Latis (named after the Celtic Goddess of Water) is the lovely new collection shown above by the folks at Omvivo. It’s hard to go wrong when you use the right materials, and there’s few things that have a more timeless look than stone. Mix that with a modern sophisticate form, and you get a bathroom that makes all your friends seeth with architectural jealousy.

If your phone can have a touch screen with out actual buttons, why can’t your house do the same? The Living Wall project, led by Lisa Buechley at the MIT’s Media Lab uses conductive paint in wall paper. This allows for a flexible surface that can be used as a touch sensor and could control almost anything electronic via bluetooth (albeit within a certain distance). In the image above, LED circuitry is incorporated into the material and conductive paint stenciled as a design motif produce light directly from the surface.

The BMW Lovos (Lifestyle of Voluntary Simplicity) concept is an interesting solution to how to integrate solar technology into a car body. The scale shaped cell panels can lift and turn to adjust themselves to the angle of the sun and absorb the most reflective light. The “scales” can also affect handling by lying flat for maximum aerodynamic performance or lifting to create airfoil braking and stabilization.
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This brings back some romantic notions of sleeping with your guitar by your side. Only with an actual pillow you don’t have to worry about rolling over on to sharp wires or breaking anything. Let your kids rock to thier hearts content and when they’re worn out they already have a pillow to crash on. You can get the Ouef Guitar here.

In case you missed the first sold out screening, Objectified is doing a second one this wednesday Aug 12th- 8pm at the Laemmle Theater on Santa Monica with an appearance by Director Gary Hustwit. Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Get your tix here before hand, they will not be selling them at the door.

Special one night only screening in Los Angeles of Objectified

Special screening in Los Angeles of Objectified – A Documentary by Gary Hustwit.

Join Gary Hustwit, director of Helvetica, for a special one-night screening and discussion, presented in conjunction with AIGA Los Angeles and IDSA Los Angeles.

Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability.

Thursday, July 9, 7:30pm
Laemmle’s Royal Theatre
11523 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Los Angeles CA, 90025
Post-film Q&A with Gary Hustwit

Tickets are $15 for AIGA, IDSA members and students, and $20 for non-members.

One showing only. Space is limited.

Reserve your seat today!

The Nickel Couch by Johnny Swing is made from approximately 7,000 nickels held together by over 35,000 welds on a stainless steel truss. Weighing in at surprisingly light 125 lbs,  can relax on your bling and show it off at the same time.

Your guess is as good as ours as to the legitimacy of this image, but it’s obviously getting some buzz. We found this on Doshdosh, but they make no mention of where they got it. As they mention, until Apple confirms this is real (highly unlikely) take it with a grain of salt.
Our guess is that this is an outsiders best guess as to what the next iPhone might look like. But that said, this may turn out to be a pretty good guess.

You may have remembered last year when we wrote about Tata motors showing the $2,500 Nano hailed as the new car of the people. Tata has just announced that the production version of the Nano will be available for purchase in India April 9, 2009 and has been squeezed even further down to a base price of $2,000.

What do we like about the Nano? We think that the most impressive feature (aside from the rock bottom price) is that it gets a reported 50 mpg. While this is not a hybrid engine, if it consumes less gas and emits less pollution we’re all for it. On top of that, the Nano is barely 10 feet long, which has distinct advantages when trying to park in a crowded urban area like Los Angeles.
The downside of course is, the Nano is a funny looking little car with tiny rollerskate like wheels. The top speed on the Nano is 65 mph, which means your going to get honked at even in the slow lane. There’s the obvious safety concerns that a small car has over getting hit by a large truck, but millions of Prius drivers seem safe enough so far.

The Tata Nano will be released in it’s home country of India first and is expected to do very well by Indian standards. We respect the concept as your faithful Editor-In-Chief’s first car was a ‘73 VW Beetle which served millions of people around the world well for many decades. We think in fact, that the destruction of the the US auto industry has had a lot to do with building cars that are often half the price of the owners pretax income, became increasing difficult for the average owner to fix without expensive computer based tools, and broke down more and more frequently. It’s one thing if your car is cheap and when it breaks down you can fix it yourself (which we often did with the VW with $50 and some duct tape). It’s another when it’s a $20-$40K item that breaks down and you have to shell out another $500-$1000 every time it breaks down, which happens every 4-6 months.

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In would could be a step forward on a road to a greener future Better Place is looking to get electric cars out on the road sooner rather than later, and according to NY Times columnist David Pogue, it’s a plan that might be just crazy enough to work.
If you want the low down, Better Place want to sell you a car, and lease you a battery that you can charge up at home or trade out at charging station. The idea is you own your car, but but your pay for the miles like you’d buy minutes on a cell phone plan. According to Better Place CEO Shai Agassi in fact, the company will subsidize the price of the car if you buy enough miles in the same way that cell phone companies subsidize handsets.
So far the company has signed on it’s home country of Isreal, as well as Denmark, Ontario CA, and Hawaii, with San Francisco CA and a few other Bay Area counties on the way. The company has it’s share of critics as you can read on Tree Hugger and the Huffington Post. We think that while this may not be the answer it is an answer to the myriad of problems with both how we use energy, and how we move from one place to another.
As we have mentioned before, cars haven’t changed to tremedously since Henry Ford released the Model T, and we applaud anyone doing anything to re-think how a works or what a car is. As for the would we buy one question goes, we think there are three big issues to address in no particular order.

1. Is the price of the car and the miles more, less, or roughly equivalent compared to a gas powered model?

2. What happens if I forget to charge it and I run out of power? Will AAA come bring me a battery to swap?

3. What’s the quality of the car like? Is it reliable? Is it fun to drive? Aside from the feel good factor of saving the planet, will I love this car?