This is the ‘ORA’ concept watch, by Greek designer Alexandros Stasinopoulos.

The ‘ORA’ concept watch has a stunning and unique design that screams originality. It focuses on the display of time through an unconventional mode, by replacing the expected dial arrangement found in the vast majority of usual mechanical watches with a set of three interwoven tapes with a “tape-measure like” appearance – one which indicates the hour, one which indicates the minute, and one which indicates the date.

The casing design reflects an ‘inside-out’ design approach, as with the ORA Concept Watch, it was the mechanism’s
arrangement that prescribed the overall shape, in an attempt to enhance its uniqueness and create a distinctive silhouette.

Alexandros Stasinopolous is an award-winning designer (reddot design award, iF design award) educated in the domains of product design and product innovation & management, experienced in international, cross-disciplinary teamwork and management. A native-born Greek, he has been exposed to diverse cultural settings by living and studying in Italy, the Netherlands and Hong-Kong, as well as travelling around the world.

For more designs visit Alexandros Stasinopoulos’ website.

This is the Flexible Love chair, it was designed by Chishen Chium, who one day stumbled upon a small factory producing ‘honeycombed’ sheets of recycled paper in suburban Taipei. Chishen was intrigued by their use of the honeycomb structure to create cardboard palettes that were being used to replace traditional wooden palettes, and believed the material could be applied to create any rigid structure. Within days, the idea for FlexibleLove chair had been sketched out and turned into a working model.

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It can be a little embarrassing when a crowd of friends descend on your doorstep and you don’t have enough chairs to seat them all. However, if you have a FlexibleLove chair – you won’t have anything to worry about. This fabulously functional FlexibleLove chair, which is constructed almost entirely from recycled cardboard and recycled wood waste, can expand to hold up to 8, 16 or 20 people!

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FlexibleLove™ furniture incorporates an ‘accordion-like, honeycomb’ structure to create durable furniture pieces produced from widely-available recycled materials. FlexibleLove furniture, such as FlexibleLove Earth 16, are made from recycled paper and recycled wood waste, and are produced using pre-existing manufacturing processes in order to reduce their overall impact on the environment.

The name “FlexibleLove” was derived from the concept of a ‘flexible love-seat’ – seating that could hold from one to as many as sixteen individuals; changing length and shape with a simple pull at each end. A honeycomb structure, used throughout the entire FlexibleLove line, produces an accordion-like result that allows each piece to be extended and collapsed with ease.

The 2010 line includes FlexibleLove Virgin 20, FlexibleLove Earth 16, FlexibleLove White 16, and FlexibleLove Earth 8, and is manufactured by Pinzaan Company Limited.

Buy FlexibleLove chair UK

Buy FlexibleLove chair Worldwide

Ron Barth, President of Resource Furniture, demonstrates and explains their amazing line of Italian-designed space-savers. In modern city living, space is at more of a premium than ever before. Well designed, ergonomic space saving furniture allows you to live comfortably, stylishly and freely by making a small space change to your various needs and requirements at different times of the day.

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Radiators are a design feature that are in every room of our homes yet are often overlooked and hidden away. Radiators seem designed for the background. However, there are a number of clever and creative radiator designs which can make the radiator a key feature of the room which it occupies. But even this seemingly ignorable collection of valves, pipes and ribs can become an urban designer’s dream canvas. Here are our Top 10 creative Radiator Designs:

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Check out these fantastic designs we recently came across for RGB wallpaper. They were created for the Milan Design Week by Italian studio Carnovsky and consist of a series of wallpapers that react to different coloured lights. When the colour of the light source is changed, the wallpaper shows a different image. The designs were created for the Milan shop of Janelli & Volpi, a noted Italian wallpaper brand. Each features overlapping illustrations, different elements of which are revealed depending on whether a blue, green or red light is shone upon them.

This one is based around the theme of the human body:

This one is based around the animal kingdom:

Over recent times The Rainbow pub in Digbeth has risen to prominence as the shining beacon on the Birmingham nightlife landscape. Since being transformed from a sleepy Victorian Irish boozer in 2003, The Rainbow has built up a cult like following with its individual blend of good music, cool people and unique surroundings and has fast developed into an independently organised empire for the musically minded. Once The Rainbow pub was firmly established on the musical map and regularly packed to the rafters, it became obvious expansion was necessary. First came The Rainbow Warehouse, then The Street and now the latest in the spectacular line of Rainbow Venues, to be known as “Cellar Door“.

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One year ago The Rainbow was handed a noise abatement order, prompted by complaints about its stylish sounds shaking a nearby residential development. The future looked bleak for the popular venue, but the public took up the fight. Within 10 days 22,000 people had signed up to a Save The Rainbow Facebook group (indicative of the emotion the venue stirs) – newspaper editorials covered the story almost daily, BBC TV Inside Out scheduled a programme on the subject and BBC Breakfast broadcast live to the nation from inside The Rainbow. Locally based 60 million record selling UB40 performed a fundraising concert at The Rainbow Warehouse to ‘Raise the Roof’ – with proceeds enabling a sound insulating roof to be installed, which prevented further council action. Many would see the post abatement era as a time to consolidate and reflect, but that is not the Rainbow way.

The English compound noun “cellar door” has often been used in films and literature as an example of a word or phrase which is beautiful in terms of phonoaesthetics (sound) with no regard for semantics (meaning), and that synopsis applies just as aptly to the venue. How do you get more underground than The Rainbow? Only one way – turn the cellar into a venue. The Cellar Door opened on May 28 2010 and is under the very floorboards of the The Rainbow itself. True to form, Cellar Door provides yet another stylish modern urban venue which is indicative of the ethos which it represents.

The original Rainbow now consists of Bar, Courtyard and Cellar each delivering a specific flavour to the overall taste of this unique venue. With The Warehouse just a few steps further down Adderley Street, The Rainbow provides a unique portfolio of venues that it is incomparable to any other in the UK. This has earned The Rainbow a reputation that has seen artists such as Grammy award winner Joss Stone, mercury nominee La Roux and The Prodigy to name but three, chose to gig there above more established yet more homogeneous venue chains.

Landlord Kent Davis is now confident the pub can now play a significant role in supporting a “Birmingham scene”.

He recently said in The Birmingham Post: “We have completely gutted it and put about £150,000 investment into developing the space, and it looks fantastic.” “We are keen to develop a Birmingham scene, a bit like Manchester had its Hacienda and Liverpool had the Cavern Club. “It is our responsibility to provide the venues where this can happen.”

With future venues The Mezzanine and The Arena on the way, The Rainbow Complex will soon contain 9 separate venues on the same street that can be utilised for events of 200-5000 in isolation, or can combined by way of pre agreed road closures to create a unique self contained Urban complex for up to 10,000 people which is licensed until 6am. This is unprecedented anywhere else in the UK. Some are saying The Rainbow is now the best underground music venue in the UK, and I for one do not disagree with that statement. The Rainbow looks set to provide a haven of for the musical masses for the foreseeable future and we will keep you up to date with their charge to the top.

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This is the Amirko ‘Change It’ Wall, a uniquely designed interior wall which allows you to switch the colour of the wall to suit your mood, and also make colourful designs and patterns. We all get bored of the colour of our room sometimes, the Amirko “Change It” Wall allows you to have a change of scenery without the need to re-wallpaper or paint. The “Change It” wall is comprised of hundreds of individual cubic triangles that have different colors on each of its sides. It allows you to get creative and know that you can always revert to old white when necessary.

For now it’s just the pantone colors above that are available, however, in the future the designer plans to have a number of different choices for the sides. This leads to possible applications in a child’s room or an educational environment as well as the home. With the rise in popularity of open plan living, and therefore dividing walls, the “Change It” wall is an interesting option to separate any open plan living space.

Designer: Amirko aka Amirkhan Abdurakhmanov

TooMuchPosse! is a bold street label based in London & established in 2006. Now in its fifth year as a design collective they are busy preparing their summer collection available soon via their website.

(See TooMuchPosse – Street Culture).

Inspired by global street cultures from large cities such as New York, London, Kingston and Tokyo, TMP as they are also known fuse different design ideas, concepts and beautiful typography to create garment art for people passionate about well… looking fly. Here are some choice picks from their collections thus far.

Their range of Tees bring together a bit of the past, present and the future, elements of blaxploitation, reggae, graffiti and computer culture make for a very relevant collection today.

You can check out their website at TooMuchPosse, their blog at TMP Blog, and for good measure the kind TMP team have also been putting together some mixtapes for free download.  We will keep you posted re: the summer collection launch.