Tag Archives: Sports

Felipe Pantone’s Tennis Court Refuses to Look the Same Twice

Posted on by

A tennis court in Valencia currently looks like it’s sinking into the ground. Walk up to the edge of the one at Casa Axis and the white lines that normally just mark boundaries start pulling inward, stacking through fake layers of chrome and burgundy until the whole surface reads like a hallway you could fall down. It’s called Hard Court 2, painted by Spanish artist Spok Brillor, and it treats a sports court like a living canvas instead of a slab of asphalt everyone stops noticing the week after the ribbon gets cut.

That’s usually the fate of most site-specific art. A muralist gets a wall, a brand throws a launch party, and within a year the piece turns into background noise nobody actually looks at anymore. Sports facilities have it worse. A court gets painted once, and it stays that exact shade of green or blue for a decade, because nobody budgets for touch-ups, let alone reinvention. Casa Axis, the art and design space Felipe Pantone runs out of a 1975 house outside Valencia, didn’t fix that with a bigger maintenance budget. It fixed it with a rule: the court has to change, every single year, by design.

Designer: Spok Brillor

The rule lives inside C.A.I.O., the Casa Axis International Open, a scrappy little tennis tournament for artists that launched in June 2026. No rankings, no categories, no portfolios required. Just instinct, apparently, and a healthy amount of frustration. The twist is what the winner actually takes home. Instead of a trophy, they get handed the responsibility of repainting the court before the next tournament. Win the match, inherit the canvas.

Lucas Benarroch, known as MRKA, painted the first version in 2025, loosening the court’s regulation markings into loose, hand-drawn lines that felt more like a sketch than a sports surface. He then went on to win the inaugural C.A.I.O., which technically put him back in charge of the next transformation. He passed the job to Spok Brillor instead, who had competed against him in the same tournament. That handoff is the part I find genuinely clever. The competition doesn’t just crown a winner, it forces the winner to make a choice about who gets to shape the space next, which quietly turns a tennis match into a succession plan for an ongoing art piece.

Spok took the opposite approach from MRKA. Where MRKA loosened the geometry, Spok tightened it, repeating the court’s own markings inward through metallic gradients until the actual boundaries get harder to read. Deep reds and burgundies contract through rectangular planes, pale blue and yellow lines cross the surface like reflected metal, and the whole thing sits somewhere between an architectural shaft and a painted portal. It took twelve days to finish, and it’s already scheduled to disappear under whoever wins next year.

I like that this thing is built to be temporary on purpose. Most design work chases permanence, a piece that survives, a brand that lasts forever, a finish that never fades. Hard Court 2 does the opposite. It’s designed to be beaten, literally, by the next person good enough to win a tennis match on top of it. That’s a genuinely strange model for how art gets commissioned, and it works specifically because nobody involved is trying to make something that outlives its usefulness.

There’s also something honest about tying the transformation to actual competition rather than a curator’s calendar. Nobody at Casa Axis decided in advance that the court needed a refresh this September. It changed because someone won a match and had to make good on the assignment. That’s a small distinction, but it changes how the whole project feels. It’s less a rotating gallery and more a living structure that happens to have paint on it.

Whether this idea scales beyond one backyard court in L’Eliana is a fair question, and probably a “no” for most places. But the instinct behind it, building change into the rules instead of hoping someone remembers to update things later, feels like it’s worth stealing for a lot more than tennis courts.

The post Felipe Pantone’s Tennis Court Refuses to Look the Same Twice first appeared on Yanko Design.

Your Body Is the New Tech Platform: The Wildest Wearables at IFA 2026

Posted on by

Tech shows have always been about what’s next, and for a while that meant displays, processors, and connectivity standards nobody could fully explain. The “next” that keeps showing up now is a lot more personal. AI that tracks your muscle tension and adjusts a massage roller’s pressure in real time. Exoskeleton hardware that detects your activity type and switches support modes in under 200 milliseconds. Earbuds running a transcription service across 78 languages in the background while you go about your day. The body has become the most actively developed platform in consumer technology, and the hardware being built around it is finally starting to match the ambition.

Hearing protection for children. Clinic-style oral care without the clinic. Underwater AR navigation that projects real-time depth, air, and directional data into a diver’s field of view. Scalp wellness built around making hair loss treatment less of a chore to stick to. An AI sports camera that follows the action in 4K without anyone behind the lens. These brands at the Global Connect Show at IFA 2026 cover wildly different ground, and that breadth is exactly what makes them worth pulling into one roundup. Here’s our full breakdown.

Covamio S1: Five Therapies, One Shoulder Wrap

The shoulder is a weird body part to build around. Covamio picked it deliberately as one of the most complex wearable rehabilitation scenarios, citing high daily use, complex movement and stability demands, common pain and stiffness, and a clear need for ongoing support. The S1 is their answer to what a device shaped specifically around that complexity should look like. The core proposition is consolidating five therapy modalities into one wearable: their proprietary M-sti matrix electrical pulse system running TENS and NMES programs for pain and muscle activation, red and near-infrared light for photobiomodulation, zoned heat for pre-session warmup, adaptive compression to hold everything in contact while the shoulder moves, and AI-assisted sensing monitoring fit, contact, temperature, and output during each session. The specific choice to use dry electrodes stands out, since it removes the gel-pad consumable that most TENS units depend on, which is quietly one of the more practical design decisions in the whole package.

Where the S1 gets more ambitious is the platform layer. Covamio frames this as the first node in a system rather than a standalone gadget, with a three-part software platform covering device-side sensing and control, user applications for guided sessions and activity history, and professional tools that aggregate device activity, user feedback, and progress for clinician review. The roadmap is stated openly: S1 establishes a foundation for future systems built around other joints, each wearable shaped to its own anatomy but connecting through the same platform. That’s a meaningful architectural bet, positioning the wrap as infrastructure rather than a one-off product. Worth flagging, this is still pre-commercial, and hard specs like pricing, dimensions, weight, battery figures, and wavelength details for the light therapy are not yet public. What’s available is the design reasoning, and on that front, it’s a thoughtful pitch for what shoulder recovery hardware should be doing right now.

XbotGo Falcon: The Sideline Camera That Already Knows Where the Ball is Going

AI auto-tracking cameras for sports have been around for a bit, mostly in the form of school and club-level systems that require installation, licensing fees, and a monthly subscription just to access the footage you already paid to record. XbotGo is taking direct aim at that model. The Falcon is a compact, 544-gram, dual-lens camera built around a 1/1.8″ Sony CMOS sensor shooting true 4K, with a 106-degree wide-angle tracking lens working alongside the recording lens so the system always knows where the action is. A 6-TOPS AI processor handles the motion intelligence onboard, with 360-degree panoramic rotation and 160 degrees of ground-to-sky tilt giving it coverage across sports as varied as soccer, basketball, lacrosse, pickleball, and badminton. Zone Mapping lets you lock the play area through the XbotGo app so the tracking stays disciplined and doesn’t chase the wrong thing. Battery life runs to 4.5 hours, it’s IPX5 rain-resistant, and setup is fast enough that you’re recording before the warm-up is over.

The pricing sits at $799, and critically, the core AI tracking and recording intelligence comes with no ongoing subscription, which is a meaningful differentiator in a market where competitors have leaned hard into recurring revenue from the very features users expect to work out of the box. On top of that, live streaming to YouTube and Facebook is built in and free, with a Live Scoreboard overlay and AI-generated highlight reels that clip the best moments automatically. XbotGo was founded by Dr. David Tan, a computer vision researcher who reportedly built the Falcon partly out of frustration from trying to film his own kid’s games. That origin story shows in the design philosophy: this is a camera built for the parent on the sideline and the coach with no camera operator, not for a broadcast crew with a van full of gear.

iClever QuietShield Q950: The Kids’ Headphone That Actually Takes Hearing Seriously

We covered the iClever Q950 back in July when it quietly became one of the more impressive sub-$70 audio products of the year, with our writer noting it was good enough they might use it themselves. The headline credential hasn’t changed: the Q950 is the world’s first kids’ headphone to earn TÜV Rheinland Hearing Care Certification, capping volume at 80dBA and delivering hybrid ANC with up to 35dB of noise reduction. That ANC works in wired mode too, which matters on planes and in classrooms where a dead battery shouldn’t mean a loud environment. It also picked up the 2026 Red Dot Award for Industrial Design, which makes it a rare thing in consumer audio: a children’s product that got taken seriously by industrial design judges.

The build is worth talking about. High-strength POK headband construction and reinforced metal hinges provide enhanced resistance to bending and drops, validated through SGS-certified 3,000-cycle twist durability and drop testing. The ear cups rotate 90 degrees to reduce pressure on younger heads, there’s auto-pause when the headphones come off, and Bluetooth 6.0 keeps the connection stable and low-latency. Battery life runs to 60 hours with ANC off, 35 hours with it on. At $54.99 on sale, this is the headphone category doing the right thing at the right price.

Viaim Rise: The Earbud Case That Thinks Faster Than You Do

The AI note-taking space has gotten crowded fast. Standalone recorders, transcription apps, dedicated meeting hardware. What Viaim is doing with the Rise is trying to collapse all of that into something you were already going to put in your ears. The Rise is an AI Agent Earbuds system built around premium earbuds and a press-to-rise smart case that captures every meeting, call, and piece of content shaping your work, then turns it into editable notes, ready-to-send follow-ups, and agent-handled tasks. The case interaction is the hook: a mechanical press-to-rise structure opens the case and triggers instant capture with no app, no unlock, no interruption. One tap records calls, live meetings, media, and simultaneous interpretation across 78 languages and 145 accents, and the smart case captures even when the buds are off. Switch on Ambient Listening and it builds memory in the background without retaining the underlying audio.

The hardware underneath is serious. An 11mm and 6mm dual driver sits alongside an 11-mic array with VPU bone-conduction denoising, and the USB-C smart case doubles as a 3-mic PC recorder, with Bluetooth 5.4, Apple MFi, Google Fast Pair, Find My, and IP55 rated. On the software side, Space Intelligence connects recordings, documents, and project history, while Vitana, viaim’s built-in AI assistant, surfaces new risks, decisions, and next steps the moment they emerge. Task Broker routes user-approved actions into Google Workspace, Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot, with more integrations rolling out through 2027. The Rise launched on Indiegogo on August 31, 2026, which makes IFA its first major hardware show outing, and the timing feels deliberate. This is a product that wants to be seen.

AREX ONE: The Dive Mask That Turns Your Entire Field of View Into a Dashboard

Dive computers have always had an uncomfortable irony at their core. The device keeping you safe underwater sits on your wrist, which means every critical check requires you to pull your gaze away from the environment you’re actively navigating. Underwater, that life-saving data living on your wrist means constant checking and occupying your hands during critical moments, and when your attention leaves the dive, risks arise. AREX is building its entire pitch around fixing that. The AREX ONE is positioned as the world’s first AR dive computer mask, projecting all the information you’d normally glance down at directly into your natural field of view. It’s the kind of form-factor shift that sounds obvious in hindsight, and the kind that tends to make an entire product category look overdue.

The feature set covers a built-in dive computer, AR data, a marine ID scanner, personalized RGB lights, a 120-meter depth rating at 13 ATM, tank data display, 40-hour battery life, in-sight air integration, an intuitive control dial, and a unified digital ecosystem. The dive computer side runs on an independent logic board processing real-time sensor data and ZHL-16C algorithms, which is the same decompression standard used in serious technical dive computers from Shearwater and Suunto. The modes scale from a minimal immersive mode all the way to a full technical mode with PPO2, tissue saturation charts, and gradient factors. Then there’s the marine life identification feature, which frames marine life in your natural field of view to instantly scan and identify species, turning a hammerhead passing by into a labeled data card without breaking your focus. It comes with three attachable modules: a Marine ID Scanner, a TX Pressure Pod, and a Sync Dive Torch, each feeding into the same in-mask display. The Kickstarter launch puts it in the crowdfunding category for now, but the hardware ambition here reads like something that’s been genuinely thought through, not just rendered.

Ascentiz H Series: Exoskeleton Hardware for Hikers, Commuters, and Everyone in Between

Ascentiz has been at this since 2023, building modular exoskeleton hardware that clips onto your hips or knees depending on what your body needs that day. We’ve covered them on YD before, and the brand has only gotten sharper since. The bigger picture Ascentiz is working toward is a full modular ecosystem, lower body now, upper body eventually, rather than a single fixed device you’re stuck with. The H Pro and H Ultra are the current center of that ecosystem, and both run on an AI MOTION engine that recognizes 12 terrain types on the Pro and 16 on the Ultra, covering everything from slow walks and sprints to stair climbing, cycling, and full hike up and down modes. Both models come in at around 2.5kg, operate at under 35dB, and carry IP54 weatherproofing, which covers the kind of conditions you’d actually want to wear an exoskeleton in. Kinetic energy recovery comes standard on both, charging the battery while the system is actively driving you forward.

The H Pro is the everyday option, built for fitness, commuting, and lighter outdoor use, with a 25km assisted range and a price of $1,499. The H Ultra is built for longer, harder journeys, with Toray T700 carbon fiber and a titanium-alloy Exo-Belt, a dual-battery setup, and an assisted range of up to 50km. It also adds a Boost Mode the Pro doesn’t carry, bumps motor torque from 22Nm to 24Nm, and upgrades the fabric from waterproof-coated nylon to Event waterproof and breathable material, which is the kind of detail that separates a product that’s been actually tested outdoors from one that hasn’t. Both units are airplane-portable and charge fully in 65 minutes via Type-C at up to 100W. The Ultra sits at $1,999, and between the materials, the range, and the extra terrain intelligence, the $500 gap makes reasonable sense. The hardware has already picked up the iF Design Award, Red Dot, and several others, which tracks for a company that’s clearly been thinking hard about what wearing one of these things should actually feel like.

ROOTIQUE DUO: Because the Real Problem With Hair Loss Treatment Is Discipline

The data sitting behind ROOTIQUE is blunter than most brands would choose to lead with. A 2023 study in Dermatology and Therapy found that 86.3% of patients discontinued topical minoxidil treatment, not because it failed to work, but because the application process was messy, inconsistent, and easy to skip. ROOTIQUE is built entirely around that dropout problem. The DUO is the world’s first micro-misting hair tonic applicator, and its core argument is simple: consistency is the treatment as much as the tonic. IntelliMist converts tonic into 0.005mm mist particles delivered directly to the follicles, bypassing the hair fibres that absorb most of what people apply by hand. The result, per independent fluorescence-tracer testing, is up to 3.5x absorption compared to bare-hand application.

The DuoTrace teeth part the hair gently for direct-to-scalp delivery, a 660nm red light at clinically recognized wavelength supports follicle health simultaneously, and the whole session takes 15 seconds with zero residue on the hands. The 5ml tank holds enough for multiple sessions, charges to up to 40 uses, and is travel-ready without cords. One beep signals 1ml dispensed, two beeps means you’re done, so there’s no guesswork on dosage. ROOTIQUE claims 50% less tonic wasted compared to manual application, and 56% of customers self-reported increased consistency after switching to DUO. For a product category where quitting early is the norm, turning a messy two-minute ritual into a 15-second routine is, genuinely, the whole product.

GLYDE Auto-Fade Clipper: The Clipper That Finally Handles the Part You Can’t See

For most people who cut their own hair, the actual clipping is manageable. The part that breaks everything is the fade, that gradual transition between different lengths on the sides and back that barbers make look effortless. A home user can’t see the back of their own head, can’t simultaneously judge angle, distance, and cutting length, and one wrong pass leaves a harsh line that’s impossible to fix without cutting shorter. GLYDE, the debut product from Shenzhen-based Kuaiku Innovation, is built entirely around solving that one problem. Working with a wearable Fade Band, GLYDE tracks where the clipper is relative to the fade line and adjusts the blade in real time, handling the gradual blending that makes fades so difficult and helping users get cleaner, more consistent results at home. It also solves the consistency problem by storing hairstyle profiles digitally. Once users dial in a fade they like, they save it and recall it with a single tap, and the clipper reproduces the exact same parameters every session.

That search for the right product took nearly three years, with no auto-fade clipper to reference, no established technical roadmap, and no competitor to reverse-engineer. Every mechanism and algorithm had to be defined and validated from scratch. What IFA is seeing is the result of that work, refined after an on-site CES survey where more than 60 percent of respondents said their primary concern was maintaining the sides and back, not getting a full haircut. GLYDE deliberately breaks from the traditional clipper aesthetic, with a cold-toned minimal body, polished stainless steel accents, and a signature LED light orb that reads more like consumer electronics than a grooming tool. Hardware specs for the current prototype include a 2600 mAh battery, approximately two hours of runtime, Bluetooth Low Energy, USB-C charging, a 1.47-inch display, and a weight of about 370 grams. It is still a pre-production prototype with pricing TBD, but the product logic is already sharp: GLYDE believes that a portion of men’s haircutting, especially fade maintenance, will follow the same trajectory shaving did when the electric razor moved it from barbershop to bathroom counter.

OCJOY Air-Streaming Oral Cleaner: The Dental Clinic Protocol That Now Lives on Your Bathroom Counter

Plaque gets all the marketing attention in oral care, but the real problem is biofilm, the structured bacterial colony that anchors to enamel, builds a protective shield, and starts rebuilding within hours of brushing. Bristles only clean where they make contact, leaving grooves, pits, and gumline areas routinely untouched. Water flossers reach the gaps but carry no active cleaning agent. OCJOY’s answer is Air-Streaming Technology, built on Guided Biofilm Therapy (GBT), a Swiss clinical protocol designed to gently lift biofilm using precisely controlled air, water, and fine food-grade powder. Until now, GBT has been available only in dental practices; OCJOY makes it practical for daily use, delivering a clean that bristles or water alone cannot achieve. The proprietary TriMatter system propels millions of fine particles across enamel surfaces and into grooves, pits, and interdental gaps, disrupting biofilm exactly where water flossers cannot reach.

Independent lab testing puts numbers behind those claims. In 20 seconds, OCJOY removed 99.9% of biofilm, compared to 9.2% left behind by an electric toothbrush under the same conditions. Surface stains from coffee, tea, wine, and tobacco cleared at 88% to 100% without bleach, and a 100-participant study recorded visible whitening of 2-3 shades within 3-7 days. Traditional oral care demands four separate tools, a water flosser, toothbrush, dental polisher, and mouthwash, taking up to 15 minutes for a thorough clean; OCJOY consolidates all of that into a single device in approximately three minutes. The powder chamber holds enough for about 20 uses, the 150mL magnetic water tank lifts out, refills, and snaps back in seconds, and a single tap triggers an automatic self-cleaning cycle that blows out residual moisture and flushes internal pathways to prevent clogs. Clinicians from USC, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and West China Hospital of Stomatology have evaluated the technology and recommend it for daily cleaning between professional visits.

Merach Treadmills & Rowing Machines: China’s Fitness Juggernaut Makes Its IFA Debut

Founded in 2018, Merach climbed to the top of China’s fitness hardware market in a short window, building a lineup around products that treat home space as a constraint worth designing around rather than ignoring. Their rowing machines run on magnetic resistance systems with multiple adjustable levels and Bluetooth app connectivity, letting users track strokes per minute, output, and workout history without a subscription gate in the way. The walking pads fold thin enough to slide under furniture and run on motors quiet enough for apartment living, a combination that turns out to be genuinely rare at this price tier. Stationary bikes round out the core range with foldable frames and app-paired resistance adjustment, keeping the footprint manageable even when the workout is serious.

Showing up at IFA for the first time, despite already being a recognized name in European and North American markets, puts Merach in an interesting position. The brand built its international following largely through e-commerce and community word-of-mouth, so the audience arriving at their Berlin booth has often already bought something, watched a review, or at least seen the name float past. IFA gives that existing relationship a physical layer, a chance for buyers to grip a rowing handle or step onto a walking pad before committing. For a brand that converted most of its global audience through a screen, that kind of face-to-face engagement at one of the world’s biggest consumer tech stages is a logical next step.

RheoFit A1 and A1 Lite: Recovery Tech for People Who Are Tired of Doing Recovery Manually

Recovery gear has spent years pretending that adding vibration is enough to count as innovation. RheoFit goes in a much smarter direction. The A1 and A1 Lite are automatic massage rollers built around the idea that post-workout recovery should be as hands-free as possible, which immediately makes them stand out in a market full of massage guns, static foam rollers, and devices that still expect you to twist yourself into awkward positions after leg day. RheoFit frames the product around rehabilitation medicine and AI, with both rollers designed to detect body contour and weight distribution, identify key muscle groups, and generate a personalized massage plan through the app. That makes the whole category feel less like gym equipment and more like body-aware hardware, the kind of product that understands recovery as a system instead of a single feature.

The A1 is the more robust version, supporting up to 300 lbs while weighing 5.4 lbs, with 4 to 8 hours of use per charge and up to two weeks between charges depending on usage. It comes with two interchangeable massage surfaces, a high-intensity serrated roller with 70A Shore hardness for deeper, knuckle-like pressure, and a gentler 50A soothing roller shaped for a broader palm-fit feel. The A1 Lite keeps the same core promise but trims the package down into a more portable format, weighing 4.4 lbs, supporting up to 250 lbs, and adding a more targeted recovery pitch with 15 recovery positions that include full-body, targeted, and upper-back modes. Together, they make a strong case for the next phase of wellness hardware, where the roller finally rolls itself and your body gets treated like something technology can actually learn from.

The post Your Body Is the New Tech Platform: The Wildest Wearables at IFA 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Huawei Just Made a Watch That Tracks Your Skiing Inside, Without Real Snow

Posted on by

Huawei built the WATCH GT 7 Series around a simple idea: that a smartwatch meant for the outdoors shouldn’t have to wait for good weather or a full calendar to be useful. Unveiled at IFA 2026, the series unites bold design, advanced outdoor capabilities, and comprehensive health monitoring to deliver a smarter, more capable wearable experience. It’s a watch built to follow someone from a ski lodge to a coastal bike route without missing a beat.

That versatility starts with fit. The WATCH GT 7 comes in 46mm and 41mm sizes across eight colorways, from a woven pink strap to sun-bright yellow silicone, while the Pro model steps up its materials with a nano-tech ceramic bezel and a titanium alloy middle frame. A fluoroelastomer strap using Huawei’s EasyCross design keeps everything secured whether someone’s typing at a desk or crouched into a bike’s drop bars.

Designer: Huawei

Where the GT 7 earns its outdoor reputation is in a new suite of snow sports features that don’t require snow to actually fall. Indoor snow sports modes remove seasonal and geographical constraints, letting a multi-sensor array detect skiing or snowboarding activity and track training time by reading posture and elevation changes, even when GPS signal disappears entirely inside an indoor slope facility.

Huawei Watch GT 7

Outdoors, that same intelligence sharpens further. Riders get access to maps for more than 3,000 ski resorts worldwide, downloaded through the Huawei Health app and synced instantly, useful for a beginner trying to avoid an accidental black diamond or an expert hunting for a faster line down a familiar run. A new Turn Detection feature counts short and long turns by calculating turning radius, while G-Force detection measures the centrifugal pull of a sharp carve.

Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro

Team-Up rounds out the slope-focused features, letting a group track each other’s locations and performance metrics in real time, so nobody has to guess where the rest of the party ended up after a run splits everyone apart. It’s a detail built less for solo athletes chasing a personal record and more for families or friend groups navigating a mountain together.

Cycling gets its own dedicated toolkit too. Climb Planning generates a profile of upcoming elevation gains before a ride even starts, while Climb Broadcast reports live gradient and remaining distance mid-ascent. Sharp Turn Alerts step in with haptic and voice warnings if someone barrels into a bend too fast, a small addition that could matter far more than its size suggests on a descent like the coastal road these watches were clearly built to handle.

Health tracking ties all that activity back into daily life through an upgraded Physical Readiness score, blending sleep quality, heart rate variability, emotion, and calories burned into a five-level recovery snapshot each morning. Rather than dumping raw numbers on a screen, Huawei frames the data as a quick read before the day even begins, useful whether someone’s deciding to push hard or hold back.

Battery life backs up all that tracking, with high-silicon stacked batteries pushing the GT 7 Pro and 46mm models to as long as 21 days per charge under light use. Add contactless payments through Curve Pay and compatibility across iOS and Android, and the GT 7 starts looking less like a fitness tracker and more like a travel companion that happens to count steps.

Pricing starts at £279.99 (around $378) for the WATCH GT 7, climbing to £379.99 (around $513) for the Pro model, positioning the series comfortably below premium sports watches from rival brands. Between the ceramic finishes, the resort maps, and the sheer range of conditions it’s built to track, Huawei’s newest GT model reads like a watch designed for people who treat a change in season as an excuse to keep moving.

The post Huawei Just Made a Watch That Tracks Your Skiing Inside, Without Real Snow first appeared on Yanko Design.

Garmin’s Tacx Neo 2T Turns Your Existing Bike Into a Connected Gym, No Extra Setup

Posted on by

You know that bike sitting in your garage, judged by cobwebs, wondering when you’ll finally take it out again. Garmin just gave it a second career. The Tacx Neo 2T with Zwift Cog and Click, out August 21 for $1,099, clips onto pretty much any bike with 8 to 13 gears and turns it into a full smart trainer, complete with power tracking, cadence data, and a straight line into Zwift and Rouvy. No cassette swap, no calibration ritual, no YouTube tutorial at 11pm trying to figure out why your bike won’t pair.

Basically, Garmin looked at the whole “buy a $2,000 smart bike” trend and said, why not just use the one you already own. You bolt the trainer on, plug in the included remote for virtual shifting, and you’re pedaling through a Zwift climb before your coffee gets cold. It is less a new machine and more a software upgrade for your legs.

Designer: Garmin

The actual hardware here is not new, and Garmin is not pretending otherwise. The NEO 2T shell, that angular black and blue wedge with the vent slots, has been around since 2019. What changed is what sits inside the flywheel. A bright orange Zwift Cog now stands in for your entire cassette, and it is compatible with almost any 8 to 13 speed bike, no tools required beyond whatever it takes to bolt your bike onto the trainer itself. Pair it with the Zwift Click, a small handlebar remote that handles shifting, steering, and menu navigation, and the whole “getting started” phase collapses into about ten minutes.

What you actually get for your money is the boring but important stuff. Power and cadence accuracy within 1 percent, dynamic resistance that adjusts for weight, speed, and incline, and enough quietness that you will not wake up the rest of the house doing intervals at 6am. Buyers who are new to Zwift also get a free membership offer, though Garmin has not said how long that lasts.

For years, the trend was building bikes that look like sculptures, cabinets that hide a Peloton, frames designed to disappear into a living room. Garmin is taking the opposite route. Instead of hiding the machine, it is shrinking the amount of machine you need in the first place. Your actual bike stays your actual bike. The only thing that changes is what happens once you clip it in.

You do not need a second bike, a dedicated smart frame, or a spare room that quietly becomes “the cycling room.” You need the bike you already own and about ten minutes on a Wednesday afternoon.

The post Garmin’s Tacx Neo 2T Turns Your Existing Bike Into a Connected Gym, No Extra Setup first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Clip On Handle Turns Any Water Bottle Pack Into A Kettlebell

Posted on by

Every broke gym rat has done this at some point. You run out of dumbbells, you eyeball two water jugs, you duct tape a broom handle across them, and suddenly you have a homemade kettlebell that looks like a science fair project gone wrong. It works, technically, but it also looks like something you’d hide before your date comes over. Purra just looked at that entire genre of improvised home gym equipment and decided to make it official, good looking, and branded. The result is a plastic handle that clips onto a pair of their mineral water bottles and turns them into an actual kettlebell, weight marking and all.

Designed as a marketing stunt tied to Purra’s presence at HYROX Bangkok, the handle snaps over two 1.5 liter bottles to hit exactly 3 kilograms, which is either a happy coincidence or someone in R&D did their homework. The dome is molded in the same powder blue as Purra’s label, debossed with the brand name, and shaped with the same scalloped horns you’d find on a competition kettlebell. Nothing about it screams cheap giveaway. It screams someone in the marketing department actually asked an industrial designer for help instead of ordering branded tote bags like everyone else.

Designer: Purra (Singha Corporation)

I have made my own version of this exact object during the pandemic, so I have some opinions on how well the real thing pulls it off. The horn spacing on the handle matches a proper competition kettlebell almost to the millimeter, wide enough for a two handed swing without your knuckles clipping the bottle caps. That is the detail that separates a design object from a novelty prop. A lot of branded merch gets the silhouette right and ignores the ergonomics entirely, and you end up with something that photographs well and hurts your wrist on rep three.

Two 1.5 liter bottles of water land you at 3 kilograms on the nose, and the handle stamps that number right into the plastic like it wants to be taken seriously as an actual training tool. Most branded merch settles for looking the part. This one does the arithmetic and shows its work, which is a small thing but it’s the kind of small thing that tells you someone cared past the pitch deck.

Purra is Singha’s mineral water brand, sourced from nearly 1,000 feet underground in Sing Buri, and the kind of company that already runs annual designer bottle collaborations, so a marketing play like this isn’t a stretch for them creatively. HYROX is arguably the best possible stage for it, since the format runs on eight fixed equipment stations and the kettlebell is one of them, so a water brand showing up with literal kettlebell bottles is closer to a punchline than a pitch.

Whether this thing gets mass produced or stays a one-off activation prop is unclear, and honestly that’s fine. Not every good idea needs a retail SKU to justify existing. Sometimes the point is just proving the trick works, and this one does. I won’t be surprised if we start seeing 3D builds on online platforms for people to print on their own!

The post This Clip On Handle Turns Any Water Bottle Pack Into A Kettlebell first appeared on Yanko Design.

The $171 Vest Worn by F1 Drivers Hit the World Cup

Posted on by

Heat has always been part of the game. Whether you’re a footballer running laps before a match, a Formula 1 driver crammed into a cockpit where temperatures can soar to 55-60°C, or a cyclist grinding through the Tour de France in July, managing your body temperature isn’t just about comfort. It’s about survival and, more specifically, performance.

That’s exactly what Dutch company Inuteq has been working on for years, quietly and without much fanfare, until now. Their PCM CoolOver, a cooling vest built on phase-change material technology, has found its way into one of the most high-profile collaborations in sportswear: the adidas CLIMACOOL System, officially unveiled for the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Designers: adidas x Inuteq

The way phase-change material works is genuinely clever. The vest contains PCM cells made from 100% biobased materials that absorb heat from the body as they gradually transition from solid to liquid state, keeping the surface at a consistent, controlled temperature. The 15°C version, the one widely used by athletes in sport and recovery, delivers up to 2.5 hours of constant cooling. No batteries, no electricity, no complicated mechanics. Just material science doing what it’s supposed to do.

I’ll admit that I didn’t expect to find myself genuinely excited about a vest. But when you look at what this collaboration actually represents, it shifts the conversation in interesting ways. Cooling technology has been operating in the background of elite sport for a long time. Ice towels, cold baths, fans on the sideline. These solutions work well enough, but they’re reactive. The PCM CoolOver feels like a proper design response to a problem that deserves one. It’s specific, engineered, wearable, and built on science rather than just intuition.

The adidas partnership started in motorsport. The CLIMACOOL System was originally developed to help Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team drivers, including George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, cope with extreme cockpit heat. From there, it was adapted, tested, and refined alongside football clubs including Manchester United, Juventus, and Arsenal, before being made available to all adidas partner federations at the 2026 World Cup. That’s a journey from one of the most technically demanding environments in sport to one of the most globally watched. Not a bad trajectory for what is, at its core, a vest.

The numbers are worth sitting with for a moment. The system reduces core body temperature by up to 0.5°C and skin temperature by up to 13°C, with a complementary overshoe that brings foot temperature down by up to 2°C in minutes. The Spanish Football Federation was quick to point out how they’ve been using the vest before matches, after training, and at half-time to support player recovery and readiness. When a federation is publicly crediting a vest as part of their performance strategy, that tells you something.

What also deserves attention here is the sustainability angle. Inuteq’s PCM technology is USDA-certified 100% biobased and REACH compliant, which makes it one of the only cooling vests on the market that can make those claims. In a category that could easily lean on synthetic chemicals and disposable components, the fact that this product is also biodegradable and fabric-free, easy to clean and even sterilize, puts it in a different class. Good design shouldn’t have to compromise on this, and here, it doesn’t.

The PCM CoolOver comes in multiple temperature variants: 6.5°C, 15°C, 21°C, 24°C, and 29°C, each calibrated for different conditions and use cases, from elite athletic performance to industrial and medical settings. The range feels thoughtful, like a product family that was designed to solve real problems across real environments rather than chase a single use case.

Cooling as a design challenge might not carry the aesthetic glamour of, say, a new sneaker drop or a conceptual chair. But the PCM CoolOver is proof that genuinely functional design, the kind that solves a physical human problem with precision and care, is just as compelling, and arguably more necessary. The fact that it has quietly traveled from Dutch labs to Formula 1 cockpits to World Cup pitches says more about its value than any product launch ever could.

The post The $171 Vest Worn by F1 Drivers Hit the World Cup first appeared on Yanko Design.

Pittsburgh Just Built the Most Beautiful Pickleball Courts in America

Posted on by

The floor is the canvas. That’s the premise behind Geometry of Play, Sharmistha Ray’s new public art installation at Arts Landing in downtown Pittsburgh, and it might just be the most quietly radical thing to happen to both art and sport this year.

Ray, an artist, writer, and educator born in Kolkata and raised in Kuwait before settling in the United States, has always worked in the language of vibrant geometric abstraction. Their paintings draw from South Asian visual traditions, including kaleidoscopic mandalas and architectural ornamentation, filtered through a lens of queerness, migration, and belonging. It’s rich, layered work. So when the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust commissioned Ray to create a mural across three pickleball courts for their inaugural public art program at Arts Landing, the choice wasn’t arbitrary. They needed someone who understood that abstraction isn’t just decoration. It’s meaning.

Designer: Sharmistha Ray

Geometry of Play is made up of large-scale murals painted directly onto the playing surfaces of three 22-by-40-foot pickleball courts, making them the first artist-designed pickleball courts in the entire country. Interlocking circles, triangles, and grids move across the pavement in bold, saturated color. Up close, it reads like a painting you’d frame and hang in a gallery. From a drone view, it’s something closer to architecture, or maybe a quilt, or a mandala. All of those things at once.

What strikes me about this project is how well it understands its context. Pickleball is famously communal. It’s not a solitary sport of stoic concentration. It’s loud and social and a little chaotic, and the people who love it tend to love it deeply. Ray’s work doesn’t ignore that energy; it amplifies it. The mural creates a constantly shifting visual and physical experience as players move across the court. The geometry doesn’t sit still. It responds to motion, to foot traffic, to the unpredictable choreography of the game itself.

That’s a pretty smart relationship between art and function, and I’ll be honest: I think it puts a lot of conventional public art to shame. So much public art, especially the kind installed on flat, horizontal surfaces, tends to feel like an afterthought. A logo. A pattern that exists to fill space without challenging it. Geometry of Play actually does the opposite. It treats the court not as a site that needs decorating but as a site that can carry meaning, even while a game is being played on top of it.

Ray is also a founding member of Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist artist collective, and currently teaches at Carnegie Mellon University. That connection to Pittsburgh runs deeper than a single commission, and you can feel it in the work. This isn’t a project that was parachuted in from another city. Geometry of Play is part of a larger program featuring 23 works by 10 artists, all commissioned for Arts Landing. It’s part of something being built slowly, intentionally, in one place.

The installation debuted during Picklesburgh, Pittsburgh’s beloved annual festival, in July 2026. But the courts aren’t going anywhere. They remain open for public use, which means people will be playing pickleball on top of a painting for years. I find that genuinely exciting. Art in a museum demands a certain mode of attention: quiet, reverential, scheduled. Art on a pickleball court demands nothing. It just shows up where life already is.

Ray has said that they treat abstraction as “a spatial and cultural gesture of joy, inclusion, and shared encounters across identities, generations, and modes of seeing.” That framing matters. Geometry of Play isn’t trying to be monumental. It’s trying to be present, in the middle of things, where people are actually gathering and moving and having fun. We talk a lot about making art more accessible. Most of the time, that conversation stays theoretical. Sharmistha Ray just painted it onto the ground and said: here. Come play.

The post Pittsburgh Just Built the Most Beautiful Pickleball Courts in America first appeared on Yanko Design.

Garmin Just Built the Whoop Alternative That Needs No Subscription

Posted on by

There’s a growing frustration with fitness wearables that has nothing to do with their accuracy or features. It’s the screen. Even devices that track recovery and stress can contribute to the same screen-checking habit they’re supposed to help reduce, turning what should be a passive health monitor into just another thing demanding attention on your wrist. The smartwatch category has leaned further into displays, notifications, and apps, leaving a gap for something that doesn’t do any of that.

The Garmin CIRQA is Garmin’s first screen-free smart band, and the pitch is straightforward. It tracks everything, shows you nothing on the wrist, and routes all the data to the Garmin Connect app for review when you actually want to look. There’s no display to glance at, no notifications, no interface to interact with during the day. The band does its job in the background, and you check the results on your terms.

Designer: Garmin

Worn on the wrist or moved up to the upper arm for sleeping or specific activities, the CIRQA runs 24 hours a day on a single charge for up to ten days. The sensor stack covers all the metrics Garmin is known for: continuous heart rate, Body Battery energy monitoring, Pulse Ox, stress, skin temperature, HRV status, and comprehensive sleep tracking including sleep stages, a sleep score, and nap detection. Women can also track their menstrual cycle and sync skin temperature data with the FDA-cleared Natural Cycles birth control app.

Fitness tracking doesn’t require picking up the phone either. The band detects and records activities automatically, and the more you review and correct those logs in Garmin Connect, the better it gets at classifying your workouts without prompting. For sessions where you want more control, a single side button lets you manually start any of 80-plus activities. Connected GPS borrows location data from a paired smartphone for accurate outdoor pace and distance, and LiveTrack lets people follow your route in real time.

The monitoring side goes deeper than basic step counting. Training readiness, VO2 Max estimates, and workout recovery time give athletes a fuller picture of whether a day calls for a hard effort or an easy spin. The CIRQA was built to complement Garmin’s watch lineup rather than replace it. Someone who already runs with a Forerunner can use the CIRQA to handle overnight recovery and all-day wellness without wearing the watch to bed or to the office.

The band comes in a soft ComfortFit fabric strap that Garmin designed to fade into the background and sits in a compact sensor module with a fiber-reinforced polymer housing. Colors include Black, French Gray, Berry, and Navy, with seven additional accessory band options for the wrist. Both wrist and upper-arm sizing are available in two fits.

The CIRQA Smart Band is priced at $199.99, and no subscription is required for the core feature set, which is a pointed difference from Whoop, the most obvious comparison in this category. Garmin does offer optional Connect+ upgrades for coaching and advanced guidance, but the full tracking stack works without it.

The post Garmin Just Built the Whoop Alternative That Needs No Subscription first appeared on Yanko Design.

Louis Vuitton unveils bespoke Trophy Trunk for FIFA World Cup 2026 ahead of the final

Posted on by

France is shown the door, and Spain has triumphed into the final of the FIFA World Cup, now waiting patiently for either England or the favorites, Argentina. While who will make it to the final to contest for the most coveted trophy against Spain remains uncertain, at the time of writing, what’s certain is that Louis Vuitton has readied the bespoke trunk that will be used by the winners to carry the golden trophy out of the New York New Jersey Stadium on Sunday, July 19.

Like it has been doing in the last four editions, LV has unveiled its licensed 2026 FIFA World Cup Trophy Trunk to showcase and transport the most iconic cup in sports. It has previously designed trophy trunks for the 2010 edition of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, followed by the 2014 Brazil, 2018 Russia, and 2022 Qatar editions.

Designer:  FIFA and Louis Vuitton

The fifth such trunk, in as many editions of the World Cup, is made by Maison’s artisans in its Asnières-sur-Seine workshops near Paris. It is meticulously covered in the iconic Louis Vuitton monogram canvas and will, for the first time, be officially disclosed at the final match of the World Cup.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup Trophy Trunk will be brought onto the pitch for the finals ceremony and will become part of the music and entertainment programs when football’s greatest achievement is celebrated. Making its presence etched in the annals of history, the 2026 FIFA World Cup Trophy Trunk comes enclosed in an all-LV Monogram canvas cover and features a pair of front panels adorned with a golden “V,” which, according to the press statement, stands for both Vuitton and Victory.

The exterior doesn’t give out much about the official partnership. It is more reserved for the interior, which is done in light beige leather and a space in the center for the “world’s most coveted trophy—a symbol of dedication, collective ambition, and the ultimate celebration of victory.” Here, a patch on the lid is used to showcase the partnership logo between Louis Vuitton and FIFA.

Returning to the exterior, it features LV’s signature leather trim known as “lozines.” The trunk corners are protected with gold-plated brass, while clasps and a lock are used to secure the precious trophy inside. Lock and clasp design is reminiscent of those used by the maison since the 1860s.

Unless you are the FIFA museum in Zurich, Switzerland, there is no chance you can keep the trophy or the trunk. Louis Vuitton understands it better than any of us and has therefore created three look-alike limited edition trunks. Since each of these is inspired by the trunk designed for the original solid gold trophy, they feature monogram canvas, a hand-painted FIFA World Cup logo, and the golden “V”.

The first of the three iterations is the Coffret 8 Montres, made to hold eight watches; the Cotteville 16 Montres is designed for the same purpose but with the capacity to store 16 watches. Malle Courrier Lozine 110 is a different breed; it is a trunk for the purpose of carrying luggage. There is no word on how each of these will be priced, but we learn that users will have an option to personalize their purchase with their initials.

The post Louis Vuitton unveils bespoke Trophy Trunk for FIFA World Cup 2026 ahead of the final first appeared on Yanko Design.

adidas BB.01 is first 3D-printed basketball shoe built to improve stability and flexibility on court

Posted on by

While the world is fixated on who’s making it to the quarterfinals of the FIFA World Cup. adidas thinks it’s done enough for the love of the game with the Trionda, and now it’s time to shift focus to basketball. To do that, the sportswear giant is bringing 3D-printed footwear innovation to the hardwood with the launch of adidas BB.01. It is the first 3D-printed basketball shoe to hit the market, in an eye-catching combination of Solar Red and Orbit Grey.

The 3D printed basketball shoe from adidas is a definite head-turner. It’s called the adidas BB.01 “Solar Red/Orbit Grey,” and it’s nothing like the traditional canvas, textile, and foam silhouettes. While most shoe midsoles are molded in factories, the BB.01 is printed entirely from resin in layers instead.

Designer: adidas

The basketball shoe is part of adidas’ Project R.A.P (Radical Athlete Perception). The program ensures that adaptive manufacturing is not just an experimental category but an actual way to create functional, court-worthy footwear. Based on this ideology, adidas BB.01 has been a long time coming.

The much-anticipated footwear finally has a release date and a price. Fans should be able to get their feet into the 3D-printed marvel starting July 14, when it will be available through the adidas Confirmed app for $250. Meticulously combining “cutting-edge digital manufacturing with elite on-court performance,” the shoe features Orbit Grey in the base, which, in contrast, is highlighted by the Solar Red upper cage. The Three Stripes logo is present on the heel, from where it extends upward toward the collar.

Since the footwear is designed to complement the wearer’s performance on the court, its 3D printed midsole is designed to handle the impact and keep the player “stable through cuts and landings.” The footwear weighs only 15.13 oz (428 g) and comes with its most striking resin outer shell on top of the engineered midsole, which utilizes a lattice design across the sidewalls. This form factor allows the shoe to flex with the twisting nature of the foot. Higher-density printing is also carried out around the toes and heels for stability.

adidas BB.01 is not an attractive shoe on the outside alone. On the inside, it also features a soft textile bootie that locks the foot in place, ensuring support and comfort. A flagbearer of the future of 3D printing in the footwear industry, adidas BB.01 will release on July 14, but you can start registering for it as early as July 9 through the company website.

The post adidas BB.01 is first 3D-printed basketball shoe built to improve stability and flexibility on court first appeared on Yanko Design.