Bravo Company, an independent design studio based in Singapore, has recently launched a clever new product called Rememberings™. These stretchable silicon rings, similar to those yellow LIVESTRONG bracelets, have inscriptions on them that remind us of little, yet important things, such as Take pills; Call mum; Pay bills; Return books; Buy gift, etc, that always seem to slip our minds. The bright colors are sure to catch anybody’s eye, which thus fulfills its purpose of reminding! It works well as an accessory or a gift for a forgetful friend.

The stacking Shuffle Desk Tidy from RALLI Design is great for things beyond just paperclips and tacks. Use it for jewelry, gadgets, doodads, whatever.

Made of six ceramic containers and six removable ash bases, you can stack them to organize in any configuration you’d like. If you’re like me, you want things in the same place all the time, exactly where you want them. The Shuffle Desk Tidy gives you that option.

This product will be available in the Hidden Art stand at 100% Design.

Jason Phillips is back with a beautiful design called Treforma. Made of bent, tinted glass, each table nests into one another to form one unit.

The newest addition to join Abu Dhabi’s list of cutting-edge and futuristically designed sky-scrapers is a parking lot named Compressive. Yes, you read it right, a parking lot. However, it is no ordinary parking lot, as this one boasts of an intuitive thinking which reacts to the weight of both you and your car.

This striking multi-storied lot was designed as part of the advanced Exotic Variables and States of Change studio led by Thom Faulders at the California College of the Arts. It is the fruitful result of a challenge, set to examine emerging patterns that would allow for growth and adaptive response. The resultant structure does two things. First, it captures the everyday interaction between a person and his car at various scales. And second, it challenges the current stereotype thinking of the parking lot as a “service space.”

The USP of the structure is that the building’s floors can sense occupancy by registering the weight of your car. Once done, the floors then compress themselves, as and when needed, depending on the weights of the car parked in them. For example, when the main programs of the mixed-use tower are sectionally arranged, groups of up to 5 floors can actually begin to sag with the weight of cars, based on program use at different times throughout the day.

This compression is used even on the various yellow pedestrian paths, to make them safer. So whenever a car approaches any of these paths, the road reacts locally to the car’s weight, thereby creating an on-the-spot inverted speed bump to ensure it slows down.

But nothing is compromised in the structure, especially not fresh air and sunlight, as the dynamic façade system of the structure is so designed that it folds both, out and up, when the floors compress.

This in turn allows for more ventilation throughout the parking area, to counteract the huge number of cars. Also, shorter floor-to-floor height of the surrounding parking ramps makes up for whatever little solar protection that is lost.

Bashko Trybek‘s Serpent shelving is a modular system in which the user can choose the dimensions of the shelf and adjust them according to his or her needs.

For people who lose their sight as adults, learning Braille can sometimes feel like a defeat or a sacrifice. Newly-blind adults – particularly those who have lost their sight over time – may not want to admit to themselves that they can no longer read print.

On the other hand, even those who have no problem with the concept of learning Braille may have a difficult time learning a whole new reading system. The Snail is a concept for anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to learn to read Braille.

The Snail is a small rolling device that quickly and easily translates Braille into spoken words. The snail shell-like shape helps the device easily roll along lines of Braille while the pressure-sensitive pad detects the distinctive dots.

The paired Bluetooth earpiece provides an aural readout of the words on the page without disturbing others in the reader’s immediate vicinity. A small button allows the reader to replay passages or to record entire pages, letting the user play back certain favorite parts or record pages for leisurely listening at a later time.

The device has an internal speaker as well for when the user is at home and not concerned about disturbing others. Because the Snail rolls along under the user’s muscle power, it is able to use that power to recharge itself through kinetic charging.

A distinctive set of guide wheels helps the user keep the gadget rolling in a straight line. The Snail, designed by Wonkook Lee, is still just a concept at this point, but if ever produced it could help countless people with visual impairments hold onto their independence and their love of the written word.

Milwaukee-based designer Peter Pless is proud to present a clever new table design at the American Design Club’s “Use Me” exhibition this weekend. “Link” consists of seven rotating fiberboard discs on maple legs, connected with aluminum panels that transform each disc into a giant, flattened bike chain: “Inspired by the flexibility of a bicycle chain, the Link table offers many configurations in order to adapt to any architectural environment… allowing for a range of sculptural configurations specific to need and function.”

The table isn’t quite modular, but rather reconfigurable, from a round-ish sidetable (when coiled) to a narrow console unit (when fully extended).

Modular Lights by Robhoff (Robert Hoffman) are adjustable luminaries made of aluminium and steel. Simply turn and tilt the different faces of the light to get just the right amount of focused light you need.

See one in action:

(click here if you can’t see the video)

Photography by Stephanie Neumann.

Designers: Yonggu Do, Dohyung Kim & Sewon Oh

Most able-bodied folks probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how people with disabilities navigate the world, particularly in developing countries. However, Amos Winter did, and still does. Winter, a recent PhD graduate from the MIT department of Mechanical Engineering, went to Tanzania as part of his work in 2005. He wanted to understand how people who needed wheelchairs got around and how well current wheelchair technology met peoples’ mobility needs. Winter’s work was part of an internship with Whirlwind Wheelchair International, a group that designs wheelchairs in developing countries. He learned that people in wheelchairs often just didn’t get where they needed to go.

In fact, according to the Wheelchair Foundation, it is estimated that the number of people who need wheelchairs will increase by 22 percent over the next 10 years, with the greatest need existing in developing countries. And USAID estimates that 20 million people in the developing world need a wheelchair.

For instance, wheelchair-accessible buildings and roads are rare in countries like Tanzania. Beyond that, individuals must overcome narrow doorways, steep hills, bumpy, muddy roads and long distances to destinations like school — often upwards of two to three miles. All of these issues combined make it virtually impossible to get anywhere with a conventional wheelchair. Beyond that, they were too expensive for individuals who often can’t work due to their disability, or make about $1/day if they do work.

Hand-powered tricycles were the other existing option in developing countries. But they’re too large for indoor use and too heavy to maneuver over rough terrain.

In Winter’s mind, the chair he wanted to create would offer individuals:
+ Independence – the ability to live with as little assistance as possible
+ Empowerment – the ability to get to where they want to go, when they want to go
+ Access – the mobility that allows them to access resources and employment when these things won’t come to them
+ Affordability – a tool that’s at a price that they’re able to afford