The Spiral Lamp, a creation born of innovative thinking and reverence for everyday design, is a striking example of how simplicity and creativity can elevate modern lighting. This hanging pendant lamp is more than a mere light source; it is an artistic exploration of assembly, modularity, and the understated elegance of everyday materials.

At the heart of the Spiral Lamp lies a simple yet ingenious construction. The lamp’s power cable is not just a means of delivering electricity, it also serves as the primary structural element. Binding the outer shade and internal tube together, the cable eliminates the need for fixings, screws, or adhesives. This unique design choice allows for effortless assembly and disassembly, making the lamp not only repairable but also highly customizable. Whether for residential or commercial spaces, the Spiral Lamp can adapt in size, color, and finish to suit any environment.

Designer: BLOND LTD

The Spiral Lamp’s main body is crafted from a laser-cut aluminum tube and pressed sheet metal, showcasing a thoughtful balance between durability and simplicity. These materials can be easily adjusted in length to cater to different applications, from high ceilings in commercial spaces to cozy living rooms. This straightforward manufacturing process ensures cost-efficiency and scalability, making the Spiral Lamp a prime candidate for large-scale production and potential expansion into a cohesive family of lighting products.

The design of the Spiral Lamp finds its roots in BLOND Artefacts, an internal studio initiative dedicated to drawing inspiration from offline, real-world objects that have faded from mainstream production. The studio’s extensive archive of artifacts includes forgotten treasures from charity shops, attics, and even street finds. The inspiration for the Spiral Lamp specifically came from a vintage timber basket, whose structural integrity was achieved by weaving rope through flat timber sheets. This clever use of material informed the Spiral Lamp’s playful construction, transforming a practical concept into an elegant design statement.

The BLOND Artefacts initiative culminated in the BLOND LABORATORY exhibition during Milan Design Week 2024, where the Spiral Lamp was proudly showcased. The exhibition celebrated the creative potential of overlooked objects, breathing new life into traditional construction techniques and celebrating low-tech ingenuity.

The Spiral Lamp’s aesthetic is both iconic and understated. Its silhouette echoes the vintage timber basket that inspired its design, with the cable wrapping tonally matched components into a unified whole. The interplay between the internal tube and external shade highlights the elegance of the cable’s dual role as both a structural and functional element. This seamless integration of form and construction pays homage to the design’s origins while offering a fresh perspective on contemporary lighting.

In the Spiral Lamp, every element respects and complements the other. The cable suspends, powers, and binds the lamp into a single harmonious object, subtly celebrating its often-overlooked structural capabilities. This approach transforms a mundane element into a central feature, blending humor with practicality in a design that is as thoughtful as it is beautiful.

The Spiral Lamp is a testament to BLOND’s commitment to innovation, sustainability, and the enduring relevance of everyday design. By embracing simple materials, playful construction methods, and inspiration from the past, it offers a fresh, adaptable, and scalable lighting solution for the modern world.

The post How BLOND’s Spiral Lamp Redefines Lighting with Everyday Materials and Ingenious Design first appeared on Yanko Design.

If you try thinking about the most important smartphone accessory, you’d probably first think of protective cases and power banks. In reality, a charger is probably the most critical sidekick to a mobile device, to the point that there were a lot of ruffled feathers when Apple, followed by other manufacturers, started excluding it from smartphone boxes. Admittedly, there is an overabundance of chargers out in the wild, justifying that sustainability strategy, but chargers have seemingly been ignored by designers despite their popularity.

With the emergence of charging technologies like GaN (Gallium nitride), chargers can be even more compact or, conversely, take on less conventional shapes, appearances, and even materials. Designers now have more wiggle room to craft a charger that you won’t hide away in embarrassment but even proudly display on your desk, even when you’re not charging anything.

Designer: Gazelle (Wise Integration)

Like many simple electronics, smartphone chargers are commonly boxy in shape to maximize the space inside while also making the design compact. The last thing you need is to take out a bulky charger that sharply contrasts with your thin and luxurious smartphone but even then, charger designs often look either uninspiring or too technical. Apple mastered the art of minimalist charger design, of course, but not everyone subscribes to that aesthetic.

The Gazelle TheOne offers an alternative that turns the charger into a sleek and elegant design object. Its curvy, pebble-like shape makes it look quite appealing, and the layer of color on top adds a bit of character to the design. It’s definitely larger than your average phone or laptop charger, and it might compete for space on cramped power outlets or strips, but it makes up for that by looking good while being rather visible.

TheOne charger also challenges the status quo by offering a design that’s also more sustainable, attacking the problem of e-waste from a different angle. The charger’s base is made from recycled resin, for example, and the casing makes use of recycled plastics as well. Interestingly, the packaging for the charger, in addition to being fully recyclable, can also be used as a boxy phone holder in the meantime.

Gazelle is able to pull off this unconventional charger design thanks to the use of Wise Integration’s GaN technology. That said, despite the charger’s large size, it is capped at a maximum of 65W. That’s plenty fast for a smartphone or tablet, but it will struggle to keep up with many laptops. At the end of the day, TheOne is a challenge to long-held mindsets that chargers have to be bland and downright unattractive.

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New material innovations that can substitute the use of ABS plastic piques my interest, as it should of those conscious of the e-waste we create daily. The production of computer peripherals has grown manifold but ethical ways to dispose of the plasticky waste and electronic components have not grown in the same propensity. To that accord, the idea of a BioHybrid Device for gaming that can grow through biofabrication instead of being constructed on an assembly line really brings forth a sustainable alternative we could love to embrace.

Designed and created by Vivien Roussel, Madalina Nicolae, and Marc Teyssier; BioHybrid Device video game controller is a combination of biological growth and digital fabrication. It is (according to the designers) grown using a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY). It is then integrated with sensors and electronic components – during the natural growth process – to create a real device you can play with. How cool is that?

Designers: Vivien Roussel, Madalina Nicolae and Marc Teyssier

The idea of the project kicked off with the question; “what if we could biologically grow interactive devices?” To achieve the proposed outcome, designers have fused electronic components into living organisms to produce interactive biohybrid devices. This provides us with an idea of a future where we can have natural devices that can develop, evolve, and eventually biodegrade at the end of life. We would still need ways to dispose of the electronics: maybe someone is thinking of fabricating them biologically as well.

The base biomaterial produced by the symbiosis of bacteria and yeast is a bacterial cellulose traditionally used for the creation of sustainable leather-like artifacts. Designers have leveraged this and used morphogenesis for embedding it with electronic components of a traditional controller to make this BioHybrid Device video game controller.

These biologically grown devices blur the boundaries between living and non-living systems, in the process opening up possibilities to create interactive devices through biological and digital fabrication for many other applications such as robotics, medical devices, and wearables, in addition to the proposed usage in gaming. While most of it looks impressive, such devices would entail a complex fabrication process and require more maintenance to remain functional for a longer time.

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Imagine if your Wi-Fi router or smoke detector could completely dissolve at the end of its life, not into waste, but into a source for new products. This is the transformative idea behind PAPE, a groundbreaking product family redefining how we think about small electronics.

Crafted from densely pressed paper fibers and featuring a dissolvable, recyclable PCB board, PAPE doesn’t just aim to reduce e-waste, it eliminates it entirely. This innovative design creates a closed material cycle, making PAPE devices both environmentally friendly and cost-effective.

Designer: Franziska Kerber

Thanks to significant advancements in sustainable PCB-board technology, the electronics industry has made strides in developing dissolution processes for recycling. PAPE takes this progress to the next level by extending the dissolution process to the entire product, not just the PCB board.

Unlike traditional electronic devices that require mechanical deconstruction to separate components for recycling, PAPE’s design ensures that every part of the product can be recovered in a single step. The result? A system that’s more efficient, less wasteful, and remarkably user-friendly.

By focusing on affordability without compromising innovation, PAPE transforms sustainability into something accessible for everyday users. Its dissolvable materials and simple return system make responsible disposal easy and intuitive.

When you’re done using a PAPE device, you disassemble it just as you received it using its intuitive, hinged design and drop it into a postbox. From there, the manufacturer dissolves the entire product, recovering materials for reuse. This process eliminates the hassle of sorting or specialized drop-off points, making it simple for users to be part of the solution.

The beauty of PAPE lies in its holistic approach. Traditional small electronics rely on plastic housings and complex recycling methods that often fail to capture their full material value. These devices are prone to ending up in landfills or household trash, contributing to the 4.9 million tonnes of e-waste generated in Europe in 2020, much of which was never recycled.

PAPE addresses this issue by aligning the lifespan of its materials with the lifespan of its technology. Its paper-based housing ensures that the structural elements don’t outlive their usefulness, while the dissolvable PCB ensures that even the internal components are easy to recover. Together, these innovations create a product that is as kind to the planet as it is to the user.

What makes PAPE truly remarkable is its ability to combine cutting-edge material science with everyday practicality. By eliminating the need for mechanical deconstruction, it simplifies recycling while recovering more materials. It’s a true cradle-to-cradle solution for small electronics, a model for how the industry can transition to a circular economy.

The simplicity of the dissolution process doesn’t just make PAPE efficient; it makes it scalable. With the support of advancements in dissolvable PCBs and sustainable design, PAPE has the potential to revolutionize how electronics are made, used, and reborn.

PAPE isn’t just about creating better products—it’s about creating a better future. By rethinking how we approach e-waste and material recovery, PAPE sparks a vital conversation about sustainability in everyday life.

As the team looks to partner with PCB manufacturers and showcase PAPE’s potential through platforms like the James Dyson Award, the goal is clear: inspire change, foster innovation, and prove that sustainability doesn’t have to be a compromise.

PAPE challenges us to imagine a world where electronics never become waste. With its closed material cycle, user-friendly design, and pioneering dissolution process, it offers a vision of the future where every device serves as a stepping stone toward a more sustainable planet.

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I’ve never had the desire to have an indoor garden or a garden of any kind because I’m too lazy to take care of anything and also anything I touch actually dies. But sometimes when I see my friends who can harvest their own herbs and vegetables, I get a little jealous. Now if there only was a way that I can keep a couple of plants alive that I can use for my kitchen while still being a lazy, low-maintenance person.

Designer: Plantaform

The Plantafrom Smart Indoor Garden might just be the answer to my problem as it employs fogponics technology. The creators guarantee that this transformative way of growing food indoors is easy to use and maintain. Fogponics is a more water-efficient way of raising plants indoors compared to other systems like aeroponics or hydroponics and even traditional gardening. It’s also supposed to develop roots faster and produce yields faster since it delivers water and nutrients directly to plant roots through an ultra-fine mist.

Plantaform is an egg-shaped device that has a fully automated lighting and nutrient and water delivery. It also has a custom LED system that is able to mimic natural sunlight so plants can grow regardless of the season. The plant pods are also designed to be soil-free so there’s no messy digging around. The system uses non-GMO seeds and is pesticide-free. You can also connect it to the app that can help you from setup to maintenance to harvesting.

The device itself is minimalist in design and is small enough to fit in a small table or on your kitchen counter. You can choose between white or black. They say even if you don’t have any experience in planting or if you’re like me that has a black thumb, you’ll still be able to grow things in this indoor garden system.

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At CES 2025, Beatbot unveiled the Amphibious RoboTurtle and Shore Self-Docking and Charging Station, two groundbreaking innovations that revolutionize pool care while setting a bold new standard for sustainable robotics. With their innovative designs, these technologies bridge the gap between ecological responsibility and practical application. The attention to detail in form and functionality reflects Beatbot’s focus on creating smarter, greener solutions.

Designer: Beatbot

The Amphibious RoboTurtle: Inspired by Nature, Driven by Innovation

The RoboTurtle’s design harmoniously blends biomimicry and cutting-edge robotics. Its smooth, shell-like exterior mimics the natural form of a turtle, enabling it to integrate seamlessly into aquatic environments. This aesthetic choice is visually striking, while its streamlined design reduces water resistance, enabling the robot to move with precision and agility. The bionic multi-jointed limbs replicate a turtle’s movements, ensuring that its presence in fragile ecosystems is non-disruptive. Each movement reflects meticulous engineering, balancing strength and subtlety.

Underneath its elegant exterior, the RoboTurtle is equipped with advanced technologies. The adaptive buoyancy system enables smooth transitions between land and water, allowing the robot to navigate challenging terrains and dynamic aquatic conditions. AI-powered cameras provide researchers with real-time data, capturing everything from biometric details of marine life to environmental hazards such as oil spills. High-efficiency solar panels embedded in its shell further enhance its functionality, offering sustainable, uninterrupted operation in remote locations.

This combination of design and technology makes the RoboTurtle a versatile tool for conservationists, emergency responders, and researchers. Whether tracking endangered species, analyzing water quality, or responding to environmental crises, the RoboTurtle’s capabilities position it as an essential partner in ecological preservation.

The Shore Self-Docking and Charging Station: Where Function Meets Simplicity

The Shore Self-Docking and Charging Station complements the RoboTurtle with an equally thoughtful design. At first glance, the station’s minimalist aesthetic belies its sophisticated functionality. The clean lines and compact form factor make it an unobtrusive addition to any poolside setting. The motorized ramp, crafted for smooth transitions, ensures that the robotic cleaner moves effortlessly from water to dock without human intervention.

This docking station distinguishes itself with its use of wireless magnetic charging. This system eliminates the need for exposed ports, reducing the risk of water damage and ensuring consistent, reliable performance. The advanced multi-sensor fusion technology allows the robotic cleaner to navigate accurately back to the dock, even in complex pool environments. By charging the robot outside the pool, the design prioritizes both safety and efficiency, enabling quicker maintenance cycles and minimizing downtime.

The Shore Station’s energy-efficient approach perfectly aligns with modern sustainability goals. It streamlines the maintenance process and reduces waste, making it indispensable for homeowners who value convenience and eco-conscious living.

A Unified Vision for Smart Aquatic Solutions

Together, the Amphibious RoboTurtle and the Shore Self-Docking and Charging Station represent a significant leap forward in smart aquatic technology. Beatbot has taken a holistic approach, ensuring that each product complements the other while addressing distinct challenges. The RoboTurtle brings ecological responsibility to the forefront with its versatile capabilities, while the Shore Station simplifies daily maintenance for pool owners without compromising on sustainability.

These innovations show how Beatbot blends technology with nature in practical and meaningful ways. As showcased at CES 2025, Booth 52368, the RoboTurtle, and Shore Station are technological marvels designed to create a smarter, greener future. By focusing on design, functionality, and environmental impact, Beatbot sets a new benchmark for what robotics can achieve in aquatic environments.

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Acer’s Aspire Vero 16 laptop stands as a testament to sustainable innovation, committed to achieving carbon neutrality throughout its entire lifecycle. This groundbreaking device boasts a chassis crafted from over 70% post-consumer recycled plastic combined with bio-based oyster shell material, marking a pioneering step in eco-friendly technology. Its design not only promotes sustainability but also ensures ease of repair, contributing to a longer product lifespan and reduced waste.

At the heart of this laptop is a promise of carbon neutrality throughout its lifecycle. Acer has made a bold move by incorporating bio-based oyster shell material, making it the first in the world to do so. This innovation underscores Acer’s dedication to environmental responsibility and pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in sustainable technology. But don’t let its green credentials fool you—this laptop packs a punch. With Intel® Core Ultra 200H series processors and Intel® Arc graphics, it’s ready to handle anything from spreadsheets to streaming with ease. This combination ensures that your tasks are completed efficiently, making it a top choice for both professionals and creatives.

Designer: Acer

Durability meets style in the Aspire Vero 16. Its MIL-STD-810H-certified chassis can take a beating while maintaining a sleek, modern look. This “green but mean” machine doesn’t just talk the talk; it walks the walk, offering a perfect blend of sustainability and high performance. Whether you’re crunching numbers or creating art, its powerful specs, including up to 32 GB of memory and 2 TB of storage, have got you covered. The design not only focuses on robustness but also reflects a conscious effort to minimize environmental impact, appealing to eco-conscious consumers who refuse to compromise on performance.

Visuals are where the Aspire Vero 16 truly shines. Its 16-inch display delivers crisp, vibrant images with 100% sRGB color support, all framed by ultra-slim bezels for a wide viewing experience. Whether you’re working on detailed design projects or binge-watching your favorite series, the screen is a feast for the eyes. Plus, with a 1440P QHD webcam and top-notch privacy features, your video calls have never looked better. This makes the laptop an excellent choice for remote workers and students who rely on virtual meetings and collaborations.

Connectivity is a breeze with this laptop. It comes loaded with Wi-Fi 7, HDMI 2.1, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports, ensuring you stay plugged into your digital world without a hitch. The ocean-bound plastic touchpad and reduced PET thickness further emphasize its eco-friendly design, proving that you can have a tech-savvy device that’s kind to the planet. This thoughtful approach to materials not only benefits the environment but also sets a new standard for the industry.

This laptop encourages a change in how we think about our devices. With an easy-to-repair design, users are more likely to fix rather than replace, reducing electronic waste. This approach not only saves money in the long run but also conserves resources, aligning with the principles of a circular economy. The Aspire Vero 16 invites us to rethink our consumption habits and make choices that reflect our values.

Choosing the Acer Aspire Vero 16 means embracing a new era of technology where sustainability and innovation go hand in hand. It’s an invitation to be part of a community that values both technological advancement and environmental stewardship. As more companies follow Acer’s lead, we can look forward to a future where all tech products are designed with the planet in mind, offering us the best of both worlds. The Acer Aspire Vero 16 will be available in North America starting in April with a suggested retail price of $799.99.

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Although desktop computers haven’t gone the way of the dinosaur as some pundits predicted, laptops clearly surpass towers and even small boxes in terms of presence and numbers. The flexibility offered by these mobile computers can match the needs of most users, sometimes including gamers and content creators as well. The one area where laptops still can’t match desktops, aside from raw power, is the ability to swap out parts as needed, but that may only be a matter of time.

As laptops become the most common computers, the need for more modular designs also becomes even greater. From repairability to upgradability, laptops will need to adapt to the fast-paced changes in trends and demands, even if that might not make business sense immediately. This open source modular laptop could very well provide the blueprint for future designs that will deliver what users want, including a mechanical keyboard.

Designers: Lukas Hartmann (Electronics, Software), Ana Dantas (Industrial Designer), MNT Reform

If you consider that some laptops today have upgradable memory and storage, the designs have really come a long way from the original black boxes that these mobile computers were in the past. Compared to desktops, however, you’re still restricted to whatever the manufacturer chose for the other components. Never mind being unable to upgrade those parts, repairing anything that’s broken can become a financial and logistics nightmare, even when it’s just one of the USB ports.

The MNT Reform Next modular laptop tries to bring a bit of the openness of the desktop computer ecosystem to laptops, promising not just sustainability but also personalization to some extent. Almost every part of the laptop can be easily replaced, at least compared to a regular laptop, and you can choose the design or arrangement of the parts as you see fit. The parts on either side of the laptop, for example, can be swapped if their default positions don’t make sense to you.

The default specs of the laptop come with a few interesting choices, including a mechanical keyboard that’s rarely seen on laptops. The two battery packs that power the system also use four LiFePO batteries each for a total of 16,000mAh, allowing you to swap out individual cells as needed. By default, the bead-blasted anodized aluminum shell comes in Black, Purple, or Raw Silver color options, but the open hardware design allows you to make your own as long as they conform to the grid-like internal design freely provided.

Unfortunately, there are a few big caveats that would prevent this promising modular laptop from becoming mainstream. The biggest gotcha would be the Arm-based Rockchip 3588 processor, which is significantly weaker than your typical Intel or AMD CPUs in regular laptops. That also means compatibility with Windows is a bit of a hit-or-miss, which is why the system comes with Linux out of the box. The laptop is also chunkier and heftier than most laptops due to its modular design, but that could be a price some people will be willing to pay for this kind of design.

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Christmas, at least the actual day, is all but over, but it’s never too early to start thinking about gift ideas for next year. Music boxes are always a popular idea for the holidays since it can also be used the whole year round. It’s also one of those things that you can innovate on, design-wise since there are a lot of shapes, colors, designs, concepts, and tunes that you can play around with. Even the materials that are used can also be played around with, like with this concept for a music box made from recycled materials.

Designer: Hyunbin Kim

Snowie is a concept for a Christmas music box that is built from an unlikely source: coffee grounds. It’s not normally associated with this product but we’re always on the lookout for ways to recycle something as common as coffee grounds. This music box is also not really a box as the shape of the base is a huge round mound of coffee grounds, sort of evoking a coffee bean although it’s not really bean-shaped. Since it’s a Christmas product it’s more about a snowball except it’s brown since it’s made from coffee.

It also has a cute “hat” on top called a Snowie hat which uses aluminum material with a polishing technique finish. The hat spring serves as the winding mechanism for the music box component. Once you insert it on top and wind it up, the Christmas music is supposed to play. There is also a magnetic Snowie nose that is made from coffee grounds and other materials to give it a lighter color. There doesn’t seem to be a functional component to it other than to give the music box (or circle) a cute nose. It can also be either round or triangular.

If you mix the coffee grounds with other materials, you can also get other colors of the Snowie music box. Other than brown, there are also renders of ivory and white colors, although it’s not really clear what other materials can be mixed. Well, there’s still a year to perfect this concept or have an actual product in time for Christmas 2025.

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France-based Lou Tiny House recently designed a house of wheels for a client, Stephanie. The client wanted a home on wheels, tucked away in an idyllic location with views of the Pyrenees mountains and green pastures. She wanted a simple and cozy dwelling that would allow her to sustain a closer connection to the outdoors and nature. They created a tiny home for her that would help her lead a minimal and sustainable lifestyle. The home is a true tiny home in every essence, with simple luxuries, and an exterior that seamlessly merges with its natural surroundings.

Designer: Lou Tiny House

The house has a pretty traditional configuration with no indoor/outdoor spaces. The home is compact yet cozy, with natural light streaming in. It features one bedroom in the loft section and doesn’t have a formal living room. It includes a large bistro window that allows service from the snack bar area. The dining area is spacious and serves as a modern and sophisticated element. The custom-built snack bar is also equipped with multiple open shelves for storage. Seating is offered by a simple bench with built-in storage, while the kitchen countertop extension functions as a small snack bar.

The kitchen is quite simple and holds small appliances like a mini fridge. The furnishings in the kitchen are minimal, so the home doesn’t feel cramped or cluttered. A fixed ladder offers access to the loft floor, and this is space-efficient. It doesn’t occupy much space and leaves space for a kitchen countertop. The loft bedroom is kept private on account of a full-width safety wall. There is a separate section with a metal rod for hanging clothes, as well as a storage section with long shelves.

The tiny home also includes a small entrance section with hallway furniture. A built-in open cabinet is included in this furniture, while a sliding white door leads to the bathroom. The bathroom is equipped with a custom-made vanity and small rustic shelves. A composting toilet has been added to it. Stephanie’s tiny home has been specially designed for her, and it is ideal for a single owner wishing to live a minimalist lifestyle.

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