Archive Category: Home & Garden
World's Most Expensive Home: $2 Billion Skyscraper!
When the Ambani residence is finished next year, it will be the most expensive home in the world: a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai. The cost? $2 billion!
But the Ambani family can well afford it, because Mukesh Ambani, head of India’s petrochemical giant Reliance Industries, is the fifth richest man in the world and is worth $43 billion.
Forbes has the story:
The home will cost more than a hotel or high-rise of similar size because of its custom measurements and fittings: A hotel or condominium has a common layout, replicated on every floor, and uses the same materials throughout the building (such as door handles, floors, lamps and window treatments).
The Ambani home, called Antilla, differs in that no two floors are alike in either plans or materials used. At the request of Nita Ambani, say the designers, if a metal, wood or crystal is part of the ninth-floor design, it shouldn’t be used on the eleventh floor, for example. The idea is to blend styles and architectural elements so spaces give the feel of consistency, but without repetition.
Antilla’s shape is based on Vaastu, an Indian tradition much like Feng Shui that is said to move energy beneficially through the building by strategically placing materials, rooms and objects.
Link | Photo Gallery – via Growabrain
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Let It Ride Coffee Table
Neatorama reader Hugo Brown told us about a coffee table he designed and made: a Let It Ride board game coffee table complete with stormtrooper, unicorn, and karma. No words on how the game is played, though.
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Coffin Couches
The guys at CoffinCouches.com sells sofas made from recycled coffins (coffins that are not used for burial because of cosmetic defects):
Our niche happens to be 18 gauge steel coffins which we collected from local funeral homes primarily in Southern California. It is a health and safety law that funeral homes cannot resell used coffins to the general public. We approached funeral directors with the attitude of recycling. These coffins are not used for burial due to slight cosmetic inconsistencies. They are reconfigured and modified resulting in a finished product – a unique one a kind coffin couch.
If you notice (although it may be too small) the six cast iron heavy duty legs are embossed with the universal biohazard insignia. The reason we utilized this sign was because safety was our utmost concern. If you are not aware, once a human body is placed in a coffin it is considered biohazard tissue. The legs have the embossed insignia for
precautionary reasons in the event body fluids are exchanged on these coffins. Perhaps you would feel safe knowing that you are in designated biohazard scene! Ha!!
Link – Thanks Piper Kinison!
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The Source of Women's Extra Housework: Their Husbands!
University of Michigan researchers have just discovered the reason why married women always have so much housework to do: their husbands!
A new study from the University of Michigan shows that having a husband creates an extra seven hours of extra housework a week for women. But a wife saves her husband from an hour of chores around the house each week.
"It’s a well-known pattern. There’s still a significant reallocation of labor that occurs at marriage — men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor," said Frank Stafford, of the university’s Institute for Social Research (ISR), who directed the study.
"And the situation gets worse for women when they have children," he added in a statement.
Link – via Miss Cellania
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Monkey Spoon
The Spoon Museum has a wonderful entry on "Monkey Spoons," a type of unusual spoon used by the Dutch settler in the New York/Hudson River area to commemorate birth, marriage, and death:
The English and some continental societies placed a great emphasis on births. The occasion of a birth was a blessed event and parties and gatherings were held. Prosperous citizens would often give an apostle spoon to new born babies at the time of their christening. The silver spoons bore the image of an apostle as the finial. The hope was that the baby would observe this finial every time it was fed. One spoon was often used by a person for their entire life. The phrase to "be born with a silver spoon" stems from this practice.
But the Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley region were not as religious as other groups and they did not place the same emphasis on births. Instead they place greater emphasis on marriage and a very heavy emphasis on death. They did, however, adapt the concept of using a spoon to symbolize these important life transitions.
But where did the term "Monkey Spoon" comes from?
That is a good question, and no one knows for sure. Several hypotheses have been made and you are free to accept the one that suits you.
1. Since the monkey spoons all have a hook on the stem and they hang by that hook, it would "look like a monkey hanging by its tail" (my favorite).
2. Most monkey spoons have a small figural emblem on the high part of the curve. I haven’t seen any that look like a monkey (Some later reproductions supposedly had a monkey as a word play on the name), but there is one style that is very hard to figure out. Some people see a "monkey" in this figure.
3. When people drink too much they often act strangely. In Dutch the term "zuiging the monkey" is a reference to drunkeness.
Take your choice. There is no "wrong" answer.
Link – via Lisa Rogak, Thanks Stefanie Hutson!
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Pooktree Arbosculpture and Other Twisted Trees
That’s Peter of Pooktre Tree Shapers, who specializes in shaping trees as they grow in pre-determined shapes (sort of like a living sculpture!): Link
Check out more "twisted" trees at Web Urbanist’s neat post: 25 Seriously Twisted Trees: From Uncanny Urban Overgrowth to Awesome Arbosculpture – Thanks Bjorn!
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Stainless Steel Chaise Lounge
That’s a stainless steel chaise lounge created by P. Cazzaniga for MDF Italia – sure it looks sleek and futuristic, but do you think it’s comfortable to lie down on one?
Link | Original Website (in Italian, click on "prodotti" then "divani e poltrone") – Thanks John!
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Best Bed Sheet and Pillow Case EVAR!
Photo: Crys [Flickr]
When Alice Taylor of the wonderful Wonderland Blog visited her in-laws, she was greeted by the best bed linen evar: ET bed sheet with Star Wars pillow case! Link
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Christiaan Postma's Clock
That gibberish on a blackboard is actually a clock, made by Dutch industrial designer Christiaan Postma. He used over 150 individual clock mechanism to spell out the hour!
Link – via CrunchGear
To get a full appreciation of how it works, see this Flash animation of the clock in fast forward.
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Inflatable Toast Mattress
Some things in life are so ridiculous yet so awesome that they leave us breathless. This may just be one of those things: behold, the Inflatable Toast Mattress!
Breakfast in bed? No, breakfast is bed! Link – via Fabulist
(Yes, yes, it’s late for an April Fool’s joke post but come on, it was funny. And someone should really make it.)
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Stacked
Stacked: it’s three cups in one. This coffee cup doesn’t offer any enhanced features or new technology; it just looks really cool. Link -via the Presurfer
As a side note, drinking coffee and teeth that look like this are totally incompatible in the real world.
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How To Break Down a Door
The Art of Manliness blog has a post about How to Break Down a Door … Here it is, just in case you need to (like a burning building or something like that):
Now, from my experience, it’s virtually impossible to kick open a properly installed exterior door with deadbolt locks and heavy duty hinges. If the door and frames are metal, it is impossible to kick open.
Link – via The Evangelical Outpost
Whatever you do, just don’t do it like this:
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Tea-Over-Ice Pitchers
Tea-Over-Ice from Tea Forté is a set of two pitchers: the smaller one, used to brew the hot tea sits on top of the larger one, which holds ice.
The idea is that after your tea is brewed, you can simply flash chill it by pouring it over the ice for a glass of iced tea (the pitchers are made from heat-resistant glass)
Brilliant! Link – via swissmiss
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Houses Covered in Kudzu
Photo: Jack Anthony
Kudzu is a climbing vine introduced into the United States from Japan in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Expo as a forage crop and ornamental plan. In the early 1950s, US Department of Agriculture encouraged farmers to plant kudzu to reduce soil erosion.
Fast forward a couple of decades later, kudzu is a fast growing weed that has infested about 11,000 square miles of the southeastern United States. It costs around $500 million every year in lost cropland and control costs.
Jack Anthony has a photo gallery of abandoned houses in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina that have been taken over by kudzu, noting that they make "interesting natural sculptures": Link – via Cynical-C
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Self-stirring Cup
A new teacup called Ceramic For Mix (which appears to be made of glass) eliminates the need for a stirring spoon. This is acheived by a ball installed in the bottom. Designer Florian Dussopt says,
“The ball is put into a slightly protruding base to keep it in place when stirring and drinking.
“Users gently move the cup, like you would when swirling a glass of cognac, and the action pushes the ball around.
“The ceramic ball mixes all various sugars and milk at the same time, thus eliminating the need for a spoon.
“When you drink, the ball is blocked by the gravity in the recess of the glass.”
The company, Ana Gram, has made prototypes and is looking for a manufacturer. Link -via Digg
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£130 Million Home Comes With ... a Garden Squatter!
Imagine the shock of this poor ol’ tycoon: he wanted to build the world’s most expensive home only to find that he has a squatter in the garden!
A billionaire is planning to transform a vacant London stately house into the world’s most expensive home – but can’t evict a squatter who’s been living there for the past 21 years.
Harry Hallowes, 71, was awarded squatters’ rights last year, which means he can continue living in his tent in the grounds. His small plot is now worth a staggering £4million.
Link – via One Large Prawn
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The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon
Good spoons have heavy handles, but that makes it difficult to lay your spoon down when eating from a bowl. If you don’t want to put the spoon down on the table, you’ll tip the bowl over. But this bowl and spoon combination makes it easy to rest your spoon in your bowl. $21.00 Link -via J-Walk Blog
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Cure for the Boring Toilet Paper: Innovations in Toilet Paper You Can Buy on the Web!
Chalk up another benefit to teh Interweb: ordering online can relieve you of the doldrums of white toilet papers! For instance, take the Sudoku puzzle toilet paper to the left. It’ll surely help you while away the time …
Here’s a neat article at our pal mental_floss: Innovations in Toilet Paper – via Miss Cellania
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Persian Puzzle Rug
Katrin Sonnleitner created this extremely modular flooring: a Persian rug called PuzzlePerser, made out of thousands of individual puzzle pieces! Link [Flash, click on Project, then PuzzlePerser] – via MoCo Loco
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Japanese Homewares (That You Can't Get in the United States)
Apartment Therapy LA Blog has a neat post about some homewares from Japan (that unfortunately, you can’t get in the United States). This one above, a dining room set called Cube Style, is very cleverly designed for small apartments (as you probably know, space is at a premium in Tokyo)
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Beer Bottle Bricks
In the 1960s, Heineken got the brilliant idea of making square beer bottles … so that after you’re done drinking the beer, you can use the bottles as bricks!
Made in England by Gentlemen blog has the pics of a wall built out of Heinies: Link
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Chairman Mao Chair
That’s the Chairman Mao chair, created by artist Gerard Scarfe, as seen in I’m Learning to Share blog.
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Neverending Bookshelf
Photo: Andreoli
That’s the "Neverending" bookshelf, made out of Corian by Italian designers Luca Nichetto and Andreoli. Link
It’s just one of the many bookshelves featured on this very specialized "Bookshelf Blog" – via Metafilter | If you like this, you’ll love Freshome’s feature "30 Most Creative Bookshelves Designs"
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LEGO Planter
After Bob of TheBobBlog saw a Park Planters pot by Tristan Zimmermann, retailing for $100 (or even higher), he decided that he could do one cheaper … with LEGO! Here’s Bob’s version, the LEGO Planter: Link – Thanks Bob!
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A Disaster-Proof Bed
The Quantum Sleeper is a bed that converts into a bullet-proof, airtight shelter that is shielded from biochemical attacks with filtered ventilation and rebreathing equipment. Options include a toilet, a short-wave radio, and motion detectors.
Link via Gizmodo via Ace
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Bizarre Furniture Made From Recycled Materials
One of my favorite new blogs, WebUrbanist, got a new post about 20 creative (and somewhat bizarre) furniture made from recycled materials.
The four above are: light made from old fluorescent light tubes by Castor Canadensis design collective, a Lamponi lamp made from an old iron, a shopping cart chair by reestore, and a bicycle wheel table by Andrew Gregg.
Check out the full list here: Link
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Rug Glows with Each Step
It only makes sense: a rug that lights up when you walk on it. They call it Footlume.
“The glow that the rug emits is very soft,” said co-inventor Leona Dean, of London South Bank University, who also noted the innovation’s party applications, “It can provide ambient mood lighting or flash in time to music as a talking point at a party.”
Dean and another LSBU engineering student Zoe Robson developed the light-up rug, called Footlume, for a college course, and they will exhibit the innovation at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Show in London this month.
The electroluminescent rug uses rechargeable batteries and lights up in response to the weight applied when a person walks across the carpet.
It could also light the way to the bathroom in the night and serve as a child’s night light. Footlume is a prototype, but could be produced commercially if investors are interested. Link -via Digg
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Throwzini Knife Holder
This knife block makes you feel like a circus knife-thrower in your own kitchen! It’s not yet in stock, but you can register to be notified when it becomes available. Link -via Dump Trumpet
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Reel Furnitures
David Meddings of reelfurniture makes chairs and tables out of recycled timber. One of his specialties is this rocking chair made from those giant wooden reels (like the ones used to transport power lines). Link – via Ectoplasmosis
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Black Facial Tissue from Japan (Where Else?)
Attention hipsters: you wear black t-shirt, black jeans, black shoes … but still use white tissues to blow your nose? You need this: a box of Japanese black facial tissue.
Spiddlement blog has more pics: Link – Thanks Jeff Jones!
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