Chess player goes fashionable

What it is                             
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is a Norwegian chess Grandmaster and chess prodigy who is currently the number-one ranked player in the world. Magnus Carlsen quite surprisingly teamed up with Liv Tyler for G-Star’s Fall/Winter 2010 advertising campaign, combining intelligence with beauty in fashion.

Why it's cool                      
Brands most of the time use super skinny and the most beautiful models, whereby it's hard to identify with them for the customer. G-star has made a smart move to combine beauty with brains because the image of G-star will become more accessible, and the advertisements will surely attract attention on the street.   
This proves that 'the normal man' or even the nerd can also be an attractive model for an advertisement. G-star shows with this campaign that they don't only look for skinny and beautiful models, but that they also want to broaden their horizon and look for people who just stand out in the crowd and are known for something else than beauty.
           

Biosphere home farming

What it is                                                                                                                                                   Home Farming explores growing at least part of your daily calorific requirement inside your house. This biosphere home farm has been designed to occupy a minimum of floor space and instead to stack the various mini-ecosystems on top of each other. It contains fish, crustaceans, algae and edible plants, all interdependent and in balance with each other. Water filtration, recycling of nutrients and optimum use of sunlight are all central to its appeal. It takes all your kitchen-trash as fodder for the farm and manages to generate food, water and cooking gas for the family.


Unlike conventional hydroponic nurseries this system incorporates a methane digester than produces heat and gas to power lights, similarly algae produces hydrogen and the root plants produces oxygen, which is fed back to fish. CO2 is pumped into the plants. It is a closed loop interdependent system. The system uses waste water and non-consumable household matter and delivers food in return.


Why it's cool
The concept supplements a families nutritional needs by generating several hundred calories a day.
Everything you need in your new sustainable household will be in this structure.
It's cool because it creates a vicious circle and it's still all natural. 


Family's with kids often use and waste a lot of electricity, water and food.
But this concept is the perfect solution for a eco-friendly household. It will all be used or will provide you with energy. I definitely hope this will be the future so we'll get more aware of natural habitats and we will spend more time being self-suffient.

This video shows you how it works, at 7:54. The first 8 minutes is about food printing which is also very interesting.

source: http://www.design.philips.com/probes/projects/food/index.page

Dakboerin

What it is
Dakboerin Annelies Kuiper ontwerpt sinds 1 januari 2011 groentetuinen op daken in met name stedelijke gebieden. Ze legt ze vervolgens aan en onderhoudt ze, indien gewenst. De oogst wordt direct gegeten in de bedrijfskantine, restaurant, schoolmenza of thuis onder eigen dak. Alles wat Annelies verbouwd is duurzaam en biologisch en het maakt de mens weer zelfvoorzienend zodat we weten wat er in ons eten zit. Van dak naar bord! 

Why it's cool    
Omdat voedselkilometers als probleem worden gezien om aan de vraag naar biologische producten te kunnen voldoen
is stadslandbouw een goed alternatief.  Grond is schaars in de stedelijke gebieden, maar daken… die zijn er natuurlijk genoeg. 
Dit is een goede oplossing voor de toekomst nu steeds meer land bebouwd wordt met huizen en ook omdat onze voedselvoorziening niet meer van ver weg hoeft te komen en er dus minder transport voor nodig is. Hierdoor reduceren we de milieuvervuiling, en door meer groen in de steden wordt er ook nog eens meer C02 omgezet in zuurstof.
Straten, buurten en zo ook wijken en dorpen en steden zouden elkaar hierdoor kunnen inspireren en gemeentes zouden hierin kunnen investeren. Want het is niet alleen duurzamer, maar het is ook een mooi aanzien.




bron: www.dakboerin.nl

World’s first chocolate made website

What it is
Whittakers Chocolate has come up with a website that is fully made out of chocolate. They designed all the buttons they wanted for the website, made a mold for every one of them and poured them into chocolate. In the movie you can see the whole process of making the website.
Watch it on: http://www.whittakers.co.nz/

Why it’s cool     
This is a great example of implementing the concept to perfection. The concept of great tasteful chocolate and luxury is exactly what the website is showing.
It also stimulates the senses and it makes you want to eat Whittakers chocolate. And that's of course exactly what they want you to think.
There has been so much work put into this website and because it’s so unique, it’s cool. 

'Metamorphosis'

What it is                                                                                                                                           Philips Design’s latest Design Probe ‘Metamorphosis’ explores how we have become separated from the natural world, both in terms of our surroundings and how we perceive and manage our time.

While seasons and time awaken powerful instinctive responses in us, currently the spaces in which we live and work do not reflect the changes outside to allow these effects to take place. Metamorphosis demonstrates how we have become detached from nature and the effect it has on our sensory experience and lifestyle.

Within the themes Light, Air, Sound and Body, the Metamorphosis team has created design concepts that view the home as a filter to limit air pollution, electromagnetic smog, and industrial noise penetrating our living and working space while letting in natural light, air and sound. The concepts work as a filter between people and the natural world from which, over time, people have become detached.

Why it’s cool
Thanks to the Metamorphosis people will become more aware of their natural habitat.
And this is necessary because we all seem to alienate from our nature.
Almost everyone’s working inside, at the office or at school and the TL-light is not very helpful for our kind. The bright lights from our laptops and our environments effect the response we should give to the change of light and seasons.
The Metamorphosis will give for instance urban nomads a healthier environment to work in and it will give people a more relaxing atmosphere.
Because we go back to what nature gave us, it will all effect body and mind and make us healthy. This way we can still work and feel comfortable in our workspace. 


source: http://www.design.philips.com/sites/philipsdesign/about/design/designnews/newvaluebydesign/june2010/metamorphosis.page

The City Spa

What it is
The City Spa is - not very suprising - a spa in the middle of a city centre. The only difference is that it's possible to have a short treatment so you don't have to be there whole day, unlike other spas outside the city. 
Another positive thing is that you don't have to make an appointment, you can just stop by, and you will be helped immediately.


Why it's cool
The city spa is the perfect place to relax in between a chaotic morning at work and a important business lunch. The City Spa is the place to relax in the middle of the city without having to make an appointment and you can make the visit as long as you want! 
This is another trend manifestation who respond to the trend Stress society and urban nomads. We want to work in the city but we also want to relax in the coolest ways. Our problem though is that we make up excuses that we don't have the time. Now we don't have to make that excuse any more because a twenty-minute massage in your one hour break is possible. Because this spa is totally adapted to the busy lives of the urban nomads you are guaranteed of a fast service, but still in a relaxed environment.
Ideal for us busy woman who need to relax ones in a while but can’t find the time for it.




source: http://www.beautymix.nl/health/2681/beauty_nieuws_rituals_opent_eerste_city_spa

Neofastfood

What it is                                                                                   
Even the patriarch of the traditional French kitchen, Paul Bocuse gave up his battle against fast food, to open – how ironically – his own fast food restaurant in the culinary city Lyon, ‘Quest Express’.   And New York’s celebrity store ‘Le Bernadin’ has organized a special family-style fried chicken night on mondaynight.
After years of being part of the underground scene as a result of having a bad and mostly wrong fatreputation, fastfood revives. Slow food goes fast. We want fastfood but in a healthy, fresh, often biological neoluxurious varation, straight from the world’s streets on your designer plate.                                                                

However everything in this world has to be faster and healthier, fast food had never had the image of healthy. It didn’t exist that fast food could be healthy too. Many begin to understand it and a new generation of fast food restaurants has been born.                                                                                                                                                Cook Gordon Ramsey even started his own fast food-show ‘The F-word’ and he wrote the book ‘FastFood’.                                                                                                                         Even Marc Veyrat with all of his biological food is ‘going fast’. And lots of restaurants follow (like Pizza hut, Burgermeester, Vapiano, Maier-Peveling’s)

New are the so-called foodtrucks who mostly drive through the big city’s of America, and apprise via twitter on which corner in which street they are selling their a la minute fresh made neofastfood, such as Korean ribs. The snacks travel across festivals, markets and events with upmarket healthy snacks, which you can get from vending machines a.k.a a converted Citroën van. (source:www.talkinfood.nl www.delekkeretrek.com)

Why it's cool                                                                                                                                           Because obesity is a growing problem in this world, people need to change their habits and eat healthier food. But we also live in a stress society and people want anything, anywhere at any time, as fast as possible because they have to go on with their busy lives. As a result of this they will eat fast food, which, most of the time, contains french fries and burgers. Because of neofastfood we can eat healthy quality food, but we can still move on with our busy lives. It's the perfect solution for the people with fast lives but still want to be healthy and skinny.