Category — Ideas

From the suppliers of outdoor gear, GSI Outdoors, comes the titanium Kung Foon, which combines a fork/spoon with chopsticks that slide into the handle – perfect for scooping, scraping or stirring rehydrated pouch meals or narrow pots.

Might look a bit silly at the dinner table, but I guess that’s why it’s sold for outdoor use… Not too pricey at US$16.95, but there’s also a cheaper stainless version.

The Titanium Kung Foon

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Japanese company Merry Shop sell ingenious little tablets of compress dry soil, which you can impregnate with various herb seeds and then just stick (with water) in a commonly found bottle cap. A few of these and you have an indoor herb garden!

Check them out on Merry-Shop.com (Japanese language)

Via

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These sushi memo pads are so very cool and the epitome of simplicity. A bit pricey at US$23? Good ideas come at a price.

Via

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The Handsome Bag Company, formed by Hong Kong born and bred Billy Potts and Joseph Ng, create bags out of the iconic Hong Kong taxi. The interior of the products are lined with fabric available in three different colours which actually symbolise three local taxis: red for Hong Kong Island cabs, green for New Territories and blue for Lantau Island.

Read more about the Handsome Bag Company: From taxi to tote bag, on CNNGo

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Nikolaï Carels of The Netherlands designed this wok for the Dutch brand Royal VKB. Called the boomerang wok, it’s a simple evolution of the timeless, oriental kitchen classic, that extends the front to create a cupped edge. This is something we all needed back when our feeble adolescent left forearms first wielded the wok and failed to create the flip that stopped all the food from flying out…

Via

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Russian designer Natalie Ponomareva created a really nice concept product of a tea bag folded up as an origami bird. Whilst infusing the tea bags in water, the shape reveals a bird as it gradually expands.

Via

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If you *really* like fortune cookies, you can get a permanent one made of pewter from artist Herbert Hoover who makes sculptures of iconic American snack foods. It’s a fun idea that also culminates in pewter versions of a saltine cracker, pretzel necklace and cookies. Perhaps you create your own permanent good fortune and keep it as a paperweight on your desk?

Fortune Cookie snack food sculpture in pewter

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Though it may sound hard to fathom how a shop can survive by giving out free stuff, Tokyo‘s Only Free Paper does this. It’s a Japanese initiative that collects together almost 400 newspapers and magazines for shoppers to take away – free.

The shop’s mission is to “get people passionate about paper and ink publications” – a noble initiative in these digital times, and though it has no income, there are plans to rent out itself as a gallery or venue space.

Check out more on Only Free Paper’s website

Via Springwise

Technorati Tags: ideas, Japan, Only Free Paper, shop, Tokyo

To combat over parking of bikes, the boffins in Japan have come up with this excellent storage system for bikes. Kept underground and stored and retrieved by a mechanical arm, the bikes are parked quickly and conveniently as well as safe and secure. Not to mention dry when it happens to rain.

Via

Technorati Tags: bike parking, bike storage, ideas, Japan

Expensive rents in Beijing inspired Dai Haifei to come up with his egg house. A two metre space to crash in after working at his studio nearby. The outside surface could grow grass making this a nice, organic addition to urban concrete that can also insulate the occupants inside.

If only this were real and mass produced. We’d love to see landscapes full of these green blobs. Perhaps their owners would differentiate and personalise their homes by growing different plants on them?

More on Abitare

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