Sauce

Drains and manhole covers are a sore point with me. Slippy, oily, ugly metal motorcycle catchers that often reach out and insist unsuspecting bikers pay a visit to the concrete below. But smart invention has begun to deliver perhaps a chink of hope…possibly consigning these dangers to history if UK proposals are accepted by Europe.New non-slip manhole covers offer equivalent grip to a good quality road surface, according to the BMF.

Yipee I hear all motorcyclists roar (well perhaps not quite) but then look at them…

Really there is no excuse for unimaginative design even for the most mundane of objects. You only have to look at Honfay Lui who has created a concept for  drainage systems ‘Matrix’ to realise the ordinary can be extra ordinary.

www.yankodesign.com and www.motorcyclenews.com

 Its amazing when you sit and figure out where you have been in the world.

• Create your own travel map or travel blog
• Visit TripAdvisor.com

Most of us know when we see an ‘M’ on the back of the BMW passing us on the freeway, there’s virtually no way we’re going to catch up even on 2 wheels. The ‘M’ division BMW has recently revealed its latest concept – a tribute to their first mid-engine supercar originally manufactured by collaborative efforts of BMW and Lamborghini thirty years ago – the M1.

In the world of supercars, the M1 certainly looks like it will hold its own – an effortless blend of retro cool with revolutionary elegance. The new Liquid Orange M1 may only be a concept right now, but just know if you see those beady headlights quickly approaching from your rear view mirror, move out of the fast lane. BMW seems to have realised form sometimes has as much place as function. look out for the BMW Moto GP bike post coming soon. Where this has 2 too many wheels the Triple-powered MotoGP machine is beauty and brawn all in one.

Launching this week as part of Milan’s furniture festivities, the latest collaboration with leading designers and the second with Karim Rashid and Veuve Clicquot is this reinvention of a chandelier in the form of a glowing pink champagne holder that doubles as a cooling tote. The design, an asymmetrical sensual ellipse, was the result of Rashid’s initial scribble after asked to meld the immaterial and the material like he’d done with his first project for Veuve, the loveseat. Realizing his doodle was “the idea in itself,” the Globalight literally circles the champagne and adds ambient illumination that plays off the pink hue of Ros champagne, for which it was designed.

Bringing lighting experts Zumtobel into the project, the lamp-cum-basket uses technology to light up without heating and in fact keeps bottles at the ideal temperature for up to two hours.

Limited to a run of 500 (only 50 of those will be available for the U.S. market), the Globalight will be available on Eclicquot in May for $4,000.

via coolhunting

Against a background of natural terrain and vegetation, is a “red ribbon” spanning five hundred meters, which integrates the functions of lighting, seating, environmental interpretation, and orientation. While preserving as much of the natural river corridor as possible during the process of urbanization, this project demonstrates how a minimal design solution can achieve a dramatic improvement to the landscape.

The Tanghe River Park, located in Qinhuangdao, China, features a new installation of red steel that stretches for 500 meters along the riverbank. It is made of fiber steel, and lit from inside so that it glows red at night.

Four pavilions in the shape of clouds are distributed along the ribbon, which provide protection from the weather, meeting opportunities, and visual focal points.

www.asla.org

Rice Gallery commissioned this installation in collaboration with The Museum Fine Arts in Houston exhibition, The Modern West: American Landscape, 1890-1950.

Rip Curl Canyon was a kind of mythical location in the American West where land and water collide, far from Houston’s flat drained swamps. From its highest point at the rear of the gallery, its steep, crevice-like formations sloped down and gained momentum before breaking apart to form ribbons of curling waves. Like rip currents – narrow, fast moving belts of water – the segments twisted and surged toward the front glass entry wall. The view through the glass provided only glimpses of the unfolding topography beyond and invited the visitor to probe deeper. The steady climbing exploring caused the raw cut cardboard to slowly compress with each footstep…over time this accumulation developed into subtle pathways.

The fabrication processes used to make the natural brown surfaces are in the lineage of those Gehry employed in his legendary “Easy Edges” line of furniture in the 1970’s. Expanding on this knowledge enabled us to create architecturally scaled cardboard structures and introduce double curvature. We used the properties and limitations of the material – determined through building full scaled mock-ups during development combined with a parametric digital interface - to shape the cardboard – ribbons.” The project required laminating over 20,000 strips (weighing approximately eight tons) of curved, industrially die-cut corrugated cardboard in twelve days. Incredibly strong and capable of supporting the weight of several people, the cardboard laminates operate as semi-monocoques with an intermediary plywood armature. The armature was made of standard wood materials – 2 x 4s and plywood – individually cut and CNC routered offsite to conform to the varying dimensions and curvature of the undulating cardboard shells. We digitally developed a language of slotting connections so that these non-standard parts came together like a giant puzzle in four days, required very little structural decision making in the field and gave us the freedom to make improvised choices when installing the cardboard.