Design

What would happen if you could take "The A-Team" and "Storm Chasers" and put them together in a blender? You'd get something like Tornado Junkies.

As their name suggests, this trio of young men are crazy about tornadoes. So crazy they think they can build a tornado-proof van.

Yes, this $5,000 Kickstarter project wants your money to build an armor-plated Ford to carry these Des Moines dudes down Tornado Alley chasing twisters. … Read more

It's a good week for renewable energy around the globe, with the world's first algae-powered building opening in Germany, and the official opening of the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere. Now, France is getting in on the action, with construction officially beginning on the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux, by Swiss design firm Herzog & de Meuron.

The project consists of three parts: the stadium bowl, including the sports field and the seating; the concourse; and the aesthetic look of the stadium. Located in the Bordeaux Lac region on the banks of the Garonne in the city's north, the stadium will be able to hold up to 42,000 spectators. … Read more

It looks like a fish swimming in a bowl, or a serving of living octopus in its own salt water, but the photorealistic works of Singapore-based artist Keng Lye are not even sculptures, but paintings. He uses a technique developed by Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori, using acrylic paint and resin to build up, layer by layer, images of creatures swimming in water.

The technique involves starting with a container and pouring in thin layers of clear resin. When each layer dries, the next "slice" of the creature is painted on and allowed to dry before the next layer is poured. It's quite a painstaking process, but the effect, as you can see, is stunning. … Read more

The beer drinking experience is already fairly interactive. You open bottles, clink them against your friends' bottles, and dress them up in little cozies to keep them cold. Apparently, all that wasn't enough for Heineken, which unveiled a prototype of its new Heineken Ignite bottle last week at Milan Design Week.

The bottles incorporate LEDs, micro-sensors, and wireless networking. The technology can detect when the bottle is just sitting there, when a person is drinking, and when it's used for cheering. Various actions are set to trigger the light effects, or it can be remotely activated to flash in time with music.… Read more

With a wave of your hand, bright lasers cascade across 12,000 translucent spheres that hang above a reflecting pool, creating a flickering, sinuous symphony of light. The ethereal experience isn't a dream, but rather Fluidic, a hybrid light show and sculpture that responds to viewers' movements.

Created by Berlin-based design studio Whitevoid Designs for Hyundai's Advanced Design Center, "Fluidic -- Sculpture in Motion" is just one of many interesting art exhibits on show during Italy's Milan Design Week, which runs through this weekend.… Read more

It's hard to imagine life without a limb -- not just the physical difficulties, but how it might affect your relationship with your body, and your sense of how you're perceived by the world around you. One prosthetist is taking into account not just restoring limb function, but also the wearer's personality and style.

The Alternative Limb Project is the work of Sophie de Oliveira Barata, who, taking her honors degree from the London Arts University studying special-effects prosthetics, went to work as a sculptor for a prosthetics company. In her eight years there, she created realistic limbs and digits for amputees who wanted their new limbs to blend into their bodies.

de Oliveira Barata has continued this work with the Alternative Limb Project, and her realistic limbs, molded from casts of the customer's own body, are incredibly detailed. But some people prefer to stand out in a crowd. … Read more

There's something beautiful and futuristic about bright neon lights against a natural background.

In a stunning series of images called "Neon Luminance," San Francisco multimedia group From the Lenz used long-exposure photography to capture glow sticks traveling down a waterfall. The resulting pictures look straight out of a science fiction movie featuring a strange new world unlike our own. … Read more

Sure, you could go out and get an outdoor heater, but we think we prefer the solution of a U.K. engineer who goes by the name "Rob Halftroll." He built himself a wood stove in the shape of one of our favorite lovable rascals of all time, Bender Bending Rodriguez from "Futurama."

Halftroll started with five old metal gas bottles -- two at 29 pounds, one at 42 pounds, and two big boys at 104 pounds -- and cut them into pieces to form Bender's body and head, welding all the pieces together as he went. Tube steel forms the arms, legs and fingers, and a chimney juts out from behind his head, neatly concealed.

It's actually quite a fiddly and involved process. Our hats have to come off to Halftroll, who did all his bending human style to create a wood-burning heater we'd never, ever be able to stop showing off -- and which, even in spite of itself, would be quite useful to humans. … Read more

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I sure wish I could type with my butt?" No, we haven't either, but that hasn't stopped us from admiring the QWERTY Sofa by Italian firm ZO-loft.

Alas, you can't actually type with it (otherwise you'd probably get something that looked like your cat had been sitting on your keyboard every time you offered guests a seat), but it does look pretty sleek.

… Read more