Single-Family City Home Marries Modernism with Greenery

Creating a green residential oasis is no easy feat when faced on three sides with potentially nosy neighbors on an urban plot – the key is making the hard building decisions look easy.
A series of perforated metal, natural stone, cast-in-place concrete and glass deck walls frame the entryway to a relatively secluded-feeling series of indoor and outdoor spaces designed by Australian architect Michael Morris.

Softening the edges of these straight-lined design elements are a complementary set of vegetation-related strategies, starting with a row of young pines in front of the lot, followed by a series wild grasses suspended at eye level, an overhanging old peppercorn tree from an adjacent property and a series of semi-abstract green walls in the courtyard.

Inside, a simple repetitive use of red accents ties together disparate rooms, each designed in a pragmatic way to address its particular function, using conventional finishes and traditional materials in combination with contemporary aesthetic sensibilities.

There is nothing expressly novel about the material palette or the visual techniques employed, but in combination they show a remarkable sensitivity to site and context, and exert conscious control over all views in and out, all without feeling forced or otherwise artificial.

Well-Off on Wheels: Futuristic RVs are Packed with Luxury

Driving around the country in an RV is not the first thing most of us think of when the word “luxurious” is mentioned. Perhaps the futuristic luxury RVs from Marchi Mobile Vehicles will change that.

The slightly strange-looking RV is based on the strikingly futuristic truck designs of Luigi Colani. Like Colani’s trucks, the eleMMent RV sports some truly crazy looks and over-the-top parts.

The 38-foot-long, 13.5-foot-tall RV boasts around 500 square feet of usable interior area, making it larger than some apartments. The push of a single button causes a large “sky bar” to rise from the top of the vehicle, letting residents and guests party under the stars in style.

But a pop-up bar is just the tip of the ultra-luxurious iceberg. The eleMMent also features a huge master bedroom with a 40-inch flat screen TV, a gorgeous spa bathroom and, oddly enough, a fireplace.

Lest your exceptional vehicle ever look like it has actually been driving around on dusty roads, the eleMMent features an integrated vehicle cleaning system to keep the paint job looking nice and fresh.

The specific amenities on each eleMMent can be changed around and customized based on each buyer’s preferences. Although there are not many actual photographs of the ultra-cool RV, there are plenty of renderings to ogle.

Provided you can afford one, you can order an eleMMent today with your individual preferences in place. Just remember the traditional wisdom: if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it

Digital Sundial Shines Time on Walls with Bright Laser Lights

White walls can be a boring waste of space during the day, dull and dark by night . Why not add some color and life, use them to project your schedule, adjust your social calender, view the weather and tell time on demand? This clever little all-in-one gadget proposes to do all of the above, and perhaps even more.
Yonggu Do, Dohyung Kim & Sewon Oh fashioned the device as a simple circular attachment – an unobtrusive, wall-mounted object that is activated by touch or via remote connection. Bluetooth, WIFI, and more – these days, all easy add-ons. A music player (with laser-light display of what you are listening to) would not be difficult either.

A series of lasers project digital information onto the flat surface surrounding the sundial, using familiar frames of reference for things like numerals one expects to see at a certain angle from center (making it easier to read from a distance, knowing the positions of hours and minutes and the relative size of the hands).

How To Send Music and Video Anywhere From An Apple iOS Device

One of the great features of Apple devices is AirPlay, the technology that enables them to wirelessly stream media to one another. The company has also set out to enable a growing range of other equipment, such as A/V receivers and speaker docks, to get content from your iTunes library simply by being near your computer or iOS device. Still, AirPlay has some Apple-imposed limitations, including the required use of iTunes and a relatively small pool of supported third-party devices. Recently, several tricks have been developed to extend AirPlay’s functionality, letting you stream music and video to and from more places.

Easy: Send Video To Your Mac

One of AirPlay’s major shortcomings is its inability to sling content to a Mac. A free app, AirPlayer, solves that problem by transforming your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone into a video transmitter and allowing them to wirelessly stream iTunes clips to your Mac so you can watch on a bigger screen. The program works its magic by imitating the Apple TV’s connection protocols. Note: This is not to be confused with another app called AirPlayer, which sells for $5 in the iTunes store.

Medium: Enable Non-iTunes Video-To-TV Streaming

With the free content-management application Plex Media Center installed on your computer, the new Plex 1.1 iOS app ($4.99 on iTunes) lets you search through all your media (not just iTunes content) with your iPhone or iPad, stream it over 3G, and channel it to a friend’s HDTV via experimental AirPlay support. You’ll need to enable a setting on your router known as port forwarding to connect devices outside of your local network; for instructions, head to wiki.plexapp.com. Note that purchased videos with digital rights management (DRM) controls cannot be streamed.

Advanced: Stream To Any Device

The biggest difficulty with AirPlay is having to buy hardware that supports it. ShairPort lets you keep your current gear. The software can be installed onto any PC, allowing any device to take advantage of AirPlay streaming. For now, this allows only streaming to third-party software, so you’ll need a second computer to act as a go-between. For example, you could use your primary computer to stream music to the free VLC mediaplayer software running on a home-theater PC, and then from VLC to an A/V receiver. You can get the ShairPort code free at mafipulation.org, but fair warning—using it may void your equipment’s warranties.