Tomorrow is the start of Glemseck 101, a motorcycle festival in Germany with an emphasis on custom rides. If you live in Europe and want to see unique designs on two wheels, you could do a lot worse than Glemseck. And here is what will surely be one of the most unusual bikes in attendance:

The bike's called the EASY, and it was put together by Berlin-based repair shop Urban Motors. The engine is from a 1964 Jawa 350, a Czech-made motorcycle that, in its heyday, was something like the two-wheeled VW Bug for Eastern Europe in terms of popularity.

This is no high-performance machine--it's got a single drum brake on the rear wheel only--but more of a design exercise. It's got no lights or blinkers, and I can't even tell if the thing has any form of suspension whatsoever. And the rider's position doesn't exactly look comfortable.

But darn if it ain't purty.

The minimalist bike will be competing in a 16-team sprint at Glemseck. With a 350cc-engine racing against competitors of up to 1200cc's, a win isn't exactly guaranteed. But it's sure to be in good standing for the other award, where a panel of judges as well as the public will vote on the best-designed bike.

And that may be the point. "Those who sprint slowly," Urban Motors' Peter Dannenberg told Bike Exif, "are seen longer!"

By Clinton & Charles Robertson from Del Rio, Texas & College Station, TX, USA - Ladybird Beetle Taking Flight, CC BY-SA 2.0

If there's anything on this earth that looks like it shouldn't be able to fly, it's a ladybug. They've got the same overall form factor as turtles, for chrissakes, and they look like they were designed by the people that came up with Super Mario Bros.

But ladybugs' hard shell, or Elytra, actually has a sneaky reveal down the middle. These Elytra swing open like the doors of a freaking Lamborghini, allowing an improbably long pair of wings to unfurl from within. If you've never seen this in action before, have a look, it's pretty cool:

Cool, but almost comically ungraceful. I like how when the wings come out, they initially look like they have upturned winglets on the tips.

Credit where credit is due, by the way: "The sequence was recorded by cameraman Rainer Bergomaz from Blue Paw Artists," writes PCO, a German manufacturer of scientific cameras, "with a pco.dimax HD at 3000 frames/s and 1296 x 720 pixel resolution. The first part is displayed at 250 frames/s and when the ladybug starts to unfold its wings the display speed is reduced to 25 frames/s."

As Labs Lead Interaction Designer, you will be deeply involved in our experience development process from concept to outcome, high-level discussions to fine detail. You will collaborate closely with the entire Labs team, including Design, Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Senior Leadership, as well as exciting internal and external partners.

Kali Protectives wants to defend your melon using soft tentacles hidden inside your helmet. As a design wonk I'm required to give weird concept helmets their due for pushing the conversation forward, and we've coveredmorethana fewoverthe years. But as an actual cyclist I'd usually rather pass: disrupting a widespread and heavily engineered technology is only cool when you actually improve it. So far, it looks like Kali nailed it. The safety tech just debuted on their all new "Interceptor" helmet at Eurobike, and the concept is subtle but exciting. 

Photo: Bike Mag

This project was developed to address a central design issue manufacturers and wearers face, while improving on the MIPS concept. Helmets need to survive both high intensity impacts that cause catastrophic damage (and dictate safety standards), as well as the lower intensity crashes riders sustain more often. Protecting against catastrophic accidents requires dense and hard materials, yet head trauma occurs during softer crashes too…and can be exacerbated by that same hard protective shell. 

Photo: Bike Mag

Kali Protectives' solution is to create a "Low Density Layer" a.k.a. cushiony middle barrier between your head and the harder foam frame of the helmet. Their soft tentacle-esque blocks fit around the inside of the form and the suckery parts can flex in any direction, absorbing and dispersing impact before your skull makes contact with the harder foam. If their assessment is accurate, this tech can reduce low-g impact forces by 12 percent and rotational forces by 25 percent. The material of the blocks is still under wraps, but it's fair to assume it compresses a lot more articulately than traditional foam inserts or pads. 

Photo: Pink Bike

Helmet design is tricky because you have to weigh cool racy aesthetics against intimate ergonomics, a wide range of physical conditions, and protection against an array of impact types. And, unlike cars, which have more space to stick in crumple zones and foam and airbags, you have to stay as small and light as possible. Unless these tentacles trap head sweat and reek, or weigh a comparative ton, this solution's well on its way to meeting all those needs. 

Photo: Pink Bike

Kali Protectives has been pushing the envelope on helmet tech from the foam up for awhile (the foam on the Interceptor includes nano tubes), and it can't hurt to have an actual rocket engineer at the helm. In this case, their willingness to break from both industry trends and normal appearance feels like the right kind of design risk first and foremost because it aims to provably reduce risk for riders.

When we first started thinking about the 2016 Core77 Conference we asked ourselves: What are the most interesting ideas and challenges in contemporary design practice? From this starting place, we made a list of interesting topics and people who are shaping design—through ideas big and small—in their daily work.

One of those big ideas is the potential of digital fabrication and generative design. [Read more about designing with machine intelligence in our interview with recent New York Times R&D Lab creative director and conference keynote Alexis Lloyd.] In anticipation of next month's Core77 conference on design-led co-creation, we spoke with Autodesk tech evangelist and product designer Paul Sohi about the maker scene in London, his favorite open-source projects and what it will mean to co-design with machines.

Core77: As a product designer at Autodesk, what does your day-to-day look like?

Paul Sohi: My day to day is pretty hard to nail down, I travel a huge amount for work, and will hop all around Europe, and sometimes over to the US. Typically though, these trips are to meet with co-working spaces, start-ups and makers—to help them out with their projects, to get them up and running, or on project ideas.

Prosthetic arms from Exiii, a Japanese robotics company that Sohi is working with that focuses on democratizing bionics

You are based in London and are very involved in the open-source maker scene there. What are some trends you are seeing on the ground? How does that effect the work you do at Autodesk?

Right now, there's a bit of an obsession with clean technologies, open source sustainability ideas and drones—all of which are really cool. It's great to see more and more of the maker consciousness focus into areas that are for the betterment of humanity, and this really lines up with Autodesk's sustainability initiatives, and gives me a great opportunity to get more involved with these kinds of projects.

At the Core77 Conference, you'll be speaking about digital fabrication. What are some of your favorite recent projects that highlight the ways that collaborative design might change the way we work in the future?

OpenDesk design

There's almost too many to mention! One of my particular favorites is OpenDesk, a company that designs open source furniture for the home and office. The designs are beautiful, and fully free, so anyone with access to a maker space or fab lab can build their own stuff, I even have one at home as my dining table! Their openness with their designs, and the way they share them out has built a really strong community of designers submitting their own designs to be part of the open desk line.

We've recently been interested in the potential of collaborating with computers in the fields of generative learning and generative design. How will the role of the designer evolve with new technologies?

We've been flirting with generative and Computer Aided Design for a while now, but now we're looking to our computers and softwares to be more active in the design process, less of a passive logging of our inputs. Generative design allows us to rapidly produce thousands of design iterations which fulfill different criteria, letting us quickly process through the "how does it work" elements of design. Our computers will be able to give us better feedback on mechanical and engineering problems to solve them faster, but the designer is still the core of every product, generative design still needs our input to achieve the next line of great products!

Learn more about digital fabrication and generative design at this September's Core77 Conference in Los Angeles. Buy your ticket today!

Mark Kokavec runs Render Demo, an online design training resource offering for-pay rendering tutorials. But he's going back to basics for his latest offering: Teaching folks how to draw, on paper, the human form. To accomplish this, Kokavec has designed a sketchbook filled with templates that use a sort of reverse-engineering technique that he calls "phasing-out:"

Demand is clearly strong; Kokavec sought $8,000 on Kickstarter, and at press time had garnered $43,637 with 17 days left to pledge. Buy-in starts at $25.

For those of you looking to improve your overall ID sketching for free, we've got you covered here.

Nanit is the world’s smartest baby monitor. It provides parents with unparalleled insight into their child’s sleep patterns and habits. We designed Nanit to be an elegant addition to any nursery. Nanit's smooth, seamless and flowing form floats quietly above the crib. The monitor incorporates a soft, functional light that glows through it’s top surface so that it won’t disturb the sleeping baby. In addition, Nanit’s stand was designed for incredibly easy set up and to the highest safety standards.

A mechanical vortex of hell has been created in lower Manhattan. It's called the intersection of Lafayette and Broome Streets, where each afternoon two traffic surges—those trying to get downtown to the East River bridges and those trying to get crosstown to the Holland Tunnel--intersect, and the box becomes so badly blocked with cars pointed in different directions that it must resemble a swastika from overhead. Horns blare, tempers flare, fingers are extended, cars go nowhere.

One cause of traffic snarls is selfish drivers. Another is human error. A third has to do with the dynamics of flow. Here YouTube content creator CGP Grey tackles the second and third (we all know we can't do anything about the first), demonstrates how the snarls start and end, and explains the solution, which he facetiously refers to as "simple:"

You know what Labor Day means—back to school, back to work...and finally buying that much-coveted Core77 Conference ticket, of course! In honor of our conference's co-creation theme, here's a list of activities to help promote some good ol' American group bonding this Labor Day Weekend. Back away from that flat screen TV and get co-creating!

8. Go-Karts are so 2002—Build your own Cooler-Scooter and host a Cooler Scooter Race. It doesn't get more American than this. Pro-tip: carry booze to your destination inside of your scooter, but avoid drinking and scooting.

7. Channel the energy and teamwork of this Pyrotechnics group. It's time to make up for your 4th of July fireworks fail—no dogs allowed this time.

6. Pimp your boat, together. Here's some inspiration.

5. How to get people to go fishing with you on said boat: make this primitive fish spear and allow people to watch you attempt to use it...entertainment guaranteed.

4. Assemble the Avengers to build Captain America's shield from titanium. The kids will love this appropriate family activity.

3. During an intense sand castle competition, surprise your competitors with an abstract sand sculpture instead of a typical castle. Your design will look so artistic, no-one will know you free-formed the entire design process. 

2. Kindle your camping fire with Doritos and use the leftovers for walking tacos. The fact that these "cheesy" chips can start fires is alarming, but they still taste darn good with taco meat.

1. Set up an epic walking taco bar on this massive farmhouse table or collaborate on delicious eats at a backyard communal BBQ party. 

When co-creating with family and friends, remember that things can get a little heated. During competitions and group bonding activities, remind yourselves to enjoy the holiday weekend and the time you're spending together.

Learn more about co-creation at this September's Core77 Conference in LA. Buy your ticket today!

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 Justice League for AI

What happens when Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft join forces? Hopefully an industry standard for ethical development of AI. As the New York Times reported earlier today, the tech giants have been meeting to ensure that machine intelligence doesn't run amok.

—LinYee Yuan, managing editor

Self-Driving Cars Don't Care About Your Moral Dilemmas

This Guardian article addresses the classic question: Should a self-driving car kill its driver to save others' lives?

—Rain Noe, senior editor

Drake Will Need a Walkie Talkie Just to Get a Beverage in His New Mansion

Toronto based visualization studio, Norm Li, took it upon themselves to create highly detailed renderings of Drake's proposed mansion in "the 6" to life. Highlights of their appropriately named project, "Drizzy Manor" include an OVO Sound themed basketball court and a "Hotline Bling" inspired champagne room.

—Emily Engle, editorial assistant

Autonomous Vehicles Could Change the Way We Relate to Our World

I'm happy to see a philosophical take on our autonomous vehicle future in this think piece written by Chenoe Hart. Yes, the driverless future is quite astounding, but what will this do to the way we observe and absorb our surroundings? With radical car concepts like IDEO's traveling office vehicle, we will soon "have to deliberately choose what we want to see" as Hart puts it: "cityscapes become optional, consumable on demand rather than by necessity. Meanwhile, the mobile workplace's controlled internal habitat would remain constant no matter where it was."

Postulations in the article are admittedly and intentionally far-fetched, but think nowadays about how hard it can be to simply get around without your iPhone and your Google Maps app—you think we were imagining that as an integral part of our reality 10 years ago?

—Allison Fonder, community manager

DIY Shoe Storage Cabinet

Working with humble materials and tools, Ben Uyeda builds a shoe storage cabinet that doubles as an entryway bench:

The Drill-Powered Through Wrench

Izzy Swan shows off the prototype of his nifty new invention, the DPT Wrench:

A Tool for Easily Cutting Flawless Miters

When Swan looks at a tool invention and thinks "Why didn't I think of that," you know it's got to be something special. Here he reviews the ingenious MiterSet:

Sub-$20 DIY Tail Vise

Swan's a machine this week, here's another invention: A quick-action tail vise you can construct for less than $20.

Different Ways to Make Mortises and Tenons

A bit of Maker Crossover this week, as April Wilkerson teams up with Jay Bates and Nick Ferry to demonstrate a variety of ways to cut mortises and tenons:

Bedside Table w/ Drawer

Here's the video April was referring to above, where she, Nick and Jay all work together to produce a bedside table for Nick's son:

Staining Wood With Beets, Coffee, Red Wine & More

Steve Ramsey experiments with using five things in your kitchen that you can use to stain wood:

Dealing with Disc Sander Frustration

The Samurai Carpenter shows you the best way to remove and replace the sandpaper on your disc sander:

Acrylic Bathroom Shelf

It's downright strange to see Matthias Wandel working with plastic rather than wood. But the missus has requested a bathroom shelf, and the wet environment's a no-go, so Matthias tackles it with acrylic.

"Maple Clouds"

Frank Howarth returns to the wonderful animation and filmmaking style that first put him on our radar:

Suspended Utensil Shelf w/ Hand-Cut Dovetails

This is classic Jay Bates, where you see how his meticulous planning and attention to techniques results in a smoothly-executed project in a spotless shop.

How to Cast a Human Head

Bob Clagett goes to a prop-making house to have a life cast made of his head:

Basque-Style Birdhouse

"We made a bird house in the typical style of [the] Basque region (south-west of France)," La Fabrique DIY writes. "Birds seem to like it, maybe there are Basque?"

Building and Installing "Map Drawers"

Talk about production work! Here Sandra Powell bangs out a LOT of "map drawers" to make very efficient use of an angled-ceiling space:

DIY Bathroom Towel Rack

More space efficiency: Linn from Darbin Orvar wrings some practical use out of an unclaimed piece of bathroom real estate.

Laura's Maple Table, Part 2

This week Laura Kampf whips up a steel base for the maple tabletop she produced last week:

In space-tight Tokyo, it occasionally happens that a tall building needs to be done away with. Real estate markets shift, local needs change and anti-earthquake building technologies improve, making structures obsolete. But how do you get rid of a 40-story building surrounded by residents?

That was the problem faced by Taisei, a Japanese general contractor tasked with removing the formerly iconic Akasaka Prince Hotel. Dynamiting the structure was ruled out, as the noise, debris and resultant dust cloud would be inimical to local residents' quality of life. Thus they developed the TECOREP (Taisei Ecological Reproduction) System, whereby they can noiselessly dismantle a building floor-by-floor:

What's not mentioned in the video above is an incredible trick pulled off by the company's engineers. As parts of the building are dismantled and lowered down to the ground, the weight of those parts actually generate electricity, because the lowering hoists utilize a regenerative braking system. The weight of the building parts descending creates more energy than is needed to raise the empty hook back up to the top. This excess electricity is stored in batteries that then power the lights and ventilation fans on the jobsite.

The following video provides a lot more detail as to how the system works, including how they jack the temporary structure's supporting columns downwards:

Sources:

The Awesomer

Reddit

Trends in Japan

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

Ask Your Self-Driving Car Questions at: Disruption & Rapid Expansion

As part of #speakeasyasia's networking event series, this discussion will focus on Disruption & Rapid Expansion within the field of technology. Panelists will discuss how they use changes in technology and society to their advantage to grow quickly and dominate their market. Don't miss out on invaluable insights from Uber, Blippar and Expedia.

Singapore. September 5th at 6:30PM. 

Tuesday

Close the Generational Gap at: Eternal Ceramics

An opportunity to view classic works alongside modern, abstract sculptural forms, this diverse ceramic exhibit features works by twelve artists from six different countries. The featured work spans from 1949 to 2015 and features ceramic objects of all shapes, styles and colors.

London, UK. On view through September 8, 2016.

Wednesday

Bring a Mad Men Fan to: International Art Moves Festival

Celebrating the art of billboards and other means of advertising through art, the International Art Moves Festival turns the city of Torun into an enormous, outdoor art gallery. Visitors are invited to walk through spaces filled with art centered around the theme, "under pressure—how to be yourself in the contemporary oppressive world."

Torun, Poland. Festival runs through September 9, 2016.

Thursday

Get Your Fabric On at: New York Textile Month at Colony

Colony is celebrating New York Textile Month with three consecutive exhibits during the month of September, each one showcasing the impressive catalogs of two Colony Co-op members, Hiroko Takeda and Meg Callahan, and the Colony Consult collaborator, FEBRIK.

New York New York. Visit the event schedule for specific exhibit dates.

Friday

Watch Process Porn IRL at: Artist Talk With Yuki Hayama

In this presentation, Yuki Hayama will explore the sources, processes and themes used in his current exhibition, Beauty of Life. During the talk, Hayama will demonstrate his incredible drawing technique on ceramic.

New York, NY. September 9, 2016 at 2PM.

Saturday/Sunday

Get Spiritual at: inConversation:—Morris Skenderian

Architect Morris Skenderian will be talking about his work with William F. Cody on the St. Theresa Catholic Church in Palm Springs. Skenderian joined the project as a young architect and offered to work with Laguna Beach stained glass artist, Joseph Maes, in the making of the church's stained glass windows.

Los Angeles, CA. September 11, 2016 at 1PM.

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.

Our challenge was to interpret Moen’s DNA from their highly interactive, largely style-driven, and consumer-facing product line into a function-driven product that delivers all the benefits that consumers are looking for. We worked closely with the Moen team to create a unique garbage disposal that visually communicates the power of the Vortex advanced chopping technology and Sound Shield noise deadening. The products were designed for both home owner and professional to install with confidence and ease.

This is innovative but kind of hilarious. The $1,400-$1,800 Cuddle Mattress has slots running across it crosswise, providing a space for errant limbs to go, both with and without a partner:

Stomach-sleeper? Here's a handy place to tuck those pesky toes:

I'd be curious to try this out, though I suspect the channels would become repositories for dead skin and hair. And gimmickiness aside, I can't deny that this does seem to provide some ergonomic benefit for side-sleepers.

In an industrial setting, making things clean is a messy, time-consuming business. You can sandblast, soak, scrub or grind surface contaminants away, and must then dispose of the waste. And cleaning media needs to be replenished.

Using a specially-calibrated laser cuts several steps out of the process by simply vaporizing whatever surface contaminants need to be removed:

Here's a laser burning a beer bottle mold and a saw blade clean:

And of course laser cleaning is awesome for detail work. When something is too big to soak, like this old fireplace, the only alternative would be to sandblast or scrub. But with a laser you can do it onsite:

The first two videos are by Belgian manufacturer P-Laser while the third is from Canada's ESR Laser. Both tout the eco-friendly benefits of laser cleaning, which is honest inasmuch as there is no need to dispose of chemicals; but the nasty fumes coming off of these parts surely need to be filtered somehow.

The role of the Technical Designer is to develop artwork. Ranging from logo creation to bulk production specs as it relates to Global Custom Product Program. Create and maintain templates for production of print and web based sales tools using Adobe Illustrator, Tech Pack and Spec creation/updates/maintenance, process custom artwork requests within a designated time frame, Replicates artwork across all leagues/teams.

The Period Purse is a sleek minimalist portfolio for menstrual tools, intended to cover a lot of bases without raising any eyebrows. While about half the world's population will have periods during their lives, there are next to zero period supplies that the general public won't flinch at seeing. 

However the flow is managed, period-havers have to deal with messy surprises, supplies disappearing into bag corners, discreetly carrying supplies to a bathroom, limited space or privacy, and lack of easy disposal. These factors add discomfort and stress to a time that can already be uncomfortable. Now LAVA Women Design is tackling each in a very tidy amount of space. 

At 15.5cm x 9.5 x 2.5 the faux leather purse is the size of a small clutch, and would easily pass (or work) as a standard purse or makeup bag. One side has elastic pockets for tampons, pads, liners or cups. The other side fits custom packs of resealable baby wipes. The center flap holds a custom pack of disposable sanitary bags, which double over twice to make transporting used supplies to a garbage can worry-free.

The funniest/most thoughtful element is a small strap you can fold out and snap around your leg if the stall lacks somewhere to put your items other than the floor. While the visual is fun, the lived experience without it is not. 

The kit would be particularly nice for out and about folks like business people, travelers and students. It would also suit people who use greener options like applicator-free tampons or menstrual cups, both of which can get users (particularly newer converts) worried about feeling messy in public. It would also work well for ladies with subdued, organized style. Google "period bag" or its variants and you'll find clunky bags with prints that would embarrass a middle schooler. There's no way I'm pulling out a pink floral duffel between lunch and my next meeting.

While I'm pretty sure this purse can fit a jumbo baggie of Ibuprofin, I do wonder if pads would need more storage space, particularly for people with heavy days. I'm also not a big fan of designs that rely on proprietary refills, but given the range of wipes and plastic bags out there you might have viable mass-market options as well. 

Overall the Period Purse only differs a bit from common purse options, but it does it with a very sharp eye on actual use. Its functionality comes close to dopp kits and baby travel bags, but those aren't as small, elegant or purpose-driven. And regardless, if daily organizers are important enough to drive a percentage of Japan's GDP, menstrual accessories can use some more design variety too. I'm fine throwing supplies into a cluttered makeup bag, but if given equally portable options with better storage and form, I'd switch fast.... And likely stay better prepared in general. 

There's no right or wrong way to handle your period, but thoughtful tools can help it feel like less of a burden. Without getting into the disgusting parts (e.g. millennia of taboos and shame), there's no reason dealing with a period should be additionally flustering. I hope this minimalist step in that direction gets traction and lights some fires under other bag designers too.

The Period Purse campaign ends October 11, 2016.

I once helped a friend move a sofa up a narrow East Village tenement staircase to her third-floor apartment. That was a nightmarish puzzle of physics and geometry. But this seems considerably worse:

By now you may have seen that GIF making the social media rounds, and I had to dig around a bit to figure out what it's from. That's in China's Yunnan province, where a wind farm was constructed last year atop Baoding Mountain, elevation 2,900 meters (9,500 feet). The 12-ton blades are a whopping 52.4 meters (172 feet) long, and had to be transported to the mountaintop up a winding path riddled with 212 switchbacks and grades as steep as 30 degrees.

The GIF is taken from the video below, which seems to be a commercial for the company that provided the purpose-built trucks. In order to avoid the power lines, tree branches, buildings and other obstacles along the route, an operator has to sit in the back of each truck and control the blade's orientation and angle:

Incredibly, they transported no less than 90 blades up to the top.

Sources:

Imgur

CIMC Vehicles

WindPower Monthly

Los Angeles owes a huge debt to Charles and Ray Eames, who helped champion the city as an exceptional home base from which to design and innovate. But there's more to L.A. design history than just the Eameses' story. Throughout the 20th century, L.A.'s delightful climate, strong manufacturing base and Hollywood-adjacent industries have helped to nurture a strong design community. 

Join us September 29-30 for the Core77 Conference in Downtown Los Angeles. Buy your ticket today!

Like the rest of California, L.A. is known for a culture of experimentation—architect Richard Neutra said it best when he wrote that L.A. attracted "people who were more 'mentally footloose' than those elsewhere"—and it's these people who have helped to create an environment where design can flourish. Here are a few ways how:

An early polyurethane foam and fiberglass surfboard from 1956 made by Dave Sweet. Photo via the collection of the Surfing Heritage & Culture Center 

Preston "Pete" Peterson and a friend ride one of his custom boards

1. Technology from L.A.'s aircraft industry created a surfing craze

During World War II, Los Angeles's aircraft manufacturers ramped up not only their production efforts but also their research and development of new materials and manufacturing techniques, playing an important role in supporting America's war efforts. After the war, these innovations began to trickle down to the region's designers, who were keen to experiment with new commercial applications of military materials. Those materials also found their way into Southern California's surf community when avid surfer and Douglas Aircraft plastics engineer Brandt Goldsworthy and surfer Preston "Pete" Peterson teamed up in 1946 to create a revolutionary new fiberglass board. Previously used for aircraft nose cones and radar domes, fiberglass was the key to transforming the surfboard's humble (and heavy) wooden design into a sleek new object that could be enjoyed by the masses. With the advent of even lighter and cheaper boards in the mid-1950s that used polyurethane foam covered in fiberglass and resin, a nationwide surf craze was born.

Earl customized the above Pierce-Arrow for Fatty Arbuckle in 1919 at an estimated cost of $32,000 (a huge amount of money at the time).

2. A car design legend got his start in Hollywood

Long before Pimp My Ride, L.A.'s rich history of automotive design and manufacturing produced a number of influential figures, including Harley J. Earl, General Motors' first design chief. Born into a family of coachbuilders and automotive body makers, Earl honed his skills in his father's L.A. factory before taking over the company's custom body designs. He found himself in high demand in Hollywood, where he customized cars for wealthy movie stars and directors like Fatty Arbuckle, Mary Pickford and Cecil B. DeMille. In 1926, G.M. approached Earl to design the first Cadillac LaSalle; the following year, it asked him to join G.M. permanently to create the auto industry's first full-time design department. Earl would lead G.M.'s design from 1927 until 1959, introducing America to the tail fin and the Corvette, and famously hiring the so-called Damsels of Design. Many consider him the Los Angeles–born father of modern automotive design.

The 1927 LaSalle Roadster was Earl's first design for General Motors. Photo from the collections of The Henry Ford

Mattel's original Barbie doll from 1959

3. Everyone's favorite busty blond was designed in L.A.

It may come as a surprise that one of America's largest toy designers and manufacturers was launched from a garage-workshop in El Segundo in 1945. From this unassuming base, Mattel, founded by Ruth and Elliot Handler and Harold "Matt" Matson, created a sensation when they introduced the Barbie doll in 1959. In her striped bathing suit and cat-eye sunglasses she quickly became an ambassador of Southern California style and design, witnessed in her original mid-century modern Dream House (with Eames-inspired couch) from 1962—and, for better or worse, in her new 2014 McMansion with not one but two elevators.

Barbie's 1962 Dream House

4. An L.A.–hating transplant gave the city a stylish new look

When architect John Lautner arrived in Los Angeles in 1938, it was far from love at first sight: "When I first drove down Santa Monica Boulevard it was so ugly I was physically sick for the first year I was here." Known for his cinematic homes like the Chemosphere ("Body Double"), the Sheats-Goldstein house ("The Big Lebowski") and the Elrod home ("Diamonds Are Forever"), Lautner also inspired a completely new style of commercial architecture with his 1949 Googie's coffee shop in West Hollywood. His space-age architecture was quickly adopted by other coffee shops, bowling alleys and gas stations in the region, and the term "Googie" was coined to describe their upswept roofs, large glass windows and deployment of starbursts, amoebas and flying saucer forms. Leaving his mark on L.A.'s urban fabric must have made the city a little easier for Lautner to stomach: he stuck around another five decades until his death in 1994.

Lautner's 1949 Googie's coffee shop in West Hollywood. Photo © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

The UFO-shaped Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport, 1961

Henry Keck's 1957 designs for the Dripcut Starline Corporation

5. An L.A. industrial designer modernized the tabletop

While Googie architecture revolutionized the exterior of Southern California's coffee shops, Los Angeles–based industrial designer Henry Keck was busy modernizing the humble implements inside. His glass-and-chrome syrup dispenser will be familiar to anyone who has ever climbed into a diner booth and ordered a short stack of pancakes. It matches his equally well-known salt, pepper and sugar shakers, which he designed for the Dripcut Starline Corporation in 1957 (and which are still available today). Keck estimates that more than 25 million sugar shakers alone have been sold since his design was introduced.

Neutra's 1929 Lovell Health House in Los Angeles

6. L.A.'s design emigrants helped create California Modernism

L.A.'s design and architecture community was enhanced by an influx of European modernists who found a welcoming climate and an openness to experimentation. Austrian architects R.M. Schindler and Richard Neutra arrived in the city and were immediately besot by the idea of "healthful" indoor-outdoor lifestyles, finding clients that enthusiastically sought new ways of living. Meanwhile, Swedish furniture and industrial designers Greta Magnusson Grossman and Greta von Nessen found L.A. consumers were hungry for Scandinavia's austere designs. L.A.'s design emigrants also played a key role in developing what would become known as the "California look" by mid-century. As Wendy Kaplan writes in her introduction to Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930–1965, "California modernism became a different, and hugely influential, model for the rest of the country and was widely admired abroad because it reflected the way people really wanted to live."

Desk and chair by Grossman for Glenn of California; lamp by Grossman for Ralph O. Smith. Photo by Sherry Griffin/R & Company

The Tamale, built in 1928. Photo via the Los Angeles Conservancy

7. L.A. became the capital of novelty architecture

What better way to advertise your "hot tamale pies" and other "Spanish delights" than to serve them up from a giant tamale-shaped building? With the rise of L.A.'s car culture in the late 1920's, programmatic architecture quickly sprang up to capture the attention of passing motorists with whimsical structures that telegraphed exactly what was being sold inside. While the Tail o' the Pup and the Wilshire Coffee Pot are now sadly gone, the Tamale (now a salon), along with the Darkroom (now a Tex-Mex restaurant) and the Donut Hole, all await your roadside pilgrimage.

The drive-through Donut Hole, built in 1968. Photo via the Los Angeles Conservancy from the Tom Gardner Collection/Conservancy archives

Learn more about L.A.'s design history at this September's Core77 Conference in Downtown Los Angeles. Buy your ticket today!