Ever feel like star gazing from your living room floor? Or sun bathing in your bath tub? Andrew Maynard Architects has, and they’ve developed a “ridiculously inside-out” extension to a suburban home in Australia that breaks conventional standards for environmental architecture to do so. The house goes by the name “Cut Paw Paw” and beautifully blurs the lines between interior and landscape design.
The space between the dining room and the owners studio, is an unclad frame surrounded by garden. According to the architects, “It is both inside and outside. It is both a new building and an old ruin. It is both garden and home.”
Kudos to them for even keeping some of the house green & sustainable. The house is highly insulated, and rainwater is directed from the roof to tanks which provide water for toilet-flushing, the washing machine, and garden irrigation.
What Sparks our Fire: design that breaks the “rules” of traditional architecture.
Would you live in the Cut Paw Paw house?
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Now that the winter season has officially started, don’t let the cold weather slow down your productivity. This winter, stay connected on all of your favorite devices while keeping your hands nice and toasty with touchscreen gloves from Mujjo. Most gloves designed for this purpose, are restricted to one or two fingers, but Mujjo redefines the touchscreen gloves promise letting you use all 10 fingers, or even the palm of your hand, without having to expose your hands to the blistery elements! They’re available in many colors: black, natural gray, lavender, coral pink and made from the finest Ethiopian lambskin, known for offering the best isolation properties of any kind of leather. Beyond touch screen functionality, they keep you warm, are durable, with a comfortable fit and they look great. If this sounds like something you’ve always been looking for, the gloves are available from Mujjo’s site.
What Sparks Our Fire: high-tech meets fashion to come up with a useful item
Would you grab yourself a piece? Let us know below.
Wearable tech bracelets are often known to be rather bulky and downright ugly but not this time. Meet Elemoon, the jewelry that combines technology and style. Elemoon is a techy and pretty LED bracelet for the fashion conscious. Elemoon changes color to match your outfit, notifications, has step tracking (like fitbit), displays time and you can even use it to find your phone by swiping the bracelet when sync and it will make the phone emit a sound alert. You can also design individualized icons that light up when various contacts call or message you. For instance, set a heart when your boyfriend calls. Isn’t it fabulous. Inside Elemoon are an array of 75 brilliant LED lights that helps the accessory be colorful and stylish. In terms of battery usage, the magnetically charged device can last from one day to one week depending on user habits. We think the concept of Elemoon opens up the wearable market to a more fashionable crowd. So, if you think Elemoon is something you could benefit from, visit the website now to pre-order to benefit from great deals.
What Sparks Our Fire: customizable jewelry that syncs with you
Would you consider bringing stylish technology to your wrist everywhere with Elemoon?
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1. Shoe Shine Boy
Shoe Shine Boy is perfect to make shoes and bags shine like never before. This small gadget set has all the goodies one needs for a thorough gleam on calfskin pieces to extend their life. All you need to do is insert two AA batteries into your device, attach the microfiber pad, apply shoe polish to the pad and turn on polisher. Shoe Shine Boy works at 420 rotations per minute and can be used on a wide range of leather products including car seats, shoes and leather bags. If new, the batteries can last up to 70 uses. Think it might be the perfect gift for someone you know? Don’t hesitate to purchase it here.
What Sparks Our Fire: A gadget that can keep our leather goods looking good with minimum fuss.
2. Lensbaby
Lensbaby is a mobile lens more fun than a barrel of filters. Thin enough that it won’t interfere with most cases or other lens attachments. With the lensbaby, you get an effect that’s very similar to the one you get when zooming a lens while shooting, with a depth-of-field blur. A gadget highly recommended for people looking to enliven their camera photography but still merit a #nofilter. So if you want to gift someone who is really into photography, we recommend getting your hands on this. Where to buy? Simply click here.
What Sparks Our Fire: A gadget that can make us have professional camera effect with just our mobile phone.
3. Fujifilm’s Intax Printer
Another gadget for photography lovers. With apps like Instagram and its many filters, quite often, one wish to have its pictures printed. With this Fujifilm’s Instax Printer, anyone can have their phone pictures printed like a Polaroid. Now, that’s cool, right. What is fun about this is that there is no need for a separate supply of ink so you don’t have to worry about running out of ink and don’t have to load cartridges. The gadget actually uses the same cartridges as Fujifilm Instax instant cameras. The camera simply uses LEDs lights along with a liquid crystal shutter to expose the film inside the printer. It is fun and you can watch the image develop over the next several minutes. Fancy this? Get it here.
What Sparks Our Fire: A portable photo printer, because in 2015 millennials will appreciate pictures in print more than the ones on their instagram feed (maybe).
4. Hoodie pillow
And yes this exists. Simple as the tittle, it’s a hood with a pillow. This hooded pillowcase can provide ultimate “ Cocoonification™”, helping you tuck away the stresses of your day. Useful for long flights trip or simply for curling up with a good book, dozing on the couch, watching TV. This is the perfect accessory to enhance your lounging experience. The HoodiePillow Hooded Pillowcase fits all standard bed pillows and measures. There is alsoi the C shape version. Sometimes, pictures speak louder than words. Get one here and why not for yourself as well.
What Sparks Our Fire: a gadget that every holiday season traveler wants, but is too embarassed to purchase for themselves.
5. Slimger
We all suffer from short life batteries whether we have an iPhone or an Android. For some reasons phone makers have not tackled the issue yet. So, in the meantime while they get it all together, we have this suggestion that could be the gift of the year. It is called Slimger: a charger so thin and small it can fit in your wallet. This is the result of a project on indiegogo that received more than six time its initial pledge of $10,000. Thank you to all backers, we can now all benefit from the magic. If you need to purchase a devise. Here is the link
What Sparks our Fire: a useful devise that is easy to carry around and a life/phone save
We hope you found this list useful. What did you pick? Let us know.
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A lot of outdoor products seem like they were designed by people who’ve never been around water (beach, pool, etc.) but with the Ecostone speakers, engineers clearly understood the main priority of the poolside party. The coolest thing about Ecostone is that it is a rechargeable Bluetooth speaker that you can take anywhere and that can survive everywhere. A small splash of water on it wouldn’t turn your pool party into a meditation group. Not only can it shrug off a splash, it floats and can survive being dunked up to 3 feet underwater or even endure a sandstorm. It has a 12-hour battery life and is equipped with detachable mounting options that can attach the speaker to just about anything. The Ecostone is available now at many fine retailers in Black, Blue, Orange and “Real Tree”. You also have the option to purchase it straight from the company’s website.
What Sparks Our Fire: A perfect gadget for those who live an active lifestyle.
Would you consider EcoStone for your next summertime pool party?
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A small but important part of many people’s lives is the intimacy of having a barista who remembers who you are and more importantly how you have your coffee. Memory is a coffee maker that uses hand print recognition to act as your personal barista and make the right cup of coffee for the right person. Set it to your preference of weak, medium or strong coffee or even an espresso to a ristretto. When you’re ready for your perfect cup of coffee, Memory will scan your hand and get it right every time. The machine was designed by WenYao Cai from China, an Electrolux Design Lab 2012 finalist.
No matter how hard we wished it wasn’t, Memory is still in the concept phase and isn’t ready to be on the market just yet.
What Sparks Our Fire: An innovative gadget that allows you to get your perfect cup of coffee with a simple scan of the hand.
Do you wish Memory was out on the market? Let us know your thoughts.
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If you dream of a world where people use air-powered umbrellas to fight the rain, you can wake up. The future is now. To be honest, the umbrella is one of those gadgets that hasn’t really been updated much in the last 200 years. Sure, technological advancements have allowed them to become easier to handle and more durable, but overall, it’s pretty much the same deal. But a new Kickstarter campaign has launched an idea that changes the umbrella game completely. It is called the Air Umbrella and it makes use of the airflow to form an umbrella without a visible cover.
Put simply, the gadget releases air that pushes the rain away. Currently, there are three sizes of the Air Umbrella available: small, medium and large. You can also fit two people under the Air Umbrella. The air umbrella will be ready to launch by December 2015. Head over to the Air Umbrella Kickstarter page to find out more.
What Sparks Our Fire: Engineers that strive to bring innovation to the most basic objects.
Would you consider investing in an invisible umbrella once it becomes available?
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Do you sometimes wish you could fly? Well, Hong Kong-based designers David Koo and Zheng Yawei developed something close to sitting on cloud 9 with this astonishing concept design. Yes, a couch that floats in the air. The levitating couch uses a magnetic force from the bottom base to stay afloat. And is designed like a cloud for ultra comfort and relaxation. Sadly, this Cloud sofa remains a concept for now, but it looks like something anyone would try out for sure. And if this isn’t magical, we don’t know what is.
What Sparks Our Fire: Though only a concept, the Cloud may be the coolest idea and most aesthetically pleasing couch, ever.
What do you think of Cloud? Would you be willing to relax up in the air like the Mario Bros?
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Close your eyes and imagine waking up every morning to a different view without ever leaving home. You can have this luxury if you fancy living on the World, the only private residential yacht on the planet. The World has 165 luxury apartments with full kitchens on board from studios to six bedrooms. Residents are allowed to fully own their apartment and decorate it to their own tastes. And if you think you are already blown away by what it has to offer, wait until you read the list of amenities: a cigar club, a library, conference rooms, a gourmet market, a spa, themed restaurants, bars and more. But, if you don’t want to eat out of your apartment and don’t feel like cooking, you can book a top chef that will prepare a meal in the comfort of your own home. Also, if you are a wine lover, the World also has everything for you with over 12,000 bottles of wine from 18 different countries.
The most interesting thing about the World is that each year, residents get to pick their itinerary with two to three major expeditions. For 2015 for instance, the trip begins in Singapore via Southeast Asia. For the late winter, residents will have a taste of warm weather in Maldives and Seychelles followed by an adventurous trip in West Africa. Finally, the luxurious yacht full of residents will stop in Morocco, the Mediterranean, the UK and Iceland to end up in Canada, US, Panama Canal, South America and more. Check here to see the full itinerary. While residents range from 30 to 80 years old, the minimum to be considered for residency is a net worth of at least $10 million. So if you like the idea of spending your years traversing the globe instead of settling down in your vacation home, The World may be the address for you.
What Sparks Our Fire: A dream project brought to life.
Is the World yours? Check out more details on this amazing yacht here.
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We all know the advantages of motorcycles over cars. There are easy to park, take up less space in the garage, require less gas, and tend to be much cheaper. One major downfall is the number of passengers or belongings a bike can carry each ride. Since we are in the age of high-tech design innovation, it is no surprise someone had the excellent idea of how to tackle one of the issues…
Meet EQUS, an electric cargo motorcycle created by three designers that allows you to bring along a variety of goods on your commute, while running errands or just out for a spin. The bike’s structure was built in reverse with a remote steering designed around a convenient cargo area between the rider’s seat and the front fork. The cargo section can carry objects of different shapes, volume and weight. And you know what’s even better? It’s environment-friendly.
The team wanted to develop a vehicle that would contribute to better mobility in large cities while allowing riders to bring everything of importance with them. Get all details about the unique EQUS design, colors available for purchase and different features here.
What Sparks Our Fire: A bike that maximizes convenience and functionality while reducing your carbon footprint.
What do you think of EQUS and if you could add an additional function, what would it be?
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