The Re-vive Table Legs, created by UK design firm Cohda, offer a way to reclaim discarded materials and offer more functional flexibility than many traditional, non-sustainable solutions. The product consists of four patented, vice-like clamps that secure legs to any flat, rigid surface, converting that old piece of plywood in the garage or beautiful oak door found in the alley into a new table suitable for any use. If use dictates new needs, the legs can simply be removed—without any tools—and reattached to any other surface. It’s a wonderfully intuitive solution and a beautiful way to make new objects from [...]

While online music distribution avenues like Apple’s iTunes have had moderate success in keeping the music industry alive in the wake of the disintegration of CD sales, the new music consumer still prefers downloading the best or most popular tracks off the album, leaving the rest behind. Some music traditionalists and certainly record labels bemoan the death of the physical album as a complete, physical package, and not just for the fatter sales tapes, CDs, and LPs procured for the latter. Beyond the simple fact that stores and labels could charge more for albums, the sentiment persists that there was [...]

La Rinascente, Milan’s landmark 150-year-old upscale department store, recently received a much-needed shot in the arm from retail aesthetic guru Vittorio Radice. Radice renovated a floor in the store’s lower levels, unveiling La Rinascente’s new ‘Design Supermarket’—an upscale, affordable selection of masterful Italian design objects, arranged in an approachable, minimalist retail setting, with entire shelves devoted to esteemed brands like Kartell, Alessi and Nespresso. The store’s prices are meant to be as friendly as its interior, with design items available for as little as 9 euros.
[via The Moment]

In a brilliant work of perspectival illusion, the projection artists at Urbanscreen have transformed O. M. Unger’s Galerie der Gegenwart in Hamburg into a surreal plane of shifting form. The project, inspired by the concept of a “dreaming” building, truly does ascribe a sort of material consciousness to the structure’s facade; giant hands press and pull bricks apart and around, walls collapse and expand, and vivid multicolored forms swirl and merge. The optical effects are fantastic to behold via the video alone; we can only imagine what the experience would be like in person.

555 KUBIK_ extended version from urbanscreen on [...]

Navigating the line between augmented-reality-as-buzzword-of-the-moment and the technology’s genuine utility can be tricky of late, and Jonas Jäger’s new Augmented Business Card technology is indicative of the problem. On the one hand, the concept is certainly cool—enriching a traditional paper business card with a rotatable quasi-3D image of yourself along with live Twitter updates, contact links, and gesture-controlled media. But beyond the undoubtedly slick presentation, we have to ask ourselves; will this have any relevance once the gleam and polish of augmented reality wears off, and the crumpled shrink wrap is on the floor? Augmented reality is melding functionality and [...]

As gaming systems become increasingly integrated with the physicality of the gamer, developers are seizing upon the intricacies of our actual environments for new ways of having fun on-screen. Aspyr’s Treasure World for Nintendo’s DS and DSi handhelds is one such attempt to bridge the gap between the real and the pixelated, launching players on a virtual treasure hunt that requires exploring one’s surroundings for actual wireless networks. Real-life WiFi spots are converted into in-game “treasure,” which can be traded in for items. The game can even be played with the handheld closed—at which point one is literally just wandering [...]

Last month we told you about Quirky, a crowdsourced product design site that lets the community collaborate and deliberate about each step of the conception and manufacturing process. We’ll admit that we were a bit skeptical of the whole process, and Quirky’s first release, a universal cord retractor, didn’t exactly blow us away. But the Quirky crowd’s newest idea, the Split Stick USB drive, gives us hope that the crowd of amateur innovators has the potential for truly good ideas matched with a powerful new distribution model.

There are already a dizzying number of USB flash drives already available, from goofy [...]

A team of young German architects is envisioning a new method of construction that challenges our very notion of building materials. Many a design plan strives for an ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ appearance, one that seems to blend into and coexist with its environment, but Oliver Storz, Ferdinand Ludwig, and Hannes Schwertfeger, are constructing buildings from the environment itself, bending and grafting trees around and into each other to form sophisticated structures. The architects build their ‘arbo-architecture’ structures around metal support frames, which guide and constrict the growth of young trees into set forms. Once they mature, they are pruned so [...]

As ugly as most advertising billboards are, what’s even uglier is that most of them are made out of non-biodegradable vinyl, and that over three million billboards’ worth (that’s 10,000 tons) get thrown into landfills every year. TerraCycle and Yakpak, who will be turning discarded vinyl into durable backpacks and messenger bags. The material happens to lend itself exceptionally well to tough conditions—it was used for the outdoors, after all—and accordingly the bags come with a lifetime warranty. Yakpak is going to great lengths to ensure the manufacture of the bags is ethically sound—they own their own factory in El [...]

Target, which has long built its reputation on its eye for good design, is further distinguishing itself as a purveyor of finer taste (by big box retailer standards, at least). The 1,700 location chain is using its ‘Bookmarked Club Pick‘ program to turn its loyal shoppers into rabid readers—and catapulting unwitting authors into significant sales territory at the same time. By positioning Target-exclusive editions in prominent shelving locations throughout stores, authors like Tatiana de Rosnay—whose initial dud Sarah’s Key went on to sell 145,000 copies through Bookmarked—are finding themselves with a second chance at a literary career.
The Bookmark displays are [...]

Oxfam International, a non-governmental group dedicated to the fight against poverty and social injustice, tapped Spanish design study Hey for a series of promotional shirts, posters, and other cause-worthy accoutrement. The studio’s designs use clever iconography, typography and vivid color for a look that is as visually arresting as the important issues behind them. More images from the commission can be seen at Hey’s project site.
[via notcot]

No matter how complex and diverse our online communities are, and how sophisticated and evolved the new ways in which we interact with one another seem, buying and selling still remains at the fore of the online world. Though the basic act of commerce has not changed, many entrepreneurial minds have envisioned new ways to facilitate our transactions, and bring business beyond cash and coin. Here are ten currencies we’ve been tracking:
The Renmibi
In China, the QQ Coin—a currency attached to the massively popular QQ chatting and social networking service—has broken out of the virtual world, and is increasingly used to [...]

The commercial offspring of an alliance of independent record shops staring down the barrel the new reality of the music biz, ThinkIndie is an online music store that proffers hand-picked, DRM-free, high-quality MP3 files from a dizzying variety of independent artists, positioning itself as a cultural alternative to mainstream music emporiums, both online and off.
The selection ranges between famous acts like Sonic Youth and David Bowie, critic’s darlings like Animal Collective, and of course a host of lesser-known acts that have been vouched for by the curators behind ThinkIndie. ThinkIndie’s prices don’t seem to be standardized, and it’s certainly not [...]

The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, at the forefront of philanthropy toward the benefit of spinal injury research, is facing an image problem, as their namesake founders no longer carry the same cultural currency with an increasingly younger crowd interested in good causes.
To combat the threat, though still on the horizon, of diminished generational relevance for an affliction that pays no attention to generational boundaries, the Reeve Foundation is aiming to convert itself from a face to a mission; the cause itself must take precedence over the famous name attached to it. Hoping to boost awareness accordingly, the foundation is [...]

Using computer energy saving settings is certainly far better than the alternative, but at best they are rough estimates of one’s personal computer usage—how long we’re likely to be staring at our screens without stirring our cursor, for instance. But there are still those times at which we watch a movie or stare at a particularly complicated document, only to have the display annoyingly dim or turn off entirely. New software from VeryPC, a British company that specializes in energy-efficient computers, aims to address this problem with an elegant facial recognition solution. Rather than using a set of timers—a rather [...]