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The NASA Artemis 2.0 Smartwatch Runs Python And Lets Kids Code Their Own Wearable

NASA’s Artemis II lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026, carrying four astronauts on humanity’s first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen are currently aboard the Orion spacecraft, preparing for a lunar flyby that will take them farther from Earth than any humans have traveled since Apollo 13. Space exploration feels immediate again in a way it hasn’t in decades, and CircuitMess timed the NASA Artemis Watch 2.0 perfectly into that cultural moment. This is a $129 programmable smartwatch, fully assembled and ready to use out of the box, inspired by the very mission currently making headlines.

The hardware inside includes a dual-core ESP32 microcontroller, a full-color LCD screen, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a compass, and a temperature sensor. It pairs with iOS and Android devices over Bluetooth for activity tracking and notifications, and the firmware is entirely open-source, reprogrammable in Python, CircuitBlocks, or the Arduino IDE. You can design custom watch faces, build interactive apps, and modify sensor behavior as deep as you want to go. The age recommendation is 9 and up, which reflects the lower barrier to entry compared to CircuitMess’s Perseverance Rover kit we wrote about earlier. No assembly required, no soldering, just charge it and start exploring.

Designer: CircuitMess

Most smartwatches aimed at kids treat programming as something that happens elsewhere, if it happens at all. You get a companion app with preset themes, maybe a handful of watch face options, and locked-down software that assumes the wearer has no interest in understanding what’s running underneath. The Artemis Watch 2.0 flips that entire model. CircuitMess ships it fully functional, but every layer of the software is accessible and modifiable. The visual block-based CircuitBlocks environment gives beginners a starting point, while Python and Arduino IDE support mean users can graduate to full code without hitting an artificial ceiling. The firmware lives on GitHub as an open-source repository, so there’s no proprietary lock-in and no feature wall you can’t get past.

The dual-core ESP32 processor does real work here. It handles Bluetooth pairing with smartphones, processes sensor data from the accelerometer and gyroscope in real time, and runs whatever custom apps you decide to build on top of the base system. The compass and temperature sensor add environmental awareness, which opens up coding projects beyond simple timekeeping. You could program the watch to log temperature changes throughout the day, trigger alerts based on compass heading, or build a step counter that uses the accelerometer to track movement patterns. The 1.77 x 0.5 x 2.76 inch form factor keeps it wearable for younger users, and the rechargeable Li-Po battery charges via USB-C.

CircuitMess sells the Artemis Watch 2.0 standalone at $129, but it also appears in a Mars Exploration Bundle alongside the Perseverance Rover for $399, a 23% discount over buying both separately. That bundle positions the watch as a companion device for tracking rover missions and staying connected during the 20-hour rover build. CircuitMess also offers a Collector’s Bundle that includes the watch and four official strap designs for $149. The company has sold over 300,000 kits worldwide, and the Artemis branding ties directly into the kind of sustained media coverage that makes space feel culturally relevant again.

The Artemis Watch 2.0 is available now at circuitmess.com. If you followed the actual Artemis II launch this week, if you care about wearable tech that doesn’t condescend to younger users, or if you want a smartwatch that teaches coding by letting you rebuild it from the inside out, this is one of the few products in this category worth the $129 ask.

The post The NASA Artemis 2.0 Smartwatch Runs Python And Lets Kids Code Their Own Wearable first appeared on Yanko Design.

Someone Turned the “Cat Knocking Things Off Tables” Meme Into a 3D Printed Lamp and It’s Perfect

Cats knocking things off tables is old internet. It predates memes as a concept, predates YouTube, predates the entire visual language of digital humor. It is perhaps the most documented animal behavior in human history, captured billions of times, studied by actual ethologists, and still inexplicably funny every single time. Fabio Ferrari has taken this behavior and made it load-bearing, literally, designing a 3D-printed table lamp where a seated cat figure tilts the shade off-axis mid-push, and the resulting tension between lampshade and gravity is the entire point of the object.

Printed white in PLA, the classical turned column and drum shade read as a proper lamp, and the cat sits alongside it with one paw extended toward the column, head craned upward, frozen in that particular expression of focused feline mischief that every cat owner recognizes immediately. The layer lines on the print dissolve into surface texture at this scale, giving the whole thing an almost ceramic quality. It lands on a desk or nightstand and earns a second look from anyone who passes it.

Designer: Fabio Ferrari

Ferrari released the STL pack on Cults3D in late March 2026, priced at $4.04 after a 50% discount, and it pulled 102 downloads and 7,000 views within days, which for a single-designer listing on a platform with 3.2 million models is a genuinely strong signal. The pack ships five files covering two body variants sized for different bulb lengths, plus a supplementary shade that covers the bulb completely for a cleaner look.

The recommended material is white or marble PLA, though PETG and resin both work, and the print settings are straightforward: 15 to 20 percent infill for the shade, higher for the cat and base to keep the center of gravity honest. The shade is the only component that needs supports, and Ferrari is emphatic that the lamp column itself should print support-free since anything inside that channel will obstruct the wire routing.

The lamp works with standard E12, E14, or E27 bulb kits depending on how you scale it, and the warm ambient glow it throws makes it best suited on a nightstand or shelf light rather than serving task lighting. At roughly 250 to 294mm tall depending on the variant, it has enough physical presence to read across a room without overwhelming a surface.

The design sits in an interesting lineage. Seletti’s Monkey Lamp and the broader wave of anthropomorphic lighting that swept through the design-forward homeware market in the 2010s established that people would pay serious money for a lamp with a personality. What Ferrari has done is democratize that impulse entirely, collapsing the distance between a $300 design object and a $4 STL file and a weekend print. Just make sure you aim for 25% or higher infill or the balance goes awry. You wouldn’t want a lightweight cat actually knocking your lamp over, right?!

The post Someone Turned the “Cat Knocking Things Off Tables” Meme Into a 3D Printed Lamp and It’s Perfect first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Lounge Chair’s Shape Is Precisely Why Two of Them Make a Sofa

Modular seating tends to be either complicated or a compromise. The sectional sofa has never really solved the fundamental problem that living situations change, people move, and the enormous L-shaped configuration that worked in your last apartment probably doesn’t fit your new one. Furniture that adapts to circumstance sounds like an obvious idea, but the designs that actually pull it off cleanly remain surprisingly rare.

Liam de la Bedoyere, the designer behind Bored Eye Design, takes a direct approach to the problem with Bunch, a modular seating concept that begins from a deceptively simple premise. Each unit is a fully functional lounge chair on its own. The idea, however, is that it was designed from the beginning to combine with others, and the way it does that is where the concept gets genuinely interesting.

Designer: Liam de la Bedoyere

The mechanism is in the staggered relationship between the two parts of each chair. The backrest sits elevated and set back, while the seat extends forward, creating a stepped profile from the side. That offset is precise enough that when a second chair is placed alongside it, the seat of one slides naturally into the space left open by the recessed back of the other. No connectors, no assembly, just geometry.

The result, when two or more units are pushed together, is a sofa that reads as a continuous and intentional piece rather than a row of chairs touching each other. The staggered rhythm carries across the joined units, producing a silhouette that looks considered rather than accidental. It’s the kind of configuration that takes a moment to understand, but once you do, it feels like it couldn’t have worked any other way.

The standalone chair holds up on its own terms, too, and isn’t just a sofa segment that happens to function independently. It sits directly on the floor with no visible legs, giving it a relaxed lounge quality. The proportions keep the form compact enough to live in smaller spaces, which matters when the concept is something you might realistically buy gradually, one unit at a time.

Both the backrest and the seat share the same rounded-rectangle silhouette, upholstered in a thick, textured fabric with the warmth of bouclé. That material, combined with the legless, floor-hugging profile, gives the chair a deliberately unhurried quality, the kind of object that makes a room feel slightly slower and more settled than it did before.

The scalability is part of the appeal. Two units make a small sofa, three make a longer one, and the concept seems to extend indefinitely. When units in different tones are combined side by side, the color contrast adds a visual layer that a single chair doesn’t have. There’s also something honest about a design whose best version requires more than one, an admission that’s built directly into the name.

The post This Lounge Chair’s Shape Is Precisely Why Two of Them Make a Sofa first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Hydrogen Business Jet Emits Nothing But Water and Could Change Private Aviation Forever

French aerospace startup Beyond Aero has just completed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) of its hydrogen-electric business jet, the BYA-I One, a significant step that moves the aircraft firmly into detailed design and verification and one step closer to its target commercial entry in 2030. Founded in Toulouse in December 2020, Beyond Aero first unveiled the BYA-I concept at the Paris Air Show in June 2023. Since then, the aircraft has evolved considerably, and the PDR marks the most mature version yet.

The review confirmed the full integration of hydrogen storage, electric propulsion, thermal management, fuel cell systems, and safety architecture into what the company describes as a certifiable design. The propulsion setup is the heart of the story. The BYA-I One uses a twin pusher-configured propfan system, a shift from the earlier ducted-fan arrangement, powered by six 400kW hydrogen fuel cells delivering a combined 2.4MW of power, with a total propeller shaft output of 950kW.

Designer: Beyond Aero

Gaseous hydrogen is stored at 700 bar in externally mounted tanks above the wing structure, with a refueling time of just 30 minutes. The aircraft emits only water vapor in flight, making it one of the cleanest propulsion concepts in business aviation today. A custom-designed Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) system ensures precise performance across all flight phases and will be certified under a TC Engine framework.

On performance, the numbers are compelling. The BYA-I One is designed to carry up to eight passengers over a range of 800 nautical miles at 300 knots, covering more than 80% of current European business aviation routes. It has a maximum speed of 414 mph, a ceiling of 26,000 feet, and a takeoff ground roll of just 725 meters, short enough to serve constrained airports like London City, and can operate from grass, snow, and unpaved surfaces.

Inside, the cabin stretches 1.84 meters wide and 1.7 meters tall, wider than most light jets, with a six-seat club configuration. Elliptical windows are 27% larger than those found in conventional business jets, flooding the interior with natural light. With 90% fewer moving parts and no high-temperature turbine, maintenance costs are projected to drop by up to 60%, and overall operational costs could fall by 40–60% compared to conventional jets.

Market appetite is already strong, with Beyond Aero securing $914 million in Letters of Intent across 108 aircraft, and a waiting list for booking deposits is now open. The certification path runs through EASA, where Beyond Aero is actively collaborating to develop special conditions for hydrogen-electric aircraft, essentially helping write the rulebook for an entirely new category of flight. If the 2030 timeline holds, the BYA-I One won’t just be another business jet. It’ll be the first of its kind.

The post This Hydrogen Business Jet Emits Nothing But Water and Could Change Private Aviation Forever first appeared on Yanko Design.

5 Vertical Farm Designs That Grow Food Inside Your Home and City

Vertical farming is redefining how food is grown, distributed, and consumed in an increasingly urban world. As populations rise and arable land becomes scarce, growing food vertically offers a practical, efficient alternative to traditional agriculture. By producing crops closer to where people live, vertical farming reduces dependence on long supply chains, minimizes food waste, and ensures year-round access to fresh produce. It also uses significantly less water and land, making it a more sustainable approach to feeding cities.

Beyond efficiency, vertical farming is reshaping the relationship between people and food. It brings food production back into daily life, increasing awareness of how produce is grown and encouraging healthier eating habits. Advanced systems that combine controlled lighting, irrigation, and monitoring technologies allow consistent yields with minimal environmental impact. Here is how vertical farming is not just a growing method, but a shift toward resilient, localized, and future-ready food systems.

1. High-Rise Agritecture

Skyscrapers are transforming into living, productive organisms. Static glass facades are giving way to “living skins” that integrate vertical farming, allowing cities to grow food within minimal footprints. This approach reduces transportation emissions and creates a seamless dialogue between architecture and the surrounding urban landscape.

These vertical farms use double-height glazing tuned for optimal light absorption, maximizing photosynthesis and crop yield. Dense vegetation also provides natural insulation, lowering energy use while diffusing sunlight for residents. By merging agricultural efficiency with architectural elegance, these spires redefine urban living, offering sustainable food production and serene, light-filled interiors.

By integrating large-scale vertical agriculture directly into a high-rise typology, the tower addresses food insecurity in Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods, where access to fresh, affordable produce remains limited. Food production is embedded within the building core, allowing crops to be grown, processed, and distributed locally. This approach reduces reliance on long-distance supply chains, lowers carbon emissions, and transforms the skyscraper into a productive, self-sustaining system that supports urban resilience and food equity.

The tower’s form and systems are designed to support continuous agricultural performance. A fluid, water-inspired massing optimizes light penetration, airflow, and water circulation, while cloud harvesting, rainwater reuse, and renewable energy systems sustain year-round cultivation. Residential, educational, and commercial programs are organized around farming zones, reinforcing food production as a shared civic function. Structurally, a diagrid exoskeleton enables large inner voids for light and ventilation, allowing the skyscraper to operate as a vertical landscape where agriculture, architecture, and urban life are fully integrated.

2. Reconfigurable Modular Planter

Modular planters introduce a layered spatial rhythm where planting systems evolve alongside everyday living. Designed with architectural precision, these elements use high-performance bio-composites that express material honesty while functioning as adaptable interior features. Acting as spatial dividers and living furniture, they create biophilic zones that improve air quality and soften the hard lines of contemporary interiors.

The long-term value of modular planters lies in flexibility and design longevity. Systems can be rearranged as spatial needs shift, allowing interiors to remain responsive rather than fixed. More than decorative objects, these planters operate as architectural components, seamlessly connecting interior design with agricultural thinking while preserving the coherence and integrity of the home’s-built form.

As home gardening gains popularity, the challenge of growing food in compact living spaces has become increasingly apparent. Many planters designed for small homes limit the number of plants they can support, restricting both yield and flexibility. Chilean designer Lorenzo Vega addresses this issue through a modular vertical planter system inspired by LEGO-style construction. Beginning with a single cubic unit, the system allows users to grow vegetables using traditional methods, then expand vertically by stacking additional modules as space permits. This scalable approach enables efficient food cultivation without demanding a larger footprint.

Each module consists of a planting dish encased within a cubic frame that provides sufficient depth for crops to grow to full height. The design draws visual and structural influence from Japanese Metabolism and Social Modernist architecture, resulting in a clean, stripped-back aesthetic. Its stackable form maximizes vertical space, transforming underused areas into productive growing zones.

3. Indoor Vertical Farms

Integrating an indoor vertical farm into the heart of the home has become a defining marker of contemporary luxury. This residential biosphere transforms everyday living into a sensory experience, where the presence of living greens, natural aromas, and visual vitality elevates well-being. Rather than serving as ornamentation, the farm prioritizes nourishment, mindfulness, and a deeper connection between occupants and their environment.

Functioning as an architectural system, these vertical farms actively regulate the home’s internal climate. Layered hydroponic structures support thermal performance, operating as natural heat moderators within the interior. Treated as sanctuaries of softened light, the grow zones conceal advanced technology behind refined joinery, creating a seamless balance between precision engineering and calm, restorative spatial design.

Berlin-based design studio The Subdivision introduced Agrilution as an indoor vertical farming solution that turns sustainable living into an intuitive, everyday experience. Designed with ease of use in mind, the concept focuses on making home-grown food practical for modern lifestyles, particularly for those living in compact urban spaces.

Also known as the Plantcube, Agrilution resembles a small refrigerator and features two sliding shelves for soil planters and crops. Built-in LED grow lights deliver consistent artificial light, supporting plant growth throughout the year. A connected app tracks plant health and alerts users when watering or maintenance is needed. With its clean black-and-white finish, Agrilution integrates effortlessly into contemporary interiors, offering a discreet and efficient way to grow fresh produce at home.

4. Integrating Community Lifestyle

Vertical farming is increasingly understood as a catalyst for social connection within contemporary developments. Shared growing spaces transform food production into a collective ritual, offering a form of psychological value that conventional luxury amenities rarely achieve. These communal agricultural zones function as biophilic environments where residents connect not only with nature but with one another, strengthening the relationship between architecture and social well-being.

Designed as central spatial anchors, these farms are embedded within primary circulation routes to encourage movement, pause, and interaction. Positioning agriculture at the core of daily life reframes it as a cultural act rather than a background utility. In dense urban settings, such spaces counter isolation, fostering shared responsibility and turning the productive landscape into a lived, communal experience.

Urban farming adapts to the character and constraints of each city, taking forms that range from backyard gardens to rooftop plots and hydroponic systems. In Malmö, where space is limited, small-scale community farming has become an important part of urban life. Designer Jacob Alm Andersson developed Nivå, a vertical farming system shaped by the practices and shared experiences of local urban farmers. Through interviews, Andersson discovered that many residents began growing food after being inspired by their neighbors, highlighting the role of community exchange in sustaining urban agriculture and encouraging participation across generations.

Responding to Malmö’s spatial limitations, Nivå is designed to function efficiently on a vertical plane while remaining adaptable and robust. The system is constructed from stacked steel beams reinforced with wood, creating stable shelving for cultivation. Heat-treated pine planters attach using a hook-and-latch mechanism, eliminating the need for screws. Beyond growing food, Nivå operates as a communal workstation, complete with a central work surface that supports planting, harvesting, and maintenance, reinforcing urban farming as both a productive and social activity.

5. Automated Irrigation

Automated irrigation operates as the quiet intelligence behind productive, plant-integrated architecture. IoT-enabled systems regulate water and nutrient delivery with extreme accuracy, supporting healthy growth while drastically reducing waste. This technical layer is carefully concealed within recessed channels and shadow gaps, preserving the visual integrity of stone, timber, and other primary finishes while allowing the architecture to read as calm and resolved.

Beyond performance, automation enhances long-term value and resilience. By controlling moisture precisely, these systems protect the building envelope and ensure consistent yields without constant human intervention. The result is a biophilic environment that feels effortless to inhabit where advanced engineering and natural growth work in harmony to create a self-sustaining, low-impact domestic ecosystem.

Loop is a smart, modular plant pot designed specifically for compact urban interiors. Created by designer Elif Bulut, the system addresses common challenges of indoor gardening, such as limited space, inconsistent light, and irregular watering. Its sculptural, plume-inspired form allows plants to grow from both the top and bottom, with detachable seed modules arranged in a radial configuration. Each module securely locks into place, enabling easy customization and maintenance while keeping the system compact and visually cohesive.

At the core of Loop is an automated irrigation and lighting system that simplifies plant care. An adjustable top-mounted water reservoir controls the flow of water to each module, allowing users to fine-tune irrigation based on plant needs. Integrated LED lights beneath the lid distribute balanced light throughout the day, supporting healthy growth indoors. Once set up, Loop’s smart technology monitors plant conditions and maintains optimal settings, making indoor gardening intuitive, low-maintenance, and well-suited to city living.

Vertical farming is transforming how we inhabit cities and homes, blending architecture, sustainability, and community. From towering agricultural skyscrapers to modular indoor systems, these innovations create resilient, biophilic environments that nourish both people and planet.

The post 5 Vertical Farm Designs That Grow Food Inside Your Home and City first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Daphne Is a Tiny Home That Thinks It’s an Apartment

Most tiny homes ask you to live smaller. The Daphne skips that conversation entirely. It doesn’t try to be a tiny home — it tries to be a home, full stop. Built by Alberta-based Teacup Tiny Homes, a builder that has been crafting thoughtfully designed compact dwellings since 2016, the Daphne is a park model that reframes what small-scale living can actually look and feel like.

Originally custom-designed and built for a client in Ontario, the Daphne sits on a triple-axle trailer and measures 36 feet long by 10 feet 6 inches wide, a noticeably generous footprint by tiny home standards. That extra width is the whole point. Where most road-legal tiny homes max out at 8.5 feet across, the Daphne’s park model classification allows it to stretch into a proportion that feels closer to an apartment than a camper. The result is 378 square feet of interior space that sleeps up to four people, all on a single floor, with no lofts in sight.

Designer: Teacup Tiny Homes

The exterior makes a clean first impression. Horizontal lap siding wraps the structure, punctuated by cedar accents that add warmth and a sense of craft without veering into rustic territory. Large windows run throughout, drawing in natural light and giving the interior an openness that defies the square footage. Inside, the design reads like a well-edited apartment, bright, modern, and deliberately finished. Fine materials and considered details are present throughout, reflecting the kind of specificity that comes with a custom build.

The kitchen earns its title as a gourmet space, offering full-sized functionality in a layout that doesn’t feel squeezed. The living area is generous enough to actually use, and the main floor bedroom includes built-in storage that keeps the space feeling uncluttered. But the bathroom might be Daphne’s boldest move: it includes both a freestanding bathtub and a separate shower, a feature that’s rare even in full-sized homes, let alone tiny ones. It signals clearly that this is a home built around comfort rather than compromise.

For those looking at seasonal retreats, full-time living, or a secondary dwelling on a larger property, the Daphne presents a genuinely compelling case. It doesn’t ask its owner to give anything up. The proportions are right, the finishes are right, and the floor plan flows the way a real home should. Teacup Tiny Homes has always argued that small doesn’t have to mean less, and the Daphne is the clearest version of that argument yet.

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Portugal’s Official TORRAS Phone Case for World Cup 2026 Has A Hands-Free Camera Stand

Cristiano Ronaldo did not become the most recognizable footballer of his generation by accident. The discipline, the training footage, the obsessive documentation of progress over years and decades, all of that has been as central to the story as any trophy or record. Portuguese football has a particular relationship with that kind of dedication, with the belief that the work done before anyone is watching forms the foundation of everything that happens when the stadium fills. That culture has produced players who treat consistency as a competitive advantage, shaping the team’s identity in a way that outlasts any single result. With the 2026 World Cup approaching on American soil, the squad carries that identity into a tournament that feels deeply personal, thirty-two years after Portugal missed their chance on the same stage.

TORRAS built its co-branded case around that spirit, officially partnering with the Portuguese Football Federation. The Q3 Air Portugal National Football Team Edition draws from the squad’s new kit: a red, green, and gold palette, a wave-patterned texture referencing Portugal’s maritime heritage, and the Quinas crest pressed into the airbag structure alongside football-inspired graphics. A No.7 sticker comes included with the case, nodding to the player who has come to embody the “Dedication, Hard Work and Belief” message printed across the back. The magnetic Ostand ring supports 180-degree flipping and 360-degree rotation, enabling hands-free setup on gym equipment, flat courts, or almost any surface. TORRAS has been in the phone stand category since 2018, and the Portugal Football Edition is the most culturally grounded product they have put out.

Designer: TORRAS

Click Here to Buy Now: $69.99.

The gradient runs from deep crimson at the top to forest green toward the base, and the design reads as Portuguese football rather than a Portuguese football souvenir. The vertical line texture looks like jersey fabric up close and stadium turf under floodlights from a distance, which is either a very deliberate choice or the best kind of coincidence. The Quinas crest is pressed into the airbag corner structure, placing Portugal’s national symbol at the exact section of the case engineered to absorb impact. That placement is functionally deliberate as much as it is visual, because the corners carry the highest concentration of drop protection engineering in any phone case. The No.7 sticker reads as insider vocabulary to most, and unmistakable shorthand to anyone who has followed Portuguese football for the last two decades.

The Ostand ring snaps completely flat when not in use, keeping the profile slim enough that the case slides into a pocket like any standard shell. It opens into a stand that locks across a full 180-degree flip range with 360-degree rotation on the horizontal axis, covering portrait, landscape, and every diagonal angle between them. The entire case stays MagSafe-compatible, so wireless charging and MagSafe accessories work without pulling the case off, a trade-off most ring-stand designs handle badly. TORRAS rates the airbag corner structure for military-grade drop protection, and the Football Team edition holds to that spec without adding bulk for the co-branded graphics. The magnetic hold is firm enough for hands-free recording on a gym wall or a stadium barrier, and releases cleanly when you want to reposition.

The 2026 World Cup is set to be held on American soil for the first time since 1994. Portugal’s inclusion in this WC roster gives this campaign a weight that the squad feels and the fan community mirrors. The collaboration, announced under the name “Record Your Passion,” centers on the premise that the daily habit of documenting training is, for many athletes, inseparable from the discipline of showing up for it. The training clips, the watch-party setups, the goal reaction shot on a phone propped against a stadium seat, all of it fills the gap between what broadcast cameras pick up and what personal memory holds. A limited-edition case built in the colors of your team, with a stand deploying in under a second, is a product that knows its audience.

Click Here to Buy Now: $69.99.

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Alessi Just Built an Espresso Maker Shaped Like a Screw

The trash or scrapyard is probably the last place you would look for inspiration when trying to come up with a design for food or drink-related products. But apparently, the new Vite espresso maker from Alessi did just that. Designer Philippe Malouin used his Scrapyard Works process to develop the concept for this coffee maker, drawing inspiration from an unexpected item: the screw. In fact, this approach is completely unprecedented in the history of Alessi, making the Vite one of the most conceptually bold things the brand has released in years.

Vite literally means “screw” in Italian, and the coffee maker looks exactly like what it’s named after. It is apparently what caught Malouin’s attention as he sifted through metal fragments, pieces that could be brought to new life through recomposition and reinterpretation. What you get is a coffee maker with a distinct industrial feel that can still deliver one of the best cups of fresh espresso you can get from a stovetop brewer.

Designer: Philippe Malouin

London-based industrial designer Philippe Malouin is no stranger to turning bold concepts into beautifully functional objects. Born in Laval in 1982, he founded his studio in 2008 and has since built a reputation for work spanning furniture, lighting, objects, and installations. He has taught at prestigious institutions like the Royal College of Art in London and ECAL in Lausanne, earning international recognition through awards from Wallpaper*, Archiproducts, and Dezeen. With the Vite, he brings that same thoughtful, concept-driven approach to your morning coffee ritual, and honestly, your kitchen counter will never look the same.

The Vite is made from die-cast aluminum, which gives your espresso a rich, rounded, full-bodied flavor. That choice of material is not just aesthetic, as aluminum has long been favored in traditional Italian coffee making for exactly this reason. The boiler is shaped to echo the form of a screw, a nod not only to the name but also to the physical gesture of twisting or screwing the two halves of the device together to brew your perfect cup. It’s a rare case where the name, the form, and the function all tell exactly the same story.

The small flared base of the boiler mirrors the head of a screw, keeping the theme consistent from top to bottom. This section is crafted from thermoplastic resin, and the color variants were actually sampled directly from the machinery and tools inside the Alessi workshop, meaning what sits on your stovetop is literally a piece of Alessi’s factory floor translated into design. Available shades include Sage Green and Brown, among other workshop-inspired options. It’s a small detail, but it’s exactly the kind of thoughtful decision that Alessi collectors tend to fall in love with. If you’d prefer a cleaner, more minimalist look, there’s also an exclusive natural aluminum version available only on alessi.com and in select Alessi stores.

Beyond its striking looks, the Vite is impressively practical. It brews three cups of espresso at a time and is compatible with all types of cooktops, including induction. That’s a major win for anyone who has had to retire a beloved moka pot simply because of a kitchen upgrade. At just 17 cm tall and 10 cm in diameter, it’s compact enough to tuck away but distinctive enough that you’ll probably want to leave it on permanent display.

And that’s really what sets the Vite apart in a crowded market of coffee makers: it’s as much a collectible as it is an appliance. Alessi has always walked the line between industrial design and art, and the Vite is a near-perfect example of that philosophy in action. Whether you’re a design collector, a devoted espresso lover, or simply someone who believes your kitchen deserves beautiful things, this screw-shaped little brewer is worth every bit of the attention it’s getting. Sometimes, the best ideas really do come from the scrapyard, and this one just happens to make a really great cup of coffee too.

The post Alessi Just Built an Espresso Maker Shaped Like a Screw first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Side Table Has No Legs: Its Two Storage Units Are the Structure

Side tables rarely demand much attention. They hold a drink, a lamp, or a book, and that’s essentially all anyone expects from them. The more ambitious ones add a drawer or a second tier, but the core formula stays the same. It’s one of those furniture categories where function has long settled into convention, quietly waiting for someone to rethink the structure itself.

Designer Deniz Aktay has been doing exactly that kind of rethinking through his designs. His latest concept, the Torque High Side Table, takes the structural question seriously, proposing a pedestal that isn’t really a pedestal at all. The table’s support comes entirely from two metal storage units that carry the weight of the design, both literally and visually, stacked and rotated against each other.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

The idea of torque, that mechanical tension created by rotation, becomes the organizing principle here. Each storage unit opens in a different direction, offset against the other to create the visual friction the name implies. It makes the structure feel active, as if the table is caught mid-turn. The two-tone blue colorway reinforces that, with a dark navy upper section against a brighter blue lower.

That rotation also creates something practically useful. Where the two units meet, a small shelf platform projects outward between them, adding a third storage level beyond the two main compartments. It reinforces the visual logic of the twist while giving you somewhere to set smaller objects. Three storage spots from a single structural idea is a tidy outcome for a table of this size.

Books sit naturally in each compartment, held upright in the curved enclosures without needing brackets or dividers. Each section holds a small collection without effort, turning what might otherwise be a purely decorative object into something you’d interact with daily. That balance between use and visual statement is where this kind of furniture concept tends to either land well or feel entirely theoretical.

The storage-as-structure approach means the Torque table looks interesting from every angle. There are no legs, no base panel, and no conventional framing hardware. The two open-faced volumes do all the work, with a circular disc on top forming the table surface and a matching flat disc at the bottom serving as the foot. Everything between them is either storing something or making a structural point.

Aktay has built a body of work around this kind of thinking, concepts that start with a formal problem and arrive somewhere genuinely practical. The Torque High Side Table fits that approach well. It doesn’t need to announce its cleverness because the structure speaks on its own, and anyone who tucks a book into one of the compartments and sets a cup on top will feel the logic in it.

The post This Side Table Has No Legs: Its Two Storage Units Are the Structure first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Anello Chair Is 3 Design Eras in One Piece of Wood

The Anello chair by Kiritsu Mokko does not shout for attention. It sits quietly with a circular backrest that seems to float around a sculpted wooden seat, looking like a piece slightly out of time. Not in a dated way. More like it arrived from a place where three very different design traditions decided, once and for all, to stop competing and just become one thing.

Kiritsu Mokko has been making furniture in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, since 1949. That is a long time to study wood. And the Anello, which loosely translates to “ring” in Italian, is a direct expression of that accumulated knowledge. The circular back is not a simple ring slapped onto a base. It is constructed by carefully joining pieces of solid wood, with the grain matched so deliberately that the joints nearly disappear into the form. The result is a curve that looks almost impossible in wood, as though someone forgot to tell the material what it could and could not do.

Designer: Kiritsu Mokko

The design language is genuinely hard to place, and I think that is the entire point. From certain angles, the Anello looks like it belongs in a 1960s living room, all rounded forms and quiet futurism, the kind of chair Kubrick might have placed in a scene just for its shape. From another angle, it reads as straightforwardly Danish Modern, with clean proportions, warm wood tones, and that particular kind of seated elegance that Scandinavian design spent decades perfecting. And then you look at the joinery, the patience baked into every curve, and it becomes unmistakably Japanese. Not Japanese in a superficial, “inspired by” way, but in the deeper sense of a culture that treats materials with a respect that borders on reverence.

The seat swivels. That detail is easy to miss because Kiritsu Mokko was careful to hide the mechanism, keeping the chair’s silhouette completely uninterrupted. No visible hardware, no break in the form. You can rotate in place and the chair still reads as a single, continuous object. That kind of restraint is its own design philosophy, the idea that if a feature does not serve the visual integrity of a piece, it should be invisible. This is not a new concept in Japanese design, but seeing it executed this cleanly is always a reminder of how much the rest of the furniture world is leaving on the table.

It comes in walnut and oak, which matters more than it might seem. These are not just material options. They are two entirely different emotional experiences of the same chair. The walnut version has a richness that pulls the Anello toward something more intimate and sculptural. The oak reads lighter, more architectural, almost Scandinavian by default. Either way, the solid wood construction means this is not a piece designed to be replaced in five years. It is made with the assumption that you will still have it in thirty.

I will admit that the Anello is the kind of chair that makes me think about how little faith the mainstream furniture market has in its customers. Most of what fills showrooms today operates on a kind of planned impermanence, pieces designed to look good in a photograph before you buy them and mediocre in a room after you do. The Anello is the opposite of that. It is a chair that probably photographs well but is genuinely intended to be lived with.

A piece of furniture that synthesizes Space Age optimism, Scandinavian warmth, and Japanese precision without feeling like a design school exercise is genuinely rare. The Anello pulls it off not because it was trying to be three things at once, but because Kiritsu Mokko has been doing this long enough to trust the materials to speak for themselves.

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