Cape Town Haven

See that top middle image? When I first saw it, by itself, I thought it was a rooftop bar somewhere at a resort or something, and I thought I want to go there. Then I did a little digging to discover its source, and discovered it is the kitchen in a house!!!

This is brilliance. That kitchen that you see at right is pretty compact, in a pretty compact house– 1300 square feet– so the owners, the Lagos of Cape Town, turned the formerly small kitchen window into a large window/pass-through, with a bar on the other side that opens out to that eating area at left!

(I’m posting it again below so you can see it larger. In all it’s glory. With that chaise up above on another little deck for some added awesomeness.)

Now, this seems so obvious, right? It’s like having a pass-through from a kitchen into a living room with a bar on the other side (like pretty much every white-characterless-box NYC apartment built in the ’80s-’90s has), but have you ever seen it done to the outside? Well, I hadn’t, and I pretty much freaked when I saw this.

The house was featured in Vart Nya Hem, a Swedish magazine, so my understanding of it is based on Google translate, which told me some useful things like, “The house is to pack a small box when they themselves are going away. When it comes to living in the big city, it pays to be anpassningbar.”

So, my information is somewhat limited, but I did learn that when they moved in, they tore out the white tile floor (can totally picture that, would’ve had a terrible feeling, great call) and laid down white expox resin, which they say made the space feel bigger (no grout lines!).

Also, they fit two bedrooms in the space by having the master lofted (I think it opens out to that chaise area above the kitchen) and tucking the guest bedroom beneath the stairs (so Harry Potter), and what sound like some interesting space-saving measures that Google translate made a little difficult to understand totally: “The kitchen cabinets are the drying rack in the guest room has a walk-in cabinet with a concealed toilet and the bedroom has walls nearly invisible cupboards and drawers, which may act Julies closet.”

Check out the original article for more photos– I just chose my favorites!

Soccket

Yesterday, I spent the entire, wonderful day hearing the pitches from the social entrepreneurs who have spent their summers at the Unreasonable Institute’s incubator, and I can’t tell you how unbelievably inspiring it was.

A business plan from a Ugandan for turning agri-waste into eco-friendly charcoal in rural Uganda to prevent de-forestation driven by demand for cooking fuel, an engineer who has created a reusable bag and chemical that clean contaminated water and can be distributed in disaster relief areas instead of (and much more efficiently than) bottled water, and many many more. Y’all, I wish I could fund them all.

I was blown away and my heart was brimming over with excitement that the world contains such creative, smart, passionate people. Their final video pitches aren’t online yet– I’ll post them when they are– but I thought I’d share another cool innovation I recently came across in the meantime.

Featured at the Clinton Global Initiative, The sOccket (seen above) is a soccer ball invented by four girls from Harvard that creates usable energy as it is kicked. 15 minutes of play generates 3 hours of electricity. With 25% of the world lacking electricity, there’s a huge need for innovations like this (also saw some great ones yesterday!).

The ball actually has a socket on it, so a light or cell phone charger can be plugged directly in (learned yesterday that phone charging is in huge demand in areas without electricty… crazy, huh? Phones but no electricity?). Pretty cool, eh?

The video below was created for sOccket in collaboration with American Express’s Member Project.

It’s Hammock Time

Sorry, I couldn’t resist that terrible MC Hammer-inspired pun for the title. But don’t let that detract you, this is really cool!

Above is a public space, like a park, but it’s a structure, built in Vienna and filled with four stories of hammocks. Just ‘cuz. If public spaces are meant to enhance one’s enjoyment of a city, I can’t think of a better way to enjoy the view than relaxing in a hammock looking out at the city.

It’s a temporary structure, only there until October, but not to fear, it’s not going to demolished– it will simply change owners and move to a new location. Designed by these architects.

Also, in other hammock news… YES, there is other hammock news! What a fun day that there is news about hammocks!

Anyway, the first item is this: Brazilian artist Narcelio Grud installed hammocks around Manchester’s town center, with the sole intention of creating enjoyment interventions in people’s days, much like this swing project. I love it, and I love that there are people like that to do things like that in this world.

And item B: hammocks induce better sleep, says NPR. It made me think, maybe for future houseguests in our cozy little apartment (read: kind of too small for guests), maybe rather than offering the couch, we could find a way to string up a hammock for sleeping!

Street Art + 3D + Band Poster

To promote their new single, “Horses,” British band Dry the River teamed up with FOAM and Xavier Barade to make these 3D paper posters. Yes, paper.

In addition to being a brilliant promotional move and twist on the traditional poster, I also love that once “in the wild,” these function like 3D street art… something I haven’t seen too much of!

I loved these at first site, but three things made me love them more:

1) They are made of paper. 2) They were created using Google Sketchup. #1 + #2 means an awesome intersection of handmade, crafty, tangible, and cool tech tools. 3) They went one step further after creating them (they took 35 hours each) and installing them and made this video below showing them in their habitats and the reactions of passersby. #ilovevideocontent

With so much to love, the music was sort of an afterthought for me, but I do like the song!

Finally, how do I get my hands on one of these??

Via/more info here.

Links, etc.

Hi there! In case you’re not following Wonderlust on Twitter, I thought I’d post a round-up of recent links and stuff I’ve posted to Twitter. Basically, all the stuff I come across and love that doesn’t make it onto the blog gets posted to Twitter…

This week:

What the what?! This is amazing. And SO confusing. Indoor choreographed “skydiving” http://j.mp/opsqt8

If you haven’t caught this yet, you need to. Grand Rapids makes video in response to being called top dying city in US.http://j.mp/jvafQb

And now, one of their retirement homes makes an even more awesome video, further proving it is not a dying city.http://youtu.be/uZ7-n930zJo

Well put: “The be all and end all of centerpieces” http://j.mp/qhHMIl

Oh gosh yes. Turn a stack of magazines or books (heavens knows I have plenty of both) into a stool! http://j.mp/oX9K5m

FACT: A smile of just a mere four-hundredths of a second is enough to produce a mini emotional high in others. http://ow.ly/5DGDy

“Fantastic Flying Books”- making kids’ books interactive for the iPad! COOL! Trailer:http://j.mp/n7pNr4

Ok this is super cool, but is it going to become real or just a daydream? http://j.mp/jWWIOH

Have never seen art like this before! Images created all with letters and symbols on a typewriter… http://j.mp/qhEzTn

Wow, LOVE the interface of new recipe-finder www.gojee.com — the whole-screen photos and overlaid recipe format is so pleasing!

Woolly Mammoth Roars Again

The above might not look like much, but this project is so cool. It’s from Fast Co., and I really can’t tell it any better, so without further ado, in their words:

Scientists employ all sorts of techniques to introduce us to extinct animals in the context of a museum, but for the most part, those techniques are largely visual. We usually don’t get to learn how they smelled, for example, or how their skin felt, ignoring a whole range of senses during what should be a transformative experience. Filling in those gaps is the quest of Royal College of Art grad student Marguerite Humeau, who became fascinated with the idea of creating reproductions of the vocal tracts of extinct animals to bring them back to life through sound.

As she embarked upon her research, she learned a curious fact about the recovery of extinct animals: Because the vocal tract is made of soft tissue, it does not fossilize. The data she was looking for, like 3-D scans of the vocal tract and windpipe, simply did not exist. “When I discovered that, it became a personal obsession. I had to recreate this data in some way,” she tells Co.Design.

For six months, Humeau studied with paleontologists, zoologists, veterinarians, engineers, explorers, surgeons, ear and throat specialists, and radiologists — over 100 specialists — in an effort to recreate the chords of a Mammoth Imperator, an ancestor of the better-known woolly mammoth. For the resonance cavities, for example, she had to get a CT scan of a relative: a modern-day Asian elephant. For the windpipe and lungs, she spoke to elephant vocalization specialists. In the end, Humeau was able to build a massive compilation of data that did not exist before her research, she says. “I created bridges between areas of science which normally would not be related.”

…For the rest of the article (it’s fascinating!), click here.

Amie Weitzman

This week, Design*Sponge featured the two homes of textile designer and painter Amie Weitzman– a townhouse in NYC, and a cottage in Connecticut.

I loved the happy, casual feel and mix of traditional and mid-century modern that run through both.

Don’t they both just seem to radiate a feel of “a happy family lives here!”?

Everything is so simple and un-fussy (and kid-friendly), and yet it’s still really cool– cool art and books everywhere, interesting textiles.. haha, I guess that makes sense for the home of a textile designer and painter!

At top, the kitchen is from the CT cottage, and the other two are from the NYC townhouse. The grey mud room and the breakfast nook in the post are from the CT cottage.

Check out the gallery for more! All the images that end in -2 are from the cottage. For the rest (I didn’t include all the shots, just my favorites), check out the original posts.

PS- I’m also super excited about the D*S book coming out and love the “book trailer” for it! (In general, I love that book trailers have become a thing… I love trailers!)

Design Sponge at Home (Official Book Trailer) from The Panic Room Videos on Vimeo.

Arcade Fire + Chris Milk

I so wish I had been at Coachella for this.

Director Chris Milk, as part of The Creator’s Project, along with Moment Factory, created this interactive visual experience during Arcade Fire’s last song at Coachella by releasing big “balloons” embedded with LEDs and IR transmitters that they used to make them change colors with the music.

Check out the video to hear/see more!

If you haven’t seen The Wilderness Downtown video/project by Chris Milk for Arcade Fire, definitely check that out too!

Photo at left above by flickr user Critical Thought, others are stills.

The Next Jackie O

I never knew I had any princess-y daydreams until there was Kate Middleton.

Honestly. Didn’t grow up playing princesses or thinking about marrying a prince. I actually asked my mom recently if I ever played with dolls or dressup or house or really anything girly, and she answered “No, you really just liked to read.” Ha. (#nerdalert)

I didn’t even really care about the royal wedding in the weeks leading up to it. But then. She wore that utterly perfect Alexander McQueen wedding dress and everything changed. It still wasn’t so much that I then wanted to be a princess, it was just that I knew she was going to play the part of a princess to a tee, and watching it would be so much fun.

So I’m here to admit, I am absolutely living vicariously through her every wardrobe choice. She is the ultimate princess. Polished but not overdone, ladylike but not stuffy, and pretty much always stunning. The princess we all hope we would be if we ever were a princess.

And I kind of like how consistent her style is, she seems to follow three rules for princess-appropriate, classic, flattering clothing about 85% of the time: high necks, cinch everything at the waist, and unless it’s floor length, it should hit just above the knee.

I still don’t envy her life (endless commitments, so much pressure, your every move is watched, fame sounds horrible to me), but I do enjoy watching how she lives it.

Here’s to hoping Kate Middleton will be the next Jackie O. of style!

Olly Moss

The silhouette art trend may have been around for a while (I think it was ’06 when I painted a silhouette of my sister’s basset hound for Christmas), but that doesn’t mean I don’t love Olly Moss’s silhouette series of pop stars, both real and fictional.

I love the humor and high-low kitsch of the series! (It also doesn’t hurt that she included many of my favorite characters, books, and movies.)

I think my favorites are the “cast” of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Carmen San Diego, for that clever use of map.

Check out the gallery for lots more, and here for even more.

Thank you to Dave Pedra for sharing!