Core77

A Concrete Weed Grinder

Rain Noe

For the weed smoker seeking a more tactile grinding experience: This Sphere Grinder, by German weed paraphernalia company Herb Studio, is made out of concrete. It's begging to be handled.

Inside is an anodized aluminum grinder, and a neodymium magnetic closure.

It's roughly four inches in diameter and weighs 2.2 lbs; a non-slip silicone base means it won't mar surfaces.

These run $100, and come in two colors.

Grabo Finds Yet Another Market for Their Portable Suction Cups: Riggers

Rain Noe

Rigging is the art and science of hanging equipment, like lighting or cameras, for film or stage production. It involves erecting sturdy supports and mechanically attaching equipment to them, which sounds low-tech. But it's a field that technology is having a major advancement on. First Pipe Lighting changed the game with their inflatable, lightweight LED lights, which offer a massive amount of lumens with minimal rigging.

Now Grabo, a company that makes portable suction tools used by the construction industry, has drawn the attention of riggers. Grabo's eponymous product provides a convenient handle for lifting heavy, flat things like plywood sheets, stone pavers and glass:

Now the company shrewdly offers a universal Attachment Plate that features a variety of threaded ports. As the company surmised, this enabled those with unmet needs to find new uses (and thus a bigger market) for their tool.

Cinematographer Wiki Feng was filming a commercial that required overhead lighting. But the apartment setting would not accommodate the wall spreader (overhead bars that span from wall to wall) on which to hang his lighting. He thus used a Grabo with the Attachment Plate:

"The strength and reliability of these electric suction cups, [which] can be triggered automatically or manually to maintain its pressure, is insane. These also are so gentle with the surfaces you work with."

While the construction market is large enough to maintain a good business, Grabo's Attachment Plate will open up entirely new markets for them.

A Mid-Century Modern Classic: Hans J. Wegner's Daybed with Hidden Storage

Rain Noe

Hans J. Wegner designed this GE-258 Daybed in the 1950s.

Made of Beech, it featured a large rear shelf behind the backrests. This was to provide a storage space for bedding beneath it. The shelf was hinged in two places, allowing the backrest to pivot out of the way, revealing the full extent of the sleeping surface.

It makes a little more sense seen in video:

The GE-258 was produced by Danish manufacturer Getama, and had a long production run stretching into the 1960s. The piece is sought after today, and sturdy enough that there are plenty of surviving examples on reseller sites.

When Bathroom Scales were Leather-Clad

Rain Noe

Leather, whether synthetic or real, isn't a material we typically associate with the bathroom. But in the 1970s, it was a thing in Germany to clad bathroom scales with it. These olive and yellow models are by Krups:

This brown one, by competitor Stube:

Manufacturer Soehnle offered theirs in blue and orange:

These remarkably well-preserved specimens were in the collection of WertWerk, a South Korean vintage goods reseller. (All have been sold.)

Industrial Design Student Work: A Collapsible Touring Bicycle with 3D-Printed Components

Rain Noe

This Touring Bicycle was the thesis project of Sebastian Andraschko, an Institute of Industrial Design student at Austria's FH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences, Graz. The idea was to use metal 3D printing to create strong but lightweight connectors between straight runs of tubing.

Gaya is a collapsible touring bicycle constructed from metal 3D-printed parts. It combines the geometry of modern gravel bikes with a frame system that can be dismantled into handy segments.

New manufacturing processes were used in its design, creating a new aesthetic in frame construction. The use of metallic 3D printing results in a combination of lightweight design, stability, and design freedom.

The bachelor's thesis primarily examined how bicycles need to be designed so that they can be easily transported without compromising riding dynamics.

My main criticism of the presentation: A project this ambitious deserves at least one, if not multiple, hero shots so we can see the object in its entirety.

A Fold-to-Assemble Spiritual Successor to Braun's AB 20 Clock

Rain Noe

This clock concept is by Argentina-based industrial designer Agustin Papadopulos. Spiritually, it recalls Braun's iconic AB 20--except it's made out of steel, and laser-cut from a single sheet:

Tyme invites users to activate the object through the simple act of folding rather than using traditional joints. This process emphasizes material efficiency while exploring the symbolic relationship between self-construction and the passage of time.

Industrial Designer with a Sense of Humor: Alberto Essesi's "Oops" Lamp

Rain Noe

With his Oops lamp, L.A.-based industrial designer Alberto Essesi channels that moment in the studio when you realize you've made a terrible mistake:

This has been an idea I've had for a few years and always laugh when I think about it. Finally, I've gotten to design it, a simple moment that inverts the expected. A moment we've all experienced after building something and a small detail was missed. Inspired by a hanging light bulb.

No word on production plans.

How to Make Your Own Camping Cutlery: This Chopsticks Maker

Rain Noe

This Chopsticks Maker is by Shanghai-based industrial designer Mario Tsai. The idea is that if you're camping, you can make your own cutlery out of twigs, and them behind to biodegrade.

By reinterpreting and redesigning the pencil sharpener as a prototype, we have created a miniature portable tool for making chopsticks. Instead of the one-dimensional logic of "providing ready-made utensils", the tool empowers users to be self-sufficient: in outdoor scenarios, they can source materials locally — selecting safe twigs, thin bamboo or other natural materials — and quickly remove the outer skin and sharp edges to form usable chopsticks. After use, the chopsticks can be cleaned and discarded. As the materials come from nature and return to nature, they create no environmental burden, embodying a minimalist and sustainable lifestyle.

This chopstick-making tool is not a simple replacement for tableware, but a tangible modern carrier of the "teach a man to fish" life philosophy. To equip people with the awareness and ability to craft chopsticks on their own is a modern interpretation of this traditional philosophy of survival.

A Pickup-Truck-Style Service Robot

Rain Noe

While Chinese robotics companies like Unitree are all in on humanoid robots, South Korean company Neubility is opting for a more utilitarian, rolling form. They tapped industrial design firm BKID to design Billi, a sort of pickup truck version of a service robot:

"With wheel-based mobility, a rotating robotic arm, and a modular cargo bay, Billi can pick up, load, and hand over items. Billi aims to minimize human intervention points at service sites through tasks such as operating elevator and door buttons, transporting and loading goods, and last-mile delivery, while pursuing an End-to-End service flow that connects seamlessly to the end-user."

Neubility currently offers Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) with their existing Neubie model, an autonomous sidewalk robot with a boxy form factor. Neubie has been delivering food and packages in South Korea since 2021.

Billi, meanwhile, will launch in South Korea later this year.

These Beautiful FSB 1292 Door Handles are by Foster + Partners Industrial Design

Rain Noe

"The act of reaching for a door handle, often our first tactile encounter with a building, becomes a sensory moment in its own right," writes manufacturer FSB. They should know; the German firm has been producing door hardware for over a century.

For their new 1292 line of door handles, the company collaborated with Foster + Partners Industrial Design.

The Foster + Partners Industrial Design team studied both historical and contemporary everyday objects to better understand the significance of tactile interaction in our lives. Insights into how we naturally grasp and perceive materials directly shaped the handle's form. The design of the FSB 1292 product collection follows a freehand curve, defining the soft and tactile qualities of the range.

The line is available in stainless steel, bronze, and Aluminum Pure. The latter is a new finish that eliminates the standard production steps of polishing, blasting and anodizing. This gives the material a matte finish reminiscent of untreated concrete or wood, introducing patina while consuming 37% less energy than if it were anodized.

"I believe that we design better products when we understand the materials and processes used to create them," says Mike Holland, FPID's Head of Industrial Design. "That's why close collaboration with everyone involved in the design and manufacturing of a product is very important to us."

The new line includes not just door handles, but safety handles, pull handles and coat hooks.

More Defensive Urban Design: Venice's Anti-Public-Peeing Architecture Features

Rain Noe

We all know about hostile architecture/defensive urban design, which is meant to discourage citizens from engaging in a particular activity. Typically we think of horizontal surfaces festooned with protuberances that make them difficult for the homeless to sleep on.

Then there's architecture to discourage what we roundly think of as bad behavior, like public urination. In Japan, a historical solution was these bamboo inuyarai, which were reportedly designed to prevent dogs from urinating on the sides of buildings.

In Germany, the city of Hamburg has resorted to coating walls with superhydrophobic paint, which causes pee to splash back on the offenders, who in this case are human.

Yet another solution comes to use from Venice. In that city, you'll find these masonry protuberances in corners:

Those are called pissotte, and are a centuries-old solution for preventing passersby from peeing in corners. They also, the city's tourism board explains, "anti-bandit humps"—they prevented people from lurking in corners, in the era before streetlights.

MVE-Collection: An Architect and Designer Make Furniture out of Construction Site Waste

Rain Noe

MVE‑Collection is a Paris-based design studio that creates furniture and objects from reclaimed materials and construction‑site waste. They created these Brique furniture pieces:

They're made of reclaimed bricks that are assembled and joined, not by mortar, but by an unspecified "molten metal."

The surfaces are then sanded down.

The studio was founded by French architect Vincent Eschalier and designer Mattéo Lecuru, who previously worked together at Eschalier's architecture firm. Interestingly, the duo was inspired to start the spin-off firm by the amount of waste they encountered during conventional architecture projects. "We became attentive to the materials we were demolishing or uncovering during the [demo] phase of each project," Eschalier told Icon, "from aluminium window frames to the brick hidden behind plaster or stone rubble from old floors."

"'The idea is to recover as much material as possible from a building and reintegrate it, in the form of furniture, back into that same space," says Lecuru. "It also highlights, through material, the identity and history of a place, while giving the furniture and its environment a distinctive character."

Eschalier notes that due to his work as an architect, the studio has first crack at the materials on offer during a renovation. With any luck, more architects will start paying attention to that, rather than simply waiting for dumpsters to be filled so that the "real" work can begin.

A Tensegrity-Based Side Table Made out of Pipes

Rain Noe

This eye-catching side table relies on tensegrity. It's made of pipes, joints and thin rope.

"It sways," the creator writes, "but is surprisingly stable."

The table is by PipePipeDIY, a strange Instagram channel where a Japanese office woman makes various contraptions out of pipes. (I assume she works at a pipe business, because her supply seems inexhaustible.) Give it a look; she's incredibly creative.

An Airline Pilot's Disappearing Staircase References Work

Rain Noe

This aluminum staircase, installed in a home in northern Italy, is by Italian fabrication shop Studio Def.

It was designed to disappear:

"The main request by our client, an airline captain, was to design movable stairs to connect the main space of his studio to the elevated library. [Inspiration came] from the specific "airstair" of an MD-80 aircraft tail."

The entire thing was fabricated out of 5mm aluminum (aircraft-grade, we assume).

Core77 Weekly Roundup (4-27-26 to 5-1-26)

Rain Noe

Here's what we looked at this week:

Core77

A Concrete Weed Grinder

Grabo Finds Yet Another Market for Their Portable Suction Cups: Riggers

A Mid-Century Modern Classic: Hans J. Wegner's Daybed with Hidden Storage

When Bathroom Scales were Leather-Clad

Industrial Design Student Work: A Collapsible Touring Bicycle with 3D-Printed Components

A Fold-to-Assemble Spiritual Successor to Braun's AB 20 Clock

Industrial Designer with a Sense of Humor: Alberto Essesi's "Oops" Lamp

How to Make Your Own Camping Cutlery: This Chopsticks Maker

A Pickup-Truck-Style Service Robot

These Beautiful FSB 1292 Door Handles are by Foster + Partners Industrial Design

More Defensive Urban Design: Venice's Anti-Public-Peeing Architecture Features

MVE-Collection: An Architect and Designer Make Furniture out of Construction Site Waste

A Tensegrity-Based Side Table Made out of Pipes

An Airline Pilot's Disappearing Staircase References Work

Core77 Weekly Roundup (4-27-26 to 5-1-26)

Restel, by industrial designer Monica Graffeo, is a furniture piece inspired by traditional hay rakes.

Hi-tech, designey food storage: B!POD's food vacuum system.

Unito's over-the-top modular storage box.

HomeDec Furniture's unusual take on a space-saving table.

Throwback object: Telephone memo pad holders.

The birth of OLFA: Snap-off blades were inspired by chocolate bars and broken glass.

Clever use of materials: Making a child-safe axe-throwing set-up.

An unusual architectural detail from Scandinavia: Open downspouts.

Industrial designer Sebastian Bergne pays homage to everyday holes.

Industrial Design student project turned commercial furniture: Kim André Lange's kinetic, interactive SurfBench.

In this Transylvanian city, the buildings have eyes.

Autoprogettazione, Japanese-style: Drill Design's wall hanger channels Enzo Mari.

Industrial Design Student work: A repairable washing machine, from the "Design for Disassembly" class at the Institute of Industrial Design.

Konstantin Grcic's THING_04 turns scaffolding into seating.