Bairim by Timon Sager Naut Your Average Yacht Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids (kidding!). But seriously, the Bairim luxury-yacht by designer Timon Sager is enough to make you want to leave it all behind and hit the high seas. Designer: Timon Sager World’s Best Father documents what an amazing parent he is [30 pictures] In this ongoing series from photographer Dave Engledow, we get real insight into what it means to be an amazingly good dad. You may think some of the images show him being something less than exemplary in his parenting, but you’d be wrong and he has the mug to prove it… (via Pleated Jeans, Sad and Useless) Toilet Tech: A Power Generator Turns Falling Wastewater Into Electricity Here's a novel way to get a little more out of time spent in the bathroom. An industrial design student at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, has created a clever power generator that turns falling wastewater into electricity. The HighDro Power is a waterwheel-like turbine that can be incorporated into the pipes of tall buildings to turn one man's waste into another man's wattage. Student Tom Broadbent's inspiration came when he emptied a bath in a hotel room and it drained quite quickly and with impressive force. He started tinkering around with ideas for harnessing the kinetic energy that accompanies each drained sink or flushed toilet, using rapid prototyping machines and vacuum forming to create the parts. The result: a four-blade turbine that drives a small generator. Installed in series in a tall building, those generators can return quite a bit of power either to the building itself or to the grid. [Creative Boom via Core77]
Alive Without Breath: Three Dimensional Animals Painted in Layers of Resin by Keng Lye Singapore-based artist Keng Lye creates near life-like sculptures of animals relying on little but paint, resin and a phenomenal sense of perspective. Lye slowly fills bowls, buckets, and boxes with alternating layers of acrylic paint and resin, creating aquatic animal life that looks so real it could almost pass for a photograph. The artist is using a technique very similar to Japanese painter Riusuke Fukahori who was featured on this blog a little over a year ago, though Lye seems to take things a step further by making his paint creations protrude from the surface, adding another level of dimension to a remarkable medium. Update: I have some additional details from the artist that I’d like to add here, as this post seems to be getting a lot of attention. I started my first series in 2012 where all the illustrations were “flat” and depth was created using the layering of resin and acrylic over the different parts of the illustration.
18 Cool Inventions From the Past The time between the wars – the Great War and WW2 was one of great loss and uncertainty, but also one of invention, creativity and new ideas. The horrors of WWI shattered enlightenment belief that progress would continue and reason would prevail. New ideas and patterns of life developed in the 1920′s and in the way that people looked at the world [1]. The fast pace of technology change in the 20′s brought us the lie detector, traffic signal, bubble gum and Penicillin. An all-electronic moving-image television system somewhat similar to that used today was invented and demonstrated in 1929 [2]. The 30′s were not less invention-intensive bringing us the jet engine, helicopter, tea bags, sticky tape, ballpoint pen and the first photocopier [3]. However, somewhere between these great world-changing inventions there were some fun and sometimes even hilarious inventions the world has forgotten. Bike Tyre Used As Swimming Aid (Germany, 1925) One Wheel Motorcycle (1931) Radio Pram (USA, 1921)
Custom Tree House Plans, DIY Ideas & Building Designs No, really: would you want to design, build and live in an real fantasy tree house all year round? More and more people have decided to do just that and where treehouses were once novelty architecture for kids they are now (almost) mainstream structures, as attested to by the pictures above via Bella Seven. Many modern tree house designs and home designers and custom builders take a site-specific approach and construct their tree buildings around not only views and rooms but also have to account for access and structural support in unique and novel ways. Some of the results are little auxiliary spaces intended for guests or vacations while others are fully developed tree homes with everything need for daily living. While a lot of attention is paid to lofty plans by fashionable designers, there are many people who continue to use quite conventional home-building plans, techniques and materials to construct tree homes and cabins that look much like ordinary residences on the ground below.