L.A.-based industrial designer Igor Chak, who has one of the more fascinating bios I've read in a while, has a passion for vintage videogames. You probably remember 16bitghost's custom furniture videogame shrines, but Chak went in a different direction, allowing the videogames to become the furniture themselves.

Chak's leather-clad Space-Invader-inspired sofa, which he describes as "an old friend that kept trying to take over Earth but retired and became a couch," is hand-built in L.A. and ships within two to four weeks of being ordered.

His Donkey Kong shelving might not be sturdy enough to hold an angry ape and rolling barrels of flaming pitch, but it'll handle whatever you've got in your apartment.

The wall is made out of individual sections; each section is made out of durable but light carbon fiber, anodized aluminum pixels that are joined with strong stainless steel rods and toughened glass tops. The special mounts themselves are made out of steel and can support up to 60 lbs.

Check out more of Chak's work here.

For those of you who aren't hip to the streetwear scene, "SUPER" is Retrosuperfuture's flagship line of sunglasses. Milan-based brothers David and Simon Beckerman launched the company in 2007, a new venture for the publishers of an independent fashion and music magazine, to fill a space in the high-end eyewear market. The minimal acetate frames are made in Italy with Zeiss lenses start at roughly €99 and are built to last (though I'm sure many of you share my habit of losing or breaking shades on a regular basis).

They've recently produced a manufacturing video in what has become a grand tradition over the past couple years. The clip traces a pair of sunglasses' journey from cellulose powder to finished product:

I can't complain about the production value, but I do wish there was a stronger sense of continuity—i.e., this is what goes in, this is what comes out—but the edit paints the process in short, quick strokes.

via Hypebeast

In this special "flatpacking" edition of Flotspotting, we're pleased to present designer Craig Foster's "Kurk," a desk lamp "that requires no screws or glues to assemble."

Focusing on the life cycle of the product, each part of Kurk can be recycled or reused individually when it is no longer needed as a light. The sustainability and visual properties of cork make Kurk a unique, environmentally friendly alternative to standard desk lights. Kurk was chosen as the winning design for the 2012 BDC New Designer of the Year award. Kurk won 2nd place at the 2012 Lighting Association's Student Lighting Design Awards.

Consultant, People Research
Philips
Monroeville, Pennsylvania

Philips Design is seeking a Research Consultant to inform and create surprising and relevant scenarios/themes/concepts that explore potential or articulate a proposition, based on contextual understanding. The ideal candidate has solid user research/fieldwork experience and is able to show case studies on his or her research approach and effectiveness. People Researchers at Philips must be skilled in planning and leading qualitative research in the field.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

• FABLAB Education Program
• Designer: TYTHEdesign Team
• Location: Hunts Point - South Bronx, New York
• Category: Educational Initiatives
• Award: Professional Runner-Up

TYTHEdesign in collaboration with the non-profit Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx), has developed and piloted an educational after-school program to teach job and life skills by focusing on sustainability and business basics through the lens of design. By using design educational principles, students learned valuable transferable skills that can be used in every area of their lives.

How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
It was lunch time in New York and we took a break to watch the live broadcast of the awards. We work in a co-working space in Brooklyn, so watching the awards meant sitting quietly in the corner, with our earphones on! We were so honored to be recognized and immediately shared the news with our collaborators.

What's the latest news or development with your project?
Following the initial pilot launch of the program, Sustainable South Bronx has set up the FABLAB as part of their regular programming. We supported the organization in the hiring process to make sure they brought on someone who had the right background in design, education and the environment. Additionally, we provided some basic training and education to the new teacher to make sure the transition worked smoothly. In the Spring/Summer of 2012 they officially launched the program to great success, doubling the attendance of the pilot. The programs have just ended and we are looking forward to an update from both the students' and organization's perspectives.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?
Through the initial pilot program and first Etsy store, we heard back from a college recruiter, "I was interviewing a prospective student for college and we talked at length about FabLab; you have an excellent-sounding program there and I do hope you keep it going." Additionally, we have been contacted by individuals looking to hire our students, who were using the program as a form of reference. It was great for us to hear that the program had such a positive reach towards our students next steps.

What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
Bottom line, our 'a-ha' moments came through collaboration, with both the organization, our team and the students. Due to our constant evaluation during the pilot program we were able to quickly identify what was working well and what wasn't. This in itself was our 'a-ha' moment/process. Many times our assumptions were incorrect and our ideas didn't match the interest of the the students. The biggest 'a-ha' moment was changing our terminology, learning to relate better to the student by talking about 'next steps' not specifically college or job. This allowed everyone to feel comfortable, be in the same conversation and be excited that 'next steps' were all equal and exciting regardless of what they were.

As we've discussed here before, trading ships used to leave American east coast cities loaded up with goods and bound for Europe. They'd return loaded up with cobblestones--cheap, heavy, easily stackable--for ballast. They'd then ditch the stones here, load up with more goods, rinse and repeat. And our municipal forefathers used the cobblestone surplus to pave streets on the cheap.

From a surplus perspective, the modern-day equivalent to cobblestones is shipping containers, even though the trade balances have shifted. America receives tons of stuff from Asia in shipping containers, and once emptied, they're not worth the price of shipping them back. And as these things stack up, creative companies try to figure out what to do with them.

Most recently we've seen the Snoozebox shipping container mobile hotel, though that's a UK-based project. Stateside, we've got a company out of Texas called Falcon Containers that's doing something similar, but without the concierge: A mobile village for oil field workers in Texas' burgeoning Eagle Ford Shale.

"We wanted to design and provide a housing solution that would be cost effective, easy to set up and easy to move," said Stephen Shang, CEO, Falcon Containers. "The use of repurposed shipping containers in our mobile village design allows for the inclusion of unique structures for different purposes, each of which supports a comfortable living environment for these oil field work camp employees."

Temporary work camps have been created in growing numbers to support the overwhelmingly male workforce flooding into the oil drilling Texas region. A cross between a college dormitory and a military barracks, these structures include sleeper units housing multiple bunks, dining facilities, a separate laundry and shower unit as well as a multi-purpose office, recreation or first aid facility.

Some unsolicited advice for Falcon's PR team: Can you guys maybe call it something other than a "work camp?" What happened, was "gulag" already taken?

In addition to their forthcoming mobile village design, Falcon repurposes shipping containers as offices, residential homes, and even military training facilites. Learn more at Falcon's comprehensive blog on all things shipping container related.

This video has recently been making the blog rounds, and is purportedly underwater footage, shot with a GoPro in a custom rig, of a school of dolphins trailing a boat. And people seem to love it:

The Blue from Mark Peters on Vimeo.

Um...am I the only one who thinks it's fake? Something about the lighting, the motion of the dolphins, and their edges creates an impression of unreality. The lighting appears a bit too even, and when one dolphin passes over another, there is no shadow.

I know Core77's readership has a lot more direct rendering experience than I, and am curious to hear your impressions. I'm also curious if the odd lighting and edges are just a function of how GoPro cameras capture images underwater.

My apologies to the original shooter if I'm leveling a false accusation. I should point out that I really, really hope it is real.

This ought to be a standard ID school problem presented to first-year students:

You've got a heavy, bulky piece of machinery that needs to rest on a stable base. But from time to time you need to move it around. All you've got is some basic hardware--hinges, casters, carriage bolts--and scrap pieces of wood or some metal pipes. What can you come up with that will temporarily render this thing mobile?

A host of DIY'ers without dedicated shop space are faced with this very problem, as they try to maneuver their table saws or workbenches around in cramped garages. Here are some of the clever, if decidedly homespun, solutions they've come up with. (The provenance of these ideas, by the way, is pretty cloudy; nearly everyone on YouTube refers to having previously seen a similar design...on YouTube.)

Object to be moved: Table saw
Materials for solution: Hinges, wood scraps, casters
Solution:

Object to be moved: 4-foot by 8-foot workbench
Materials used: Carriage bolt, steel bushing, wood scraps, casters
Solution:

The traditional bench-mounted vise, protruding as it does from the worksurface, is always in the way when you're not using it. And over time they can start to sag, which gets annoying. (The ones we had in the ID shop at Pratt did that thing where they got higher as you started to tighten them and lower as you loosened them.)

Workbench manufacturer Benchcrafted's Tail Vise is a clear design improvement. Integrated into the bench itself, the Tail Vise holds a dog block (that's on you to provide) meant to correspond with a row of dog holes in your bench.

One cool thing is that the screw doesn't move in and out of the table as it's turned, instead maintaining its position in space. Another cool feature is the cast-iron wheel, rather than a T-handle; the wheel affords greater precision and lets you more quickly crank a full revolution.

Here it is in action:

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

• Fountain of Life
• Designer: Danwei Ye, Yakun Zhang & Yu Liu
• Location: Rochester Institute of Technology
• Category: Equipment
• Award: Student Runner-Up

Fountain of Life is a water birthing assistant medical device. It is a product based on a more traditional water birthing container like a tub and has several advanced material and medical technology modifications.

How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
We think the most valuable point of our design is to showing the humanity and warmth through a life-related equipment. Through viewing jury's comments, we are glad that they could feel the character even though they aren't the users. As industrial designers, we believe that we should always pay attention to the development of our society and people's lives, trying to find design opportunity which accord with the changes of people's concepts. In that way, we could design something to fill the vacancy of a new type relationship between people and the society.

What's the latest news or development with your project?
Our design process was done by us, with the technical support by our Innovation Center and the financial support by our CIAS department funding. Now, we want to take this design to the next level, which is introducing to more audiences, getting their feedback and making the decision whether it's really necessary to design and even product this equipment from a more marketing and investing point of view. At the same time, we will work with mechanical engineering students via the support of Innovation Center, to figure out the interior structure as well as add more details to the product. That is to say, if we can't persuade someone to spend money on this project, we still can make a better portfolio based on it.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?
As we are designing a product for women, and unfortunately we have no female team member. It became very hard for us to define some gynecology problems. And, as students, our female classmate were not familiar with these problems. As a result, we needed to discover everything by ourselves (and of course we didn't want to ask our parents). Every time when we asked something, people would ask 'Why do you want to know that? You will deliver your child?' It always takes time to clarify our idea, and after that everyone will support us.

What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
Lots of "a-ha" moments happened in the development process of this project, and the most important one was in the beginning of ideation, one of us said: Is it comfortable to set in a hot tub in that weird position? Then, we actually tried the position by our self in a tub, and it was very hard for us. After that, we merged a chair into the tub, that made it easier to get in and push. A-ha, that is a good solution to combine chair and tub into a new medical delivery equipment. At last, we collect every thing we can create into one design and here it is.

3D printing has been heading into uncharted territory of late, what with a recent recent, as-yet-unresolved IP debate. Yet while the DIY/consumer-oriented 3D printers are typically designed to extrude thermoplastics such as ABS, I (for one) didn't realize that 3D printing can also be used to make metal parts in a similar fashion. One commercially available process, electron beam melting (EBM to those in the know), has been around for upwards of a decade and its major applications include medical implants and aerospace engineering.

Alternately, as commenter Modul notes, metal objects can also be digitally fabricated in what is known as Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), which allows for a higher level of detail but requires postprocess thermal treatment, which is not necessary with EBM (a detail comparison of the two processes can be found European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS) recently collaborated with Charge Bikes (no acronym necessary) of Bristol, UK, on fabricating titanium dropouts for some of their cyclocross frames.

Andy Hawkins of EADS Innovation Works notes that "the key benefit of this technology [is that] we're able to manufacture components with a much higher degree of complexity. Features that were totally impossible with conventional machining, for instance, are now possible."

Additionally (or is that additively?), 3D-printing is substantially less wasteful than traditional subtractive methods, in which a block of material is milled or machined down to the final product: the excess powder (at 2:09 in the video below) can be reused.

Watch and learn:

Imagination Playground, Rockwell Group / Photo Christ Amaral, courtesy Rockwell Group

Like the Olympics, scores of countries come out to play at the annual International Venice Architecture Biennale, now in its 13th year. The United States is representing overseas with "Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good," an exhibition of 124 urban interventions by architects, designers, artists and "everyday citizens in U.S. cities that bring positive change to the public realm."

Parklets (Various) / Photo Abby Wilcox and the Bold Italic Magazine

Just what is a spontaneous, urban intervention? According to the Institute for Urban Design, who's organizing the event this year, it's everything from "parklets to community farms, guerrilla bike lanes to urban repair squads, outdoor living rooms to pop-up markets, sharing networks and temporary architecture, the installation highlights viable citizen-led alternatives to traditional top-down urban revitalization tactics."

You may have seen Rockwell Group's Imagination Playground at some of the design festivals this year. The big blue blocks are designed to encourage children to build their own play spaces, and are specially suited for public outdoor environments. You've probably also heard of Seed Bombs, the seed-packed balls you can buy from old fashioned gumball machines and toss anywhere you'd like to see a little greenery - though we suggest aiming for a plot of dirt at the very least. But those are just two of 124 creative, ambitious and, more importantly, playful projects that will be on exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion. If you're not heading to Venice you can still check out the exhibition online.

"Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good" at the U.S. Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale from August 29 – November 25, 2012.

Greenaid Seedbomb Vending Machine, COMMONstudio / Photo courtesy COMMONstudio

New York Street Advertising Takeover, Public Aid Campaign / Photo Ji Lee, courtesy Public Aid Campaign

Sr. Industrial Designer
Newell Rubbermaid
Huntersville, North Carolina

Newell Rubbermaid is looking to expand its design team with a passionate and energetic Senior Industrial Designer who can work independently on cross functional teams. Their diverse portfolio provides opportunities across a wide array of categories including Outdoor Living, Home Organization, Closet, Garage, Indoor Waste, Outdoor Refuse, Laundry, Kitchen, Cleaning, Insulated, Food Storage and Beverage. Guide your programs through all phases of development by working internally with three domestic manufacturing facilities and externally with suppliers, consultants and manufacturers.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

In an idealistic version of ID, you'd never set out to design "a pair of headphones;" you'd aim to design "a way people can hear their music, hands-free, while performing a variety of activities." In other words you'd start with the problem and design the solution with no predetermined form factor. In the real world, of course, chances are slim you'll have this luxury when your firm is contracted by a company in the business of making headphones.

Design competitions, on the other hand, hew more to that ideal state of ID. The danger there is that absent hardnosed clients and budget constraints, rigor goes out the window and the fanciful predominates.

But industrial designer Nick Ross' entry in the James Dyson Award, the Axolotl Selective Bio-Harvester, hits that sweet spot: It attacks the problem of deforestation based on rigorous research, not just preconceptions, and the proposed solution is meant to solve that problem the way an industrial designer would solve it.

What I mean by that last part is this: A protestor tries to solve deforestation by chaining themself to a tree. An environmentalist activist might organize rallies. A town council might ban logging and force companies to go log some other town's forest. A materials scientist might try to develop a viable alternative to wood. But what Ross did was design something that comes out of a factory and does the existing job in an entirely different way, one that changes the impact of the job itself. "Instead of directing this project in a 'save the rainforest' protest, I opted for a realizable and commercially viable solution," Ross explains. "I felt this would increase the possibilities that my research and concept could become a viable solution that would benefit the forestry industry as well as the forest."

First, the research part. Ross, who hails from New Zealand, spent roughly four months in Sweden immersing himself in the practical issues of deforestation:

I collaborated with 9 Swedish forestry companies. I organized various seminars during the project in which I invited company representatives, machinery operators and forest owners. A variety of research methodology was implemented, including on site ethnography of machine operators, multiple interviews with environmental and forestry specialists and field visits to witness current damage and effects. Throughout the entirety of the project my findings and conclusions were validated by the various people involved. The entire process was documented and compiled into a thorough report that was made available following presenting the research and final concept to a well received audience made up of representatives from all regions of the industry.

Secondly, the proposed solution Ross developed, much better explained in video:

*The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the view of his firm or its clients.

The mere mention of design patents in the title of this article has already gotten most of you thinking about the ongoing trial of Apple against Samsung. Many are waiting to see which side of the dispute I'll favor and some people are ready to unleash their arguments against my position. They'll have to keep waiting, though, because this article isn't about Apple v. Samsung...well, as much as any article on design patents right now can manage to not be about Apple v. Samsung.

While we wait through what many are characterizing as the "boring" part of the trial, I'd like to take some time to discuss design patents in general. I'm sure that many industrial designers who are following the Apple v. Samsung case are wondering how a handful of design patents, the oft-maligned afterthought of the intellectual property (or "IP" world), can make up a significant part of a $2.5 billion lawsuit. More importantly, designers should be interested to know what the impact of this case will be on design patents and how that will affect their own work.

From a purely legal standpoint, nothing is likely to change because of Apple v. Samsung, regardless of the outcome. Any design patent not involved in the trial will be the same on the day after the verdict as it was the day before. The decision in Apple v. Samsung is going to be based on how the jury interprets the facts of the case. The only way any law has a chance of being changed is if a decision gets appealed.

The real potential for impact, however lies in the mere fact that the design and business worlds are paying close attention to the design patent side of this case in the first place. Design patents have been around for over 150 years and in that time have only seen limited usage. Sure, many people or corporations have sued in the past to enforce their design rights with some success, but both the number of design patent lawsuits and the number of design patents granted pale in comparison to those of utility patents.

The traditionally meager status of design patents is the reason why many designers are likely surprised by the prominence of design patents in Apple v. Samsung. In all reality, practically everyone who has an opinion holds design patents in the lowest esteem of all the different forms of IP protection. You'll find that most people listing the different areas of intellectual property will rattle off copyright, trademark and patent while actually only thinking of utility patents—the more esteemed form of patent protection that is geared toward what an invention is or how it functions.

If asked about protection for the visual aspects of a product's design, that same person might then dismissively mention the existence of a design patent before relaying a common view about them: they're easy to get around, but they're cheap and easy to get. This perspective views design patents, at best, a quick way to get a patent number to slap on a product.

The negative view of design patents is so widespread that even most designers feel that there is no meaningful way to protect the appearance of a product. The fact is that while many of the innovations that come out of design and design thinking find adequate protection in utility patents, most designers feel that there is no meaningful way to protect the appearance of a product. As a result, designers often feel that a substantial part of their work is left vulnerable to copying. This feeling exists in spite of the fact that an entire section of IP law in the United States has been carved out for the protection of a product's visual design.

Before we get too far in, it is important to understand the different types of IP protection and how they relate to each other. Put as simply as possible, patents protect things and methods for making or using things, trademarks essentially protect brand identity and copyrights protect artistic expression. As mentioned above, patents are further broken down into utility patents and design patents. While methods fit exclusively within the area of utility patents, physical things can find protection on both the utility and design sides.

Essentially, the structure or functional elements of a thing can be protected by utility patents, and the physical appearance can be protected by design patents. If there are any features of a product that straddle the line between being functional or being visual, you can often find a way to get protection from both types of patents. This alone is a major advantage of design patents over trademarks and copyrights, which both specifically exclude coverage for anything functional (the recent grant of trademark protection to Hershey's notable chocolate bar pattern notwithstanding). To get design protection for something that has unique characteristics both visually and functionally, all you have to do is to find a way to present it so that the appearance of what you're protecting is dictated more by aesthetics than by function, if only slightly.

While Apple v. Samsung isn't currently rewriting any design patent laws, it's certainly putting design patents in a position that makes them hard to ignore. Apple's focus on its design rights with respect to a product that is also covered by over 200 utility patents (by Apple's own count) is making people realize that, if you're serious about design, you need to seriously consider design patents. The key for designers going forward is going to be knowing what it means to be serious about design patents.

Unfortunately, I can't simply say that the common, dismissive view of design patents is absolutely false and that filing more design patent applications and suing more people for design patent infringement will fix everything. The fact is that not all design patents are created equal, and that it's really easy to end up with a bad one. If you go into the patent process with the view that you're just trying to get a cheap and easy patent, a design patent can fit that bill, but it may prove to be worth about the amount of consideration and time that went into it. Often, this ends up being very little or nothing at all. On the other hand, with the right thought process and a little extra effort, it is actually possible to get valuable coverage from a design patent.

The problem is that the cheap and easy approach to design patents is so pervasive that it weighs down the entire design patent system. The result is that each of the components of this view have been almost accepted as fact. However, the thinking that design patents are easy to avoid, that they're cheap and that their only redeeming quality is that they're easy to get, are really misconceptions about design patents that arose over time from lack of understanding of or appreciation for design itself. As you can see, this problem is bigger than three individual design patents and can't be fixed by one simple trial, but designers can use the opportunity presented by the current attention to design patents as a way to take steps to erase these misconceptions.

To understand how to get valuable design patents we need to understand why so many bad design patents have been filed and have been issued in the past. This involves exploring each misconception about design patents to see that they are not indicative of inherent limitations of design patents in general. Of course, simply knowing that good design patents are a possibility is only one step to actually getting one yourself. Fortunately, there are a few simple things that designers can do themselves to ensure that the design patents they get or that cover their designs are worth the effort and expense.


Misconception 1: Design Patents Are Easy to Get Around

Everything starts with the idea that design patents are inherently narrow in scope and that any design patent can be avoided or "designed around" by simply making some minor change to the original design. Historically, it's true that most of the people who have tried to sue someone for infringement of a design patent have found that their patents can't protect against much more than blatant copies. We can see that this isn't always the case though, by the simple fact that Apple's case against Samsung has made it this far. The reason why people have such a hard time covering other products with their design patents, however, is really a problem with how those specific patents are put together and not because of some built-in limitation of design patents in general.

We've (flot)spotted some of NZ-based Richard Clarkson's work before and we're always curious to see what he's working on. His latest project, the f(x) Chair, has more in common with his more cerebral Rotary Smartphone concept than his rather more straightforward, papasan-like Cradle.

The f(x) chair is an exploration of mixing and mashing different seating contexts. At its core is an application created through Processing & Grasshopper, a powerful generative 3D modelling plugin for Rhino. The app allows a user to mix and match any standard context with any standard "seating task." For instance if a user wants a seat in the kitchen with which to also work in the outcome would look somewhat like a stool—office chair hybrid. The power of the app then comes from the ability to adjust the percentages of the mix, i.e 20% kitchen / 80% work.

Where his fellow Kiwis' "Sketchchair" was based on a similarly digital concept, Clarkson's f(x) Chair generates results that might be considered as the polar opposite of the SketchChair: both programs allow for customization, but Clarkson's application suggests the drawbacks of a pseudo-scientific approach to furniture design.

Ironically this mixing of contexts often creates a hybrid which rather than suiting both contexts actually doesn't suit either, but I argue that this is the beauty of this system. These hybrids allow users to interpret seating in new ways, derived away from the conventional seat to customizable "body support systems."

Although the final product—doughy globs slapped onto a wire frame—looks like a fascinating experiment in itself, it would be difficult to deduce the design process from any given prototype.

The location, size and fluidity of the blobs are predefined within the app by the user and can be adjusted to suit the users desired comfort levels. The base frame is exported out and CNC bent into sections which are welded together. A nylon web like mesh is then 'spun' on the frame. Expanding Polyurethane foam is then robotically blobbed onto points of the web. This manufacturing technique allows for true customization by doing away with moulds or wasteful subtraction manufacturing processes. The intermingling of these elements, rod frame (structure), web (sub-structure) and blobs (comfort) form a relationship in which each element enhances the qualities of the other, for instance the blobs strengthen the web and in return the web gives extra flexibility and thus comfort to the blobs.

Success after failure is always more interesting than success after success. Hearing that artist Matthew Shlian failed Algebra in high school is astonishing once you see his work, as it's clear the guy is a geometric genius.

Paper-folding is Shlian's forte, and if that sounds frivolous or like "merely" art, consider that he's also been commissioned by scientists and researchers at the University of Michigan. "We work on the nanoscale, translating paper structures to micro folds," Shlian explains. "Our investigations extend to visualizing cellular division and solar cell development. Researchers see paper engineering as a metaphor for scintific princiapls; I see their inquiry as basis for artistic inspiration."

On the commercial side, Shlian does work for companies as diverse as Apple, the United States Mint and Ghostly International, the latter of which commissioned this vid explaining what he does:

In the 1700s, a French craftsman named Andre Jacob Roubo took the time to record his vast woodworking knowledge, presumably for the benefit of future generations. His resultant work, L'Art du Menuisier (loosely translated, "The Art of the Joiner") was a three-volume set containing over 300 illustration plates.

In 2008 woodworkers Christopher Schwarz and Bjenk Ellefsen of Lost Art Press admirably took on the Herculean task of translating the work into English. It's not a matter of simply plugging text into Google Translator; Roubo refers to extinct tools, and the pre-Metric French measurement system differs from anything we use today. But the first translated piece of the tome, "On tools for cutting and preparing wood," is here.

That initial translation caused a stir in the woodworking community, because it provided explanation and details of Roubo's workbench design—absolutely the most crucial piece of shop equipment in a pre-table-saw era. Modern-day accomplished woodworkers gamely began replicating Roubo's design, as in the drawing below.

[image source]

YouTube tutorials went up on the subject, including this staggering 34-part series.

We thought we'd show you something that makes for more manageable viewing: A craftsman named Ryan Van Dyke walking you through the features of his finished Roubo bench (which features the Benchcrafted Tail Vise we wrote about earlier).

Of the multiples we've seen on YouTube, Van Dyke's video is the clearest and best-shot--but he's rendered it unembeddable. Click here to check it out.

The latest development in the Roubo translation occurred just last week. Schwarz's co-conspirator Don Williams reached a milestone and completed the bulk of the work, getting through 94,000 words—or as he puts it, "Three people, four years, five thousand hours."

Next month Lapka Electronics is set to release Lapka, its much anticipated new environmental monitoring device and app for the iPhone. Once you download the free app you can plug in one of four lead-free, PVC-free, water resistant sensors to track radiation, organic matter, EMF (electromagnetic fields) and humidity in your immediate environment (from right to left in the image above). The radiation sensor is professional grade, counting every particle and then translating that data into how it might be affecting you. The organic sensor uses a stainless steel probe to detect significant amounts of nitrates in raw foods and drinking water caused by residues or synthetic fertilizers. Try it out at your local farmers market to see if those high-priced organic peaches are really and truly organic. The EMF sensor detects the electromagnetic pollution caused by electronics, telecommunication transmitters and power lines. You might use it to locate the least electromagnetically polluted area in your home for your bed or your child's room. The last sensor for humidity compares generally accepted comfort standards with the temperature and humidity in your immediate environment. (While we don't need an app to tell us that August in New York ranks in at miserable on the comfort index, it's nice to know when our frizzy hair, shiny faces and sweat-soaked shirts are scientifically unacceptable.)

On a more practical level, we can see the app's ability to translate data into easy-to-read values (which it puts into context with global standards, averages and suggested tolerance ranges) being especially useful not just at home or in the office, but in public spaces like parks, airplanes, hospitals or your child's school. You can take environmental 'snapshots' throughout the day to create a personalized 'comfort diary' that you can share with a global community of users. If enough people get involved it means that we'll be able to view accurate, real-time environmental data from locations around the world and record and track the data to analyze changes over time. That's not only fun and helpful for the curious everyday user, but it's a potentially significant source of information for medical researchers looking at how environmental factors impact health and the regional spread of infection and disease. And if your goal is to make your home a less toxic environment, you can get precise feedback on changes you make to your space.

Lapka is expected to be available in December 2012 for $220.

Mutewatch is a minimalist wristwatch with an interesting UI: You swipe to access various features, though there's no iPhone-like animation that smoothly tracks the swiping. It's the type of thing that would clearly befuddle your parents, though anyone who's used an iDevice will "get" it.

You could be forgiven for thinking it's a concept, but it is in fact a real product. While it started out as an entry in a design/ideation competition at Sweden's Stockholm School of Economics, then-student Mai-Li Hammargren observed the strong interest and realized she was onto something. Now she's the CEO of the seven-person team that makes up Mutewatch.

Mutewatch has a second version, or V2, in the works though it "won't be out for quite some time," they write. "So I'd go ahead and get a V1 ;)"

The Mutewatch is on sale in 21 different countries and also available online.