Thermo Hemp ( veganic way of insulating ? )

"85% of Thermo-Hemp is composed of natural hemp fibres from domestic cultivation. Approximately 5% is composed of the natural material soda, which provides a high level of fire resistance."

::VIA

Wooden Food Toys

"German toymakers Haba and Erzi offer the most extensive collections of wooden kitchen play toys. From great basic sets like the gift basket by Haba which includes an assortment of fruits and vegetables, bread, dairy and chocolate ($19 from Moolka) to more obscure items like Sugar Cubes ($6), Noodles ($4) and Canned Pineapple Rings ($28), Haba's intricate details are irresistible. The Cheese Roll Cutting set from Erzi ($15) is a child-sized cutting board, knife, cheese and roll with halves that velcro together to make that satisfying real-life sound when "cut."

American toy makers Melissa and Doug also make a variety of wooden kitchen play toys. I love the generic commercial innocence of the packaging design on this Deluxe Wooden Play Food Set (pictured below left ) available for $20 at Amazon. For children with more international tastes, the Wooden Sushi Set ($20 from Genius Jones) is a wooden bento box comes complete with chopsticks, wasabi, ginger and soy sauce."

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CO2 Eating Hummer Concept Won!

"In his remarks accepting the top award, Frank Saucedo, director of GM Advanced Design Studio in California, said, “We thought Hummer was the perfect brand to tackle this design challenge.” His studio threw out the idea of creating a vehicle that would be “less bad” for the environment, instead presenting a “blue sky” scheme in which the car would be a boon to the environment. “We developed a car that would give back — this is a ‘net gain’ vehicle,” Saucedo said of the concept. "
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Art Hotels

CoolHunting just recently posted some great Art Hotels to stay at in Seattle, San Francisco, Australia.

"One-upping the generic prints that often hang inoffensively in hotel rooms and lobbies, more and more hotels add work by big name contemporary artists to their lists of amenities. These three destinations feature art by less flashy names, which makes them a good place to discover new artists and the presentation—graffiti-style murals that cover the walls of a room and doors with photographic overlays—makes for an experience that's more immersive than an average hotel, or museum for that matter." - Ami Kealoha

Read On.

Ari Leinonon's Floating Prefab Sauna

"Architect Ari Leinonon designed this houseboat-sauna for his parents, and since it is Europe and the prefab companies are a little more sophisticated than in North America, it got snapped up by Swedish prefabber Modern Living, which makes a whole range of interesting modern prefabs. (In North America, the Michelle Kaufmanns and Leo Marmols have to build their own factories because the existing prefab manufacturers won't touch them) The SeaSauna comes in three sizes, starting at 200 square feet for $30K to $45K. For those who insist, that is between $150 and $225 per square foot not including shipping and on-site assembly. It is made of native fir and has a wood-burning stove holding 90 pounds of granite. The architect was inspired by Eliel Saarinen' design for a sauna at Hvittrask from the early 20th Century."

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Illustration By Andy Coucil

"I really enjoy seeing original styles of illustration and Andy Council definitely has an unique style. I love his superb collection of Bristol Dinosaur illustrations which contain incredibly detailed dinosaurs made up of buildings, roads and cars. This may sound confusing but one look at the illustrations and you will know what I mean. Visit Andy Council’s Website to see more fantastic illustrations."

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Click on images below to see detailed images

LoopWing Wind Turbine From Japan

"This is the "LoopWing" wind turbine. It is soon to be unveiled in Japan's Eco-Products 2006 Exhibition. The E1500 model turbine is aimed at homeowners, and it sports a unique wing design that operates with low vibration, and at wind speeds as low as 1.6 m/sec. The efficiency specs on the turbine are vague — "43% power performance at optimum wind speeds" is all published."

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Gift Wraps:: For The Holidays

"Giving gifts is almost as much about the presentation as it is about the gift inside. As the holiday shopping rush escalates, wrapping paper is a detail that's crucial not to overlook. These five gift wraps leave the creativity to someone else and look great alone without any fussy ribbons or decoration.

(w)rapping paper

Though not quite in production yet, Si Hill Design has been getting a lot of praise for his clever (w)rapping paper that features the instantly recognizable lyrics to popular rap songs. The pun of the gift wrap itself is as funny as it is to read the familiar words in print. The UK-based designer's prototypes include the old school, Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" (pictured left, click for detail), NWA's classic "Straight Outta Compton," the embarrassment of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and House of Pain's "Jump Around," all in different two-hue colorways.

eBoy Christmas Gift Wrap
Featuring a snow scape populated with the pixel characters that the Berlin design collective eBoy's known for, this eBoy Christmas Gift Wrap paper (pictured left, click for detail) pares down the holiday to the element of snow. It's available, along with other eBoy patterns and equally unique graphics by other designers, from Nineteen Seventy Three for £1.80 per sheet.

Dude Wrap
Whimsy Press has a selection of Dude Wrap, like the ironic name might imply, is the perfect antidote to saccharine Santas and snowmen. The Paper Invaders set (pictured above left) features vintage video game graphics, the Sticks and Stones set is adorned with skulls and crossbones and the Bugz set has creepy bugs with the words "I love to squish bugs." Each sheet costs $4.50 and is available online.

Paporganics Holiday Hemp Wrap
Printed with 100% vegetable ink on hemp blend (10% hemp/flax, 90% recycled post-consumer fiber processed chlorine-free) paper Paporganics wrapping paper adds eco-chic to traditional (yet un-cheesy) patterns. Available in four nondenominational designs, our favorites are the Peace Doves print (pictured below left) and Pointsettias. $5 will get you two 24"x36" Sheets.

Happy Fucking Whatever
Crass is it may be, Happy Fucking Whatever (pictured below right) wrap adds a little humor—not to mention practicality—to holiday excess. Four 26"x 19" sheets cost $7."

::VIA

Minale Maeda::Table Manners Collection

"Minale Maeda's "Table Manners Collection" is a clever exploration of the intersection of formal dining and fast food. Toasted directly onto a grilled sandwich, the porcelain pattern lends the refinement of fine china to eating on-the-go. Other works by Mario Minale and Kuniko Maeda, the duo behind this Rotterdam-based design studio, include t-shirts printed with a tablecloth pattern—for those of us who would rather eat topless than on a undressed table—and delicately embroidered paper napkins."
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Mitsuoka Motors in Japan sells neat car kits

" To support your dream to make up your original car by yourself. Not only people who love cars but also like mechanical things must have dreamed at least once. This model makes your dream come true.

[The K4] is composed of more than 500 parts and takes approximately 40 hours to assemble. The Kit-Car measures just under 2.5 meters (eight feet) long and can run at up to 50 kilometers (31 miles) an hour. The expected cost of each of this vehicle is US $6,460." (Spluch)

Link

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World’s biggest moving machine

"The world’s biggest moving machine is Bagger 288, a giant trencher or bucket excavator. It is 300 meters long and weighs 45,500 tons! Link"
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Stone Bathtub

"Stone Forest in Santa Fe, New Mexico, makes some awesome bathtubs from natural boulders: Link"
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Wireless cup-and-string communicator::; By Duncan Wilson

"Tug the cord to activate, squeeze to talk and hold to the mouth and ear...

The form and function of the Cup Communicator refer to the ‘two-cans and string' children's toy and the physical factors involved with that device. This typology and its associations remind us of the magic and playful intrigue of our first communication devices that has been lost by the desire for more efficient forms of telecommunication." - Duncan Wilson

Check them out here.

New Cool Hunting Video::Cut & Paste

"A little more than a year ago, CH sponsored Cut & Paste, the first design competition to square designers against each other in a live tournament-style battle. From the initial sold-out event in NYC, Cut & Paste has grown into a nationwide tour with stops in four cities featuring local designers and judges in each spot. For episode 55, CH joined the party that kicked-off their national series at a Brooklyn warehouse-turned-club to document eight of the best young New York designers duking it out on stage. The video captures the three high-energy rounds, a lively 1200-person audience and an unexpected turn. You'll have to watch to find out which of CH's crew stepped in last-minute to replace a judge who was sick." Check the video here.

New Tado Website Now Online

"The new Tado website is now up for all fans to visit and to adore the great talents of Mike and Katie. Tado are responsible for some very cool art as well as a lot of great vinyl toy designs. However they also have their own line of vinyl toys coming out soon called Ryoko and the SissyFists (pictured above). Head over to the Tado website now and enjoy yourself."

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Flexlight:: Innovative LED Lighting

"Jos Kranen was showing his LED Flexilight designed for Feek Furniture. "...an ultra-flat-ready-to-use solution, so you can define your own routes of electricity through your house, using a decorative system to lay out your own 'underground map' of electricity."." ::VIA

The JimX Wallet

"Mike O’Neill, designer behind the super-successful “not a wallet” Jimi wallet just launched his next product, the JimiX. A wallet for people who hate wallets, but love cash. It holds cards like the normal Jimi wallet, but also has a nice external clip for cashola. Of course, it’s still made from recycled plastic, locally in the US and 1% of sales revenue goes 1% for The Planet." ::VIA

Reset Design Tattoo

"A collective of international designers have been brought together to illustrate new functional and aesthetic approaches to body art in the Reset Design Tattoo Collection.

The collection is part the French design site's first curated exhibition, Eden ADN, which will be part of the St. Etienne Design Biennale November 22 through December 3 in Paris.

Some of the images offer a political message on racism and sexism, others speak to societal notions of beauty, while a few are clever pop culture commentaries. Pure fodder for hipster ironic tattoos."

::VIA

Happy Birthday Flowbots

"Artist, tattooist and designer of one of the CH x Timbuk2 Artist Bags, Joseph Ari Aloi (aka JK5) celebrates the birthday of his Flowbots next Friday, 17 November 2006, at ToyTokyo's Showroom NYC. In addition to revealing the introductory series of three-inch vinyl toys, produced in collaboration with Kidrobot, new paintings, drawings and sculpture created by JK5 exclusively for this event will be on display. JK5 says of the Flowbots—nine distinct characters with two secret additional colorways—“Each one is a symbol, an archetype, an art form and one is my best friend.”

Happy Birthday Flowbots
Opening Friday, 17 November 2006, 7-10pm
Through 22 November 2006
The Showroom NYC
117 Second Avenue, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10003 map
tel. 01 212 673 5424

::VIA

Orange balls to throw at bad people in Japan

"In convenience stores in Japan, the cashiers keep a supply of clear balls filled with a foul smelling orange liquid. What are they for? As the shop owner explains in this video, "if a robber comes in, please hit them." You can read more here. ::VIA