Tag Archives: Modular

This modular bracelet concept lets you choose how smart you want your jewelry to be

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The popularity of the Apple Watch has finally given smartwatches their place in the market, making them understandable and even desirable. Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone now wants a smartwatch, especially those who prefer mechanical watches or have different aesthetic tastes. Unfortunately, the majority of wrist-worn smart trackers seem to be made with sporty and rugged designs in mind. Given hardware requirements, that’s not exactly surprising, but that shouldn’t stop designers from imagining what’s possible. One such dream is reflected in this minimalist yet distinctive bracelet that throws all smart wearable design conventions out the window, offering a modular piece of jewelry that is smart in more ways than one.

Designers: Akasaki Vanhuyse, Astrid Vanhuyse

If you remove the actual time-keeping function of a smartwatch or a fitness tracker, all you’re really left with are the sensors that actually do the work of keeping tabs on different metrics of your health, directly or indirectly. A display isn’t even necessary since you can always check those figures on a smartphone. In fact, a display might even be detrimental because of the distractions it pushes your way or how it clashes with some fashion styles. Smartwatch designs are primarily constricted by hardware such as displays and big batteries, but what if you could be free of those restrictions?

That’s what the BEAD concept seems to be proposing, offering the same health and wellness monitoring functionalities but in a form that is a bit more universal and, at the same time, more personal. At the heart of the design are the beads, actually tiny cylinders that each hide a single sensor used to track a specific biometric like a pulse oximeter or an accelerometer. Each bead is an independent unit, free from displays or large batteries, performing a single task and performing it to perfection.

The idea is that you can combine any number of these beads on a string or wire to achieve the same collective effect as a fitness tracker. You wear it around your wrist like a bracelet, held together at the ends by magnets in the shape of half-spheres. The wire is white, plain, and unadorned, which puts a bigger visual focus on the beads. Those beads themselves carry a brushed metal finish that helps hide whatever scratches they may incur over time while also giving them unique characters.

You can add or remove as many of these modular beads as you need, only paying for the functionality you actually use. It also makes repairing broken beads easier, since you only need to replace that single piece. Admittedly, the industrial aesthetic might not appeal to everyone’s tastes, but the concept opens the possibility of using different, perhaps more stylish designs that will truly create a fusion of fashion and technology in a simple smart bracelet.

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The Valencia Modular Seating Is The Sleek + Stylish Furniture Piece Your Living Room Needs

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We often underestimate the importance of a great sofa. When in reality, we really shouldn’t. We spend the majority of our day sitting on sofas, whether we’re watching some TV, enjoying a meal, or simply sitting and reading a book for leisure! Hence, this piece of furniture needs to be not only comfortable but ergonomic and aesthetic as well. And we’ve curated a collection of chair designs that meet all these criteria! An excellent sofa should not only be super comfy to sink into, but should also perfectly match the interiors of your modern homes, and one such sofa design is the Valencia Modular Sofa.

Designer: Morgan Furniture

The Valencia modular sofa is designed by the British brand Morgan, and is intended to be a light and aesthetically pleasing design. It is designed to be an alternative to typical modular sofas. It is a classic of the brand’s catalogue and made up of individual seating units that are meant to be placed together. You can pick from the option of a full, three-quarter or half backrest.

“The combined backrest outlines create a rhythmic sequence of rise and fall, with sofas coming together to form distinctive ‘V’-shaped silhouettes,” said Morgan. The backrests of the Valencia modular sofa are tapered at each end to reduce some of the weight from the volumes, providing the sofa with a clean and flowing form that brings to mind the image of rolling hills in a landscape.

The tapered timber legs add an impressive effect to which echo the gentle angles at the top of the sofa, providing the seating with a look of lightness. The Valencia collection has won the Design Guild Mark award in 2017, which recognizes excellence in British design. The collection will include a daybed, as well as a side and coffee tables, which would make for an excellent addition to your modern living spaces.

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Quirky shapes make this modular table set a fun yet functional addition to your space

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Tables primarily serve a functional purpose, providing a horizontal surface to place things. Considering the space they occupy, it’s only fair that they should also have some aesthetic value, adding to the ambiance of a room instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately, not all designs balance form and function equally, with one aspect getting a heavier focus than the other. Some might be extremely beautiful but have little room for use as an actual table, while others try to get too smart with features at the expense of a pleasing appearance. Fortunately, we have plenty of inspiration around us to help shape our designs, and this family of odd-looking tables takes a few pages from Mother Nature’s book to create pieces that offer both practical utility as well as visual interest, bringing any living space to life.

Designer: Superlife

Most tabletops come in conventional shapes such as rectangles, squares, circles, or ellipses. These, after all, are the most space-efficient shapes around, maximizing the area that you can use to lay down objects like laptops, books, or cups. They’re probably also the most mundane shapes you’ve ever laid eyes on, and they are totally dependent on the rest of the table’s composition or materials to pique your interest. The Flow family of tables bucks that trend and presents a table that almost looks impractical but is actually quite flexible in its functionality, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it pulls off this feat by learning from organic things designed by nature itself.

As the name somewhat implies, these tables are inspired by naturally occurring bodies of water. Whether they’re puddles or lakes, water doesn’t appear as a perfect circle or rectangle, not unless you put them in artificial containers. The amorphous and almost random shape that water comes in evokes a sense of fluidity, even while at rest. It’s almost the perfect metaphor for tables that become centers of activity even as they act as resting places for your stuff.

Flow, however, is also inspired by cells that take similarly undefined shapes. Each table in the collection also has different heights to add to its unique character. And just like cells, these distinct pieces can function independently or merge into one to provide a larger canvas to arrange objects. The dynamic shapes of the tables might even inspire you to inject some life into your room, just like how cells are the building blocks of organic life.

Whether alone or connected, the fluid shapes of the Flow tables create an interesting ambiance that is both lively and calm, just like water. The tables are both pieces of structural art as well as flexible furniture that provide a bold visual impact, blending form and function in harmony just as things in nature usually do.

The post Quirky shapes make this modular table set a fun yet functional addition to your space first appeared on Yanko Design.