Kia Motors latest concept car to be shown at 2010 Paris Motor Show in September is this, the POP Electric Concept. Obviously it’s an electric urban commuter and it is three metres long and has a three-seat layout. That is all we know about it! It’s Kia’s tradition not to release any details until the last minute.
The full-electric POP will be the first car Kia enter into the ultra light market, that is if it goes into production. The zero car has unconventional LED head and tail lights, that kia says ‘brings design chic and dramatic styling to the city car segment’.
Of course concept cars that look too radical have no chance of being produced, but their innovative features will be used in future production models, and for that reason they matter.
Designer Mathieu Lehanneur has given the concept of a locavore, the collaborative effort to build more locally based and self-reliant food economies, a beautiful new twist. His River Plant Aquarium takes inspiration from the natural ecosystem found within a river by using hydroponics and a refrigerated aquarium as a hatchery for freshwater fish.
All the while vegetables grow on top in glass pods. These vegetables use the water from the fish tank for sustenance, thus filtering and purifying the water for the fish below.
Thus “Local River aims to replace the decorative ‘TV aquarium’ by an equally decorative but also functional ‘refrigerator-aquarium’. In this scenario, fish and greens cohabit for a short time in a home storage unit before being eaten by their keepers, the end-players in an exchange cycle within a controlled ecosystem.”
For those who don’t have the space to grow their own food outside, this may be an effective solution to cut the amount of miles food has to travel before it hits our plates. If you like this, check out Lehanneur’s Living Air Filter!
Edouard Francois’ ‘Flower Tower’ is an apartment building located in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. This Parisian apartment block features a green facade of bamboo planted in 380 large concrete pots embedded in the balconies. The name Flower Tower is a bit of a misnomer since bamboo isn’t a regularly flowering plant, but perhaps the name “Bamboo Building” was deemed unappealing!
The bamboo plants are fed and watered automatically through artificial stems running inside the metal balustrades of each storey. This ensures that when tenants are away the bamboo will not perish. And, of course, it makes life easy for residents day-to-day.
US airline carrier JetBlue has created the “Story Booth” in order to collect content for a forthcoming web and tv campaign. The New York based Mesh Architecture was tasked with the creation of the physical booth, and Local Projects created the interactive experience inside the booth. In order to attract visitors to the exhibit during its 10-city tour, the exterior had to be dynamic and eye catching. Color Kinetics’ LED lighting technology was therefore used on the exterior of the booth. Once inside there was a recording system running off of two Macs and a high-definition Sony video camera.
The way it works is simple—walk in, tell your story and leave. The Story Booth started its 10 city tour in Rockefeller Center in NYC. From there it went to Orlando, Santa Monica, Oakland, Burlington, DC, Ft. Lauderdale, San Jose, Boston and Rochester
Apple has recently opened a new store in the historic area of London’s Covent Garden. The store has a prime spot in the market, and Apple is hoping that the store will be as profitable as the Regent Street branch – allegedly the most profitable store in London. According to Ron Johnson, Senior VIP of Retails Operations, Apple “are hopeful that the store in Covent Garden will have the same impact to the area as the Regent Street store has had.”
This is Apple’s 300th store and there are more to come, with the company putting finishing touches to a store in Spain which will be opening in Fall. The Covent Garden branch coincides with the simultaneous opening of stores in Paris, Chicago and Shanghai.
9 h is a new take on capsule hotels, offering ‘luxury’ accommodation in a minimum living space. The name originates from the concept that guests should spend 1 hour showering, 7 sleeping and 1 resting. The hotel thus takes a different approach towards capsule hotels which are traditionally grimy, and primarily intended as expedient sleeping solutions for drunk salarymen who have missed the last train home.
The capsule hotel and all the amenities were designed by Fumie Shibata of Design Studio S, with the first hotel located in Shimogyo-Ku, Kyoto. The hotel specializes in the necessities and wraps its entire brand around the concept. The building itself will be 9 stories tall, with 125 capsules, locker rooms, showers, and a lounge for its patrons.
If you want your backyard home office orb to be minimalist and clean on the inside but woodsy and natural on the outside, the Archipod is the pod for you. The Archipod is a new concept in backyard office design, offering a convenient alternative to office work.
The pod is designed around the idea that a garden building should become part of the garden landscape, and so it is unique to other garden office designs in that it consists of a 3m-diameter sphere rather than a conventional square box. The inside of the pod very much takes the expected form of a futuristic pod, but the outside is designed not to disrupt your back yard’s harmony with nature. Thus in many ways the Archipod is like a coconut, it is smooth and white on the inside and brown and rugged on the outside!
Auto designer Vitaly Kononov has utilized futuristic EV technology to design the Rolling Stone. The concept vehicle features two big wheels that are powered by electric motors which are fuelled by rechargeable batteries on-board. The car also has two additional wheels at the base that support the main wheels, allowing for a safer and more stable drive.
The designer removes the traditional steering wheel and instead in its place there is a joystick, this supposedly allows for better control and user interface. As can be seen from the pictures, the sides of the ‘Rolling Stone’ include LED screens that can be used to display images or videos captured by cameras which are mounted in the body.
Multitoe, a research project being developed by a team of people working at the human interaction lab of Professor Patrick Baudisch of the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, is a multitouch floor that recognizes individual users by their shoe pattern and responds to such universally familiar actions as stomping your feet and tapping your toes. The display ensures endless possibilities in both space and experience for users, all without sacrificing direct touch which is often essential to usability. The floor allows such high-precision interaction that users can even type with their foot on a QWERTY keyboard.
According to the team behind Multitoe:
“Tabletop computers cannot become larger than arm’s length without giving up direct touch. This prevents tabletop applications from dealing with more than a few dozen on-screen objects. We propose direct touch surfaces that are orders of magnitude larger by integrating high-resolution multi-touch into back-projected floors, while maintaining the purpose and interaction concepts of tabletop, i.e., direct manipulation. ”
Globus is a morphing mobile workspace, which while closed shows a fascinating and intriguing shape, concealing its function and arousing curiosity.
Once opened, the design appears to be an inviting and multifunctional workspace. The Globus could therefore be described as a flexible, mobile, all-in-one workspace.
Fitted out with a filing space, working desk, and comfortable swivel chair, it is the perfect day-in-day-out workspace. The Globus is comprised of a cast aluminium base which is mounted with wheels, this supports the moulded plastic globe. One half of the globe is a comfortable seat which can swivel from side to side. Such swivel action makes sitting down and standing up very simple. The other half of the globe hides a small table that is height adjustable. The globe itself can be sprayed in any RAL colour, and the seat comes in a variety of fabrics or leathers.
