PEEL Turns Discarded Fruit Skins Into Living Textile

Posted on 24/06/2026 by Tanvi Joshi

There is something quietly radical about looking at a fruit peel and refusing to see waste. Salak and lychee skins are usually treated as the most disposable part of the fruit, peeled off, discarded, and forgotten almost instantly. PEEL begins at that exact moment of dismissal. Instead of blending the skins down, disguising them, or forcing them to behave like leather, the project lets them remain visibly themselves.

Developed by designer Anthony Guevara, PEEL transforms discarded salak and lychee skins into a durable, biodegradable textile made without adhesives, synthetic polymers, or toxic chemical treatments. The material offers a regenerative alternative to leather and petroleum-based vegan substitutes, with estimated CO₂ emissions up to 95% lower. What makes the work compelling is that it does not rely on the usual visual language of “sustainable design.” It is not trying to look clean, neutral, or overly polished. It carries the roughness, colour shifts, scale-like patterns, and irregular surfaces of the skins it comes from.

Designer: Nefeli Vitoraki

The project is deeply rooted in Indonesia, where salak and lychee are widely consumed, and their skins are discarded in large quantities every day. These fruits also have a short shelf life, which means their peels are consistently available through existing food systems. This matters because PEEL does not depend on growing a new crop or creating an additional supply chain for material production. It begins with what already exists, what is already abundant, and what is already being thrown away.

The process is careful rather than overly industrial. After the fruits are consumed, the skins are collected and dried through a controlled low-heat process. This step preserves the natural structure and pliability of each peel, which is essential for turning it into a textile. The skins are then treated with naturally derived materials to improve durability and water resistance. Once stable, they are stitched onto biodegradable backing structures such as cotton muslin or linen.

That stitching is important. Many plant-based leather alternatives are processed into uniform sheets, often requiring synthetic binders or coatings to hold everything together. In doing so, they erase the character of the original material. PEEL takes the opposite route. Each skin is treated and applied individually, so the final textile carries visible traces of the fruit’s form, colour, and texture. The result feels less like imitation leather and more like a material with its own identity.

From a design perspective, honesty is one of the strongest parts of the project. Sustainable materials often get pushed into proving themselves by looking like something familiar. Mushroom leather has to look like leather. Cactus leather has to look like leather. Grape waste, apple waste, pineapple fibre, all of them are frequently judged by how convincingly they can replace an existing material. PEEL resists that pressure. It does not apologize for the fact that it used to be fruit skin. It builds its visual and tactile language from that origin.

The development process also reveals the material’s stubbornness. PEEL began with salak alone, with no guarantee that the skins could become usable. Early experiments focused on drying methods because the peels were too brittle to stitch by machine. The first prototype, a stool, had to be hand-stitched throughout. More than fifty tests followed, adjusting combinations of naturally derived treatments until the material became flexible, durable, and workable. The second prototype, a bag, expanded the system to lychee and four other tropical fruit peels.

Home testing across abrasion, water, heat, humidity, and bend fatigue showed promising results across all six materials. Every peel demonstrated high heat and humidity resistance, and samples have remained stable for over a year. These early results suggest that the project is more than a beautiful material experiment. It has the potential to become a practical textile system, especially for applications where biodegradability, local sourcing, and distinctive surface quality are valuable.

The local production model makes the idea stronger. Since the skins can be sourced where the fruits are processed or consumed, PEEL imagines a closed regional loop: fruit is eaten, skins are collected, material is made, and products are produced within the same community. This keeps the material connected to the place. It also creates an opportunity for small local workshops in Indonesian fruit-growing regions, turning a low-value waste stream into a new economic resource.

The next step is bringing more rigour to the testing and supply chain. Guevara is working toward partnerships with Indonesian fruit processing factories where skins are currently discarded, creating a zero-cost raw material source. In parallel, collaboration with Imperial College London aims to formalise lab testing for tensile strength, abrasion resistance, and long-term durability.

PEEL is interesting because it does not frame sustainability as a finish, a label, or a moral claim attached to the end of a product. It begins with material behaviour. It asks what a peel can do before deciding what it should become. That shift feels important. The project is not just about replacing leather. It is about expanding the designer’s imagination around overlooked matter and treating waste as something with form, memory, and potential still left in it.

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This Concept Car’s AI Slows Down When It Finds a Scenic Road

Posted on 23/06/2026 by JC Torres

Modern life has made genuine rest surprisingly hard to come by. Homes are saturated with obligations, travel gets consumed by itineraries, and the spaces that are supposed to support recovery often fall short. Young people in particular are navigating a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from a lack of free time, but from a lack of environments that actually know how to be still.

Epik is a mobility concept that addresses this at its root. Rather than packing more comfort into transit or filling trips with more activities, it takes a different route entirely: nature and light, the things that already surround you but go unnoticed, become the primary tools for rest. The vehicle reimagines the journey as a second home that moves with you and adapts entirely to your intentions.

Deisgners: Ellie Ahn, Shirley Cheon, Changdong Min, Geonhoo Son

The exterior form draws from the architecture of an auditorium, with a broad, arched glass canopy that gives the interior an immersive, wide-angle view of whatever lies outside. This isn’t incidental; it’s the entire premise. Epik calls this the “Live Frame,” treating the vehicle less like a transport pod and more like a moving window that actively captures and amplifies the surrounding scenery.

Inside, the compact cabin is built around flexibility rather than fixed arrangements. Doors and windows can open to varying degrees, inviting nature in or closing it out. A rollable display changes size depending on what the occupant wants to do, while corners that would otherwise go to waste are repurposed as storage and a small work surface. The same space can hold one person alone or two people together.

On a trip through mountain country, Epik’s Scenic Mode detects beautiful stretches of road and quietly slows the vehicle, adjusting window angles to frame the best view, almost as if the pod itself is composing a photograph. The detours it suggests aren’t inconveniences; they’re the whole point. Every landscape encountered gets logged in the “Rest Timeline,” a running record of every journey worth remembering.

The onboard AI, called EPIE, learns the occupant’s routines, preferences, and how they typically spend time with the people around them. It reads mood signals through music and content choices, then gently nudges toward what comes next, whether that’s a nearby walking path, a quiet stop, or simply reconfiguring the cabin layout. For couples, it can even split the space into two personalized zones when schedules diverge.

When there’s nothing more to do than absorb the moment, the interface knows to retreat. The screen takes on a skin drawn from the surrounding landscape, blending into the view, and only the most essential details, like weather and music, stay visible. Controls are modeled after analog buttons, using transparent textures so the display feels less like a gadget and more like a natural extension of the cabin walls.

The idea that a vehicle could be primarily about rest rather than destination is still a rare one. Epik doesn’t claim you can find peace anywhere with the right pod, but it argues that the ingredients, specifically light, nature, and a space that listens, are far closer than most people realize. Getting somewhere just becomes the occasion for that rest, rather than the thing standing in its way.

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A Design Student Just Fixed the Way Runners Hydrate

Posted on 22/06/2026 by Ida Torres

Most runners know the feeling. You’re a few miles in, the sun is beating down, and somewhere between the last water stop and the next one, you’re already behind. You’ve read the articles. You know hydration matters. And yet, you still have no real idea if you’re actually drinking enough, or too much, or the right thing at all. You’re just guessing, like almost everyone else out there pounding the pavement.

That gap between knowing and doing is exactly what Yash Ghule, a student at ArtCenter College of Design, set out to close with Osmo, an adaptive hydration system built specifically for runners. It’s a student design project, but the thinking behind it is sophisticated enough to deserve a proper look well beyond the design community.

Designer: Yash Ghule

The problem Ghule identified isn’t lack of information. It’s that current hydration tools don’t fit how running actually feels. When you’re in the middle of a run, your cognitive bandwidth is largely committed to the act of running itself. Checking an app, reading a label, or doing mental math about electrolytes isn’t something most people can or will do mid-stride. Hydration fails not because runners don’t care, but because the tools available demand too much attention at exactly the wrong moment. That insight alone is sharp.

Osmo solves this with three connected components working as a single system. The wearable, worn on the wrist, continuously tracks sweat rate, temperature, humidity, and intake behavior. It then translates that data into cues delivered through haptic vibration and light feedback, nudging the runner without pulling them out of their flow. No screen to look at. No notification to parse. Just a quiet signal saying, drink something now.

The bottle is where it gets particularly elegant. Rather than requiring you to pre-plan your hydration strategy before lacing up, Osmo’s bottle includes a built-in mixing mechanism that lets you shift between water and electrolytes on the fly. A simple slider adjusts the ratio as your needs change. This is the kind of thinking that solves a real problem rather than adding a layer of complexity dressed up as innovation. No extra pouches, no separate drink mixes to remember, no mid-run compromise where you reach for the wrong option because you didn’t prepare for the conditions.

The companion app rounds out the system, handling setup before a run and offering digestible insights afterwards. That structure matters. It keeps the app out of the experience when you need to focus, and puts it to work when you finally have the headspace to reflect. I find this concept genuinely compelling, partly because so many “smart” fitness products get this backwards. They front-load the technology in ways that interrupt the activity itself, demanding interaction at moments when you just want to move. Osmo flips that. The intelligence runs quietly in the background, and the interface shows up only when it’s actually useful.

It’s also worth acknowledging the quality of thinking behind the design approach. Ghule didn’t just design a cool bottle or a slick wearable. He mapped out a friction problem, traced it back to its actual root, and then built a system around it. The research behind Osmo surfaced a key insight: runners know they should be hydrating better, but the physical and cognitive demands of running make it genuinely difficult to act on that knowledge in real time. That’s a design challenge with real nuance, and the response reflects it.

Osmo won’t be on store shelves tomorrow. It’s a student concept, and concept-to-market is always a long road. But the fact that it exists as a fully realized, integrated system rather than a single clever gadget suggests Ghule has a clear understanding of what it actually takes to change behavior. That’s not a minor thing. Running keeps growing as a sport, and the industry has largely kept pace. The gear has evolved, the shoes have evolved, the tracking technology has evolved. It’s about time hydration caught up.

The post A Design Student Just Fixed the Way Runners Hydrate first appeared on Yanko Design.

Noble’s $199 Osprey Earbuds Aim Straight at Sony’s XM6

Posted on 18/06/2026 by JC Torres

The $200 true wireless earbud market is crowded, but the brands filling it are mostly consumer electronics companies that tune for mass appeal rather than accuracy. Getting earbuds with any real audiophile pedigree under that threshold has historically meant compromising somewhere meaningful, whether on driver quality, build, or sound character. Most listeners have made their peace with that trade-off and gone with whatever Sony or Sennheiser had on the shelf.

The Noble Audio Osprey debuted at High End Vienna 2026 and starts shipping at the end of June at $199. Noble has spent years building custom in-ear monitors that sell for four figures to listeners who argue about driver counts and cable geometry. Compressing that into a sub-$200 true wireless product is a considerable stretch, and the Osprey’s choices reflect what had to be preserved and what didn’t.

Designer: Noble Audio

The Osprey uses a hybrid dual-driver configuration, pairing a 10mm dynamic driver with a custom balanced armature. The dynamic driver handles low-end weight and warmth, delivering bass that’s smooth and thick rather than just punchy, while the balanced armature supports midrange detail and treble precision. The frequency response spans 20Hz to 40kHz, wider than most consumer earbuds at this price point.

That driver combination pays off most noticeably in the soundstage, which reviewers describe as genuinely expansive, with strong depth and layering that becomes especially clear in music with complex percussion. The signature leans slightly V-shaped, with the low end its most impressive range. Mids are full and anchoring rather than recessed, and highs are crisp and extended without tipping into harshness, a balance that works across most genres.

Noble kept most of its visual identity intact. The Osprey carries the marbled acrylic faceplate aesthetic from the FoKus line, with layered blues that read as deliberate rather than generic. The aluminum charging case matches the color and keeps the premium feel without adding bulk.

On the practical side, the Osprey includes hybrid ANC, a Hearing Through mode for ambient awareness, and multipoint connectivity for switching between two devices without re-pairing. ANC handles lower frequencies well, though some higher-pitched background noise still gets through. Dual microphones with cVc noise reduction handle calls, and Bluetooth 6.0 via the Airoha 1571 chipset holds a fast, stable connection even in busier wireless environments.

Battery life sits at seven hours with ANC off and five hours with it on, in line with most competitors. Quick charging is where the Osprey pulls ahead: 10 minutes in the case delivers roughly two hours of listening, a figure that outpaces several earbuds well above this price. The 500mAh aluminum case uses USB-C, and the Noble FoKus app adds a 10-band EQ, touch remapping, and over-the-air updates.

For context, Sony’s WF-1000XM6 retails at $329.95 and the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 at $299.95, putting the Osprey around $100 to $130 below either. LDAC support separates it further from mainstream earbuds at the same price, most of which cap out at AAC. Noble Audio opened pre-orders on June 4, with units shipping by the end of June, available directly at nobleaudio.com and through select retailers.

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The Urn With 4 Screens Showing Moving Images of the Person You Lost

Posted on 17/06/2026 by JC Torres

Cremation urns have existed for thousands of years, but their design language has barely moved. They tend toward the ceremonial and the generic, pottery shapes lifted from antiquity or polished boxes that draw from the visual vocabulary of caskets. The underlying assumption across nearly all of them is the same: that the vessel marks an ending. That what’s inside has arrived, not departed.

The Transcendence Urn takes a different philosophical position entirely. It belongs to a series of objects conceived as temporary dwellings for the remains of loved ones, held in anticipation of what comes next. The form it takes to express this idea is strikingly futuristic, almost sci-fi in its ambition, built on the premise that the urn theoretically facilitates the occupant’s journey toward a higher state of existence rather than simply containing what was left behind.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

The structure stands 25 inches tall and 12 inches wide, built from painted wood in a form that seems to reach upward. Stepped tiers stack toward the top, followed by a gold sphere that crowns the whole structure and is removable from its own tiered plinth. The lower body radiates outward in layered chevron forms, pointing downward like fins, giving the whole piece a sense of directed energy, as if something inside it is moving rather than resting.

The four panel spaces near the top of the urn are where the personal dimension takes shape. Owners can fill them with photographs selected from a curated series of symbolically resonant images, or with their own. The possibilities run a wide emotional and metaphysical range: images of open sky and drifting clouds, a sunlit hillside, a field of orange flowers, a galaxy, fire, storm, and lightning are all part of the symbolic vocabulary this design draws from. Of course, photos of the actual person can go there, too.

That choice matters more than it might first appear. Most memorial objects leave the bereaved as passive recipients of a fixed form. This one asks them to make decisions about meaning, to assign symbols, and to decide what the person they lost should be surrounded by. It’s a quiet but real kind of agency during a period when very little feels controllable.

A digital variant of the Transcendence Urn replaces the four static panels with four screens displaying moving images and sounds, turning the object from a still memorial into something more like a living one. That version shifts the experience even further, letting the presence of the deceased linger in a more active, dynamic way rather than being fixed to a single still photograph chosen on a single day of grief.

It’s also worth noting what the object looks like on a shelf or a table. It doesn’t look like an urn. It looks like a piece of speculative design, the kind of object that invites questions before anyone knows what it holds. That unfamiliarity carries its own kind of comfort: it doesn’t announce loss the same way a traditional vessel does, and it doesn’t ask the viewer to feel a particular thing on sight.

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CamelBak and Crayola Just Made the Most Nostalgic Water Bottle

Posted on 11/06/2026 by Ida Torres

Remember holding a fat crayon between your fingers as a kid? The waxy smell, the satisfying peel of the paper label, that specific weight in your hand that felt like pure creative possibility? CamelBak and Crayola are betting you do, because their new limited-edition Chug Water Bottle Collection is practically a love letter to that memory.

The collaboration transforms the classic crayon into functional hydration gear, and the execution is genuinely clever. The standout feature is the lid shaped to mimic the iconic Crayola crayon tip, a small but deliberate design choice that does a lot of heavy lifting. It’s not just a slap-on logo deal or a crayon-print graphic splashed across a generic bottle. The actual form of the crayon is carried through to the cap, which makes it feel like a real design statement rather than a quick licensing cash grab.

Designer: Camelbak x Crayola

The collection comes in three sizes: a 14oz, a 16oz insulated stainless steel version, and a 25oz option made with Tritan Renew plastic. The 16oz model is vacuum-insulated, keeping drinks ice cold for hours, while the larger 25oz is lightweight and non-insulated, ideal for someone who just wants a grab-and-go bottle without the extra weight. Both are BPA-free, and the 25oz is built with Tritan Renew, which incorporates reclaimed plastic material into its construction. That feels like a thoughtful nod to sustainability, and it’s the kind of detail that tends to get overlooked in the excitement over aesthetics.

Where the collection really delivers is in the color palette. Crayola didn’t just hand over its logo and call it a day. The bottles arrive in shades pulled straight from the classic 64-count box: Cherry Red, Carnation Pink, Sky Blue, Aquamarine, Green, and more. These aren’t muted, “adultified” interpretations of those colors. They’re unapologetically vivid, exactly the kind of saturated tones that made opening a new box of crayons feel like an event. For anyone who has strong feelings about how many “adult” product lines water down color until it becomes something beige and forgettable, this collection is a welcome counter-argument. It’s rare to see a brand commit fully to the bit, and Crayola’s signature palette, deployed here at full intensity, is genuinely satisfying.

Nostalgia-driven collaborations are everywhere right now, and they can be exhausting when they feel cynical. A well-known consumer brand slaps its logo on something unrelated, leans hard on your childhood memories, and hopes the emotion carries the sale. The CamelBak x Crayola partnership sidesteps that trap because the two brands actually share the same lane. Both are built around accessibility, creativity, and the idea that the best products go everywhere with you. Crayola has been a household name since 1903, and CamelBak has spent decades designing hydration products that live in backpacks, gym bags, and school hallways alike. Putting them together isn’t a stretch. If anything, it’s the kind of collab that makes you wonder why it didn’t happen sooner.

The pricing sits at around $28 for the insulated 16oz bottle and closer to $19 to $23 for the 25oz Tritan version. Neither is bargain-bin territory, but they’re reasonable for what you’re getting: a genuinely well-made hydration product with design details that go beyond surface level.

Is this a bottle that will change the way you think about hydration? No. But that’s also not the point. The CamelBak x Crayola Chug Collection is a product that understands the quiet power of play, that the objects we carry around every day say something about who we are and what we choose to care about. Choosing a water bottle shaped like a crayon is a small, deliberate act of joy, and in a product category that has been dominated by matte black cylinders and relentless “wellness” branding, a little color goes a long way. Literally. The collection is limited edition and available now on Amazon and through CamelBak’s website.

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From Foldable Pilates to Shoe Robots: InnoX GCS 2026’s Best Startups

Posted on 09/06/2026 by JC Torres

The consumer tech market has a crowding problem, mostly driven by products that try to do too much for too many people. The most interesting hardware lately has been doing the opposite, building around one specific inconvenience that hasn’t been properly addressed yet. Shenzhen has always had a knack for this, and InnoX Academy has been quietly developing the next generation of builders who make those products happen.

Founded in 2021 by Professor Li Zexiang of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen InnoX Academy is a structured ecosystem that develops engineers and entrepreneurs into product builders. At the Global Connect Show 2026, it gave the world a look at its latest batch of startups, from home fitness and pet care to ambient design objects, each taking a more considered approach to a specific problem.

Pilates reformers have always been the kind of equipment you’d only find in a dedicated studio, too large and bulky for most apartments to accommodate. Pavo Fitness, started by a team of architects, industrial designers, and professional Pilates instructors, saw that as a solvable problem. The Pavo Reformer is their answer: a compact, foldable machine designed to bring studio-quality resistance training into a regular home.

Designer: PAVO

Once a session is done, it packs away without being disassembled or moved to a corner, so it doesn’t have to become a permanent fixture in your living space. The onboard smart system keeps tabs on workouts, which matters more in a home setting where there’s no instructor watching your form. It adds a layer of accountability that a conventional reformer simply can’t offer.

Multi-pet households have a feeding dynamic that most smart feeders don’t actually address. A timed dispenser works for one pet, but when multiple cats have different dietary needs, scheduling meals is only part of the problem; the harder challenge is making sure each cat only gets its own food. That’s what PETPA was built to solve, by a team that previously worked on hardware at DJI, Narwal, and RoboMaster.

Designer: PETPA

The PETPA Multi-pet Feeder uses individual pet recognition to identify each cat and control access to their food, particularly useful in homes where one cat needs to lose weight or follow a prescription diet while the others don’t. It launched at CES 2025 and earned a CES Innovation Award in the Pet Tech and Animal Welfare category, recognizing a product solving a problem most smart feeders still overlook.

Sneaker care has evolved into its own dedicated ritual for collectors and sports enthusiasts who’d rather not take chances with a stiff brush and soapy water. The typical cleaning routine still carries the risk of fading colors, weakening materials, or warping the structure of more delicate footwear. Brolan’s ClearX is a compact home machine that moves through cleaning, low-temperature drying, and sterilization all in one automated cycle.

Designer: Brolan

Founded in 2025 by a team drawing from Nanyang Technological University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and Tsinghua University, Brolan designed ClearX specifically to clean without the harshness of manual scrubbing. The idea is to get footwear thoroughly clean without putting materials at risk, which matters most for anyone who owns suede, knit, or premium leather shoes that even a careful hand-wash can easily ruin.

Not everything in the InnoX lineup is about automation or performance tracking. REAZENABLE takes a different direction with the REAZE Sandstone Series, a collection that sits somewhere between smart lighting and decorative object, aimed at people who’d rather their home feel calmer than more connected. The brand’s philosophy, technology empowering nature and light reshaping emotion, gives a clear sense of where its priorities are.

Designer: REANZENABLE

The collection includes the Halo light and three aroma vessels, all made from sand-based materials and shaped with ribbed surfaces that recall an uneven lunar landscape. The technical structure is deliberately concealed within those soft architectural forms, so nothing on the shelf reads as a gadget. Atmospheric light, mineral textures, and scent work together into something that feels more like a ritual object than a piece of hardware.

Several other InnoX startups addressed more personal routines. Rootique brought the DUO, a scalp atomizing applicator using patented DuoTrace and IntelliMist technology for precise serum delivery in about 15 seconds, already validated through an Indiegogo campaign that found backers across 52 countries. OCJOY presented the OCJOY Air, a home micro-air oral cleaning system that brings a water-air-powder cleaning method from dental offices to your own countertop.

Direct Drive Tech D1

The lineup stretched into less expected territory, too. Blucalm’s StrikeDeck delivers AI-assisted game audio through a desktop controller, while ORULINK’s Watcher-Robot is an open-source desktop AI companion built for everyday interaction. CHEERLUCK brought a sausage vending robot for campuses and public spaces, and both Y-H2O and ANAVI presented electric watercraft, a hydrofoiling vessel, and a smart personal watercraft, each designed to cut the noise and emissions of traditional marine engines.

EcoFlow

Narwal

What gives the InnoX lineup credibility beyond the show floor is the academy’s broader history. Brands like Narwal, SwitchBot, DJI, EcoFlow, AgileX, and LiberLive are all part of InnoX’s wider ecosystem, a track record that makes it worth paying attention when the academy’s latest batch of incubated products steps out in front of an international audience for the first time.

LiberLive

DJI

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The Personal Cooling Device That Blows Cold Air Rather Than Just Moving It

Posted on 09/06/2026 by JC Torres

Handheld fans have been a summer staple for years, but the basic formula hasn’t changed much. You press a button, blades spin, and air moves. That works fine when it’s mildly warm, but as summers grow hotter and more people spend time outdoors, a fan that simply redistributes hot air starts to feel less like relief and more like a polite gesture against a much bigger problem. And yet for years, that has remained the only option most people know and reach for.

That’s the gap Aecooly is trying to close with the Cold Air Ultra, the brand’s flagship personal cooling device. Rather than simply moving warm air from one side of your face to the other, Aecooly built it around an active cooling system that delivers genuinely cooled airflow, thanks to ultra-fine mist particles that accelerate evaporation to actively draw heat away from the skin. If you’ve ever thought there has to be a fan that actually cools the air, this is that device.

Designer: Aecooly

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It’s worth noting how the Cold Air Ultra looks, because the design says a lot about what it’s trying to be. The body is compact and upright, with a cylindrical air outlet with a straight, high-pressure duct design, giving it a shape closer to a precision tool than a seasonal gadget and ensuring that the powerful airflow reaches you with zero efficiency loss. Unlike the plastic housing common to most portable fans, the Cold Air Ultra comes in a lightweight body with a premium metallic-inspired finish that’s more resistant to scratches and daily wear, better in hand, and can passively conduct heat away from the motor during extended use.

The cooling technology is where the Cold Air Ultra stands apart. An 70,000 RPM brushless motor drives high-speed air that “breaks through” the sticky sweat layer so the mist can evaporate and pull heat away instantly. It’s this dual action of the wind clearing the path for the mist that makes it possible to reduce skin temperature by up to 18°F (10°C) in just 10 seconds, a noticeably different experience from what you’d get with a standard fan.

What makes the airflow cold rather than simply wet comes down to how the system atomizes water. Rather than using a vibrating membrane to break liquid into droplets, the approach used in most portable evaporative devices, the Cold Air Ultra uses pneumatic atomization: a high-pressure pump forces compressed air through a precision copper nozzle, shearing water into ~20 μm micro-particles at speed. The compression process itself lowers the air temperature before it exits the device, so that what reaches your skin is genuinely cooled airflow, not ambient air with moisture added. The water and air channels are sealed in a patented airtight structure that optimizes flow efficiency and prevents leakage, a design detail that also keeps the electronics fully separated from the water circuit.

Control is handled through what Aecooly calls the “Little Droplet,” a full-color touchscreen built into the front of the body. This enables fast, intuitive, and precise control, allowing users to swipe through the 100-level settings instantly, which is a much more modern and responsive way to manage airflow compared to traditional fans. And with dynamic icons that display battery level, water level, and mist status in real time, you’re never left guessing what’s left.

Picture stopping mid-hike to cool down, or waiting on a sweltering subway platform with no breeze in sight. A standard fan doesn’t do much in either of those moments beyond moving hot air around. The Cold Air Ultra is built for situations like these, where getting your skin temperature down quickly during a break or a commute actually makes a noticeable difference to how you feel.

Battery life isn’t a compromise here either. The Cold Air Ultra packs a 7,000 mAh cell for up to 10 hours, charges via USB-C in about 2.5 hours, and doubles as a 20W power bank with Quick Charge and Power Delivery support. The magnetic accessory system includes a pointed nozzle and a round nozzle for directing airflow, plus a brush head, each of which can snap on and off without tools. The included lanyard enables hands-free carry, so the device stays accessible during commutes or outdoor use without needing to be held.

Aecooly says the Cold Air system has received the Red Dot Design Award 2026, a recognition that speaks to its functional engineering as much as its considered form. It’s available in a black and a blue finish, and retails for $79.99. For a device that covers personal cooling, emergency power, and outdoor utility in a single package, the price puts it squarely in premium handheld territory.

The standard Aecooly Cold Air at $31.99 ~~$39.99~~ (20% off, use coupon code “YANKO2026”) brings the same active cooling concept in a simpler package, with a 4,500 mAh battery and five speed settings. It’s a solid introduction to the concept, but the Cold Air Ultra’s touchscreen, 7,000 mAh battery, 20W power bank output, and magnetic tool system make $79.99 feel less like a premium and more like the smarter spend.

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C Seed’s Sculptural Bugatti N1 folding TV carries dynamic flair of the Tourbillon supercar

Posted on 04/06/2026 by Gaurav Sood

Modern display technologies have come a long way in the last couple of decades, and so have the viewing experiences. Talking of the latter, no one does it better than C Seed, even though at a steep price. The Austrian high-end design brand has awed us with the 165-inch 4K MicroLED TV that disappears into the floor when not in use, and later with a TV that folds into itself within a metallic structure.

Anything new coming from them is deemed to be at the epitome of modern tech design, and that’s what the C Seed x Bugatti collaboration has materialized into. This is the Bugatti x C Seed N1 TV designed for purists who swear by the Tourbillon hypercar’s magnetism. The very same dynamic flair and emotional connection are now reflected in this sculptural C Seed folding TV.

Designer: C SEED x Bugatti

The car’s flowing contours and the precise measurements bring this colossal display into a league of its own. But it’s the calming Sierra of the display folding down into the Tourbillon’s distinct shape and then sliding off horizontally into the stand’s nest that sets this thing apart. It virtually turns into an architectural marvel in this configuration, and then when it’s time for a movie night, the N1 can open up over the course of 45 seconds with the push of a button. Depending on the sitting arrangement in the room, the TV can rotate 180 degrees like a smooth operator. Everything is effortless and creates an emotional connection, both when it is not in use and when it’s time for some cinematic entertainment with friends and family.

C Seed Bugatti N1 requires no structural integration and sits in your living room just like a luxury furniture piece. According to C Seed, the TV is “shaped by a commitment to precision engineering and uncompromising craftsmanship.” Every single detail, right from the silently unfolding MicroLED technology to the aluminum body in its finest form, is designed keeping in mind elegance, performance, and precision reminiscent of the world of automotive engineering. To keep the overall weight down, C Seed turned to carbon fiber, which speaks volumes about the ultimate refinement of the design.

The classy form of the TV is complemented by the sound system designed by Wisdom Audio. The housing has planar magnetic speakers that target a specific frequency range for perceived depth and clarity, no matter where the listener is positioned. Since we are talking about C Seed wizardry here, the speakers also retract into the sculptural housing when not in use. The display is also top of the line, incorporating the latest and greatest 4K MicroLED tech. Along with the Adaptive Gap Calibration for seamless panel transition for the perfect final unified picture, the stunning visuals match the audio for an immersive experience as a whole.

N1 TV is offered in either 110-inch or 137-inch size, and the patented folding display panel tech creates a single continuous screen even with multiple folding cycles. C Seed very rhetorically describes it as an engineered multi-stage movement that turns technical performance into a choreographed visual experience.”

There is no word about the pricing of this tech-infused kinetic sculpture for your living room, but coming from C Seed, it should carry an eye-watering price tag. One thing is clear: the folding display will come in bespoke colors and sizes for demanding users.

The post C Seed’s Sculptural Bugatti N1 folding TV carries dynamic flair of the Tourbillon supercar first appeared on Yanko Design.

Thousands of Paper Sheets, One Kiln, One $58K Prize

Posted on 03/06/2026 by Ida Torres

The first time I saw images of Jongjin Park’s Strata of Illusion, I genuinely could not figure out what I was looking at. It reads like a compressed canyon wall, like strata lifted from geological time, like something that took millennia to form. It does not look like something a person assembled in a studio over a matter of months. That disconnect between the familiar and the seemingly impossible is, I think, exactly the point.

Park is a Korean ceramic artist and assistant professor at Seoul Women’s University, and earlier this year he took home the 2026 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize for Strata of Illusion, one of the most prestigious honors in contemporary craft. The prize comes with €50,000, but the work itself is worth far more attention than a check.

Designer: Jongin Park

Here is what makes it so remarkable. The sculpture is built from thousands of sheets of ordinary tissue paper. Park coats each sheet in porcelain slip mixed with hand-mixed pigments, then folds, stacks, and presses them together into a dense, rectilinear mass that resembles a partially collapsed seat. Then he fires the whole thing in a kiln. At high temperatures, the paper burns completely away. What remains is a ceramic body that has shifted, bent, and settled under its own weight and the heat, shaped not entirely by the artist’s hands but by forces the material encounters on its own.

The part of his process that genuinely floors me is the surrender in it. Park is not a sculptor in the traditional sense of someone who carves away or imposes a rigid vision onto a material. He sets up conditions. He coats the paper, arranges the layers, builds the compression, and then he cedes control to the kiln. The collapse is not an accident, but it is also not entirely planned. That charged zone between intention and surrender is exactly where Strata of Illusion lives, and it is a hard place to hold without losing your nerve.

The work also occupies a fascinating gray area between ceramics, sculpture, and design, which is part of why it travels so naturally across contexts. Park has shown at Design Miami and PAD London, and the piece feels equally at home in those collectible design spaces as it does in a fine art exhibition. A seat that cannot really be sat upon. A ceramic form that started as something you blow your nose with. A work that looks ancient but was completed last year. The contradictions stack up as deliberately as the paper layers themselves.

Park’s approach demands a kind of trust that is actually quite radical. Not just from the artist, but from the viewer too. You have to accept that the unpredictability is the craft, not the failure of it. We are so conditioned to equate mastery with perfect control that a work like this can feel destabilizing at first. That slight unease is doing something useful, though. It is making you examine what you actually value when you look at something made by hand.

The LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize has long recognized artists who use traditional craft languages to say something larger and more conceptually ambitious. Park’s win feels like a precise fit for that legacy. Strata of Illusion is not just technically extraordinary. It is philosophically loaded in a way that rewards slow, patient looking, which is increasingly rare and increasingly worth seeking out.

The exhibition featuring Park’s work alongside other shortlisted artists is on view at the National Gallery Singapore through June 14. If you happen to be anywhere near it, photographs alone will not prepare you for what the actual scale and texture of the object must feel like in person. There is a density to those compressed layers that images have no way of translating.

For the rest of us, Strata of Illusion offers a genuinely compelling answer to the question of where craft is headed. Not backward into nostalgia, not forward into pure concept. Somewhere in between, fired at high temperatures, shaped by forces no artist fully controls.

The post Thousands of Paper Sheets, One Kiln, One $58K Prize first appeared on Yanko Design.

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