Design

Seletti’s A La Carte is a side table that looks like it’s made of oversized playing cards. If you have a fat stack, stack multiple tables to make a huge pyramid. The table is made of MDF and is available in black, red and blue.

Pernod Ricard’s Project Gutenberg concept makes cocktail mixing engaging and convenient. Spirits are shipped to customers in book-shaped containers. An iPad app lets them learn cocktail recipes as well as monitor and order liquor.

If the next Bond villain is a hipster, this should be his signature weapon. Man Ready’s decorative axe has a 3.5lb axe head plated in 24-carat gold. Its handle is made of hickory and can be customized in any color.

Van Cleef & Arpels’ Midnight Planétarium Poetic Complication has 6 stones representing Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, all moving at the same pace as the actual planets. A shooting star indicates the time. Price? $245K.

The Smart Grill is a voice-activated grill that adjusts its settings based on what you’re cooking, helping you through voice prompts. But it does have a manual mode for grilling pros. Consumer Reports says it will be out in 2015 for ~$7,000.

ModCubes’ basic unit is a cube with pegs on top, similar to a LEGO brick. The idea is to align and stack multiple cubes into different shapes and sizes depending on your needs. Check out the prototypes on ModCubes’ Facebook page.

Some of Nendo and Hashikura Matsukan’s chopstick concepts. The Rassen have helical grooves so they make a single unit, while the Kamiai have magnets that hold them together. More on Nendo. Images by Akihiro Yoshida.

Razer wants to make swapping computer parts as easy as replacing batteries on devices. Project Christine’s components are modules that can be upgraded as soon as the latest hardware comes out through a subscription service.

Henry Wang and Chris Curio’s patent-pending design is an update to the ubiquitous cardboard box. The Rapid Packing Container uses 15% less cardboard, needs no tape to be packed and easily pops open. Perhaps too easily.

To prove that the car battery it sells works in extreme cold, Canadian Tire commissioned a truck with a body made of nothing but ice, and then started it with a battery frozen to -40°C. Its body weighed a husky 14,000 lb. More here.

Print All Over Me (PAOM) lets you upload an apparel design, preview it on the canvas of your choice – a t-shirt, a sweater, a cap etc. – and order it straight away. You can even make money if you share your designs.

Designed by Benjamin Vermeulen, MAGfurniture are flat-packed furniture pieces made of steel and wood. The wooden parts have strong magnets inside them, making it easy to assemble, disassemble and repair the furniture.

An easy to transport prefabricated home with a cement wood board exterior. The 290sq.ft. home has a bedroom, a living room/kitchen area and a bathroom, and comes with the necessary wiring and plumbing. Video here.

Ok, so you can’t actually climb to or from your parking spot at this garage in Utrecht, but the structure becomes much less of an eyesore with its two attached climbing walls. It also features a nice bike shelter and public transit connection.

These screw-on plastic frames are designed for mounting vinyl LP jackets. They let you display your collection while still allowing easy access to the records inside the jackets. Available in black and white. You can also order them here.

A proof of concept for a flexible coffee table that can transform into small laptop desks. Made by Carlo Ratti Assocati and Cassina, this table is part of a series of furniture built using modern technology and with modern users in mind.

The Toyota FCV Concept uses hydrogen fuel cells to drive its electric motors, emitting only water as its waste material. Its two hydrogen tanks are good for more than 300mi and can be refilled in just three minutes. Available in 2015.

The Access Cases have micro suction technology that will firmly hold your iPhone, iPad or Galaxy S4 in a stylish exterior of luxury Italian leather but not limit the functionality of your devices by also making them easily removable.

Duffy London’s MK1 is a table that you can transform from a low and small coffee table into a full dining table in just seconds. It comes in two sizes, and there are steel and wood variants. Bespoke finishes are also available.

A pair of bookends made from two-thirds of a skateboard, complete with screws, trucks and wheels. You can also just get the tail. Available in four colors, but strangely, red isn’t currently an option.

A 3D-printed Rubik’s cube’s moves were made to correspond with lights on the Ars Eelectronica Center using an Arduino processor and Bluetooth modem to relay information to special software and allow passersby to try and solve the puzzle.

The Despacio is a 50,000w disco sound system by Jordan Acoustics, McIntosh, 2ManyDJs and James Murphy. Each of its 7 stacks has 4 15″ bass drivers, 4 12″ mid range drivers, 4 tweeters and 6 McIntosh amps. More here and here.

True Emporium sells entire room furnishings that fit in military style footlockers. There’s a living room, a dining room and a wine bar set. The furniture are handmade and built partly out of reclaimed wood and steel.

A wooden bulletin board with magnets embedded inside. It comes with a set of wooden accessories – a hook, a box, pegs and a shelf – that also have magnets inside them. You can also buy the board and the accessories separately.

Mercedes-Benz AMG made a remote-controlled 1:1 scale model of its Vision Gran Turismo, a virtual car that will be featured in Gran Turismo 6. More images here. In-game footage here. Skip to 3:38s in the video to see the model in action.

The Kawasaki J is a three-wheeled electric narrow track vehicle. It has two front wheels with a handle attached to each wheel. The front wheels can stay close for high speed maneuvering or set farther apart in cruise mode.

Korea’s Hobby:Design posted a guide about making “light bulbs” that don’t need electricity to work. Make a mold from an actual light bulb, then use it to make replica bulbs out of a mixture of silicone and luminous pigment.

If this groovy gnome doesn’t help you tend your garden, it should at least raise the morale of its fellow spirits. Designed by The Novogratz, each gnome has thousands of tiny mirrors on it, each applied by hand.

The folks behind the shape-replicating surface show off the full appearance of the device. The video also provides more possible applications of inFORM (beyond looking awesome). Find out more from MIT’s Tangible Media Group.

You can connect up to five of your USB 2.0 devices and defeat disorganization before it sinks you with this battleship-inspired USB hub from Kikkerland. If a ship in port is safe, what are five ports in ship?

This intriguing device uses small rods to imitate the size, shape and motion of objects placed under its sensor, all in real time. It was built by Professor Hiroshi Ishii and his students at the Tangible Media Group of the MIT Media Lab.

Marie-Elsa Batteux Flahault’s concept is the Bear Grylls of jackets. It has a built-in thermal blanket, flotation device, signaling devices, hidden blade, eye mask, gas mask, first aid supplies and a compartment for food and water.