This giant tree house dubbed “The Wilkinson Residence” is located in Portland, Oregon. It is made entirely of natural wood and contains modern archetectural designs such as curved edges and round windows. Take a peek into the gallery below for some detailed exterior and interior shots of the home. Just imagine living in this thing!
[Via Gizmodo]
Helex’s “I-Vision” integrates the two main focal points of your living room–a fireplace and a flat-screen television. The HDTV is covered with a glass panel and completely disappears above the gas-powered fireplace when it’s turned off. This fireplace-HDTV hybrid holds a modern, sleek look that can turn any ordinary living room into a technological marvel. And now it’s on my list of things to install into my future home. Additional shot after the break.
Though this particular room was set up by researchers and taped under controlled conditions and safety measures, it serves as a healthy (albeit scary) reminder to keep an eye on your tree and what you place near it. Sooo..happy holidays!
[Via Wired]
XXXLamp. Designed by Bart Lens.
At 13-feet in diameter and 5.25-feet high, the XXXLamp is the largest ceiling lamp in production. The giant lamp uses three light sources, but it can be ordered with RGB LEDs that allow you to remotely control the color it emits. It’s inspired by a Chinese lantern.
The twelve-segment construction makes the connection with the lantern, but a pumpkin is perhaps the first association that comes to mind, while the suspension system recalls an upside-down hot-air balloon.
[Via KanyeBlog; Gizmodo; Deezen]
Ok, this deck is not a vortex in disguise, but it sure looks like one. This trippy, mind-bending deck belongs to Jeff Dauber, an Apple senior executive of all people. “I wanted someone to barf when they look at it,” says Dauber.
The Japanese maple in Jeff Dauber’s San Francisco backyard is not at the center of a carbon-sucking vortex. Sorry, sci-fi fans, but the Berkeley-based architect Thom Faulders’s perfectly flat deck only looks like its far corner has its own warped gravity. Ever since Francesco Borromini’s Gallery Spada, in Rome, forced perspectives and architectural patronage have gone hand in hand, but whereas the Renaissance architect employed a mathematician to make that arcade seem longer through foreshortening, Faulders used 3-D–modeling software to achieve Deformscape’s dipping effect.
[Via Gizmodo; Metropolis Mag]
Microsoft holds an annual charity campaign. When fall comes around MS “donates products, services, and experiences” for their elite employees to bid on. It’s a yearly extravaganza when it comes to watching for the highest bid to tour of Bill Gates’ Lake Washington home. Last year the winning bid was a measly $8,600. One lucky Microsoft employee and a few of his friends will be taken on a personal tour of the Gates estate by Bill himself–in exchange for $35,000! MS matches the donation too, so this philanthropic venture is whole-heartedly (very) good in nature.
Oh, what I’d do to go on a personal tour of Bill Gates’ home… I bet there’s all kinds of insanely awesome gadgetry and futuristic, out-of-this-world stuff that would just make my tech heart melt. For some reason I can imagine a Massive Dynamic feel to the place, with Melinda taking the place of Nina Sharp, of course.
Carbon 451 Lamp, by Marcus Tremonto.
“The complexity of curves and required thinness could not be duplicated in any other material while still maintaining its ability to support itself completely.”
[Via Gizmodo; Contemporist]
Roca Waterdrop Shower Room, designed by Wu Chenghou.
This concept bathtub features a large tacile touchscreen that “almost envelopes you” as you cleanse yourself. The screen allows you to control video and musicplayback, the shower, jet intensities, and water temperature. Oh, and did I mention the screen is 3D?
[Via Gizmodo; Yanko Design]
DYIer Steve Hoefer has created quite an interesting device. Upon tapping a correct sequence and rhythm on a door this Arduino board-based device will unlock a dead-bolted door. After artfully smushing together a microcontroller, a piezoelectric speaker, a gear reduction motor, and some PVC pipe Hoefer posted his dramatic results in the video above. Neat, huh?
[Via Engadget]
I will let designer Michal Mitek get your tech-heart pumping:
It’s always about the future, and in the future you guys are going to realize the need of doubling up your interior spaces by adding more than one function to a room. Like, you may want your bathroom to double up as a gym when you’re not taking a bath. So how about you get the Roca Active & Relax Bathroom? It’s this luxurious room where the sunken bath is really sunken, invisible till you don’t open up the floorboards. No windows too, instead 3 floor-to-ceiling LCDs giving you the illusion of a panoramic view.
Still not satisfied? How about we give you a bathroom where the screens are connected to the Home PC so that you can watch movies as you laze in the double bathtub, or take a shower in the rainfall! Super sex-citing!
Mhm, I can now check this off as a feature of my future home. I’ll take the lady model, too.
[Via Gizmodo; YankoDesign]
