Elegant, simple and space-saving, these variously-shaped pop-up lights come in thin packaging then open up to reveal a fixture and shade that can sit in unoccupied corners of a room.

Simple typography and colors make the shapes pop out against their background and create a complete design package (complete with cord) that is lovingly executed at each stage -a pleasure to unbox, or unenvelope as it were.

A conventional curved lampshade look is offered as well as various tilted triangles and rectangles, each with its own associated color backdrop.

“The Pop-up lamp is constructed from a sheet of tinted cardboard.The sheet is cut and incised, in such a way to produce a square, triangular or circular module when folded at a 90° angle. Intended for the corner of a room, the lamp creates a luminous shape, interacting with the architecture. It cleverly takes advantage of a space often unexploited in design. The Pop-up lamp is delivered in an envelope with the electric cord.”

The post Pop-Up Wall Lamps: Flat-Pack Lights Fit Inside Corners first appeared on Gajitz.

A new twist on an ancient technique, this subterranean refrigerator takes advantage of cooler subsurface temperatures to let you store fruits, vegetables, cheese, wine and other goods right in (or rather: below) your own backyard.

Floris Schoonderbeek of Dutch design company Weltevree crated the Ground Fridge to showcase at Milan Design Week, illustrating the power of simple insulation to store foods self-sufficiently at a stable temperature year round (around 50 degrees F).

The rounded volume is placed under excavated soil, about three feet deep, with an above-ground entry for access. Needing no plumbing or electricity, the structure is generally exempt from building permit requirements so anyone can install one with relative ease. The catch: there are still many things that will spoil in this setup, so you may need to be selective about what you keep in this system, or simply try to eliminate things from your simplified lifestyle that won’t work within it.

“The Groundfridge is an innovative take on the traditional root cellar. It meets the requirements of people with their own vegetable garden, who choose to live in a modern and self-sustaining way. Floris Schoonderbeek (founder of Weltevree) is continuously discovering and exploring new angles, chances and materials that he puts to good use in improving and enriching our habitat. With the Groundfridge, he presents a means for new world citizens who want to handle their food in an autonomous, independent way.”

The post Power-Free Fridge: Underground Geothermal Food Cooling first appeared on Gajitz.

Fragile, Handle with Care and other messages are meant to remind mail carriers that things should arrive in the condition they were shipped, with this exception perhaps made to prove the rule.

Twisting, turning, bumping and dropping all help shape these perforated aluminum sheets, turning them into unique sculptures that reflect (light and) the way they were (mis)handled in transit.

The creators of Post Post put it thusly: “Inspired by the frivolous handling of packages sent through the postal system, these are aluminium canvases to be sculpted by the mail service. They are available on our webshop” (though limited to only 111 copies).

The accidental ‘making’ is in the movement – a process seen neither by seller nor buyer. “Upon ordering, we wrap and deliver the becoming artwork to our local post office in Oslo, Norway, where the rough journey ahead begins. As every sheet is handled differently in the mail, each Post Post is unique. We don’t have any control over how roughly the package is treated, so it might come out really crumbled or just slightly dented.”

The post This End Up: Rough Mail Handling Creates Unique Artworks first appeared on Gajitz.

Somewhere between art and activism, this faux ‘black diamond’ setting made from pollution sucked out of the sky dovetails well with the likewise real but far-fetched project it draws its source material from: a plan currently in motion to pull particles directly from the air in Beijing, China.

Daan Roosegaarde, known for both practical and artistic endeavors, is already working with city officials on this plan to ‘vacuum’ pollution from above the city. This ring is an extension of that project, proposing to turn said smog into a wearable reminder of the larger problem.

The plan calls for “a system using buried coils of copper to create an ion electrostatic field that attracts smog particles, effectively magnetizing them and pulling them down. The result is sizable void of clean air above. While it cannot yet work on a city-wide basis, the idea is to begin by clearing hundreds of feet of air in key public spaces like parks, squares and other paths trafficked by pedestrians.”

Clearly this cannot solve the larger issue of urban air pollution, but it can provide selective relief where it is needed most, and highlight the contrast of still-pollution sections of sky against the cleared areas – it is a start.

The post Ring of Smog: Air Pollution Pressed into Wearable Jewelry first appeared on Gajitz.

Orbiting space junk, of which there are an estimated 500,000 pieces at present, presents a huge threat to the future of human space exploration – one solution that just might stick: lasers mounted on orbited telescopes. Other ideas currently floating around include janitor satellites and trash trucks in space, but these approaches are generally limited by the need for cumbersome vehicle of some kind to make its away around picking up pieces one by one.

This alternative laser system, based on technology used in particle accelerators, employs an array of thousands of optical fibers that act in concert to produce a powerful plasma pulse capable of slowing a piece of debris until it falls out of orbit and burns up in Earth’s atmosphere – no need to collect anything after all. It would have a range of over 50 miles, requiring less movement to track and deal with individual elements of trash.

From Motherboard: “To eliminate this orbital minefield, a proposal outlined in a forthcoming Acta Astronautica paper would take advantage of the Extreme Universe Space Observatory, or EUSO, a new Japanese space telescope that’s slated to join the ISS in 2017. The EUSO wasn’t intended for garbage duty—in fact, its primary aim is to detect UV light emitted from high-energy cosmic ray showers entering Earth’s atmosphere at night. But the telescope’s powerful optics and wide field of view also make it the perfect tool for spotting small, high velocity debris as it hurtles about the ISS.”

The post Space Lasers: New Technology to Blast Debris Out of Orbit first appeared on Gajitz.