With its sharp point concealed when not in use, this silicone-capped drawing pin guards against pin pricks and scratches, and feels like a pebble in your hands.

The inspiration for this drawing pin struck the designer when he was studying his cat’s paws. A cat’s sharp claws are extended and exposed only in times of need. When retracted, the claws are sheathed by fur and the paw pads. The designer mimicked this mechanism when designing the Biomimicry drawing pin.

The sharp pin is sheathed by a hollow pad (or bubble) of malleable silicone. The pin is revealed only when the drawing pin is pressed into the pin-up surface and the silicon undergoes compression. It regains its former shape (and sheaths the pin) when the drawing pin is pulled out. The ‘push’ side is composed of solid silicon that covers the drawing pin’s plastic handle.

The PURE Water Company is a Norwegian company, established in 1997 with its head-office in Norway. In addition to our business activities in Norway, we also provide our products and services in the UK and the rest of the Scandinavian countries.

PURE Water has developed a special system that utilises the municipal water supply network to give our customers drinking water of the highest quality.

The technology behind the PURE Water system was developed in close cooperation with global leading suppliers to the breweries and beverages industry.

The 90° vase by Cuatro Cuatros (Four Fours) is based on an illustration of an optical illusion called the ‘Penrose Triangle’ where three lengths of square cross section are joined to form a triangle. The illusion of continuity is accomplished by ‘false perspective’ where the image displays ambiguous depth. An opening on the top of the vase accepts stalks of flowers which are are fed with water stored inside the tubular construction of the vessel. Cuatro Cuatros describes the 90° vase thusly:

Is this an impossible triangle?
The interposition, orientation and perspective create a contradiction of the space that makes us perceive something that is not. It comes from the Penrose experience. 90 ° is a vase that, based on a drawing, has been converted to a geometrical shape with volume. Depending on the point of view, both ends coincide and make it look like a closed figure.

Spark is a perfect entry point into the Lensbaby system for young photo enthusiasts, photography students or newer photographers who want a fun way to break out of traditional photography.  It’s a fun and affordable way to capture selective focus images with a DSLR.

Spark features a unique selective focus optic and a tilting lens body, allowing the aspiring enthusiast photographer to capture creative images in-camera that have a sweet spot of focus, surrounded by blur. It is a lightweight, all plastic (except for the optic, which is a multi-coated glass doublet) 50mm selective focus lens with a f/5.6 fixed aperture available for Canon and Nikon DSLRs.

Objects that seem like half-finished sketches of candle holders, vases, bowls and bottles won British designer Maya Selway second prize in the Object category of the Interieur Design Awards at the Interieur design biennale in Kortrijk, Belgium, last week.

Each object in the Kishu collection is carefully weighted at its base to support its lopsided structure. “I worked for a long time to get the balance just right,” Selway said.

The delicate pieces are made from oxidised copper, and the vase also has a shallow silver dish for holding water. The bottles and bowls are purely decorative, but the candle holder and the vase can be used as shown.

Selway trained as a silversmith and jeweller at Camberwell College of Arts in London and Bishopsland near Reading, and has also worked making props and building sets for theatre and film.

The Flux Chair is the product of industrial designers Douwe Jacobs and Tom Schouten from Amsterdam where the name comes from the mixture of flexible and luxury. They wanted to create a foldable chair that would take up as little space as possible but also have the mobility of going around in everyday places.

Through their inspiration from paper sculptures, the Flux Chair was born. Douwe folded a tiny, elegant, paper scale model of a chair and even though it was from a single sheet of paper, it was surprisingly strong and completely unique.

Get a Flux Chair at the LFW shop.

The trend of automotive-inspired watches has existed for a while, but the Redline concept by Kornwit D is one of my all-time favorites. It’s immediately obvious that the face and bezel are directly inspired by the car tachometer, but the blue, yellow and red color scheme do more than remind us of revving engines. Its aesthetic has a sort of Mondrian neoplastic feel that cleverly draws awareness to each passing hour with intensifying color.

Amidst the financiapocalypse, Cleveland, Ohio, has 13,000 homes and other structures in such disrepair that they need to be torn down. It’s a $4 billion job. And at least one designer is trying to find the bright side.

Daniel Cuffaro, department chair at the Cleveland Institute of Art and founder of Abeo Design, has created a modular workspace called the Hive Workstation. It’s similar to the premium corporate furnishings offered by companies like Steelcase, but there’s a key difference: Hive is built from the failed housing projects of Cleveland itself. Every piece has a secondary purpose, to “literally create value from the rubble of economic collapse.”

“From a design perspective, the biggest challenge is creating something that does not look like an old wood shed!” Cuffaro tells Co.Design. And his greatest asset in this task may be local groups A Piece of Cleveland andBenchmark Craftsmen. Together, they reclaim materials from old buildings, and cost-effectively de-nail and refinish them, transforming otherwise junked wood into the stuff of premium furniture.