Shake This Curvaceous Spice Grinder For Perfectly Pulverized Seasonings
If you like to be as physically involved with your cooking as possible, swap your electric spice grinder for this beautiful alternative that puts a unique spin-or shake-on the traditional mortar and pestle. Inside the Paprikum is a polished metal ball bearing that can turn any dried spice into a powder in no time. [More]
This Floor-To-Ceiling Lamp Marries Modern-Day Tech and Old School Design
Lamps can be pretty, but there are few quite as versatile as Konstantin's Grcic's OK Lamp. Both a ceiling fixture, but also kind of a floor lamp, its rotating LED panel can cover almost any possible angle. And it's form is the marriage of new tech with decades-old design. [More]
This Floor-To-Ceiling Lamp Marries Modern-Day Tech and Old School Design
Financial institutions-and stock exchanges in particular-are usually designed to project an image of stability. Not so in Shenzhen, where OMA's new Stock Exchange is set to open in a few weeks. Unlike the staid Neoclassicism of Wall Street, Shenzhen is getting one of the most structurally daring buildings of the century: an 820-foot tower than anchors one of the largest architectural cantilevers ever built. [More]
Autobots Assembled: How Transformers Come to Life
Transformers. There's maybe no more iconic toy, especially if you're a child of the 80s and 90s. And while the memories of making them shapeshift are indelible, the process of actually building one from scratch is far more involved (or exactly as involved, if you spent your entire childhood dreaming of this) as you'd imagine. [More]
How Famous Logos Have Changed Over Time
All the logos you see around you? They're eventually going to change some day. It might be because they get outdated or it might be because of a new CEO's quirky taste or it might because the company has some vain hope to rebrand themselves as more modern or more friendly or more whatever it is to get you to buy more of their products. [More]
This Fully Loaded, Column of a Kitchen Is Actually Becoming a Real Thing
With populations growing and cities overcrowding, space-saving designs are amassing a huge, highly lucrative following. The only problem is that they often stay just that-designs. But after being unveiled at the recent Milan Furniture Fair, at least one innovative appliance is leaving concept land to become a reality: Ecooking, a fully functional, vertical kitchen. [More]
Lovely Pastel Furniture That Looks Like Aerogel
As Salone del Mobile wrapped up in Milan last week, plenty of attendees commented that the best stuff at the show was found on the fringes-the Salone's proverbial seedy underbelly, if you will. Here's a prime example: Haze, a series by Korean designer Wonmin Park, which was apparently on view in a basement under one exhibition space. [More]
Every Library Should Come With This Built-In Slide
It's no secret how the recently built Panorama House, which stretches along the hilltop like a beautiful, stone accordion, got its name. But while the outside is lovely to behold, it's what's hiding within that really caught our attention: an awesome library-slide crossbreed in a stadium seating body. [More]
10 Visions of the Los Angeles That Could Have Been
Los Angeles isn't generally famous for its innovative urban design. But there have been many attempts to transform the city into a modern metropolis through visionary architecture and transportation projects. In their exhibition Never Built: Los Angeles, the Architecture and Design Museum is showing off the coolest of what LA could have become. [More]
10 Inspiring Objects from Salone del Mobile, the Center of the Design Universe
Salone del Mobile limped to a close last week, with tons of shade being thrown at exhibitors by big-name critics who say it's "changed." Yep, the glitziest, most-hyped design week of the year-informally nicknamed Salone del Marketing-has definitely changed. Chalk it up to the protracted recession most of Europe is slogging through: $160,000 tables just don't interest people (even rich people!) like they used to. [More]
Most Beautiful Items: April 13-April 19, 2013