Smart Design

If you’re an urban dweller, a student, or a backpacker—basically someone who lugs around a lot of stuff throughout the day—deciding what is worthy to make it out of the house with you can require some tenacity, planning, and resourcefulness. Unfortunately, one of the things that often doesn’t make the cut is a reusable water bottle. Many are (understandably) hard, durable plastic or aluminum, but these take up a lot of space and can be heavy, even without water. With convenience and time, it often seems easiest to just buy a PET bottle on the go.

A new bottle released this past year, the Vapur, is a smart and easy solution to this problem. Termed the ‘anti-bottle,’ the Vapur is a 16 oz, flexible, rollable, foldable bottle. When filled, the tough, (BPA-free) polymer bag-bottle stands upright, and flattens to roll or fold up when empty. The colored bottles (green, blue, pink, and smoke) have a standard pop-top spout, and are conveniently freezer and dishwasher safe. It also comes with a detachable carabiner, for easily attaching to belt loops and backpacks.
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So many toys are plastic. It makes sense: toys should ideally be durable, lightweight, and colorful, while inexpensive and easy to replace. Plus, kids are naturally fickle, growing up fast and constantly changing their minds about what they want to eat for dinner or their which is the favorite toy of the moment. All this drives the manufacturing of droves of toys, used briefly, then discarded.

One solution: a toy that can adapt to a child’s changing interests, encouraging creativity and using up leftover household materials. Yup, that’s Makedo, “A reusable connector system for creating amazing objects and spaces from recycled materials.”
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The idea of wearing wool while sweating through a strenuous hiking session is, point blank, pretty unappealing. A pleasant workout could turn into an itchy, sticky mess pretty quick. But New Zealand company Icebreaker, in a dogged pursuit to create a natural fleece functioning for performance, recently released their Realfleece jacket.

The jacket, in versions for men or women, serves as the first outer layer in Icebreaker’s line of merino wool base layers. It’s outer layer is a smooth, breathable jersey finish, and the interior layer is a terry knit construction, with loft that has been brushed to create air pockets that work to trap air and lock in body heat. Plus, the design also makes it a jacket that can easily straddle both the performance and social worlds.
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Bicycles have quickly become stellar representatives of the possibilities in using alternative modes of transportation. They are light, nimble, and convenient, faster than walking and easier to park than a car, and provide exercise, getting all their energy from the work that your legs do. It’s easy to jump on a bike and get to where you’re going, but in order to make bikes most effective and efficient, we are all in need of the right accessories, especially to carry all our stuff. Whether running errands, picking up a few things, or heading to work with your workbag and lunch, you need a place to store all this stuff out of the way while you cruise the streets. The tried-and-true metal or wicker baskets are always an option to throw your goods in, but bike styles have evolved to more sleek and minimal aesthetics, and, a few good bike racks have been designed to go along with them.
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Many furniture companies have tried to branch into the green market with a line of bamboo outdoor furniture here or a sustainably-manufactured chair there. But California-based Environment chose to focus the mission of the company solely in the green market, making all of their products environmentally friendly. This translates into a holistically considered approach to making new objects, from researching and utilizing reclaimed materials to responsibly using resources and alternative manufacturing processes.

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Many of us have tried to do our part in eliminating plastic bag usage, toting along a varied assortment of trusty reusable bags on shopping trips (or guiltily buying even more from their omnipresent hangout next to the checkout counter). But often every item we toss in those bags is contained within layers of packaging. Taking this into consideration and taking the leap to eliminate most food packaging, Catherine Conway opened the Unpackaged Grocery Shop in London.

The shop is essentially a thoughtful expansion of the small bulk foods sections in regular grocery stores. Most of the store’s product is sold sans-packaging, and the small amount of goods that do have packaging are easily recyclable. Customers are encouraged to bring their own selection of containers to fill as needed, and reusable containers and bags are available for purchase and/or borrowing when needed.

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Fucillo’s composting bin for the freezer.

Though the step of separating recycling from our trash has been demanded and (relatively) well implemented for years, composting has been slower to catch on. One big de-motivator to bringing composting into our daily routines is a lack of resources, especially in urban areas. But some cities have finally leveled the playing field, facilitating composting by putting citywide programs in place. San Francisco, Minneapolis, Toronto, and Boulder all have curbside composting programs in place, and in San Francisco separating compost has been mandatory since 2009. read more

Look in your kitchen; those handle connections on the pots and pans under your sink are kinda icky. For one, any seam between two different materials (even those lovely rivets so popular on the interiors of name-brand frying pans) serves as a gather point for bacteria and gook. Some super-high-end cookware even uses external weldments rather than rivets to moderate this problem. Such connections, however, while extraordinarily sanitary, also happen to conduct heat quite well, so the handle is often hollow, but then rarely comfortable. Those handles become a liability when users transfer the pot from browning on the range to cooking in the oven, since oven mitts (with their own set of problems) are needed for removal. An alternative solution is to use plastic, but for baking, that same plastic handle will chip or wear. Further, for those of us who machine wash our pans (yes, you, even though the instructions tell you not to), the external handle often takes up unwanted washer space, occasionally blocks the spray nozzle mast, and sometimes breaks stemware (see, we told you that you weren’t supposed to put that in there). read more

A self-proclaimed “Solar Powered Lunch Box”, Muvbox transforms from a closed shipping container to a gourmet fast food destination in a flash of 90 seconds. The spotlight is now on food service, shipping container architecture’s newest adaptive darling, following in the footsteps of retail shops, prefab residences, and mobile clinics. The boxy trend is gaining momentum with a seemingly endless list of ways to transform retired shipping containers into minimally foot printed, self-contained urban hotspots like Muvbox. read more

Iain Howlett has come up with a new, fun and practical application of the kid-favorite papier-mâché. Paper pulp is molded into table surfaces; these are held up by minimal wooden legs sculpted from stick lumber and hardwood dowels.

Though lightweight, the tables are very strong and can be used on a permanent basis. Structural cues have been taken from industrial paper pulp packaging, used to ship eggs, electronics, and other industrial parts. To prove the robustness of these pieces, the designer stood on an overturned paper bowl, which didn’t give way at all. read more