Tag Archives: Womxn Designer

This EV charging solution uses a network of charging drones to charge your car anytime, anywhere!

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Every day we move closer to a more sustainable future, and the automobile industry is quickly gaining traction. However, more and more electric vehicles are on the road each day, and drivers feel the heat with the lack of available charging stations. With so many EVs on the road and so few charging stations, many EV drivers admit to feeling anxious during road trips, having to worry about their car dying of charge at any moment. A group of Seoul-based designers hopes to relieve some of that stress with their new EV charging solution called Nebo, a network of charging drones that bring the electric juice directly to EVs.

To ensure their EVs remain charged when traveling, drivers often have to adjust their routes to incorporate charging stops along the way. Cutting out the extra travel time those routes take up, Nebo users can request charging drones to fly to their EV and power up their vehicles on the road. Then, drivers can plug in their destination from a dashboard display, and Nebo will find the quickest route and create a charging schedule for the trip, ensuring that EVs are fully charged. Each charging drone contains electromagnetic and ultrasonic sensors to locate and latch onto the roofs of electric vehicles.

Once securely stationed atop the EV, charging coils transmit power between Nebo and the electric vehicle. The drones would also feature bladeless wings, allowing for a compact build that can slide into itself during use. An accompanying app would also allow users to request Nebo on the go. This would come in handy when your EV is parked, and you want to get some extra charge before taking the car out for a drive.

Since EVs are hitting the roads more than ever before, the need for charging stations is growing. However, considering the lack of charging stations, those who drive electric vehicles have to worry too much about how they will get a charge. To help quell the anxiety felt by drivers of electric vehicles, Nebo brings the charge to drivers using a network of charging drones anytime, anywhere.

Designers: Junpyo Hong, Jayoung Koo, Yang Dong Wook, & Dongjae Koo

Sleek by design and discreet in appearance, Nebo is a charging drone that brings power to EVs on the road.

Electromagnetic and ultrasonic sensors help Nebo locate and latch onto EVs.

An intricate build reveals the vision sensors, charging coils, and bladeless wing system that gives Nebo such a slim body.

When latched onto the EV, Nebo’s wings slide into its body to give it a more compact structure.

























A dashboard display allows users to log trips into Nebo’s GPS technology that creates a charging schedule for each trip.

Vision sensors allow Nebo to track your EV.

An accompanying app allows users to request charging drones on the go.

Nebo charges your EV while you’re driving, cutting out the extra time it takes to find charging stations.

Once your EV is fully charged, Nebo takes off and flies back to its own charging station.

The team of designers created a life-size paper model of Nebo.

This instant tiny coffee brewing bottle mixes water with coffee grounds to make a cup in seconds!

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I’m part of the crowd that thinks getting coffee should be a reasonable excuse for being late. Business meetings, sports games, parent-teacher conferences, and lunch reservations can wait. Coffee comes first‒always. Some of us are thinking about coffee before we even brush our teeth in the morning. If you can skip the coffee, all the power to you. Besides the pursuit of punctuality, having access to a quick caffeine fix when you’re camping or on a road trip makes the difference between Hell and happiness. That’s just the truth. Giving life to that caffeine fix, Chinese designer Jiia Liu developed Saturnbird, a modular glass bottle that brews coffee in a matter of seconds.

Saturnbird comes in four pieces: a brewing top, liquid basin, lid, and coffee pods, allowing for easy brewing and cleaning. In Liu’s 3D visualization, the pods each seem to contain instant coffee grounds that turn into iced coffee when mixed with water. Once the liquid basin is filled with water, users can mix in a pod of coffee grounds, screw the brewing top back on, shake the bottle, and voilà! Instant coffee. The liquid basin displays line measurements that, when filled with water, indicates which coffee pod to pour‒140ml of water requiring a smaller pod than the pod mixed into 210ml of water. Featuring such a simple brew method, Saturnbird could become the go-to accessory for many campers whose first thought in the morning isn’t the chorus of chirping birds or the beautiful landscape, but how they’re gonna get their paws on their first cup of coffee. The liquid basin is constructed from glass with a silicone-coated glass brewing top and lid for a non-slip grip, allowing you to bring Saturnbird on hikes or water-based activities.

Whether you’re waking up in a forest, hundreds of miles away from the nearest cafe or in a daze, five minutes away from your first job interview across town, coffee accessories like Saturnbird allow coffee drinkers to get in their caffeine fix and get on with their day quicker than they could muster up a lame (and unnecessary) excuse for being late. Go ahead and walk into that meeting with a cup of coffee in your hands. You deserve it (and the one after it).

Designer: Jiia Liu

Saturnbird’s glass liquid basin screws onto a silicone brewing top for a non-slip grip.

Users simply mix coffee grounds with water for instant iced coffee.

The screw-top lid of Saturnbird allows users to insert their own straw.

The measurement lines indicate which coffee pods to use.

Modular by design, Saturnbird breaks away from its four components for easy cleaning.

This massive luxurious superyacht concept comes with three hulls instead of one

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It sort of looks like the Y-Wing Fighter from Star Wars, although designer Yeojin Jung says the superyacht’s split hull design is directly influenced by cantilevered architecture.

There are over 5,000 superyachts currently on this planet, however, none of them look as impactful as the Estrella. Designed by South Kore-based Yeojin Jung, Estrella hopes to break the mold of ‘boring’ practical superyacht design with something that’s a cross between feasible and outlandishly luxurious. Envisioned to look like the jewel of the seas, Estrella comes made for UHNWIs (or Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, as my sorry self just learnt), and sports a split-hull design that divides the yacht into the main component, and two floater components on either side, reminiscent of a seaplane.

The superyacht’s tri-swath design doesn’t make it more stable… if anything, separating the yacht over three interconnected hulls poses stability challenges. Jung, however, states that the yacht comes with separate stabilizers on the ship as well as on the individual side-hulls to counter any stability issues. This allows Estrella to make its aesthetic flex, with a yacht design that looks as beautiful from the front as well as from the top (where the superyacht’s Y-shape is more prominent). The split hull design also allows the yacht’s passengers and occupants to admire their view from multiple vantage points, getting a better experience of the sea, the marine life within it, and obviously the sky too!

The Estrella Superyacht is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Yeojin (Chloe) Jung

These prefab cabins require zero assembly and unfold into shelters in case of emergencies!

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The modern world is overwhelmed with what feels like countless crises‒climate change, human displacement, and global pandemics begins a list that barely scrapes the surface. Architects and designers alike have been taking notice and utilizing their learned disciplines to provide relief. Entering the conversation around structural relief projects, Hariri & Hariri, a New York-based architecture firm founded by Iranian sisters Gisue and Mojgan Hariri, debuted their own solution: a prefabricated folding pod or cabin that doesn’t require hands-on assembly or the need for hardware or tools.

Modeled after the intricate paper folding art of Origami, the pod’s initial folded form can fit onto flatbed trucks for efficient and manageable shipping. Once positioned for assembly, the pod from Hariri & Hariri readily expands and unfolds to create a prefabricated and modular, single-story housing unit. Born out of a need for emergency shelter across the globe, the architects behind the pod note, “In the middle of a hurricane you don’t have time for a screwdriver.” With this in mind, the pod was designed to instantaneously unfold and build itself with the push of a button. Structured like a pop-up cardboard box, hinges and hidden panels strewn across the pod’s creases aid in the unit’s assembly process. Whether multiple emergency shelters are needed or if the pod is used as a luxury single home unit for a beachside vacation, the modular construction allows the pod to either be configured together with multiple pods to form community shelters or stand alone as a single prefabricated unit.

Hariri & Hariri developed the pod into one that leans on an affordable, transportable, and efficient design by giving it a lightweight and thin exterior build. Constructed with accessible building materials like glass and Equitone panels, the pod can be acquired and utilized by most countries across the globe in need of emergency shelters. The prefabricated pod boasts simple and speedy assembly and transportation processes, making it an ideal modular unit for any event from beachside couple retreats to crowded music events or even extreme emergencies that call for immediate shelter units.

Designer: Hariri & Hariri

When situated in clusters, the pod from Hariri & Hariri can create community-wide shelters in the case of emergencies.

Alternatively, the pod can make for the perfect beachside getaway, with an open-air layout and expansive windows.

The pod can also function as a luxury single-residency for longer vacations.

Inside, the pods are roomy and offer sweeping views of the outdoors.

This intuitive wooden pen holder solves cleanup woes on messy art days and is designed to last a lifetime!

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Painting gets messy, especially when you have kids. Without regard for the new floor carpet or optic white-stained china cabinet, the whole room is their canvas when kids paint. Then there’s the dreaded clean-up of all the scattered colored pencils and paintbrushes. Setting out to create a tidy solution for those memorable, but messy paint-filled afternoons, Architect Mum, a child care accessory design studio, developed the Creative Cube, a multifunctional pen holder that can last a lifetime.

Creative Cube was inspired by Architect Mum founder Caro’s own daughter. Caro describes, “After she had painted, it was a hassle for her to tidy up the pens, too…when she was painting with water, it also happened quite often that the water glass tipped over in the creative process. I knew we needed a pen holder that would solve our problems, but I didn’t want a plastic red ladybug in our home.” Averting the tempting lure of weird, anthropomorphic plastic home accessories, Caro gave Creative Cube a wooden construction to exude a minimalist warmth and a timeless, neutral design so the product can be carried down for generations. Eighteen pen slots and a single paintbrush holder fill out the sides of Creative Cube with an additional chamber to place paint water cups stationed on the top of Creative Cube.

Manufactured in southern Germany, Creative Cube is constructed from sycamore wood and coated in linoleum for added protection. Developed to be a lifetime product, Creative Cube is doubly covered with natural linseed oil to stand the test of time and remain resistant against any potential water damage. Since wood is a natural product, Caro suggests keeping your Creative Cube out of direct sunlight to avoid any yellowing or grain fluctuations.

Designer: Architect Mum

Nine pen slots fill out each side of Creative Cube, with additional chambers for a paintbrush and water cup.

Kids can clean up their workstations with ease following paint activities and water coloring.

With an intuitive design, kids can pull their favorite colored pens from Creative Cube and put them right back when they’re done.

With wide slots, Creative Cube can hold multiple slim pencils in one holder.

This flexible vase expands in size (like an accordion) as your plant grows bigger

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Only 3% of plants survive being repotted when they grow too big for their old, smaller planter. I’m making that statistic up, it’s absolute nonsense… but here’s something that’s absolutely, undeniably true – Repotting plants as they grow bigger is a headache. You need to be incredibly gentle to avoid damaging the root system, and once you introduce a plant into a new, bigger pot, you need to hope and pray that the plant adapts to that shift. Repotting plants is a painstaking (and frankly messy task), although Lidia Gómez has a pretty clever solution.

The FlexVase by Gómez is an expandable vase made from hard-silicone. It uses an accordion-shaped profile to expand vertically in size, allowing you to simply stretch the planter as the plant inside it grows. As the planter expands in size, it creates more space for the roots to grow, as well as breaks the soil up, aerating it so the roots get more oxygen.

The FlexVase sports a set of folds that run along its width from top to bottom (looking sort of like pottery lines but much more uniform). Tug on the upper lip of the FlexVase and the folds open one by one. This allows you to increase the vase’s height in increments, making it taller as the plant grows. A similar design detail even exists in the Que Bottle, which uses a silicone construction and a spiral-shaped accordion detail to expand and collapse, making it easier to carry around while in its compact size.

While the vase’s innovative detail is functional in nature, it does lend a unique form to it too. When closed, the FlexVase looks like a normal vase, but expand it and it takes on this interesting wavy, fluted appearance… something that looks even more eye-catching when combined with the vase’s wonderful color palette!

Designer: Lidia Gómez

Sustainable design in architecture award-winning primary school will be Denmark’s first Ecolabel School this 2022!

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Renowned architecture firm Henning Larsen has commenced construction on their landmark primary school project in Sundby, Copenhagen. Contributing to the country’s agenda for sustainable educational facility architecture, the New School in Sundby ensures high sustainability parameters as well as integration with the school’s surrounding, local community. Opening its doors to 580 new students by the end of summer 2022, the New School is nature-oriented and built to merge the classroom with the environment.

Henning Larsen is an architecture firm driven to create structures that double as agents for sustainable change, first looking at what their designs can do for people and local communities. Built with the same driving ambition, their New School in Sundby supports and achieves the UN’s Sustainable Development goals from the ground up through sustainable structural design and the promise to enact a curriculum that coincides with the UN’s environmental efforts. In order to incorporate nature into the school’s curriculum, architects envisioned the surrounding environment as alternative classrooms by literally merging the school with the ground below it.

Located miles away from the burgeoning city centers of Copenhagen, The New School nestles itself in the winding hills of Denmark’s countryside. The New School in Sundby features a living roof that slopes into the grassland below it, ascending into a semi-circle that positions itself just above the ground below. Geometric windows and modules give the New School a progressive whimsy that balances the practical and unadorned integration of the natural environment. Rewarding architectural strides in sustainability factors, like low-greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, and waste, as well as health factors like ventilation, natural light, noise, and chemical exposure, the New School in Sundby will be Denmark’s first primary school to be awarded the Nordic Ecolabel.

Designer: Henning Larsen

The New School in Sundby follows a circular structure, forming a semi-circle upon completion.

Henning Larsen architecture firm has broken down on new sustainable primary school in Denmark.

Geometric windows and facades line the interior facade of the New School in Sundby.

Inside, natural wood and concrete finishes give rise to multiple levels.

Henning Larsen team.

Inspired by the clouds, this art installation was designed to be your happy place!

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Every kid has dreamed of sitting inside of a cloud. As a young kid, I pictured them as being more like tough, hovering wads of cotton candy that were thick enough to hold weight but airy enough to stay in the sky. The day I heard that you’d fall right through if you tried to sit on top of one was the day my dreams of sitting on the clouds ended. But today, Valencia-based Clap Studio has designed an art installation called Cumulus that brings those dreams of sitting inside of clouds back to life.

Inspired by the lightness and calm of clouds, Cumulus was designed to be a muted, soothing hub with a partly enclosed interior where people can feel at ease. Pulled taut around steel beams that form the shape of a sphere or Chinese lantern, the elastic fabric creates a round, internal space that’s similar to the feel of a trampoline. Inside, the globe of bright white fabric evokes the feeling of being suspended inside of a cloud. Three hanging light fixtures also brighten the interior to enhance the interior’s relaxing ambiance, mixing warm fluorescent light with the optic brightness of the elastic fabric.

Speaking on the design of Cumulus, the designers note that, “Inside the cloud, the body seems to gravitate with a feeling of lightness, it is the place where calm reigns. Through the fabric, you get to see only the shadows of what is outside and the sounds aren’t clear enough to perceive their origin.” As the years go by and human productivity increases, at times it might feel like the feeling of calm is a depleted resource. Installations like Cumulus help to make moments of respite that much more accessible, bringing us back to the magic we felt when we thought we could sit on the clouds.

Designer: Clap Studio

With elastic fabric similar to that found on trampolines, Cumulus is tensile and springy.

Partly enclosed, Cumulus features a circular hole that grants entry and exit to the installation with an attachable net that props guests in the installation’s center.

Guests can cozy into the corners of Cumulus to recline deeply against the installation’s side walls.

Hanging light fixtures brighten the space to enhance Cumulus’s cloudlike ambiance.

Opening up to the sky, an exposed skylight reveals views of actual clouds in the sky.

Shadows emanate from the outside looking in and vice versa, thanks to the elastic fabric’s membrane-like skin.

This sustainable tiny home creates one modern multifunctional living space to reduce its carbon footprint and cost!

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Nowadays, most of us are thinking tiny, especially when it comes to living spaces. Tiny homes and prefabricated cabins have spread across the globe like wildfire and for good reason. Many of us are still eager to travel and can do that with a tiny home hitched to the back of a truck, then some of us prefer tiny homes for their cost-effectiveness, and the rest of us hope to reduce our personal carbon footprints by taking up less space. Johannesburg-based architect Clara da Cruz Almeida designed her prefabricated tiny home, Pod-Idladla with the idea of creating a tiny living space for young graduates without the means for a downpayment.

Before the manufacturing process, Pod-Idladla was conceived by Clara for young professionals to have a sustainable, affordable, and multifunctional living space. Inside, the living areas form one fluid space, rather than individual rooms. Walking through the unit’s front door, vertical storage solutions line the unit’s veneered walls and universal brackets allow the plywood storage bins to be moved around the pod. Even the pieces of furniture, from the kitchen table to the living room sofa, have dual purposes to optimize the unit’s space allowing residents to customize the space however they like. To merge practicality with convenience, the shower is even located in the passageway, which is outfitted with duck boarding, or slatted wooden flooring to keep the timber from getting wet.

Speaking on the unit’s multifunctionality, Clara says her tiny home contains, “spaces, not rooms. You could use the task room to store clothes or to keep your sports equipment. You could have an upstairs study if you don’t want to sleep on the mezzanine.”

Coming up with Pod-Idladla, Clara created a prefabricated modular home that could either stand by itself or attach to additional modules. Measuring a mere seventeen square meters, Pod-Idladla was built to fit into most backyards or small outdoor areas. The frame of Pod-Idladla takes the shape of an upright trapezoid to easily cozy up against any wall or attach to additional units. Each tiny home is built from standard drywall materials, including steel, aluminum, and wood. Outside, the home is clad in timber that can last up to 100 years with the proper care and maintenance. To save on transportation costs, the prefabricated components of Pod-Idladla are constructed in a Johannesburg-based factory and assembled on site.

Designers: POD-iDLADLA

Inside, the unit feels more like one multifunctional space, containing the functionality of the kitchen just below the mezzanine bedroom.

Small enough to fit into most backyards, POD-iDLADLA measures 20.52 square meters including the outdoor deck.

A ladder brings residents from the ground level to the mezzanine that can keep the bed or be morphed into an upstairs office.

The kitchen and dining area merge into one with the help of multifunctional furniture, like the expandable kitchen table.

Vertical storage solutions punctuate the unit’s veneered walls throughout.

Plywood boxes make up the unit’s storage spaces and can be moved throughout the unit.

Clara chose Dokter and Misses to design the interior for their industrial, yet quirky design schemes.

Even the unit’s light fixtures can be moved from their sockets and placed elsewhere in the home.

Nintendo Gaming Smartphone concept images make the rounds with a very interesting camera detail!

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Let’s put my fanboy logic aside and debate this purely on strategic grounds. Smartphones occupy 40% of the gaming industry by size, and 50% by revenue… which is why a Nintendo Gaming Smartphone sounds like a pretty incredible idea. It takes the Switch lite’s portable form factor and adds smartphone capabilities to it too. Nintendo can now expand its product line while still keeping people locked within its gaming ecosystem. Now that we’ve got that elevator pitch out of the way, let’s take some time to drool over Sophia Yen’s Nintendo gaming phone concept.

Titled the Nintendo Delight, this smartphone concept builds on the success of Nintendo’s Switch, making it even more portable and adding a few extra features to it. The Nintendo Delight replaces the need to carry your phone along with your gaming console. By combining the two together, it becomes your go-to device for gaming, browsing, social media, and everything in between. Designer Sophia Yen makes a pretty astute observation when she points out that the Switch is already an Android device (YouTuber Linus Tech Tips even demonstrates how to run Netflix on a Switch), and the Nintendo Delight simply builds on it, adding network capabilities and a camera to the mix.

The Nintendo Delight is smartphone gaming at its very best. Designed by Nintendo, the Android device would already have access to Nintendo’s current Switch gaming library, but would even be able to support Android gaming, Stadia, and other game-streaming services, bringing the entire world of gaming right into your handheld device. Oh, and you can even use it as a phone – making calls, browsing the web, chatting with friends, and clicking pictures with that rather insane-looking 4-lens camera setup!

The camera setup is perhaps the Nintendo Delight’s most brilliantly creative design detail. Its diamond-shaped layout exactly mirrors the XYAB button layout seen on the Switch, so while it is, in fact, a camera module… it’s also a rather clever branding exercise that goes wonderfully with the phone’s black, red, and blue color scheme.

The gaming smartphone comes with a traditional touchscreen interface to play games, but even sports a shoulder button on the top left to give you more control as you play. There’s even a battery-level indicator on the back so you can see how much juice your device has while your phone’s charging. Quite like the Switch Lite, the smartphone doesn’t come with pop-put modules and controllers, although it’s much slimmer and lighter than the Switch Lite.

This obviously is a fan-made concept, although it does make a very compelling argument that smartphone gaming is a seriously expanding category, no matter what gaming purists say. Just like the Sony PlayStation 5G concept we featured last month, the Nintendo Delight creates the perfect hybrid device for serious console gamers as well as casual smartphone gamers. It could easily replace devices like the Switch Lite, while firmly placing Nintendo smack-dab in the middle of a smartphone market that’s desperately trying to reinvent itself. Besides, I’d pick this over that extremely glitchy and buggy version of Stadia Google is trying to ship.

Designer: Sophia Yen