Casulo - An Entire Apartment’s Furniture in One Small Box

 It might not look like it, but inside this box, there’s an armoire, a desk, a height-adjustable stool, two more stools, a six-shelf bookcase, and a bed with a mattress.



Casulo, the brilliant, modular setup designed by Marcel Krings & Sebastian Mühlhäuser, hides furnishings enough for an entire room — or, heck, an entire apartment — in a small 31″x47″ (that’s 80 cm x 120 cm) box. Two people can lift, carry, and assemble (and then disassemble, when it’s time to move) each piece of furniture within the Casulo in about 10 minutes — it requires no tools for assembly — and every part of the boxy exterior is used, negating any need for extraneous, wasteful packaging. Smart.



Casulo won the “Abraham & David Roentgen Award” in November 2007 for its “cleverness, finesse and qualitative realisation of the idea” and we think it’s quite well-deserved; what a perfect solution for frequent movers and small space dwellers alike. More pics, plus a video, of the unboxing process

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Bamboo Notebook

Asus Eco Book – The Notebook Made Out of Bamboo

Long time ago, the Apple I computer was built in a wooden box. Since then, things quickly evolved and we have been facing the plastic and metal invasion: the notebooks we know today. Asustek is trying to revive the good old days and promises to deliver an eco-friendly notebook, made out of laminated bamboo stripes.

Bamboo is flexible and resistive, and harvesting it in worth-mentioning quantities is highly unlikely to damage the ecosystem, since it grows at an accelerated pace. The industrial processing of the bamboo wood involves using some glues and laminates that contain toxins, yet, the Earth is spared from forest wood harvesting.





Asustek have a history with designing notebooks from alternative materials. High-end users can enjoy the Asustek notebooks that are calf leather-bound or the more recent faux alligator-skin models. "Originally we came out with a leather model style-book", said Cher Chronis, director of marketing communication for Asus Computer International, the Taipei-based company's US unit. "It was very popular. After that, it was kind of natural for us to experiment with other types of materials, so we decided to go green", she continued.





The bamboo model is still on the prototype workbench and the company engineers have to ensure that such approach is possible, since bamboo wood will be subject to serious resistive abuse and at the same time, it will have to allow the heat transfer from microprocessors and monitors.

The notebook comes in a time when every major hardware manufacturer wants to ensure everybody that their products love and care about the environment. There are energy-saving components, lead and mercury-free memory modules and even peripherals entirely made of recycled materials, but Asustek is the only one to offer a bamboo-cased notebook. [source: softpedia]

See their website for the software http://www.steinberg.net/

TripleWatch

Though the idea of a cellphone watch is not so new, the TripleWatch designed by Manon Maneenawa has an interesting triple flip technique that allows the user to transform the watch into a normal cellphone. When used as a wrist watch, the phone has a speaker button that allows the user to answer the phone and hang up while driving.

NEC Tag

Somehow similar to the Snaked concept, the NEC Tag is a flexible phone concept that can be , for example, hung from a belt or wrapped around the user’s arm. Interesting is that the phone has shape-memorizing material and sensors that allows the phone to change its shape according to the mode.

Benq-Siemens “The Blackbox”

Black Box designed by Benq-Siemens uses a touch screen as its keypad and, depending on the functions you are using, the touch screen changes the control layout immediately.

Retroxis By Dark Label

If most phones presented here will never be sold in store for sure, the Retroxis concept phone from Dark Label looks kinda human, and makes us hope we’ll be able to get one of these one day. Designed by Lim Sze Tat the phone is encased in high polished polycarbonate renowned for its lightweight and toughness and has an invisible OLED display that silently hides away when inactive.

What You See is What You Get Concept

One thing is for sure about this concept phone, they could’ve named it shorter. Designed by Pei-Hua Hang, the phone’s name comes from the fact that this concept no longer uses an LCD as viewfinder for the digital camera, instead it uses a transparent frame. And of course, interaction is made through a touchscreen.

Benq-Siemes “Snaked”

Benq designers thought of women too and presented Snaked. This is a “reptile” looking phone, creepy somehow, but still is very cool. The Snaked is a fashion phone for sport loving women, because it also has body monitoring sensors to help the ladies keep those fine shapes.

Sky “Sleak n Slim”

“Sleek & Slim” from SKY is another concept based on touchscreen technology. The phone has a discretely glowing touchpad, hideaway keys and generally utterly-fashionable minimalist design.

Nokia Aeon

Nokia Aeon was presented by Nokia on their website in the Research & Development section. What is so great about this phone is that it looks like it will actually go into production next February. Of course, its just a rumor, but still, makes us hope to actually see it someday in the GSM shop. All we know about it for now is that its a touchscreen phone and it looks fantastic.