Cool Hunting

Greener Gadgets Call For Entries
Greener Gadgets, a conference on the topic of greening consumer electronics, partnered up with our amigos at Core 77 in hopes of seeking out design innovations for more eco-friendly electronics. The design competition will engage established design firms and students alike to come up with new solutions for consumer electronics addressing energy issues, health and toxicity, new materials, product lifecycle and social development. The...

Transmaterial Book
Transmaterial, Blain Brownell's wonderful newsletter of all sorts of building material innovations, is finally being published as a book. Tile Toy and Flexicomb are just a couple of the fascinating things we found out about through TM and we're looking forward to the book both as brain candy and as a resource for more. There will be over 200 items not previously shared and...

The Pharos Project
by Russ Lowe Addressing inconsistencies and other challenges in eco-friendly construction, a revolutionary group of like-minded (and large-minded) scientists, architects, engineers, humanitarians and optimists from the U.S. Green Building Council's robust Northwest Chapter, Cascadia, have developed Pharos, a project that might just reshape the Green movement.Its namesake, the island lighthouse of Alexandria, references the guiding beacon that led travelers through unmarked waters in ancient...

Poetry Nightstand
A surefire way to impress that guy or girl you take home Friday night is to stack scholarly books on your bedside table, as if you casually dropped them there after breezing through some weighty tome on relational aesthetics or quantum theory. For those without the time or brain capacity, you may consider the Poetry Nightstand, designed by Marian Lassak. Although it's not a...

Luminescent Gravel
Mixing glow-in-the-dark particles with flooring materials, the Dutch company S. Lövenstein BV created one of those no-fuss design fixes that improves safety and convenience. The substance has limitless applications for things like signage or guide strips with the ability to be evenly and seamlessly distributed throughout a surface and masked into shapes and patterns. Integrated with contrasting colors, it serves a purpose in both...

Rocio Romero: LV Series
It's an all-too-common complaint that modern prefabricated homes don't fit the utilitarian or economical requirements of the average Joe. Fortunately, these Joes have a sympathetic ear with Rocio Romero. The Missouri-based architect built her first prototype in 2000 as a Chilean vacation home for her parents, and in the last few years has seen a boom in construction of her efficient, inexpensive kit homes,...