Design, Science and Technology

Canadian design collective Les Astronautes has lined a disused alley in Quebec with hundreds of protruding pool noodles.

Laval University School of Architecture graduates Gabrielle Blais-Dufour, Robin Dupuis and Alexandre Hamlyn from Les Astronautes won a competition to create an installation in a narrow space between two streets.

Since the FAA has only just begun flying drones at test sites, it'll take quite some time before it can draw up rules and regulations for commercial use of UAVs.

INDEX: Award 2013 winner Daan Roosegaarde's project has come to fruition with the installation of glowing paint on the highway to guide motorists along.

The INDEX: Award pool of innovative designs in Copenhagen all focused on improving life, with the top design being Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde’s Smart Highway- a plan to bring intelligent roads throughout The Netherlands and eventually, the world. Now, eight months later, the first stretch of glow-in-the-dark road has opened on highway N329 near the city of Oss...

When the studio Ruetemple created a room in a Russian home meant for a young brother and sister, they didn’t take a conventional approach to the design. The two-storey space, called Interior for Students, needed to be a place for the kids to study, sleep, and hang out with their friends.

So, architects Alexander Kudimov and Daria Butahina filled it with some fun details like a mezzanine hammock and a moveable cube. They built a fixed space for school work and dynamic areas for play using none of your typical furniture.
The lower level of the 108 square-foot room features a modular seating and sleeping cube on wheels. It can be arranged as a trio of sofas, as a long continuous line, or even closed up and made into a room within a room. Fixed office furniture occupies the other side of the space, and it includes desks, cupboards, shelves, and a staircase. All items are made from the same materials so that they appear as one cohesive piece of furniture.

"We’re going to live in a world where you can take a picture of your friend’s lipstick and print it out," says the founder.

Choi created her own mini home 3D printer, Mink, that will retail for $300 and allow anyone to print makeup by ripping the color code off color photos on the internet. It hooks up to a computer, just like a normal printer.

"I’ve been doing some thinking about how to best define innovation in education.  I’ve been reading a lot of mission statements lately for schools and districts and keep finding the word “innovative” used, yet little sign of practices in the objectives, tactics and goals to back this up. The tactics  and action plan seem to be oriented towards producing test scores and the practices seem 20th century at best."