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[breyn-i-keyn] Brainstorming on a Higher Level

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Archive for September 3rd, 2008

Recycled Typewriter Creatures by Jeremy Mayer

Photo credit: Jeremy Meyer
Tahoe City, Calif.-based artist Jeremy Mayer’s mechanical, steampunk-esque creatures are the subject of Wired.com’s latest slide show. Assembled from vintage typewriter parts without welding, soldering, or gluing, his recycled sculptures range from lithe, 18-inch-long mecha-crickets to seven-foot-tall aluminum skeletons that weigh between 60 to 100 pounds.
A full-size human figure takes Mayer around […]

Real Simple’s Top Compact Fluorescent Bulbs

We all know that compact fluorescent bulbs will save you money and energy, but they continue to get a bad rap for the unflattering light they throw—despite the leaps and bounds the CFL industry has made in quality. Here to the rescue are the editors of Real Simple, who tested 30 of the spiral-shape bulbs […]

100% Recyclable Refuge: The reCover Disaster Relief Shelter

Image: Matthew Malone
With the devastating myriad of natural disasters now becoming more and more commonplace, is it possible to design a more effective relief response that won’t echo the shamefully negligent FEMA trailer fiasco? Though it looks a little flimsy and a little too much like a second-year design studio project, designers Matthew Malone, Amanda […]

Tree Free School Notebooks a Stylish Back-to-School Buy

With kids across America heading back to school there’s no better time to take a look at a unique line of notebooks that just may make a difference while helping them realize the importance of considering their paper usage on a daily basis as The Banana Paper Company has put out these spiral notebooks with […]

Trends in Office Design: The Open Office, 1923

Greg at Workalicious notes that back in the day they had “open office, team building, things have come so far, and yet not at all..!”
I think there are other features worth noting as well:

the worker bees get the windows
the ceiling is high to let light and air penetrate more deeply
there is no suspended ceiling to […]

One Hour Design Challenge: Reinvent the Backpack

Industrial design site Core77 runs incredible contests where designers are supposed to spend no more than an hour coming up with responses to a challenge; in this case it was to reinvent the backpack. Whenever they do these things I can never believe a) that they actually do it in a hour, and b) how […]

Trends in Office Design: The Natural Look by Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin’s office in Anchorage. Love the sofa, not certain about the Alaska king crab on the table. ::New York Times…

Raising Energy Efficiency In A New Materials Economy - Part II

Last week in this column, I talked about several ways for raising energy efficiency mainly through recycling. Raising the energy efficiency of the materials we use commensurately cuts carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. (You may want to see our overall plan to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020, Time for Plan B, summarized from Plan […]

Turntable House from Maisons Labbé

Rotating houses are not a new idea, and have some real advantages; they can follow the sun to maximize passive solar heating in cool weather and shading in warm; solar panels can track the sun along with the house and generate power and heat more efficiently. It doesn’t take much power to move a house […]

Tata Nano Factory Construction Suspended Indefinitely Due to Protests

image based on photo by arulnathan
We’ve covered the Tata Nano a number of times, and have featured coverage of the ongoing protests about the West Bengal factory location from the beginning. You may have missed it, but those protests have come to a head in the past 24 hours. The BBC reports that construction on […]