Cool Hunting


In a world becoming more advanced every minute, with everything from virtual reality pinball machines to the common smart phone, it's difficult to make sense of it all. U.K. design studio (and CH heroes) Troika (check out Troika on CH Video here) does just that with their recent book, "Digital By Design," a complete survey of the most innovative digital products and works of art today. Way more than your standard coffee-table book, "Digital By Design" assesses the relationships between technology, product design, immersive environments and human interaction from a standpoint of how they relate to our daily lives. Commissioned by renowned art publisher Thames and Hudson and featuring a foreword by MoMA's design curator Paola Antonelli, Troika explores intelligent design and the designers behind the objects extensively and with an objective perspective.

Graduates of the Royal College of Art, the trio behind Troika are particularly well-suited for the project, drawing on their backgrounds in graphics, communication, art, product design and engineering to create works that toy with technology's role and capabilities, most notably their recent digital sculpture, "Cloud," at Heathrow airport (see our 2006 video for examples).
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Meeting with Julia and Andrés Fredes, founders of Pure Austrian Design (as well as their own studio Juland), last week was a great introduction to the Austrian design scene, including Vienna's second annual design week and their pop-up installation, " In The City." The showcase of Austrian-designed furniture was housed in a giant bubble smack dab in the middle of the Museum Quarter (a...
by Rebecca Odes The recent explosion of high-design kids gear has been hard to ignore and "Designed for Kids: A Complete Sourcebook," by Phyllis Richardson, culls the greatest hits of the modern kids marketplace into one hefty hardcover package. With its textbook-ish format, the book seems aimed at design professionals rather than consumers but for anyone on the hunt for smart kids stuff it's...
You've seen the Speedo LZR-Racer and its effect on Olympic swim times, but the Lunocet Monofin promises to have an even greater effect on swimming speeds. Although it will most likely never be allowed in competition, it represents another product design that is sure to change the swimming experience. Designed by Ted Ciamillo, the 42-inch carbon-fiber monofin acts much like a dolphin tail. In...
Fresh from the studio of those cut-up British designers Mixko, these ceramic vases take on the unexpected form of human knees and elbows. We like how the "Michaelangelo meets Dexter" vessel's organic contours are subtle enough to pass for an abstract objet.Both versions are £100 and available now from DA in Moscow and from Mixko's online store later this month.Also on Cool Hunting: Salone...
DJ Spooky has had one foot in music and another in academia over the years and the release earlier this year of his new book "Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture" is no exception. The "literary mixtape" is a collection of "reports from the front lines on the role of sound and digital media in an information-based society." Tasking authors, musicians, designers, curators...
Design with no regard to plausibility is always fascinating, especially when applied to the sense of fantasy and freedom inspired by cars. But what happens when you introduce a limiting (and very real) factor to the project? Featured in Wired, the Royal College of Arts (RCA) recently unveiled 10 progressive automobile designs that all take into account our current limiting factor of petroleum and...

