On the morning of December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright eyed another chance at getting their flying machine off the ground. The brothers and five other men lugged their 600-pound machine over a quarter mile uphill and placed it on a 60-foot monorail. They had done the same thing three days earlier but crashed, breaking several parts in their flying prototype.
![Arty Benetton Researchers Create A Sweetly Surreal Furniture Line [Slideshow]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/642x368/article_feature/grandhornu_objetprefere_lampadario4-Lede.jpeg "Arty Benetton Researchers Create A Sweetly Surreal Furniture Line [Slideshow]")
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples, then you and I will still each have one apple," George Bernard Shaw once said. "But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." Along those lines, last month, over the course of a one-week workshop, a bunch of young artist-researchers from Fabrica, Benetton's communication research center, designed and built 15 pieces of furniture inspired by the favorite objects selected by the staff of Grand-Hornu Images, in Belgium.
![Five Rising Stars From London’s Royal College Of Art [Slideshow]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/642x368/article_feature/Iain_Howlett_Pulp6.jpg "Five Rising Stars From London’s Royal College Of Art [Slideshow]")
The Royal College of Art has a history of churning out some of the best designers in the U.K.: James Dyson, Jonathan Barnbrook, Alan Fletcher (the guy who founded Pentagram), Jasper Morrison, Thomas Heatherwick. The list goes on. An exhibit/ pop-up shop at the Brompton Design District in London recently showcased the next generation of RCA grads, bright young things who, if the work shown here is any indication, could be the Dysons and Morrisons of tomorrow.
The iPad's appeal is in its thinness -- one reason Apple's new iPad Smart Cover is backless. As Apple's own marketing asks: "why hide it in a bulky case?"
Retinal prosthetics -- electronic implants that do the work of damaged or missing light-sensitive cells in blind peoples' eyes -- are pretty amazing, but they remain crude at best because of one key design flaw: The human eye is not a camera with a faulty sensor chip, "but the first stage in a system for understanding the world around us," writes vision researcher Patrick Degenaar of Newcastle University.
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Your Facebook page is already something of a minor art show, highlighting your little place in the cultural firmament through photographs and likes and cheerful cartoon chickens. Well now, you can turn it into a full-blown museum exhibit.
Interaction designers face some of the world's hardest design problems: How do you fit the entire Internet on a handheld screen? How do you create a toy that teaches, but is still fun? How should a website behave, for it to go viral? And yet, interaction design hasn't gotten much due in awards ceremonies, having usually been shoe-horned into other competitions.
No more. The Interaction Design Association has announced its first-ever Interaction Awards. (Co.Design is the event's media sponsor.)
![Model Of Manhattan, Carved Out Of 2.5 Tons Of Marble [Slideshow]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/642x368/article_feature/2007-2009%20SONYU0734_side.jpg "Model Of Manhattan, Carved Out Of 2.5 Tons Of Marble [Slideshow]")
Manhattan being the center of the universe and all it was probably inevitable that someone would come along and do to it what sculptors have done to gods and saints and kings and queens since Greco-Roman days: render the place in a giant slab of marble.
"Giant" might actually be something of an underestimate. This thing clocks in at 2.5 tons. 2.5 tons! Your average SUV weighs less.
It's Saturday afternoon, the kids are climbing up the walls, and you don't have any bright ideas for keeping them busy. You can pull out that lame board game, crack open a bottle of "mommy's special grape juice" -- or use an app called RedRover as a lifeline.
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