I just found my perfect camera, complete with a chrome finish, calf skin leather, a Leica SUMMILUX-M 35 mm f/1.4 ASPH wide-angle lens, a lens hood and carrying strap! Now excuse me while I go find the 20,000SGD I know I have lying somewhere.

I have just came across these beautiful Shrub Tables by Liu Zhili, the same brilliant designer of the Sparrow, Dove & Nightingale lamps  that we featured a while back. I simply love how he exposed the screws for the legs onto the tabletop, making them features of the design rather than something he needs to hide. Seems like we have a thing for his nature inspired, uncluttered designs.

A simple idea that everyone can do to amazing results! by Maisie Maud Broadhead.

This is hopefully the bathroom of the future. Seeming minimal and devoid of any furnishings, it serves as a simple and straight-forward shower area, with grills on the floor to collect the water. However, these grills actually open up, revealing benches and a Jacuzzi beneath, instantly transforming the bathroom into a full-fledged luxury spa! Now thats the kind of transforming that I can appreciate. via doornob

Yes! Those are real human teeth.. just don’t leave them under your pillow. via ecouterre by Australian jewelry designer Polly van der Glas

Why does it seem like Japan is more attuned to the appreciation of beauty? Do the Japanese value the aesthetic component and experience more than other places? Are things in general better designed in Japan?

When coming back to Tokyo from abroad, my first impression usually is: What a dull airport! And yet it’s clean, neat and the floors deeply polished. To the Japanese eye, there’s a particular sense of beauty in the work of the cleaning staff. It’s in the craftman’s spirit — “shokunin kishitsu” — which applies to all Japanese professionals, be they street construction workers, electricians or cooks.

A Japanese cleaning team finds satisfaction in diligently doing its job. The better they do it the more satisfaction they get out of it.

The craftman’s spirit, I think, imbues people with a sense of beauty, as in elaboration, delicacy, care, simplicity (words I often use). Obviously, this also applies to bento-making and the pride people take in making them as beautiful as they can.

There is a similar craftman’s spirit (“shokunin kishitsu” or “shokunin katagi”) in Europe. Yet in Europe I can see it coming alive only from a certain level of sophistication. –In Japan, even ordinary jobs such as cleaning and cooking are filled with this craftman’s spirit. It is is common sense in Japan.

While Japanese are known for their particular aesthetic sense, I would say we also have an incapacity to see ugliness. How come?

We usually focus fully on what’s right in front of our eyes. We tend to ignore the horrible, especially if it is not an integral part of our personal perspective. We ignore that our cities are a chaotic mess, filled with ugly architecture and nasty signage. And so you have the situation where a Japanese worker will open a beautiful bento box in a stale conference room or on a horrendous, crowded sidewalk.

Are things in general better designed in Japan?

A central aesthetic principle in Japan is simplicity, but it is different from simplicity in the West. Let me explain the difference by comparing cooking knives. The knives made by the German company, Henckel, for example, are well crafted and easy to use because they are highly ergonomic. The thumb automatically finds its place when you grab the knife.

Japanese cooks who have special skills prefer knives without any ergonomic shape. A flat handle is not seen as raw or poorly crafted. On the contrary, its perfect plainness is meant to say, “You can use me whichever way suits your skills.” The Japanese knife adapts to the cook’s skill (not to the cook’s thumb). This is, in a nutshell, Japanese simplicity.

The knife’s simple shape is not seen as poor or raw. Beauty beyond fanciness is an aesthetic principle that is sleeping at the bottom of Japanese perception. A guiding principle also to Japanese high tech architecture and the minimal products of Muji.

Applied to the bento this simply means: Don’t try to be fancy; don’t overdo it. A beautiful bento is done using seasonal ingredients; it is done quickly and easily.

via Information Architects

I <3 Tom Gauld.

Putting eggs in individual cups. Good idea or complete and utter waste of resources?

With the amount of rain that we have been getting, and the way it comes, and goes, and comes again… everyone will need a pair of these fashionable Converses! via Cool Material

wow.

I am in love. Tell me. Should I get one?

Beautiful images from a romantic Cuba.

Theme Park Maps via excavation by spoonfuls

via BoingBoing

Simple is always sexy. Moare I bent wire chair by Lucie Koldova

“There is a middle road between happy and sad. There is a melancholic math by which we can express it. So much of life exists in this uncomfortable place between cheer and depression. And we wouldn’t want it any other way.” Go order yourself a t-shirt of it!

My all time favorite illustrator, Mindflyer’s contribution to Kult magazine. Singapore’s design scene is exciting!

There are doorbells, and then there are spOre doorbells. Not all doorbells are made equal!

Song Wei is one of the 30 artists now on show at the Red Gate gallery in Beijing, China. Now who would not appreciate a 80cm x 80cm fiberglass hamburger covered in Chinese patterns?

The London olympics is shaping up to be quite the event, if not in the sporting world, then in the new green-savvy crowd. Since the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, there has been rumblings that there just has been too much waste, both in the organisation of the games, as well as the architecture of the iconic arenas. What is for sure is that what London lacks in numbers (do not expect to see 2008 Londoners drumming led-lit drums in unity!), they more than make up in ingenuity.

Case in point is the Raise The Cloud project. Proposed as a counterpoint to the extravagance, the structure is meant as a “build by the people for the people” project, funded by micro-payments, projected by the collective thoughts of the masses, and shaped by the hands of all involved in the games. Best of all, striving to be carbon neutral.

Although still in its very initial stages of proposal, I have to say, my interest is piqued! Read more about it at raisethecloud.