For building durable structures and outdoor furniture, tropical hardwood Ipé is a gift from nature. Unfortunately, we've taken too much of it, devastating the tropical rainforest to produce boardwalks, decks and flooring for yachts. A more sustainable alternative to Ipé has been developed in a very untropical climate: Skien, in southern Norway. There a company called Kebony has worked out a way to transform Radiata Pine, a softwood sustainably grown in New Zealand, into lumber with the durability and longevity of tropical hardwood. This transformed wood has the same name as the company, and it ..read more

If you're designing steel outdoor furniture or infrastructure, your go-to material would be stainless steel—if your client has deep pockets. If they don't, you'd step down to galvanized steel, which adds a protective layer of zinc, offering the corrosion resistance at a lower cost. Konture Studio's Gravitas line of outdoor furniture There are actually multiple types of galvanized steel that designers should be familiar with. Here we'll explain the three most common types: Cold galvanized, electro-galvanized and hot-dip galvanized. (Note: When laypeople say only "galvanized steel," they typical ..read more

These elegant, double-walled Cilindro oil cruets are by Italian industrial designer Corrado Dotti. They're handmade, out of borosilicate glass. There's also a Cubo version… …and finally the Sfera. (The vessel without a spout is a salt shaker.) They're also available with tinted interiors. All are in production by glassware manufacturer Ichendorf Milano ..read more

These Vök trays are by Icelandic industrial designer Dögg Guðmundsdóttir. The name makes immediate sense—if you speak Icelandic: "Inspiration and the name for these trays were found in the cracks and holes in ice that are known in Iceland as vök." "The Vök trays are three asymmetrically folded forms. They can be used separately and stored together to create a space saving solution." "Vök is a part of the ROOTS collection, where Dögg goes back to her roots in Iceland and uses the shape of the trees, mountains, cracked ice and dried sand as an inspiration for the shapes of her new series ..read more

Most power tool manufacturers you've heard of, and some you haven't, offer some form of vacuum-connected dust collector for drilling. The lamprey-like devices use the vacuum's suction to stick to a wall or ceiling, while a hole in the middle admits the bit. Milwaukee has two alternative takes on this device. Their Air-Tip Dust Collector has an open-shroud design, allowing it to work with both drills and saws. Their crazy-looking SDS Plus Dust Trap Drilling Shroud is designed specifically for overhead work. The shroud can accommodate bits up to 8" long, and compresses via spring as y ..read more

This Space-Frame series of furniture, by Berlin-based architect Gustav Düsing, was designed over a decade ago as an experiment. It's a pity it wasn't pursued further. Made of Baltic Birch plywood, the pieces could conceivably be cut on a less-than-full-size CNC mill and would obviously ship flatpack. "The Space-Frame series…are based on space-consuming structural elements (space-frame). The aim was to test architectural principles of scale, structure and production on a real object. Digital and manual techniques have been researched and developed in a series of prototypes. The resulting fu ..read more

It's been two years since we first saw the 2x2 Ultra Bike prototype, which had electric motors—and gas tanks!—in each wheel. Produced by Russian company Robo Systems, it's now being offered for sale through mobility company TheArsenale. The current version of the bike looks like renderings for a vehicle in an apocalyptic videogame: "This electric two-wheel-drive, balloon-tired motorbike is a highly specialized machine built to overcome difficult, inhospitable terrain at slow speeds and as effectively as possible," TheArsenale writes. "The 2X2 Ultra bike is powered by a 1,000-watt brushle ..read more

A company called Elements Eden is taking square aim at the "design lover's" crowd with their repurposed airline galley carts. The staged photographs present them as Mac workstations, Monocle storage units and shrines-in-waiting to Dieter Rams. The company says these are designed in Thailand and manufactured in China. It's not clear if these are off-the-shelf designs kitted out with stock or bespoke drawers; at press time the company's website was down, and there's virtually no information (beyond price) on the company's social accounts. The smaller footlocker-sized units ar ..read more

I don't know whether to be impressed, terrified or skeptical. This is startup Astribot's eponymous robot competently performing domestic tasks: Tidying up a worksurface, preparing food, vacuuming, ironing, folding clothes, etc., purportedly without being teleoperated: My kneejerk skepticism is probably because I don't want to believe these kinds of strides have been made, this quickly. And I'd never heard of this company, which hails from Shenzhen. Then again, just a few years ago I'd never heard of BYD, and now they're poised to outsell Tesla. At press time, the company has released virtual ..read more

When installing raceways or conduit brackets, each installation screw requires two holes on opposite channel walls. One hole is sized to fit the shaft of the fastener, while the opposite hole must be larger than the fastener's head. This is so the installer has enough room to drive the screw. An example photo is below. For the installer to create these holes is time-consuming, with three options: A. Mark both sides of workpiece, drill the smaller hole in one wall, flip the piece, change bits, drill the larger hole; B. Mark one side of workpiece, drill the smaller hole through both walls, chan ..read more