaper Origin unit, that self-correcting router we wrote up. Here he gives it a test-drive:

DIY Concrete Firepit

A new addition to the Maker's Roundup: HomeMadeModern shows you how to make a firepit out of concrete that's been embedded with fire bricks:

Powered Forklift Toy

Matthias Wandel delves into toy design, digging up an old wiper-motor-powered forklift he built way back in 1985. Here he refurbishes it over two videos, then runs it through its paces. It's pretty satisfying seeing what he can get it to do at the end:

Part 1

Part 2

Easel & Chalkboard Frame

Jay Bates builds an easel out of poplar for an upcoming wedding. I am always in awe of how tidy his shop is, and how organized his planning and execution are:

Board-on-Board Fence, Part 3

April Wilkerson finishes up her massive board-on-board fence project, showing you some clever efficiency tips along the way. I especially like how she builds the gate right into the fence, then cuts it free at the end with a circular saw:

Solid Maple Table

This week Laura Kampf whips up a beautiful, and burly, solid maple table with a live edge and breadboard ends. Am also digging the walnut bowties:

The New York Times Advertising department is looking for a well-rounded Graphic Designer to create beautiful and effective visual communication in support of our Creative Strategy team. The Graphic Designer will oversee the creative development and packaging of advertising opportunities, reporting directly to the Associate Creative Director.

Jumpstart your week with our insider's guide to events in the design world. As the summer exhibit season comes to a close, we're sad to see our favorites go. Here are some must-see exhibits ending this month that you'll want to catch before it's too late:

Monday

You Can Still Get Trippy at GROW

It's okay if you missed the GROW workshop a few weeks ago—the exhibit runs through tomorrow! Take a walk around a studio where mushroom mycelium gets transformed into lampshades. You may not get to grow something yourself, but the process steps are clearly displayed on the walls of the studio, giving you an inside look into the fsacinating process.

New York, NY. On view through August 30, 2016.

Tuesday

Escape from the Real Manhattan While You Still Can at Sharing Models: Manhattanisms 

Each model in this exhibit represents a section of Manhattan. The models establish analytical, conceptual, and physical frameworks for inhabiting and constructing urban spaces and the public sphere. Together, they present a composite figure—a territory that is simultaneously fictional and real, opening a window to new perceptions of the city's shared assets.

New York, NY. On view through September 2, 2016.

Wednesday

Catch ICEBERGS Before it Melts Away

Designed by James Corner Field Operations, ICEBERGS represents an underwater world of glacial ice spanning the National Building Museum's enormous Great Hall. The immersive installation features climbable icebergs, "ice" chutes, and caves to explore.

Washington, DC. On view through September 5th, 2016.

Thursday

Focus On Objects After Objects

Objects After Objects is part of Portugal's Pavilion at the Triennale di Milano. The exhibit proposes a reflection on contemporary project-related practice, including everything from its creative to political aspects. You can expect to see various objects that push the boundaries of classic design.

Milan, Italy. On view through September 12, 2016.

Friday

Dance On Over to Dance Like a Tree

This exhibit is comprised of wearable wood pieces that create sounds while being worn. These tree bark-like suits explore the ambiguity between movement and immobility while covering the whole body. The wearer becomes an abstracted form with a barely recognizable silhouette, creating focus around the senses and perception of the animated objects.

Amsterdam, Netherlands. On view through September 18, 2016.

Saturday/Sunday

Play With Your Food (Before it's Considered Taboo Again) at Tempting Art

For Tempting Art, designers Maurizio Galante and Tal Lancman invited 22 artists and designers to concoct a three-course culinary design menu, meant to be devoured with the eyes. The playful concept explores what happens when we throw the "Don't play with your food!" cautionary mentality aside and celebrate the kitchen as a playground.

Luxembourg, Luxembourg. On view through September 19, 2016.

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.

Here at Core77 HQ, as online storytellers and designers, we're always interested in new ways of communicating ideas through digital media. That's why we were especially interested in the work of designer and creative director Alexis Lloyd. Lloyd is an award-winning researcher and user experience designer whose work focuses on exploring the newly available possibilities of emerging technologies. She designs and builds compelling experiences that demonstrate innovative ways of engaging with information and with the world around us, most recently as Creative Director ofThe New York Times R&D Lab. 

At The Times, Lloyd her team identified trends then created apps and prototypes, "to facilitate innovation and thoughtful consideration of the future of media." During this September's Core77 Conference, Lloyd will discuss the importance for designers to help shape future interactions with machine intelligence—from collaborating with automated systems to augmented abilities.

Here, we discuss the opportunities and challenges with working on interdisciplinary teams, storytelling and the botifesto with Lloyd: 

Core77: Your work at the R&D Lab capitalized on the collective knowledge from diverse teams of designers—product, big data, user experience, service, visual communication. What is the single most important strategy for leading these types of interdisciplinary teams?

Alexis Lloyd: Working with an interdisciplinary team creates fantastic opportunities but also presents unique challenges. The best ideas at the R&D Lab came out of the synthesis of approaches that naturally happens when you have people from different domains working closely together. This approach challenges team members to explain assumptions or perspectives that are inherent to their discipline and to consider viewpoints that may not have occurred to them otherwise. As a result, you get more in-depth, rigorous, creative thinking and problem solving.

However, in a more traditional team, people come to rely on the common domain knowledge shared by both colleagues and managers in a number of ways. Colleagues with similar backgrounds and interests can help you improve your skill set, and managers with deep domain knowledge can provide in-depth career and project guidance. In a multidisciplinary team, those aspects are more challenging, so I think one of the most important strategies for leadership is to hire people who have a strong sense of self-direction, motivation to learn, and excellent communication skills. It's also essential to always ask lots of questions that help you learn more about your team members' areas of expertise in order to provide effective support for their projects and broader career goals.

Object Record explores everyday objects' relationships to different environmental conditions and their subjective responses to changes in those conditions.

At The New York Times, you argued for new forms of storytelling. What are some examples from The Times and beyond that exemplify this trend and how are these examples important for designers?

I think the most critical lesson for designers in thinking about new forms of storytelling is that, as new technologies emerge, it is important to deeply understand the affordances and constraints of each new platform or toolset. The best storytelling takes advantage of those new affordances and consciously works to challenge assumptions about the way things have been done before. There's a tendency not to question assumptions about form and content that are often simply the secondary effects of an older technology or circumstance. For examples, much of the way in which stories get told by news organizations are the result of constraints inherent to print media and distribution—constraints which shouldn't apply to digital platforms but are often inherited.

I wouldn't point to any single example as inspiration, but rather, I would encourage designers to deeply understand the medium in which they're working and try to challenge your assumptions about how stories need to be told.

Recently your focus has been on machine intelligence and bots (including the botifesto). Why should all designers turn their attention to this expanding technological space?

I think there's a wealth of creative possibility that is yet to be fully explored in terms of how human intelligence and machine intelligence can collaborate and complement one another. Current approaches to bots and interactions with machines tend to involve making those machines act and converse as much like people as possible. The goal in these cases is to make a bot pass the Turing test with flying colors. I think this goal in incredibly problematic and doomed to fail in all but the most simplistic interactions. In a way, machines that attempt to behave like people are the skeuomorphs for AI, in the same way that the first digital file systems were full of desks and file drawer metaphors —they're the things that people are designing because we don't have new mental models in place yet.

It's far more compelling to think about the unique capabilities of machines and understand how to really take advantage of the botness of the bots rather than turning them into second-rate humans. Fascinating possibilities start to emerge when we consider machines as a parallel species that will coexist alongside us, not replacing us but potentially complementing us and interacting with us in strange and curious ways. What unique insights can we gain from the computational gaze? What are the yet-to-be-imagined interactions with our computational companions?

Learn more about storytelling and collaborative human-machine intelligence at this September's Core77 Conference in Los Angeles. Buy your ticket today!

Kintsugi, or kintsukuroi, is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with a gold lacquer—leaving it inherently more valuable than before. Traditionally confined to ceramics, architectural studio TANK has found a new application for the treasured restoration technique: applying it to the floor of a Kyoto apartment.

The apartment, known as the Xchange Apartment, is part of a larger experiment that offers artists and others a short-term residence under one condition: they give something other than money in return. Owned by Rikki Sato, a Tokyo-based designer, the project is a collaboration with Naritake Fukumoto, principal of TANK, who is known for pushing the boundaries of traditional architecture (think: a house where removable patches of the floor double as flip-flops).

The 47-square meter Xchange Apartment is the world's first "bartering apartment." Residents can rent the space for a month but they must offer a product, art, skill or something else entirely in exchange. "Anyone who can readily exchange something is eligible for application," says Yuki Asai, TANK member.

As part of Fukumoto's vision for the space, the apartment utilizes many traditional Japanese methods fused with modern techniques and practices. "The partly unfinished look of the room encourages the observer to discover what usually goes unnoticed, unappreciated," Asai says. "The kintsugi urushi-nuri (Japanese for "lacquer coating") on the other hand, demands attention. We intend this as a way for the observer to see through superficial details. We hope these elements, whether intended or not, will evoke new ideas during their stay."

The idea of applying kintsugi to the floors of the apartment was one that Fukumoto had been toying with for awhile. During construction, traditional plaster cracks as it dries, leaving large voids that are traditionally filled as the material sets. "As the cracking of mortar cement is inherent to the material, he was looking for a way to present this as a merit rather than a demerit," Asai says. While floor cracks are usually deemed as inferior workmanship (more modern, improved mortar rarely results in the same imperfections), Fukumoto saw the cracks as an opportunity to apply the familiar mending treatment of kintsugi.

"[Fukumoto] originally thought of filling the cracks with normal epoxy as the cracks propagated, but when he talked of this idea to painter Shuhei Nakamura, he suggested adding pigment," Asai says. "Any pigment could be used, so adding gold-colored pigment naturally came to as an emulation of kintsugi."

Just as traditional kintsugi requires mixing powdered gold, silver or platinum with lacquer, TANK mixed gold-colored powdered pigment with a transparent epoxy-resin to create the cohesive mortar that fills the cracks in the plaster floor. "In traditional Japanese lacquerware, urushi-nuri, the technique calls for lacquer resin-impregnated jute fabric reinforcing a wooden base to form a rigid composite structure beneath the polished upper coat," Asai says of a similar process.

After substantial cracking had occurred, Nakamura then filled the actual cracks, taking the gold-epoxy composite and applying it "bit by bit" with a thin wand, as Asai describes. The result—like kintsugi—transforms something previously thought of as 'unfortunate' imperfections into something to celebrate, not hide.

"This composite technique is like FRP (Fiber Reinforced Plastic) layering, so we chose FRP using translucent resin for the washroom floor to mimic this method," Asai says. "The translucent resin is polished to reveal the underlying glass-fiber layers over the wooden base, resulting in a translucent yet complex visual texture while achieving the material strength and waterproofing needs for the location."

Asai anticipates that cracks will continue to develop in the floor, so the treatment will be an ongoing process, with the team returning to re-apply the epoxy concoction until the plaster has definitively settled. With the construction of the apartment complete, the next step is lining up the future residents. When we last checked, flights from New York City to Osaka were $700. Any takers?

Magnetosphere Desk Lamp is inspired by Earth and two fundamental forces of the universe—electromagnetism and gravity. This desk lamp embodies the concept that everything is attached and free to move about on the surface of the earth due to gravity.

It's strange to think terrorism has influenced the design of luggage, yet it undeniably has. Frequent fliers seek out bags with pockets allowing for quick laptop egress and ingress, and external pockets for dumping keys and change into, making the airport security line a bit easier.

At some airports we can skip the metal detectors and step into scanning machines where, in the words of Bill Burr, we're made to adopt "the Jay Z 'Hova' position."

But metal detectors are still the rule, which means we still have to take our belts off. Now a company called Flybelt is aiming to change that with their removable belt buckles.

I'm not at all sure these will take, but it's easy to see the company's thinking: They're hoping that frequent fliers will so like the design that they'll purchase a drawer full of Flybelt buckles, and a series of belts that they've designed a hanger for. They're selling the system. 

What they need now is to hire a celebrity endorser to popularize them. We recommend Hova.

Metabo's WPB 36 LTZ BL 230 Quick will surpass all other cordless grinders when it hits the European market later this month but not for the reasons it won a Red Dot Award.

The jury statement provides a quick take on the judges' thinking:

A balanced distribution of weight enables excellent control over the angle grinder. The straight lines of the geometric design convey its high efficiency.

I can't speak to the tool's balance because I haven't seen it in person or had the opportunity to handle it. But I do agree that it's sleek and good looking.

The description on the Red Dot Awards page probably came from the manufacturer and is as follows:

The WPB 36 LTX BL 230 Quick cordless angle grinder with its 230-mm disc is able to provide the same performance as large corded devices. The dynamic shape and the rotatable U-shaped handle with soft-touch components give the grinder a lightweight and ergonomic design. The wide paddle switch provides safety and ease of use in a wide variety of working positions. The adjustment of the guard and the changing of discs can be carried out without additional tools.

So far as I can tell, all of the above is true. Oversize switches and tool free adjustments to the spindle and guard are great, but are nothing you won't find on other cordless grinders. The rotatable handle is particular to Metabo; it has been on their 18-volt grinder for years and is a handy feature.

The most important piece of information about the tool is in the first sentence of the description—that it takes a 230-mm (9-inch) disk or "wheel." Currently, most cordless grinders have 4 1/2- or 5-inch wheels; a 9-inch wheel is big for a corded tool and unheard of in a cordless machine.

As can be seen in the video, the tool has the power to drive a big wheel—which it does to great effect in cutting a piece of steel the size of a highway guard rail. 

The shape of the grip is related to the size and power of the motor. The motors in most cordless grinders are just small enough to fit inside the grip. Any larger and the grip would be too fat to easily grasp.

The brushless motor in the WPB 36 LTX BL 230 Quick is too large to fit in the grip so it is set forward of it. With no need to accommodate a motor, the grip could be sized for maximum comfort—and need only be large enough to contain a trigger, switch, and wiring. The piece across from it functions as a "knuckle guard" and serves to strengthen what might otherwise be a tenuous connection between motor and battery.

It's a small detail, but I like the die-cast metal piece at the battery end of the grip—which I assume is there to prevent the battery case from being abraded by the rough surfaces the tool will be placed on in the field.

There's nothing unusual about the tool having a 36-volt rather than an 18-volt motor; a number of large cordless tools have the same. What's different is the battery system used to power it. Following in the footsteps of Makita, Metabo designed this tool to be run from a single 36-volt pack or two 18-volt packs placed in an adapter. Makita pioneered this system a few years back and has since gone on to build native two-battery 36-volt tools that do not require an adapter.

Can you think up a good product idea in 60 seconds? That's the challenge Diane Copek set for herself after watching an episode of Shark Tank. "I thought, what problem can I solve?" she says. Copek, who runs an automotive supply company and spends a lot of time on the road, didn't have to think for long: One of the hassles for traveling businesswomen is packing cosmetics, and trying to find room to apply them in often-cramped hotel bathrooms with a lack of counter space.

Here's what Copek came up with:

Copek gambled on renting booth space at this year's International Travel Goods Show in Las Vegas, and the gamble paid off. Everything Orgo won first place in the Product Innovation Award category, and large luggage manufacturers reportedly approached her to license the design. "At this time, we're saying no," Copek told WXYZ News in Detroit. "Because we're just so excited about the product, there's just so much interest out their for the product, we want to have control of our company." Smart move, we think.

Here's the WXYZ news clip where she talks about how she developed the product:

Industrial designers can be petty, and I'm no exception, so I'm always thrilled when an architect defects to our "side." But this one takes the cake. Sustainability-minded Benjamin Uyeda co-founded ZeroEnergy Design, an architecture firm that creates houses that produce more energy than they consume. Homes like that would be helpful for the poor. But only the rich could afford to have these homes built, and this began to nag at Uyeda.

This is because Uyeda himself grew up poor, sharing a room with three other siblings. He learned, as a child, that if he wanted something, he had to make it, because the family did not have the money to buy it. "Design," he says, "was about creating access to new things and experiences no matter how limited your resources."

As he began to tire of designing second homes for the wealthy, Uyeda one day had a beer with a furniture designer friend, which changed everything. (We here at Core77 always recommend that, anytime you're faced with a moral quandary, you have beer with a furniture designer friend. In fact, you should buy.) The friend complained that "It was impossible to make affordable, American-made furniture made out of real materials." Uyeda made him a bet that he could prove him wrong.

In the following TEDx Talk, "Why I Give My Best Design Ideas Away for Free," Uyeda describes how he won the bet and came to found HomeMade Modern:

Our company is growing, and our small creative team has a lot of work to do. As our new Graphic Designer, you’ll be helping us roll out and implement our new brand, which we proudly created in-house and launched last year.

Industrial designers: Do you find it stings when non-designers invent a successful product that you should have thought of?

Serge and Elena Karnegie identified a problem that everyone with running water has: Drains must be periodically cleared of hair or else they clog. If you've ever had to use one of these things…

…then you know how disgusting the clearing procedure can be.

What the long-haired, pet-owning Karnegies came up with is this:

The TubShroom, as they call it, relies on a principle that is a problem with vacuum cleaner rollers: Strands of hair, when propelled with any kind of force, like to wrap around cylindrical things. But because the TubShroom is made of soft silicone, the ringlet of hair comes off with a single wipe.

What's interesting is that the Karnegies sought funding on both KickstarterandIndieGogo—and smashed it on both. They gathered $59,267 on the former and about $120,000 on the latter.

That was last year. This year they've returned to Kickstarter with a smaller version called, unsurprisingly, the SinkShroom. The $12 device has already been 400% funded, and there's 18 days left to pledge if you want one.

Question for those of you with molding experience: Can you describe the mold required to make one of these? Here's the largest photo I could find:

I get that you can do things with softer silicone that you couldn't with rigid plastic, but I can't figure out the holes on the vertical shaft (nor what those dark lines are between the columns of holes). Obviously there's a core that provides the central cavity—if you can't tell, the bottom of the object has a large hole in it—but is this core studded with stubby cylinders, or are the holes created by the surrounding parts of the mold? In the photo above, there appears to be draft angle on the holes making them wider on the outside, which mystifies me.

The Karnegies have revealed that the tooling for the TubShroom ran $12,000, if that gives you any clue. Am dying to hear from the mold-savvy among you.

Making the decision to throw a design conference is ambitious, to say the least. Between securing speakers and presenters, organizing a variety of events, solidifying venues and marketing the event, hosting a conference is intense work. At it's heart, the annual Core77 Conference is an opportunity to bring our dynamic online community together in real life, a real place where attendees can interact with Core77 staff, presenters and the larger audience in a unique environment. Additionally, the Core77 Conference is an unparalleled opportunity for everyone to network and forge new personal and professional relationships. Through teamwork and extensive planning, Core77 launched our inaugural design conference, Object Culture, in 2014.

There's still time to attend this September's Core77 Conference! Buy your ticket today!

2014: Object Culture

Intended for those interested in broadening their perspective and gaining new insights of contemporary design practice and its impact on business, society and culture, the annual conference drew a wide array of participants with interests varying from UI/UX to consumer product design to design techniques for entrepreneurship.

Held in our hometown of Brooklyn, the first Core77 Conference featured speakers who covered topics ranging from bike culture to wearables to design techniques and theories and concluded with a social evening of food and drinks. It wasn't perfect, but as Michael Ditullo said in his 2014 conference presentation on "Design in the C-Suite," "If you only aim for perfection and skip the process, you won't go anywhere." Now in year three, we're pretty deep in the process and and our conference this year reflects just how far we've come.

Highlights from the 2015 Conference: Designing Here/Now

2015: Designing Here/Now

We're always learning, so our 2015 conference implemented a number of developments. As Designing Here/Now, we wanted to connect with our West Coast audience and dropped into the bustling design community in downtown Los Angeles, California. With a speaker line-up representing some of the most interesting design entrepreneurs and practices in Los Angeles including Matthew Manos of Very Nice, WET Designs, Tad Toulis of SONOS, Jessie Kawata of NASA JPL, Brandon Ravenhill, Tanya Aguiniga, Javier Verdura of Tesla and Pip Tompkin, the City of Angels proved to be the perfect location for our event—so much so that the conference will be returning there this year! 

2016: Designing Here/Now

With the addition of a second day, this year we're adding a formal day of practical workshops and behind-the-scenes tours to our day-long symposium hosted at the dramatic cathedral of the Vibiana in Downtown Los Angeles. The 2016 theme at the Core77 Conference: Designing Here/Now focuses on the way that designers can lead interdisciplinary teams to create innovative new products. With two years of experience hosting conferences already under our belt, the third is expected to be the best yet.

Focusing on the idea of co-creation, through talks and interactive practice, the conference will address the topics of human-centered design in the age of technology, startup strategies and storytelling. This year's presenters represent more than the disruptive startups and established brands they've worked to build—Microsoft, Google, IDEO, PAX Labs, Eames Office, Hyperloop One and more—they are working in ways that will inspire your practice and shape your long term perspective on the role of design in our near future.

On day one of the conference attendees will experience presentations and panels in our symposium. We'll provide lunch, snacks and plenty of opportunities to interact with ideas and fellow attendees. These ideas will be further expanded on day two during a morning of workshops lead by Core77's network professionals at The Standard Downtown followed by lunch at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum.

Core77 2015 Conference walking tour of downtown Los Angeles led by Alissa Walker

Then the activities continue with Friday afternoon behind-the-scene tours. For the second year in a row, Curbed Urbanism Editor Alissa Walker will be leading a walking tour of downtown Los Angeles. Gensler Architect Audrey Wu will be leading a tour of LA's new SkySlide. Part of OUE Skyspace LA, the space offers visitors a 360-degree view of Los Angeles on the tallest open-air observation deck in California and includes the 1.25" thick, forty five foot long, glass slide—positioned 1,000 feet above downtown Los Angeles.

A ride on the SkySlide (Source: Brian van der Brug for Los Angeles Times)

Last but not least, the Hyperloop One team will be leading the Hyperloop One Tour, exploring the 55,000 square-foot, 2.5 acre, headquarters of the company that's making Elon Musk's vision for future transportation—located right in the heart of the downtown Los Angeles Arts District.

Hyperloop Campus (Source: Hyperloop)

Still wondering what makes the Core77 Conference so special? While our overall industrial design conference experience is largely unmatched, "The diversity of the audience what is really exciting and unique," says Core77 Co-founder Stuart Constantine. "You never know what type of person you'll be sitting next to through the day—where they come from, what they do, what their story is. This mix is something we pride ourselves on, and always have."

Learn more about contemporary design practice at this September's Core77 Conference in Los Angeles. Buy your ticket today!

This is the latest installment of our Designing Women series. Previously, we profiled the German modernist designer Lilly Reich.

Knoll photographed by Margaret Bourke-White, 1946. Image via the Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Florence Knoll* is a one-woman design powerhouse. Not only did she help establish one of America's most influential design companies, she created a new market for modern furniture and a system for promoting designers' work that credited them by name, paid them royalties and allowed them the space to experiment with new materials and forms. She also helmed Knoll's interior design office, produced furniture designs of her own and was considered the "eye" of the company. As architecture critic Joseph Giovannini writes, the company she built with her husband (and independently after his early death) changed the landscape of the modern home and office: "Previously, chairs, tables and fabrics suitable for modern interiors simply did not exist on a dependable commercial basis in significant, reasonably priced quantity. Knoll was one of the very few companies, along with Herman Miller Inc., to recognize, anticipate and, to a certain extent, create the need for modern furniture by aggressively promoting contemporary interiors." Here are six things you may not know about the 99-year-old design legend.

*She became Florence Knoll Bassett in 1958, but for the purposes of this article we will use the name by which she's best known.

1. She was an orphan (who had the good fortune of befriending the Saarinen family)

Born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1917 and orphaned at the age of 12, Knoll (then Schust) was put in the care of a family friend who made arrangements for her to attend boarding school. Given a choice of schools, Knoll selected the Kingswood School Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills. There she came under the tutelage of master architect Eliel Saarinen and his wife, textile artist Loja Saarinen, who ran the school's weaving studio. She also befriended their son, Eero Saarinen, and spent the summers with them in Europe, where she was exposed to a rich world of art and architecture. "I've had an extraordinary life when you think about it," she told Metropolis magazine in 2001. "Growing up at Cranbrook, living as part of the Saarinen family." This special relationship helped guide her education in architecture at a time when few women entered the field—first studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, then at the Architectural Association in London (until the outbreak of World War II forced her to return home) and finally under the guidance of Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute for Technology.

Florence and Hans Knoll (back row, right) with the Saarinen family in 1949. Image copyright Cranbrook Archives, Saarinen Family Papers

A letter from Eliel Saarinen to Florence Knoll's guardian regarding summer travel, 1936. Image via the Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

2. She helped build one of America's most influential design companies

Hans Knoll established his eponymous furniture company in 1938, and in 1943 Florence Schust joined his office as an interior designer. They married in 1946 and changed the name to Knoll Associates. With Florence's previously established connections to architects and designers at Cranbrook and beyond, the couple began to expand the company's offerings with furniture collections in the modernist spirit. The result is now legendary—Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona collection, Eero Saarinen's Pedestal collection, and Harry Bertoia's innovative wire chairs, to name just a few. Reflecting on her work with the company's designers, Knoll recalled that, "In some cases the designs were existing classics like the Barcelona group. In other cases we commissioned designers to work on specific projects and stayed with them through all phases until completion. . . . In any case, we always demanded the very highest standards." In 1955, Knoll became president of the company after her husband died in a tragic accident in Cuba. She remained at the helm for the next decade (including five years as president, while the company doubled in size), ultimately retiring from Knoll in 1965.

Hans and Florence Knoll in the 1940s. Image via the Knoll Archive

Advertisement for the Diamond Chair designed by Harry Bertoia for Knoll 

Pedestal (or Tulip) chair designed by Eero Saarinen for Knoll, 1955–57. Image via the Cranbrook Art Museum

3. She inspired ingenious design and manufacturing solutions

In 1959, Knoll told the New York Times that Eero Saarinen's famous design for the Womb chair came from her simple request that he create a chair "like a great big basket of pillows that [she] could curl up in." The result was a comfy lounger whose radical fiberglass shape proved difficult to manufacture. Instead of relying on traditional methods, Knoll found a boat builder in New Jersey to help make the form. "He was very skeptical," she later recalled. "We just begged him. I guess we were so young and so enthusiastic he finally gave in and worked with us. We had lots of problems and failures until they finally got a chair that would work."

Eero Saarinen seated in a prototype for his Womb chair, 1947. Above and below images copyright Cranbrook Archive

Eero Saarinen's development models for the Knoll 70 series and Womb chair, 1948

4. She popularized the Barcelona chair

If you're reading this in a boutique hotel lobby or a chic corporate waiting room, there's a good chance you're sitting on a Barcelona chair (or, even more likely, a knockoff). Its sleek lines and refined elegance have been used for decades to telegraph a certain type of modern luxury, for which we have Knoll to thank. "I'd studied with Mies and was very interested in that form of design," she told Metropolis. "I was responsible for convincing Mies to allow us to do his furniture. He was a silent man—very private. I told him, 'I promise you we will never allow any outrageous colors or materials to be used on your furniture.' I think that convinced him." The chair, originally designed by Mies to receive the Spanish king and queen during their visit to his German Pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition in 1929, had seen very limited production in Europe. Knoll changed that, bringing his Barcelona series to her company, using it widely in her interior designs for the Knoll Planning Unit and showcasing it around the country in the Knoll showrooms.

Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair, originally designed in 1929. Mies granted Knoll exclusive rights to produce his furniture in 1948. Image via the Museum of Modern Art

Knoll's San Francisco Showroom in 1954, designed by Florence Knoll and featuring Mies's Barcelona chairs. Image via the Knoll Archive

5. She revolutionized corporate interiors

From 1946 to 1965, Knoll directed the Knoll Planning Unit, an interior design service that spread the brand's modern aesthetic to corporate clients by offering an approach to interiors that was more architectural than decorative. Furniture, textiles, color, lighting, detailing and space planning were all filtered through Florence Knoll's philosophy of "total design," revolutionizing the way that corporate interiors looked and functioned. Knoll also designed custom furniture for the Planning Unit commissions, which she called "meat-and-potato" pieces, but bristled at the idea that she was merely decorating the spaces. As she told the New York Times in 1964, "I am not a decorator … the only place I decorate is my own house."

Armchair designed in 1945 by Florence Knoll for the Rockefeller Family Offices in New York. Image via the Cranbrook Art Museum

Coffee table designed by Florence Knoll in 1954. Image via the Museum of Modern Art

"Paste-up" by Florence Knoll for a Planning Unit project. Image via the Knoll Archive

6. She designed her own archive

Knoll took her "total design" philosophy one step further when she donated her papers to the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art in 2000. While the Archive notes on their blog that it's not uncommon for donors to annotate their papers, they were amazed at the lengths that Knoll took to design a thoughtful retrospective of her career: "Florence Knoll . . . curated the entire contents of the collection, arranged the papers into portfolios and color-coded files, and provided a detailed inventory. Representative of her 'total design' philosophy, she also designed and had custom archival boxes made to house the collection!" Would you really expect any less from the woman who revolutionized modern design in America?

Above and below: pages from a chronology created by Knoll for her archive. Images via the Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Pencil Note is a notebook with a very simple polycarbonate cover that can house almost any full-sized pencil. The vacuum formed bulge on the cover provides enough space to tightly secure the pencil. Its shape also makes sure the pencil can be easily removed.