Catapult Design

A nonprofit's designs to solve developing nations' problems

Catapult Design is a San Francisco-based consortium of engineers, designers and educators largely handpicked from the innovative hotbed of Silicon Valley to find simple, practical solutions to global problems faced by billions of people in the developing world. Around for less than two years their list of accomplishments is impressive from harnessing wind power in rural Central America to dealing with water scarcity in arid …

Hour of Nine

Goddesses and monsters in a new line of letterpress cards

While the enduring appeal of letterpress lends itself well to fussy scrolls and flourishes, the recent revival has led many designers to contrast the preciousness of the form with more contemporary images. Taking an elegantly adorable approach, Lehua Chong prints her new collection of letterpress cards called Hour of Nine on bamboo paper using an antique press in NYC. Chong, a Hawaii native, spent several …

Archiquarium

Modernist two-story homes for fish friends

Unless you go custom, aquariums rarely do much to elevate the humble fish’s status anywhere close to that of furry four-legged friends. Swedish designer Karl-Oskar Ankarberg has taken on the plight of the fish, designing an attractive split-level home called the Archiquarium. Ankarberg makes the upper level of his “modern living for trendy goldfish” out of white Corian with black Corian for the ground floor, …