December 20, 2010

Onix declared Architects of the Year 2010

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 9:42 am

Onix from Groningen (and from Helsingborg, Denmark) were unanimously declared Architect of the Year 2010 last week. The jury praised among others the power of their innovation, their craftsmanship, their consistent societal attitude and their sense of responsibility.

Levs Architects from Amsterdam won the audience award after an online vote, Bright reports.

(Photo of an Onix bridge in Sneek, Friesland by Flickr user JelleS, some rights reserved. The bridge won its makers another prize, the Wood Innovation Award 2010.)

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April 19, 2010

Delft students improve surgery for cross-eyed

Filed under: Health,Science by Branko Collin @ 1:48 pm

Team Daisy, made up of Elsbeth Geukers and Nicole de Bakker, has won the 2010 Philips Innovation Award with a diagnostic technique that should drastically reduce the amount of operations required to treat strabismus (aka “cross-eyed”) in young children.

One of the problems that apparently plague doctors when trying to measure the angle of ‘crossed’ eyes is that young children do not sit still enough for an accurate measurement. Sprout.nl claims that this can lead to a failure rate of the operations of up to 50%.

The technique developed by the TU Delft students will simply measure from different angles simultaneously.

Earlier this year Geukers and De Bakker proved not only to be successful inventors but also promising businesswomen, when they won first prize (1500 euro) in the Writing a Business Plan course at their university.

(Photo by Flickr user net_efekt, some rights reserved)

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March 6, 2010

Catawiki, personal catalogue, wiki and shopping website in one

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 11:33 am

Last week the readers of Belgian online magazine Netties, an early supporter of Wikipedia, voted Catawiki the Best Website in the Dutch language.

Catawiki is what you would get if you merged Librarything, an online personal library catologue, with eBay, and squared the result. It was founded in 2009 by René Schoenmakers and Marco Jansen, who bought an existing Flemish comics database with 110,000 entries to get started. Later catalogues for stamps, coins and telephone cards were added. The site bills itself as the catalogue for and by collectors.

Although Catawiki can be used to just show the world which books, comics and even barf bags you own, you can also use it to sell items.

(Link: Eamelje.net.)

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September 20, 2009

Made from pig

Filed under: Animals,Design by Branko Collin @ 11:34 am

Christien Meindertsma documented 185 products contributed to by a single pig in an exhibition at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam last year, and in a book (also available in a pigskin bound version, of course). Pig 05049 won her one of the five 2009 Index design awards in August.

The list of good things coming from a pig includes bacon of course, yoghurt, pudding, paints, enamels (bone china!), cigarettes, brakes, bullets, and washing powder. The distinct smell of crayons is pig.

The Index Award prize money, 100,000 euro, will go in part to making the book available on the web, but if you want print copies you can buy them via Amazon and so on. The print version shows all the products life-sized.

(Via Jason Kottke. Source photo: Indexaward.dk.)

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