The future of wallpaper is: glowing? That’s Philips’ vision for the future it seems, as the company is teaming with Kvadrat Soft Cells to create a kind of luminous textile for the consumer market that will essentially embed adjustable LEDs in an acoustic panel that can be hung on the wall to provide ambient lighting like an active piece of artwork, or even be used as a wallpaper to bathe entire rooms in soft tones of the user’s choosing.

The acoustic panels will do a lot to muffle sound and reduce echo in large spaces, but ostensibly they could also respond visually to sounds–that is, the ambient color of the room might be programmed to respond to the music playing at any given time or integrated into other entertainment experiences (kind of like those televisions that framed their screens in ambient color, but on a larger scale).

They could also be used for a room’s primary lighting, reducing reliance on overhead fixtures and windows. That could go a long way toward creating a less sterile feel than fluorescent bulbs in the windowless interior spaces of large buildings. Currently Philips isn’t saying when its ambient panels might hit the market or at what cost, but for now the company is aiming its creation at businesses and hotel chains. Make your own price-per-square-foot determination of what this technology might eventually retail for accordingly.

Airline Cabins in 2050 The "vitalizing" cabin

Airbus has seen the future, and it’s spacious, sunlit and full of interactive screens. Oh, and cocktails will be served in the virtual bar, assuming someone isn’t playing 18 holes in there.

After revealing its larger vision of what aviation hardware will offer us in 2050 at last year’s Paris Air Show–reduced emissions, lower fuel consumption, reductions in noise and increases in speed–the company has turned its attention toward the passenger experience, offering a sneak peak of the future via the video below.

What does the future have in store? Well, assuming populations begin growing less obese and the economics of packing as many people on a flight as possible are discarded (in the future, air travel–like society–will know no class), the future is much more comfortable.

When flights are at less than full capacity, unneeded seats at the rear of the plane will collapse and all seats will redistribute themselves to offer everyone an equitable boost in legroom. These seats will also morph to fit passengers’ bodies.

Those who need something more than a spacious, morphing seat in steerage will be free to join others in the interaction area, which can be anything from an interactive map room to a virtual golf course to a conference room or bar/lounge, depending on what passengers require. And a “revitalizing zone” in the nose of the aircraft offers panoramic views of the Earth below while re-energizing travelers with “vitamin and antioxidant enriched air, mood lighting, aromatherapy and acupressure treatments.” Right.

But perhaps the most easily digestible part of this vision is the structure of the aircraft itself, which taps a largely-hollow, lightweight bionic structure that mimics the bones in birds and could allow for the kind of transparent canopy pictured above. Airbus isn’t sure what it would be made of yet, but it could be 3-D printed–a technology that we know Airbus’s parent firm EADS is investing heavily in.

While advocates proclaim the superior immersive qualities of 3D, the current crop of 3D TVs can actually have the opposite effect on many people by giving the impression of peering into a box filled with tiny – albeit 3D – people. Design and advertising firm NAU proposes a different solution with its latest concept dubbed the Immersive Cocoon that looks to provide the sense of immersion without the 3D.

We’ve seen a number of devices that attempt to immerse a user in a virtual space using wearable displays, such as the Vuzix’s iWear VR920 video visor and the VirtuSphere, which also offer the option of 3D. NAU’s concept instead does away with the 3D altogether to place users inside a four meter (13 ft) diameter carbon fiber sphere featuring a 360 degree interior dome-display.

To transport the user into a ‘virtual’ world, the dome features sophisticated motion-sensing software including motion capture cameras, motion-sensing floor panels, surround sound and even air conditioning. Navigation through a recreated Pompeii, sunken Egyptian tombs or floating under the ocean with jellyfish, is accomplished with Minority Report-like hand gestures and body movements.

NAU says the Immersive Cocoons could be used for educational purposes, as a tele-work device or for immersive gaming with other Cocoon users across the globe.

NAU hopes that its concept will be picked up for corporate leasing or executive airport lounges where users will be able to purchase time in a public Cocoon.

The transparent CPT002 Aston Martin Concept Phone from Mobiado

British car maker Aston Martin is looking to leverage its luxury brand into the world of consumer electronics by teaming up with Canadian mobile phone manufacturer Mobiado to produce a line of high-end handsets to be launched in May of this year. Until then, the company has provided a tantalizing peek at possible future designs with the CPT002 Aston Martin Concept Phone that takes the ‘slab of glass’ design of many current smartphones to the next level. With a solid sapphire crystal capacitive touchscreen, the CPT002 is completely transparent.

To allow the screen of the CPT002 to be transparent, Mobiado has incorporated the battery, electronics and SIM card into the sides of the device, which are crafted from platinum. The only things blocking the view when looking through the phone when it’s in standby are the Aston Martin and Mobiado logos, what appear to be battery and signal strength indicators along the top and a series of dots along the bottom that appear similar to the dots on the iPhone that let you know which screen you’re on – although it’s not ‘clear’ whether that’s actually what they are.

A transparent touchscreen has already popped up on LG’s GD900 mobile phone, but only in the form of a touchpad that displays the phone’s number pad. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait a bit longer for a phone with a transparent full touchscreen display with Mobiado’s upcoming range not sporting a phone with such a design. However, other features of the CPT002 Concept Phone that are designed to integrate with an Aston Martin vehicle are more of a possibility.

Firstly, the phone would act as a key for your Aston Martin, automatically unlocking the doors as you approach and connecting directly to the car display without the need to pull it from your pocket. The phone also uses the vehicle’s GPS to show your current location on FourSquare, with the car’s display also showing the location of friends and venues of interest.

The social networking features continue with the ability to set cameras integrated into the vehicle to periodically take happy snaps and video that can be uploaded with information about passing cities and landmarks to Twitter and FaceBook – perfect for making your friends green with envy over the exotic locales you’re visiting in your luxury automobile.

Mobiado also makes use of the CPT002′s accelerometer in an innovative way. In the event of an accident, accelerometer information from the phone sitting in the driver’s pocket is transmitted to the car to provide information about the driver’s movement from within the car seat to allow for more effective deployment of safety features such as airbag sequence, timing and seatbelt stiffening.

Whether any of these features will appear in Mobiado’s upcoming Aston Martin range or whether the collaboration will simply result in phones with the usual feature set with an Aston Martin logo emblazoned across them remains to be seen. All will be revealed in May when Mobiado launches its Aston Martin range.

The Rolltop concept proposes wrapping a flexible OLED display around a central column for easy transport, and unrolling it when needed for tablet, monitor or laptop functionality

Notebooks and tablets already offer pretty convenient computing on-the-go solutions, but Germany’s Orkin Design proposes rolling up both devices into one ultra-portable package. The Rolltop concept will take advantage of advances in flexible OLED and touchscreen technologies to create a cylinder-shaped laptop computer that can be rolled out to form a notebook, a tablet, or display monitor. The concept has been floating around for a while, but has recently received a few tweaks to the design. Although specifics are in short supply, read on for what we do know …

Rather than carry around a notebook in a laptop bag, full to the brim with all manner of cables, the Rolltop concept proposes bringing everything together in a flat panel display that’s wrapped around a central cylinder. The top of the column detaches and acts as a power plug while the carry strap doubles as a power cord (presumably some sort of battery technology is also included, although this has not been mentioned). The central column also contains speakers, a camera, USB ports, and a LAN port.

After unlocking the catch, the user would roll out the Rolltop display like a mat and then either leave it flat for 17-inch tablet computing, or raise one end up for something resembling a notebook. The lower part of the screen is then used for keying on a virtual, onscreen keyboard while the upper part becomes a 13-inch display for viewing content. A pull-out support at the back also allows the flattened device to be used as a monitor-like display, and a stylus pen has been incorporated into the body of the panel.

When rolled up, Rolltop will be 11 inches (28 cm) long and have a 3.26-inch (8.3-cm) diameter – and that’s about all we can tell you. As it’s a concept designed to be built in the future, some of the technology kinks are still being worked on, but Orkin has stated its intention to see this design through to an actual, real-world product. There are, of course, quite a number of technical hurdles to overcome before that happens and unfortunately the designers do little to shed light on how such difficulties will be dealt with, leaving us to speculate.

It requires no great stretch of the imagination to visualize the various technologies already used in dual-screen notebooks, all-in-one computers and cutting edge tablets being incorporated into the Rolltop. Recent developments in bendy screen technology might also make this device a current possibility. However, details on how the internal components like processors, memory, storage and graphics cards will be dealt with have not been forthcoming, so it looks like we’re just going to have to wait until there is more substance to this project.

In the meantime, have a look at the following video of how the designers see Rolltop being used and let us know your thoughts on this appealing concept.

Power Flowers could become a common sight in towns and cities

Arguments still rage on, but it’s generally accepted that we need to roll out more sustainable power solutions and break away from our reliance on fuels that are going to disappear one day. As advances in solar, wave and wind technologies gather pace, Dutch design house NL Architects has been looking at ways to bring wind turbines closer to where the power they produce is needed, instead of being located on remote hillsides. Inspired by a vertical-axis turbine called Eddy, the team thinks the answer may lie in tree-like creations named Power Flowers.

While most of us will offer strong vocal backing for the construction of wind farms, that can soon change if someone suggests building one nearby. As a result, the tri-blade towers get exiled to the middle of nowhere – or even further away. Instead of having a few high performance giants scattered throughout the land, NL Architects proposes a structure that would bring a few less efficient turbines together and place them closer to the users of the power they generate.

Embarking on the project, the designers asked themselves if it was possible to turn windmills into objects of desire. Bringing a few turbines together on a tree-like structure seemed the way to go, offering not-too-unpleasant aesthetics and power generation in one package. Using the familiar three-bladed turbine for such a creation would lead to similar issues as those currently faced by wind farm builders, so the team opted for the less efficient but not so unwieldy vertical-axis turbine instead.

The NL Architects design team has based its creation on an existing turbine created by Urban Green Energy called Eddy. The makers say that Eddy can be assembled in less than an hour, is safe to use in winds up to 120 mph (193 kph) and will last for at least 20 years. The Power Flowers structure would feature a hollow steel column with branches at the top. These branches would be home to either three or 12 Eddy-like turbines and could be deployed closer to, or even within, urban environments such as parks, streets or roadways.

Although vertical-axis turbines are considered less efficient than their tri-bladed bigger brothers, the Power Flowers design would allow for more of them to be packed into locations otherwise unavailable.

Using figures provided by Eddy’s manufacturer, the team reckons that a three-turbine Power Flowers structure would generate over 13,000 kWh of power every year at an average wind speed of 5 meters per second and generate as little as 42.8db of noise at 12 meters per second. Each 12-turbine structure’s annual power output for the same average wind speed is calculated at 55,000 kWh.

There are of course unresolved practical and engineering issues to overcome, which would make it very interesting to see if such a structure could actually jump from design software into the real world … after which, we’d be watching closely for what sort of statistics would actually be produced and how such a thing would be received by the public at large.

Putting all that aside for a moment, would you object to one of these creations appearing outside your bedroom window or in the middle of your local park?

The Double USB concept from designer Ma Yi Xuan would allow users to plug in a device without first making sure the connector was the right way up

Admittedly, it’s not a major headache, but it is an irritation nonetheless. I’m talking about having to make sure that the male USB-A connector is the right way up before you slot it into the female socket. Designer Ma Yi Xuan has come up with one of those simple, effective ideas where you have to wonder why no one else has gone there before. The Double USB concept features a couple of spring-loaded plastic connectors laid one on top of the other with the metal strips pointing inwards. The idea is that whichever way you push in your USB plug, it will always connect.

The way it is at the moment, a USB-A plug generally consists of a metal housing that encases a plastic divider sporting connector strips facing inward, that sits at one end of the housing. A similar plastic divider sits at one end of the receiving port on the device, again with the strips facing inward. When the two are brought together, a lovely snug and secure connection is made and whatever you’re connecting via USB begins to work… but you have to make sure that you insert the USB connector the right way up.

True, if you don’t get it the right way up, then it won’t push into the receiving port and you just turn it over in your hand and try again. However, the Double USB design from Ma Yi Xuan makes things even simpler. As you push a USB connector into the port on your device, whichever of the two plastic contact plates inside the metal housing is blocked by the receiving port’s equivalent simply pushes back within the outer shell of the double USB connector end. This leaves the other to marry up with the device port’s contact strips and away you go. When you pull the plug out, the spring brings back the hidden contact plate for next time.

For those of us who have wasted way too much time fumbling and stretching behind an inaccessible computer tower – so much so that it would have been much better just to pull the whole thing out from its cubby hole, connect the USB device in plain view and then push it back in – this would be most welcome indeed. We only hope that the mighty powers who oversee the world of USB take note, and something like this is made real in the near future.

Russian architectural firm Remistudio has taken the concept of a man-made biosphere and gone to sea with its vision for the floating "Ark Hotel." Designed to withstand floods, tidal waves and rising ocean levels as well as earthquakes and other natural disasters, the hotel concept would float and function independently on the surface of a body of water, providing a green, self-sustaining environment for guests who presumably, would never have to leave.

The shell-inspired Ark design has a load-bearing system of arches and cables which maintain an even weight distribution to withstand earthquakes, whilst the prefabricated frame allows for a fast and easy construction.

The internal garden provides a lush escape for guests by acting as a greenhouse and enough daylight is filtered throughout the internal rooms to reduce the need for lighting.

The design also integrates photovoltaic solar cells, a rainwater collection system and a frame that is protected with layer of self-cleaning and recyclable ethyltetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) – the same material used in the Beijing National Aquatic Center.

Aside from the eco-credentials, it’s a stunning design that seems to jump straight out of a science-fiction film. We can only hope that the worst global warming predictions prove inaccurate and it doesn’t become the 22nd Century’s holiday destination of choice.

The Ark was designed by Remistudio with the assistance of the International Union of Architects’ program “Architecture for Disaster Relief.”

Considering the fact that a large section of the world population has to travel miles every day to get a pot of drinking water to quench their thirst, preservation of water becomes our primary responsibility, no matter if we are living in places with scarce or abundant water resources. Emphasizing the conservation of water, South Korean designer Jang Wooseok has developed an innovative sink that requires a bit of toil to get water for your daily use. Dubbed “Bisynk,” the new faucet removes the lever and has to be paddled like an exercise bike to acquire water. The creative accessory, integrating the paddle to power the faucet, not only helps in water conservation but also keeps the user in a good shape. In other words, now users have to sweat it out to earn water for their daily consumption.

i dropper this wonderful stylus pen for an intuitive connective experience on mobile devices. Gadgets like smart phones, laptops, and PDAs form the essence of our environment these days and the intuitive i dropper interface allows you to connect fast and move data between devices in a jiffy. Modeled on the eyedropper, this new-age thang allows you to “suck in” and “drop out” information such as a mobile application, text, or an image.
This easy step eliminates the complexities of existing transmission process between devices to an intuitive eyedropper method.

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