Gizmodo Australia » house

Mirror/Ironing Board Concept

Brian Lam — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:00:55 +0000

Aha! I hate pulling down ironing boards and then having to fold their screechy legs back up. Having one disguised as a mirror is a great idea that would save time and space. (Just figure out stability.) [Aissallogerot via Toxel]

An Inside Peek at Microsoft’s Future Smart Home

Andi Wang — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:00:00 +0000

BBC has a video tour of Microsoft’s new smart house—a future home that runs on technology to help with daily tasks, including an interactive mirror that gives laundry directions for specific clothing.

A teenager’s bedroom is wallpapered in a smart display that works somewhat like a computer desktop, letting you not only change your decorations, but also bounce things off the walls and create a playful environment. A touch-enabled kitchen counter also gives out reminders and can pull up information from items place on it—including medication directions from medicine bottles and contacts from cell phones. Head over to BBC to see the full video tour. [BBC]

$US5,000 Paper House is the World’s Swankiest Hobo Pad

John Herrman — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:15:34 +0000

Swiss company The Wall AG has a perfect solution for third-world shanty towns, semi-permanent refugee camps and approximately 7.2% of adult Americans: paper houses!

This isn’t mere papercraft—the Universal World House is a $US5,000, 390-square-foot modular home, outfitted with plumbing and boarding facilities to support up to eight (eight!) residents each. The secret of its construction is its “paper” shell; the resin-soaked cellulose, made from recycled paper, is shaped into honeycomb walls, which provide structural integrity and insulation to the houses.

Aside from having a convertible closed/open-air kitchen with table and benches, the Universal World House has a hidden killer feature:

It has been designed so that a family can slaughter an animal on the veranda, wash it in the shower and hang it, along with fish, on an integrated washing line.

Hooray!(?) Apparently a few countries have placed orders for the UWH, including Nigeria and Angola, but I could see how domestic aide organisations could benefit from something like this too. [BBC via Fark]

Kickit is Most Fun You Can Have Tidying Away Shoes

Kit Eaton — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:08:46 +0000

Shoes clutter up my apartment’s hallway because both me and the wife are waaaaay too lazy to put them in the cupboard just a few feet away…but I suspect if we installed this there’d be no problem. Because kicking off your shoe to get it “stored” between the bristles of Kickit looks like fun. The kind of fun that could turn into a dangerous flying-shoe competition. But, and it’s a big but, there’s a flaw: Kickit is a designer product going for about $US2500 (€2000). But I reckon you may be able to hack together your own from some planking and sawn-off floor brushes. [Crunchgear]

House Bought On eBay For $US1.75

Nick Broughall — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:33:59 +0000

The current economic crisis in the US means that most people are tightening their purse-strings and trying to avoid the seemingly inevitable move towards bankruptcy. But really, that just means that there are some bargains out there for the rest of us!

Like this house in Michigan which sold for $US1.75. Sure, it has a whole heap of taxes on it, and the building is condemned, but that just adds to the allure of the bargain. From what I’ve read on the internet, the town it’s in sounds like it might be a bit of a hole, but that still doesn’t change the fact that this is a bargain.

Even with the taxes on the property, the whole thing cost the lucky buyer about $US1000. Take out a 30 year mortgage on that, and you’d be paying what? 20 cents a month? Not too shabby.

Now we just have to hope that someone in Australia will offer something similar. Preferably in QLD – I need a holiday house…

[ebay]

Poufman Luxury Leather Seats Are Like Pac-Man Biting Your Bum

Kit Eaton — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:20:00 +0000

Pac-Man-like padded seats, kitted out in leather and with accompanying power-pill-like stools…sounds like a fabulously retro way to pay furniture-y homage to the ’80s arcade game. The Poufman seating sets come in a bunch of colours, but retro gamers keen to dot them about their homes had better have made lots of dollars in the time since the ’80s: the price of these things is unknown, and not listed on the maker’s website. And we all know what that means. [Product via Technabob]

Motorlight Variable Spread Uplight: Moodlighting for Lighting Perfectionists

Kit Eaton — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:52:00 +0000

The world’s first variable-angle uplight is apparently what Motorlight from designer Jake Dyson represents. Twist the wheel on the side, and you adjust the geometry inside the lamp so the beam it casts is a broad splash on your walls, or a neat spotlight. And it can cycle from one to the other automagically. Lighting fanatics, like me, will be thinking “neat! dynamic moodlighting,” and will admire the simplicity of the design. Since Motorlight is made in limited batches of 500, though, its high-quality design is matched by its high-quality price: US$980 each. It comes in five colours though, with special colouring on request. [JakeDyson via Dezeen]

Rockport Paper House Is Most Ambitious Papercraft Ever

Gizmodo US Edition — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:30:00 +0000

Back in 1922, a mechanical engineer began building his summer home in Rockport, Massachusetts out of paper. Originally used just as insulation, Elis Stenman soon began to make furniture and decorations out of paper as well. What resulted was Rockport’s Paper House, which is remarkably still standing after 80 years. Stenman’s grandniece is now in charge of the house, which was turned into a museum in the 1930s.

The wall material, roughly an inch thick, is made out of pressed newspapers, glue and varnish–which keeps it waterproof. After finishing the walls in 1924, Stenman began using paper to build things around the house. He would roll newspapers up until they were roughly half an inch thick, and then cut them, glue them and nail them to create one-of-a-kind pieces of papercraft.

All furniture in the house is made out of paper, except for the brick fireplace and the insides of the piano. Stenman’s grandniece told local reporters she had no idea why her granduncle decided to embark on the project, but quipped that it could have been because paper was cheap—everyone gave him the materials for his house for free. [The Contaminated]

Great Giz Ideas: Harass Your Neighbours With Your Wi-Fi Hotspot Name

Jason Chen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:00:00 +0000

We were setting up our wireless router in this our new house when we made a startling realisation. Our wireless hotspot doesn’t need to be limited to boring names like LinksysN or 2Wire1969, they can be messages to our neighbours that they see every time they connect to their router. Here are some that our crack team of jerks have come up with.

• YourDaughterIsAWhore
• KeepThatNoiseDown
• ThosePeopleIn1583LookLikeTerrorists
• ThatLawnChairIsSoAwful
• YourWifeCheats
• FreePornography
• IHaveYourMail
• IPoisonedYourDog
• IPoisonedYourKid
• YourPriusSucks
• GetYourOwnDSLCheapskate
• MyNetworkIsLockedJackass
• ISawYouNaked

We’re sure you can think of much better ones.

Home Floating Over the Pacific Brings Peace, Insane Envy

Gizmodo US Edition — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:14:59 +0000

It may not be crazy high-tech architecture, but there’s something about this Chilean home hanging over the Pacific that has me glued to the screen with a mixed feeling of complete awe, peace, and envy. The materials, the clean design, the floor plan, the breathtaking views, all of it, make it the perfect place I want to live in.

Divided in three floors, Casa 11 Mujeres (House 11 Women, named like that because it was designed for a family with 11 daughters, ages four to twenty) was built with bare concrete with wood floors, glass, and steel on a 45 degree slope looking down Cachagua beach, 140km north of Santiago de Chile. The bottom floor contains shared spaces, while the second level has the daughters bedrooms–all overlooking the sea–, and the top floor has the master bedroom, kitchen, living room, and dining room.

I don’t know about the 11 daughters part, but sign me up for the rest. [Dezeen]