Man builds turbine-powered Batmobile, brags about having the only one

Canvas not big enough to hold this painting

© Juan Solano / CHOlon Photography

Architects: Longhi Architects / Luis Longhi

Location: Lima, Peru

Project Year: 2010

Project Area: 404 sqm

Photographs: Juan Solano / CHOlon Photography

   

Infinite rolling dunes from the desert to the East and rocky Pacific Ocean cliffs used by fishermen to the West converge on the site of Casa Q, creating a unique natural environment. Casa Q is the first residence built in one of the areas not yet occupied at the Beach Club Misterio, located 117 kilometers south of Lima, Peru.

Get More Out Of Your Toothpaste Tube

Here is another intriguing Toothpaste Packaging design that makes total sense. SavePaste has a three-point agenda: To eliminate the hard-to-squeeze dead space, minimizing toothpaste residue left inside the container; Reduce two packaging to one. It means we can reduce waste and manufacturing price plus encourage recycling. And finally, have a user-friendly design so that people easily adopt it. I think it’s a full score on all three fronts!

Designers: Sang Min Yu and Wong Sang Lee

Arranged things by messy ways

Aptly dubbed “Catalyst”, Jiyoung Seo’s shelf triggers user to feel, touch and react with the unit so as to build a closer relationship between people and furniture.

It is mainly made of silicon while still built with a wooden structure so that it can hang onto a wall. With its flexible silicon layer, the Catalyst shelf would hold anything you insert into it – no matter it is a pen, a book, a watch or jewelry.

narrowest house - just 60 inches wide

An artist's impression of the world's narrowest house which is set to be built in Warsaw, Poland (Poc: CEN)

New Salt Hotel Built in Bolivia

Visitors may want to take luxury with a grain of salt at this remote accommodation.

The hotel, seen above on July 14, is among a handful constructed solely of salt blocks on the white plains of the Salar de Uyuni in southwestern Bolivia.

The 4,085 square-mile (10,580 square-kilometer) region is the world's largest salt desert. The desert was once a lake 40,000 years ago, and it is now a hot spot for adventure tourism.

The blindingly white flats stretch as far as the eye can see, except for a few raised mounds of salt. Despite its barren appearance, the desert hosts cacti and rare hummingbirds, and three species of flamingos stop over each year to breed.

Until the recent tourist boom, the only inhabitants of the chilly, harsh region were salt miners, who still extract 25,000 tons of salt annually from the 10 billion tons available.

Takabisha: Japan Gets World’s Steepest Roller Coaster (Videos)

The Eerie, Spaceship-Like Ghosts of Communism

A photographer explores the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans in search of the Eastern Bloc's forgotten retrofuturistic monuments

                  

Podgaric

Having grown up in the former Eastern Bloc, I vividly remember the bizarre and beautiful monuments commissioned by the communist leaders of the 1960s and '70s, which remained as retrofuturistic remnants after the fall of communism, like the undying ghosts of an era most people sought to forget but would always remember. These are the subject of Spomenik—a peculiar book by contemporary Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers, who took a laborious trek across former Yugoslavia and The Balkans to photograph the strikingly beautiful yet odd structures tucked away in the region's mountains. The results are haunting and eerily powerful, evoking a felt sense of a fold in the space-time fabric of sociopolitical reality."Kempenaers did not set out as a documentary photographer, but first and foremost as an artist seeking to create a new image. An image so powerful that it engulfs the viewer. He allows the viewer to enjoy the melancholy beauty of the Spomeniks, but in so doing, forces us to take a position on a social issue." ~ Willem Jan Neutelings

555 Footstool

The succinct story of a modest little footstool-- involving datasheets, cnc routing, laser engraving, plywood, glue, chips, all-thread, angle grinders, mountains of sawdust, dowel rods, spray paint, and a picture of a cat.

The world’s craziest basketball court is in Munich

There is a basketball court in Germany that is about to blow your mind.

We're not sure, outside of displaying one's artistic integrity, why someone would choose to make a 3D-styled basketball court featuring lumps and lamps and all sorts of weirdness, but we do appreciate the results. Because it gives us an excuse to wonder what it would be like to play basketball on a court like this:

LEGO Middle-Earth: Yes. All of It.

Remember Kevin Walter and his LEGO Barad-dûr? If you think that was the most awesome thing that could have been at Brickworld 2011, you’d both be right and wrong. Because as it turns out, that huge tower is just part of an even more massive project that won Best Group Layout at the convention. The project? LEGO Middle-Earth.

Pictured above is Minas-Tirith, no doubt a great part, but still only a part of the mind-blowing set up. The whole thing took MOCpages member Chris Phipson and his“Fellowship of the Brick” a year’s worth of planning and building to finish. Based on the results I’d call these guys the Lords of the Bricks.

Roomba light paintings

'IBR roomba swarm in the dark iii', part of the 'IBR roomba art' timelapse photo series by tobias baumgartner, marcus brandenburger,
tom kamphans, alexander kroeller, and christiane schmidt of the IBR algorithm group of germany's braunschweig university of technology


long used for more than just cleaning, as a popular choice for robotics programming courses and competitions,
the roomba vacuum cleaner takes on a artistic undertaking in a series of timelapsed, 'light painting' photographs.
in the most basic renditions, roomba owners attach coloured LEDs to the devices and let them roam for the duration
of a long-exposure photograph. more enterprising photographers, like the IBR algorithm group at germany's braunschweig
university of technology, create designs by constructing obstacles, thereby designating space that the roombas cannot pass into
and which thus remains dark. flickr user reconscious utilized accelerometer-driven LEDs so that the colour light
varied depending on the roomba's movement.

more roomba light paintings can be seen in the 'roomba art' flickr group.

Use binder clips to secure cords

The first installment in this week's "Wish I'd Thought of That" series: 

You know how the cords that charge your stuff tend to slip down into the nether regions behind your desk? Here's an easy solution from David Bakker for organizing cables. I can't read the original post, but a picture's worth a thousand words. Via Unplggd.

Note from the past

Today, the Second Use field crew went to a strip-out in Queen Anne. When Flynn was removing a lintel from the wall, he discovered a hidden note from 1973. It's odd that Jack Barbour had the foresight that someone would be removing the lintel carefully, rather than knocking the whole house down. It's just another reminder that you really are preserving history when you salvage. Never know what you're going to get!

jaume plensa at the yorkshire sculpture park

jaume plensa
yorkshire sculpture park
wakefield, england
on now until 25 september 2011

'irma' by jaume plensa at the yorkshire sculpture park in wakefield, england
image courtesy YSP / © jonty wilde

barcelona-born contemporary artist and sculptor jaume plensa is currently showing his first
major UK exhibition at the yorkshire sculpture park in wakefield, england. exhibited in
the underground gallery as well as the surrounding outdoor landscape, the collection of
sculptures and drawings consists of both recent and new works that encourages its viewers to
explore the art in a tactile and sensorial manner.