In a striking example of ingenuity, Australian inventor Tom Chalko has converted a deep freezer into an incredibly efficient refrigerator.

With the economy still in a bad state state, travel across the board is down. Family vacations are losing ground to rediscovering the wonders closer to home, while business trips are increasingly being replaced by remote meetings conducted over webcam and phone. But assuming you still find yourself living out of a suitcase on occasion, there’s no reason you can’t do so on a budget, and without skimping on the finer things in life.
To that end, aptly named British comedian George Egg, shows how a bit of DIY ingenuity can transform your hotel room into an ad hoc kitchen, enabling [...]

The Circle Kitchen manages to cram in all the elements of a mid-sized kitchen into a tiny 1.8 square meter space. Able to rotate 180 degrees, this room within a piece of furniture  features ample storage, a sink, refrigerator, microwave and stovetop and dishwasher.
[via Curbly]

The Salvamanteles Bakus from Ciclus aims to curb dining waste by converting discarded bottle corks into an insulating countertop mat. One simply takes leftover corks and sticks them atop the spiked metal tray, filling in the surface and replacing worn out corks as needed. The modular design means the insulating surface itself will never wear out—provided the owner continues to imbibe—making the Salvamanteles Bakus far more reasonable (and affordable) than similar pre-manufactured kitchen mats.
[via Wired]
Related Post: Wine Box turned Lamp, the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Mixing clever design and considerate attention to household safety, New Point Knives‘ new ’safer kitchen’ line has a rounded tip that juts out beyond its point. The rounded design means the knife can never be used as a weapon to stab someone, and will also make the blade safer to use in regular kitchen settings.
[via Gizmodo]

The “future dining table” designed by Petr Kubik is a multi-purpose kitchen appliance that combines the functions of cooking and eating in the form of the familiar dining room table.

The table has hidden compartments to store your food and appliances, and the surface OLED changes from opaque to transparent to reveal the refrigerated food underneath. Different foods are compartmentalized and drinks can be retrieved from the centre core. A mini-dish washer, toaster, micro-wave, coffee maker are stored underneath the inner circle. While making meals, you can browse for recipes or read the news off the tabletop that functions as a [...]

Designer Caroline Noordijk has reinterpreted the basic kitchen knife into a multi-purpose tool. Without significantly changing the traditional shape, Noordijk packs functionality into the unused areas of the knife surface. Her basicKnives add a grater and herb scoop into the 6 inch cook’s knife, a vegetable peeler into a  4 inch paring knife and a zest/decoration tool into a 3.5 inch paring knife.
[via The Kitchn]

Curbly points us to an interesting dining room setup designed by Ilja Oelschlagel that seems to disappear into a wall. A table and benches fold out of a tiny wall unit and storage space is reveled behind a flat facade.
[Compact Kitchen via Curbly]

Unless you have a huge family, or do a lot of home canning or whatnot, a full size refrigerator is probably not practical. Both in the amount of physical space it takes up, and the amount of electricity it uses, a fridge hogs precious resources.
Izona has developed an excellent solution to this problem with their CoolDrawer. It’s a discreet and elegant under counter refrigerator-freezer unit that pulls out like a normal drawer. Individual sections can be set to different temperature settings, and you can even fit bulkier items like wine bottles without a problem.
[via Gizmodo]