Pininfarina & Napkin Collaborate To Create A Pen That Never Needs Ink. Ever.

Italian design and engineering firm, Pininfarina, combines their seductive styling with Napkin's technology to introduce the 4.EVER Pininfarina Cambiano, a revolutionary writing instrument. The pen was made in conjunction with Napkin, who created the first stylus made of aluminum with a tip made of Ethergraf®, a particular metal alloy patented by Chic Trading. With this special metal alloy, the pen can write indefinitely with no ink and no refill.



The body of the 4.EVER Pininfarina Cambiano combines aluminum and wood, design cues taken from Pinafarina's Cambiano Concept Car. Add to that the technology developed by Napkin for their own 4.Ever stylus which comes in four colors (blue avio, black, titanium and aluminium) and you have the latest innovative writing object to come out of Italy.



The 4.EVER Pininfarina Cambiano will be matched with a notebook realized in stone paper, a paper manufactured from the stone powder, stronger than the traditional one and water resistant, an eco-friendly material with a minimal environmental impact. The notebook is enriched by the original sketches of the Cambiano concept car.


above: sketches of Pininfarina's Cambiano

In the meantime, if you want an inkless pen, you can purchase on of Napkin's 4.Ever stylus here

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A Simple Add-On Helps Turn Any Flat Surface Into A Table: The Floyd Leg.

UPDATE: Congratulations to Kyle and Alex, the Floyd Leg has been fully funded via Kickstarter as of about 16 hours ago!



So, what is it?

It's so simple, it's a wonder no one has created this before now. The Floyd Leg is like a C-clamp with a long, tapered, powder-coated steel attached leg. A tool that gives you the framework to take be the creator of your own furniture by utilizing wood slabs, signs, old doors, art, reclaimed materials or found objects (basically anything flat) that can serve as a surface.






The easy-to-attach legs emerged from a personal need combined with curiosity. Living a rather nomadic lifestyle with work and school took designer Kyle Hoff to several different cities in which he found himself buying (and ultimately) discarding furniture repeatedly. He then decided that he'd like a work desk which was was easy to pack up and move around, without sacrificing aesthetic appeal or requiring any building expertise.




Kyle met future partner Alex O'Dell while designing and building out a workspace in the North Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. The building itself was formerly an auto garage.



With this history in mind, their philosophy was a minimal use of materials in order to contrast the new with the old.

above: Kyle Hoff and Alex O'Dell

After completion of the space, the Floyd Legs became their next project with these same values in mind: simple, useful, adaptive. They see the legs as a tool for people to be inventive with their furniture and reflective of their lives —without needing the skills and expertise to build from scratch.



The name Floyd harkens back to the name of Hoff's father, grandfather, and great grandfather, all steel mill workers. In the same spirit of local manufacturing, he and partner Alex O'Dell have established partnerships with local machine shops to produce the legs.

Specifications
The Floyd Leg is available in two different lengths and two different colors. Black or white powder-coated in 29” table height and a 16” coffee table height. They are produced in Detroit and made with American steel.

The legs are best suited to medium and light uses (the suggested weight to support is 75 lbs or less). However, the weight is less important as the size of the material you use. For these reasons they recommend uses such as desks, coffee tables, foyer tables, planting tables, etc. But they wouldn't recommend things that require larger surfaces and heavy interaction such as dining/dinner tables since there is no cross bracing.

The Floyd Leg has raised well over their initial goal of $18,000 on Kickstarter (as of February 4th they'd raised $214,871) and they intend to modify the prototype model with a larger clamping area on the fastener, ultimately making the leg stronger and easier to use. Rather than the small foot that is currently on the end of the fastener, the new model will have a 1.5" diameter foot for a better connection.



Kyle and Alex are both University of Michigan grads and designers based out of Detroit. They met while building out a workspace in a former auto-garage in the North Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. The approach utilized a minimal set of materials in order to contrast the old with the new. After the completion of the workspace, Alex joined Kyle in the launching of Floyd. Much like the reuse of the auto garage — Floyd is a framework for the re-imagining of existing resources.

•The Floyd Leg website
•The Floyd Leg on Kickstarter

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The Elio: An Eco-Friendly, Revolutionary 3-Wheeled Vehicle Hits The Road.

It's green, It's lean. It's got three wheels and can be ordered now. Introducing the Elio.




Founded in 2008 by Mr. Paul Elio, Elio Motors set out to provide affordable transportation to those commuters seeking an alternative while providing vital American jobs.

The result is a street legal three wheeled environmentally friendly vehicle that goes from 0-60 in under 9.6 seconds and gets 84 miles to the gallon. For students, the vehicle provides a safe and reliable means to commute around campus. For those families with mini-vans or SUV’s, Elio provides an efficient and economical way to get to and from work. The price-point of the vehicle ($6800 USD) allows Elio to be an addition to a family's fleet without adding any additional cost to an already stretched budget.



Features:
• 84 Miles per Gallon
It gets 84 miles to the gallon on the highway. That means you can go from Detroit to New York City on a tank of gas – or drive from Shreveport LA to Dallas and back – then back to Dallas again – and still have about 110 miles left before a refill.



• 8-Gallon Tank:
It can go 672 miles, or thereabouts, because it has an 8-gallon tank and 8X84=672. Of course, other factors will affect your mileage.



• Eco-Friendly:
It gets 84 MPG on the highway, but you’ll be doing your share of city driving, too. With its city rate of 49 MPG, you’ll be consuming only 1/3 of what the average American vehicle consumes.

• Transmission:
5-speed manual or automatic. And yes, it has a reverse gear.

• Power:
An inline, 3 cylinder, .9 liter, 55 HP, fuel-injected, SOHC gas-powered, liquid-cooled, automotive engine. Top speed is in excess of 100 MPH, and the 0-60 speed is under 9.6 seconds.



• Traction:
The engine is in the front and it is a front-wheel-drive vehicle. With a low center of gravity and weight towards the front, you’ll get great traction action – even in the snow.

• Suspension:
The Elio is built on an independent suspension with unequal length control arms, coil-over-spring and shock in the front and mono-shock with coil-over-spring and shock in the rear. The ground clearance is 5.75″ — similar to most of the passenger vehicles you see on the road today.

• Brakes:
3-wheel disc brakes with the Anti-Lock Braking System on 15″ wheels.



• Safety:
Each Elio comes equipped with a Safety Management System that includes three airbags – a reinforced roll-cage frame, Anti-Lock Braking System, and 50% larger crush zones than similar vehicles. Preliminary safety tests on computer models anticipate a 5-Star safety rating.

• Quiet:
The body panels are made of a composite (which is more sound deadening than steel) and attached to a tight, solid body that doesn’t have a lot of moving (read squeaky) parts. These two design features help keep outside noise from getting into the cockpit and getting in the way of your favorite tunes playing on our AM/FM radio (that’s standard).

• Space:
The trunk space will be at least 27″ x 14″ x 10″, enough for an airline carry-on bag or a golf bag with the rear seat down (47″+).



Exterior Specs:
Overall Length: 160.5″
Overall Height: 54.2″
Front Wheel Track: 66.8″ (center rim to center rim)
Wheelbase: 110″ (center of front wheels to center of rear wheel)



Interior Specs:
Headroom: Driver 39.8 Passenger 36.4 in
Seat width: Driver 20.6 Passenger 25.3 in
Interior Shoulder Width: 26.8 in
Front seat Legroom: 42.7 in
Rear seat Legroom: 33.1 in

Comfort:
Elio has been designed to fit 95% of all people, whether it be a 6’8″ former college basketball player, a 6’3″ 365 lb man or a 5’0″ petite woman.



American Made = American Jobs
It should come as no surprise that Elio will create a number of much-needed jobs for American workers. The company is estimating 1,500 jobs at their Shreveport, LA plant beginning in 2014.

Price:
It only costs $6,800. That’s about what you would pay for an outboard motor to power a rowboat.

Warranty:
The Elio comes standard with a 3 year/36000 mile warranty.



When you own an Elio, you’re not just a customer, you’re part of a family. So we’re not going to lure you in with that $6,800 low price, only to mention things like A/C and an AM/FM radio are extra. They’re not. You get those items plus heater, defrost, the three airbags, power windows and door lock, seat belts, tempered glass, and windshield wiper at no extra cost.


Learn more and/or pre-order the Elio here

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Modern Caskets For Your Body And Soul. The 2014 Equinox Collection from Camaquen.

I'm not a morbid person, despite having written about modern casket options before. No one really likes to talk about preparing for death, yet it's a realistic inevitability. That said, casket shopping is not unlike any other furniture purchase. You want one that is comfortable, reflects your design and philosophical sensibilities and is well-made without having to, well... sell your soul.



Camaquen, a company in Ecuador, has more than 25 years of experience in the design and fabrication of wood caskets. This year French-Ecuadorian designer Enzo Cucalón (shown above) decided to expand the frontiers of Camaquen and restructured the company’s vision, evolving the traditional existing line of caskets into a more modern and original one that combines modernism, minimalism and ethnic art.


Mixing together the spirituality of Incan ancestors, the force of the moon, the brightness of the sun, the power of the earth and the magnetism of the middle of the world, Enzo has designed 3 unusual caskets: the QUILLA, the INTI and PACHA.

QUILLA CASKET:




INTI CASKET:




PACHA CASKET:




The Equinox caskets are beautiful and unusual white caskets, with bright colors on the interior and exterior, and made ​​with fabrics of the world-famous Otavalo Indians.



"The place where we will going to rest for the eternity has to be comfortable, energetic, sentimental, pleasant and full of camaquen."- Enzo Cucalón



Camaquen is located in Quito-Ecuador, magical territory known for being the Middle of the World; where the cosmo-energy becomes an important element for the essence of these caskets and where the Incan ancestors left their most deeply teachings, telling us that everything existing on the face of the earth and beyond, has a special and vital force called camaquen.

images courtesy of Enzo and Camaquen

If you never saw my post on beautifully designed modern caskets, see that here.

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Champagne Cooler With Branches To Hold The Bubbly. The Enchanting Tree for Perrier Jouet Champagne by Tord Boontje.

As part of its artistic heritage, Perrier-Jouët continues its tradition of supporting and collaborating with artists and designers. This year the brand unveiled "The Enchanting Tree", a creation that reinvents the gesture of champagne.



Six participants can pluck a flute of Perrier-Jouët’s Belle Epoque cuvee from the tree designed by Tord Boontje. At its base, an ice bucket preserves the champagne’s coolness. Perrier-Jouët and Tord Boontje collaboration is rooted in a shared appreciation of Nature, Art Nouveau & craftsmanship.



Inspired by Nature as an inexhaustible source of inspiration, the designer has reinterpreted nature light-heartedly to create a fairytale in honour of spring, with floral forms flowing through a golden hand-worked tree.




With his hand-worked metal branches, the leaves soldered one by one, the anemones lacquered in white; Tord Boontje has reinvented the tasting ritual to create a decidedly Perrier-Jouët moment.





In 1902, a spray of Japanese anemones designed by Emile Gallé heralded the emergence of an artistic movement, Art Nouveau, symbolic of a yearning to which Perrier-Jouët has always remained true:


Inspired by those iconic swirling anemones, Tord Boontje designed a fluid and flowing tree, a plant sculpture with anemones and champagne flutes for blossoms. Suspended in mid-air in order to maintain the coolness of the champagne, they bathe the golden branches in light, reflecting the pearly drops of water on the ice bucket below. A refined and resolutely modern Perrier-Jouët creation, lending a hint of the sublime to the tasting of a Belle Epoque cuvée.



Tord Boontje, an artist born in 1968 in the Netherlands, studied industrial design at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (1986-1991) then at the Royal College of Art in London (1992-1994), before founding his own design studio in 1996 in London. He draws inspiration from nature and incessantly explores the relationship between nature and technology: the association with Perrier-Jouët was thus a marriage made in heaven. "My ideas come to me while strolling in the forest and observing the way light and nature interact" explains the designer, who refuses to link modernism and minimalism.

Perrier Jouet

photos courtesy of Perrier Jouet, The Wine Sleuth  and Cocorosa

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