Volkswagen offers two types of AWD stickshift station wagons: The Golf SportWagen S with 4Motion, and the Golf Alltrack (in three trim levels). Both are identical except the Alltrack has a marginally higher ride height.

I narrowed it down to the Alltrack for a practical reason: The Sportwagen S offers only cloth seats, whereas leatherette comes standard in the Alltrack (below). I own two dogs and am moving to a farm where the animals outnumber the humans by a factor of 50. I am going to get dirty. The interior of the car is going to get dirty. And cleaning cloth seats is a bitch.

For exterior automotive design I like clean, simple lines with a minimum of fuss. I don't like arbitrary bulges, flares and surface changes. With this criteria in mind, compared to the other two contenders, the Mini Clubman and the Subaru Forester, the Golf Alltrack is clearly the hands-down aesthetic winner.

The Alltrack's designers used restraint and discipline. There are no extraneous lines nor, in the details, any meandering stylistic paths to nowhere. There are no chicanes, switchbacks or stupid Z-curves. This car looks, to me, like it was the subject of a rigorous design review led by a single individual with an authoritative sense of aesthetic simplicity.

The interior is Teutonic, rational and no-nonsense.

Image by Car & Driver

The steering wheel does look a little complicated to this automotive Luddite--the steering wheel of the last car I owned featured only a horn--and I suspect I'll ignore its functionality altogether.

I double-checked that the car met all of my earlier requirements--high crash test ratings, quickness, reliability--then started the process of purchasing a 2018 Golf Alltrack.

For Research I Used:

- Car & Driver, my favorite of the car magazines. Of the majors, their sensibility aligns most with mine and their coverage is top-notch. I gleaned more useful information about the car and its trim levels on C&D than I found on Volkswagen's website.

- YouTube, where there are countless video reviews of any car you can think of. You do have to sift through them a bit, but the good ones you'll find are very informative.

- My own history. The last car I owned was a 2001 Volkswagen Golf, which I had from 2001 until 2005. Fantastic car, reliable, built at the same plant in Mexico where the Alltracks are now built.

How I Acquired One:

I was after the base trim level, the Alltrack S, because I don't need fancy features.

The first thing I learned is that stickshifts are hard to come by. Nobody wants them anymore, so it's a miracle VW still offers them. Local dealerships did not have a single stickshift Alltrack S in their inventories, and could not find one within a 500-mile radius of New York City.

One dealership eventually called back and said they found one they could have transported to New York. They quoted me roughly $28,000.

I then caught wind of a website called Autonation.com. After plugging in my search criteria, it instantly revealed four stickshift Alltracks around the country. None were in the S trim level I desired--yet all were priced lower than the estimate I got from the dealer in New York.

In the end, I contacted one of the dealerships through Autonation. Last week I signed the papers on an Alltrack SE which, even with the delivery charge and higher trim level, was far less than the other quote. I don't need a moonroof nor push-button engine starting but I'll take it. Sadly I couldn't get the interior/exterior colors that I wanted, but that's life.

At press time the car had been delivered to a local dealership, and I should be picking it up sometime this weekend. At some point I'll write an in-depth review.

Your Take on the Car Buying Process

Designers among you, what criteria do you employ when acquiring a car? Are you extra-picky about things like design and interior UX?

It takes an entire civilization to build a simple wood stool. I found this out the hard way by attempting to build furniture completely from scratch just using my body. From felling a tree with my bare hands to carving the wood using any means necessary, I realized that perhaps we as a culture are too reliant on our interconnected society.

This stool is made entirely by chewing, scratching and chipping at found natural materials.

The bottom details of the stool in which no screws, glue or shimming were used.

Felling the tree

A typical stool bought online

The pieces of the stool made from scratch

Testing the different woods

I lament the aesthetics of this object even as I admire its utility. The Bobino Screen Shelf, designed by Kikkerland, lets you wring some storage area out of the otherwise dead space atop and behind your monitor:

Rubberized dots aside, I probably wouldn't place a hot cup of coffee, or anything taller than it is wide up there, but this'd be a great place for me to drop that crucial notepad that always seems to get buried under papers on my desk.

If this thing wasn't so darned unattractive, I'd buy one.

A few bucks on Amazon will get you a plastic headphone hook that sticks to your monitor. But I am liking this quick, less-obtrusive solution far better:

A three-pack of Sugru strips goes for under ten bucks, and you get the satisfaction of shaping it yourself.

Dina Amin is an industrial designer who has encountered the paradox many of us face: "I realized that I am not very fond of a huge part of Industrial Design," she writes, "the part where we consume insane amount of resources and energy to design things that eventually people throw away."

In search of a new creative outlet, Amin took her hobby of disassembling items and turned them into stop-motion animations, revealing to viewers the sheer amount of crap that goes into your average gewgaw:

I love disassembling products to learn more about how they work, how all the pieces come together, it's like a puzzle to me! It all started with just a casual exploration of parts and then I started rearranging the dismantled product pieces into new characters, objects and stories. I've made over 30 videos so far.

Most of the products you see are old broken products that others decided to throw away. We consume too many things to the point that we forgot the amount of work that was put into bringing even the tiniest pieces of things! We rarely see what's inside each product thus treat it as one whole part; not as a plastic cover, with buttons, vibrator motor, mic and so on.

You can see more of Amin's stuff here.

LumiSource, LLC is a leading national distributor of stylish home decor at affordable prices. We supply to the nation's top retail chains as well as independent and online retailers. Our product lines range from contemporary furniture to lighting and accessories. Our inspiration mostly derives from industrial, modern, and mid-century modern

Often times during vacations and sabbaticals we feel this compulsive itch to keep working, which is why Amble's business model is so intriguing. The new program is offering designers the chance to lodge in exclusive properties otherwise not available to the public in exchange for the completion of a design project—like a break from work, except not really. Amble partners with nonprofits, conservancies, and small towns to provide the design briefs as well as discounted upscale lodging in return.

Image via Amble

The program recently launched online with a pilot program happening this November in Yosemite National Park. The first program's lodging options include a private or shared cabin located in the Wawona neighborhood in the heart of the park and a 340 acre old ranch property in Mariposa, located less than one hour away from the park. Amble plans to start small with the Yosemite program with future plans to expand to more locations in the US.

Image via Amble

Amble is currently seeking professionals in many areas, including more design-centric ones like visual designers, UX designers, photographers and videographers.

Image via Amble

The main catch we're stumped by is the pricing structure, as designers are still required to pay a fee for lodging, and they are not compensated for food and travel. So essentially, participating designers would be paying to work while on sabbatical. We reached out to Amble Co-Founder Ilyssa Kyu to get some clarity on the costs:

"As far as the exchange of skills/time for lodging, Amble provides an affordable, reduced rate for 1-month of lodging. We do not cover meals or transportation at this time. Lodging in this area at market rate would cost you around $7,000 for one month. We are offering lodging in Wawona at $1,800 for a private room (in a shared cabin) or $2,200 for a private cabin. These are also accommodations otherwise unavailable to the public—you can really only stay in Wawona by camping or by hotel otherwise, so it's a unique and exclusive opportunity. In a nutshell, the work on a project with our community hosts (who provide the lodging) help offset the costs of lodging."

If you were participating in the program, would you feel as though the discounted cost of lodging evens out with the design work you'd be doing? Would you participate in this program? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

Applications are open until July 27th, so if you're interested in the experience, apply here. Overall, we think Amble is on to something, but it is still a new program with some kinks to work out.

Europe has so many neat things that aren't offered in the 'States: Beer at McDonald's, constitutional monarchies, Volkswagen's Trailer Assist system. On the recommendation of reader Jeremy Mears, I looked up the latter to see what it's all about.

Backing up a trailer is like parallel parking set at difficulty level Expert. Imagine steering your front wheels in an effort to aim the rear two corners of your caravan, which might be more than an entire car length behind you, trickily pivoting around a point just aft of your rear bumper. It's such an oddly specific task that there's probably a videogame about it in Japan.

Volkswagen's engineers have thus developed software that works out the trajectories for you. By providing visual aids on a screen, adding user input knobs on the door and allowing the software to do the steering for you, their Trailer Assist system makes the process virtually foolproof.

I realize it's not a terribly sexy video, but the feature is one of those going-the-extra-mile (er, kilometer) UX improvements that manufacturers ought be lauded for. If I ever ran into the engineers who devised Trailer Assist, I'd buy them a round of McBeers.

Apartment-dwelling cyclists: How and where do you store your bike?

I'm a Citibike user so have never had to deal with storage. If I did, I think I'd go with an overhead bike hoist; as narrow as bicycles are, they seem to take up a disproportionate amount of floor space to me, and I'd rather get the thing completely overhead.

For those wishing to minimize their stored bicycle's footprint, this Parkis system was invented:

What do the hardcore cyclists among you think of this system? I ask because while it looks nifty, it almost seems like it takes up more space to me. (I'm aware that that's a perceptive issue to do with the intrusion of the handlebars at torso height.) I suspect that bike storage solutions are as specific to the user as the bikes themselves, and I'm curious to hear about the range of solutions you readers use.

This is an exciting, well-compensated position for an experienced CAD professional, who is looking to grow in the highly competitive international jewelry manufacturing industry. There is an immediate opening for an advanced CAD modeler to join our outstanding design team full-time at our Honolulu

This game is fun and frustrating at the same time. It's a color test developed by a company called X-Rite Photo & Video, and was designed to determine how accurately you can detect hue differences. Basically they show you this…

…and you then have to drag-and-drop the tiles to get it to look like this (this shot is of my best effort):

Click here to try the test.

What did you get? I got a measly 8 (and a slight headache). It's interesting that they show you (see image below) what range of colors you're weak at distinguishing.

Following a close call in the shop some years ago, I paid big bucks for a full-face respirator/eye protector. If I had industrial designer Eric Strebel's skillset, I'd have built my own and saved the cash. In this video Strebel demonstrates a number of techniques, including casting his own nose and how to work with fabric, to create a perfect-fitting respirator with integrated eye protection. 

"I show you the phase one design process of creating an initial concept," he writes, "and then building a proof-of-concept mock-up." Check it out:

Enlil was the name of the Mesopotamian god of wind and storms. Now, fittingly, it's what Turkish inventor Gelecegin Yenilenebilir Sehirleri is calling his vertical wind turbine. Interestingly enough, the plan of Sehirleri's company, Deveci Tech, is to line highway medians with them, capturing the wind energy of passing vehicles in order to generate electricity:

In litigation-happy America, of course, this thing would have to be wrapped in a safety cage. I wonder if that would decrease its efficacy.

This Yale forklift is called the Veracitor, model 40VX. I looked it up and it appears to be designed for indoor usage in a warehouse. However, in Chinatown you see these outside a lot, loading trucks from food processing facilities.

Since it doesn't come with an enclosed roof, the operator of this one has created a rain roof using a sign and wire ties.

I wanted to climb up on it to see what the sign says, but the operator was a few feet away and already staring at me for shooting his ride. 

If any of you live on an upper floor on Baxter Street above Hester, please look out your window and take a picture of this thing from above. I must know the sign's provenance!

The Community Microscope is a Do-It-Yourself kit that is not only a radically affordable microscope, but one which you build yourself from simple household parts. Like all Public Lab kits, it was designed through collaboration among our global community.

Now we've launched a Kickstarter to recruit new collaborators.

Its true goal, however, is to transform the very idea of a microscope by challenging who can make one, and what it can be used for. By making it so simple to build, we're inviting people to remix and reinvent the microscope, and to turn it towards urgent issues like air pollution from sand mines, ocean microplastics, and more—questions which come from local environmental groups across the globe.

Like all Public Lab kits, it is open source, and hundreds of people have already joined our effort to change how environmental science works—by changing who can participate.

Following their intimate exhibition on the ground level of Ventura Future during Milan Design Week, Central Saint Martins' 2018 MA Materials Future graduate products are now publicly on display at their Degree Show until June 24. Many of the students sill needed to add final touches to their projects on display in Milan, so it's exciting to see the final versions of what was previewed at the show. We found that a majority of the projects deal with handling specific types of waste, while many others investigate data, food futures and DNA modification. We've featured an assortment of projects below, but if you happen to be in London, we highly suggest paying the full exhibition a visit in real life.

Food Futures and Biotech

This is grown. / Bioweave by Jen Keane utilizes microbes to weave a new, hybrid material. The developed "microbial weaving" technique allows the maker to weave the warp and the bacteria to weave the weft, creating a strong and lightweight. This project acts in collaboration with nature, but throughout the process Keane also recognized and considered a likely future in which we completely control the way natural elements perform.

This is what chickens should start looking like, according to Linnea Våglund's Pink Chicken Project. For this project, Våglund explored using the CRISPR gene-drive technique to genetically alter the color of chickens. Once this gene is introduced, it has the ability to spread to the whole chicken population within just a couple of years. "What's the point?" you may ask? The altered color of the chicken brings more attention to the non-consensual genetic modification to our food than a modification only seen from within, and the spreading of the gene would highlight our reliance on factory farming.

In China, consumption of ants, wild Black Ants in particular, is quite common, as the practice is said to alleviate many health conditions, including arthritis and hepatitis. Pharma-ant by Ke Fu is a new method of farming wild Black Ants so that they hopefully wouldn't need to be hunted by traditional Chinese ant hunters anymore.

Re-Using Waste and Challenging Traditional Production Methods

After learning that on average, people in the UK throw away their own body weight in trash every seven weeks, Chih-Chia Chang realized that in order for society to become aware of and accountable for our waste, we need to establish a more personal relationship with it. So, for her project Myself, my life and my trash, she created new composite materials out of her own personal trash. The results are quite lovely.

Manufactured Geology bu Garance der Markarian is a rock making machine that recreates the geological phenomenon of sedimentation with dust in order to question current manufacturing processes.  

The new ban of foreign imported garbage to China has made it difficult for some countries to find places for their waste. Foreign Garbage by Katie May Boyd explores the politics around this specific waste predicament by creating beckoning cats—a product symbolic of the Made in China label—out of waste intended to be sent to China. 

Wine Matters by Ludovica Cantarelli creates packaging for wine using waste grape skins and branches leftover from the winemaking process. Red wine is even used as the ink and dye for the labels!

Have you ever thought about how much urine we all produce on a daily basis? I haven't either, but Sinae Kim's This is urine is a new process that uses the natural, untapped material as glaze for ceramics. It'd be fitting to subtly outfit your bathroom with the above vessels...

Rice husk waste is typically burned away in China, which contributes a large part to the country's annual haze and declining health. Increasing the value of rice husk by Lulu Wang provides an alternative to this burning method. Wang extracts the starch from the rice husks and uses it as the binder to create pencils, disposable chopsticks and other household products. 

Data and Technology

Davide Piscitelli asked a Google Home what it's dream was, and it replied, "I've always wanted to sing a duet with Stevie Wonder." Most people would have moved on confused, but Piscitelli decided to turn this statement into GOGO's Dream, a project in which the designer created a machine called GOGO whose only purpose is to make the Google Home's dream a reality. Piscitelli's goal with this satirical approach is to, "critically question the wider ethical and moral implications of a mass adoption of these potentially exploitative and manipulative devices globally."

Digitized Material by Lindsay Hanson proposes how advances in graphene and photonc crystal technology could lead to the creation of color changing yarns and textiles. The combination of graphene and a synthetic version of photonic crystals has the potential to yield amazing color-changing garments, as graphene is an extremely strong super conductor and natural photonic crystals are a contributor to the beauty of things like colorful beetle shells.

Made in our image: Love and cruelty with robots by Nina Cutler explores the effect household robots would have on our day-to-day lives if they a) became the norm for every household b) actually resembled humans and not just smart fridges and c) really did learn and react to human emotions.  

Learn more about Central Saint Martins' MA Materials Futures Degree Show here.

Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center has, quite literally, reinvented the wheel. They've developed a shape-shifting, tracked wheel that works as a conventional tire--until a button is pressed, and it reconfigures itself on-the-fly into a tracked triangle:

The RWT (Reconfigurable Wheel-Track) is one of five fancy tricks rolled out by DARPA's Ground X-Vehicle Technologies program, which "aims to improve mobility, survivability, safety, and effectiveness of future combat vehicles without piling on armor." Take a look at the other four nifty technologies they've developed:

I'm digging the spider-like vehicle with the super suspension, which has a shocking (see what I did there) six feet of travel--42 inches upwards, 30 inches downwards. However, I would definitely throw up inside that windowless vehicle with the teal and magenta road lines on the screen.

This is my final week of living in NYC, and it's been nonstop packing. Yesterday I cleaned out my 'fridge, and wondered: What the hell does the crisper drawer actually do? The name would suggest it keeps things crisp, but how does a transparent plastic drawer do that?

I poked around and found foodie website The Takeout, which consulted industry experts to provide the answer:

Carolina Biotti, Whirlpool's global food preservation scientist, tells The Takeout that thin-skinned and leafy produce like spinach, strawberries, and lettuce, are best stored in high humidity environments…. So the main goal of the fruit and veggie crisper drawers is to keep certain produce humid and happy.

But refrigerators don't actually create humidity; they harness it.

"Food already has moisture trapped inside it and releases that into the air. In a crisper drawer, you're putting the food in an enclosed space where the humidity can't escape," says Chris Thornton, senior manager of product training at Samsung.

The entry also points out that tomatoes and onions oughtn't go in the crisper, as they last longer in dry air. Which means I have been storing tomatoes incorrectly for years. (Yesterday I threw out four of them.)

Another foodie website, Epicurious, offered this advice:

Some fruits and vegetables release a gas called ethylene as they ripen, and many fruits are sensitive to ethylene and ripen further in its presence (bananas are a perfect example of this). As fruits release more and more ethylene in a small space like a crisper drawer, the fruits nearby will begin to rot. And the fruit releasing the ethylene may rot itself.

What they recommend storing in the crisper:

"Ethylene-sensitive fruits and vegetables, like asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, citrus, cucumbers, eggplant, green beans, greens (like chard and spinach), lettuces, parsley, peppers, raspberries, squash, strawberries, and sweet potatoes."

What they recommend not leaving in the crisper:

"Ethylene-producing fruits and vegetables, like apples, apricots, avocados, ripe bananas, cantaloupes, figs, honeydew melons, kiwi, nectarines, papayas, peaches, pears, and plums."

The thing I love about tools is that they will always be useful. My ratcheting screwdriver will be as handy in ten years as it was when I bought it. On the other end of the utility/sustainability spectrum, we have techno-objects that are useful today, but will be landfill in several years.

An example of this is this Rabbit Charger. You remove an existing dual power outlet's cover, then plug the Rabbit into it.

It has two retractable cables (your choice of Micro USB or USB-C) that you can use to charge a phone and/or device.

Since we're rapidly hurtling towards a future of wireless charging, this object isn't likely to have a long shelf life. But I suspect people will be drawn to the novelty and short-term convenience of it.