Core77

Table Legs that Use Spring Tension Rather than Joinery

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These Oak Shock Absorber tables are by Austrian furniture company RIOF. The legs-to-table joinery method is highly unusual:

They include two little L-shaped pieces that you use to spread the legs for installation:

With our spring-loaded leg system, we've solved one of the oldest challenges in furniture making: how to connect a tabletop and legs securely without using glue or metal screws? Our answer lies in nature itself. We utilize the spring force of partially split wood to create a strong, purely mechanical connection.

This is what makes the strut system special:

- Monomaterial: A detachable connection that holds together solely through the physical properties of the wood.

- Volume-optimized: The table legs and the associated assembly tools are inserted directly into the underside of the tabletop. This saves space during transport and conserves resources.

- High quality: We combine a solid oak or walnut tabletop with oak table legs – a wood that is particularly elastic and tough.

- Thoughtful design: A flush-milled crossbar on the table leg prevents the wood from splitting further than is necessary for the spring effect.

A Silicone Gewgaw That Turns Water Bottles into Dog Bowls

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Here's a clever use of materials, for those who take their dogs on hikes. This silicone gewgaw snaps onto any water bottle, allowing you to turn it into a drinking vessel for your pooch:

The product is sold by Korean e-tailer Gaenim.

Daily Objects' Node and Loft, a Flexible Wireless Charging System

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This wireless charging system is by British industrial design firm Layer. The idea is to provide attractive, flexible wireless charging to multiple devices, using just a single power cord. It consists of a two- or three-port dock called Loft, and different Node modules can be plugged into the ports, allowing you to charge phones, earbuds or the Apple Watch.

A Portable Lamp is also part of the line-up, and plugs directly into the ports.

The Nodes, by the way, don't need to remain attached to the dock to deliver charge; they have their own internal batteries, and can be moved around independent of the dock to deliver juice wherever you need it.

"Charging your tech is one of the most repeated interactions in daily life, yet the products that enable it are often treated as background objects," writes Layer founder Benjamin Hubert. "With Node and Loft, we wanted to bring clarity, flexibility and character to that experience and create a family of products to the fore, that work beautifully, feel intuitive to use, and establish a distinctive visual language for Daily Objects."

Daily Objects, the client, is an Indian accessories brand. For now, Node and Loft have been launched in their home market, but not yet in the U.S.

In Chinese Amusement Parks, a Safer Version of the Human Cannonball Trick

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In Chinese indoor amusement parks, they have a twist on trampolines. It translates to something like "jump air bags," and they evoke the "human cannonballs" of old:

Those are the same thing that stuntpeople use to break falls. It's a clever repurposing of what's essentially just a giant plastic tarp.

A Nifty, More Functional Alternative to the Countertop Access Flap

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At cafes and bars, a portion of the countertop often flips up to provide a pass-through for workers. Common though this solution is, it has a flaw: People tend to place objects on horizontal surfaces, and the flap must be cleared of objects before you can raise it.

Cambodian architecture firm Khoan + Partners designed something more functional for the Lagràce Café Koh Norea in Phnom Penh:

The Swerv: A Three-Wheeled Vehicle Designed Purely to Provide Thrills

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The mobility space focuses on moving people around for practical purposes. But as a student at Imperial College London's Dyson School of Design Engineering, Kerim Taskin designed a vehicle purely to provide a thrilling experience for the rider. His Swerv electric trike has a quite unusual riding position:

So what's the point of this? Taskin explains, and it sounds like more of a mental health aid than a vehicle:

Do you ever feel like your mind is going through a thick fog? Or like you just want your racing thoughts to stand still? Or maybe like the walls are closing in and your internal world is like a broken record, stuck on repeat.

The Swerv breaks you free from that by providing a pleasant, engaging and unique experience. It forces your brain to break free from its usual patterns by giving you such a unique experience that it doesn't know what else to do. Your mind becomes still, you feel instantly present and alert. Life energy rushing through your every cell. That combined with the sense of speed, feeling of flying, exhilaration of going head first and the small vibrations of the ride felt around your whole body, riders often break out in laughter and big smiles.

I often found myself sat at a laptop trying my hardest to complete assignments that were stressing me out from my university degree. My brain just didn't tick well enough to get the simplest tasks done. That's when I realised that there was an imbalance in my life. I was sat way too often at a desk trying to do tasks requiring a lot of focus. Eventually my brain felt depleted. Running and cycling helped but it took too long and too much discipline to be able to cross over from frustrated and stuck in my head to feeling relieved and being more in my body.

I realised I needed to boost my brains neuroplasticity, the ability of my brain to develop new connections and neurons. And I needed a fun and easy way of doing this pretty much on demand. I discovered from an online course that the #1 thing that boosts the brains neuroplasticity is for us to do things in new ways. Using my new found skills from my design engineering course at Imperial College London, I started my process of design for a tool that would help me to instantly feel alive, invigorated and refreshed.

I combined the design of the "Tron bike" from the movie "Tron" and a simple trike to sketch out the first ever Swerv. It took me three months to design and build and it did work. But my budget was really low and my time was limited so it was very rough around the edges, BUT IT WORKED! However I had tested the concept, it gave me the boost I was looking for, I validated the idea and as soon as I tried the first prototype I was completely HOOKED.

Now graduated, Taskin attracted enough investors to commercialize the design through his company, Sweren. For £25 (USD $33), you get a 30-minute riding session at the Preston Park Velodrome in Brighton. Reviewers have written "The adrenaline hit is insane," "Pure dopamine" and "My nervous system is still buzzing."

While it looks a bit dangerous to ride on roads, Sweren does sell a street-legal (in the UK) version of the trike for £4,990 (USD $6,587); an off-road version for £3,490 ($4,607); and a kid's version for £2,299 ($3,034).

Core77 Weekly Roundup (6-22-26 to 6-26-26)

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Here's what we looked at this week:

An aluminum lamp made using a hydraulic press, by industrial designer Omri Polishuk.

Wataru Kumano's Sauna Stool, created with a minimum of production steps.

Real Motors' stunning Project Ares electric motorcycle.

Butterfly doors for a house! By People's Architecture Office.

Great UX: Hazet's SmartCase portable tool organizers.

ArborTech's smart design for a handheld trenching tool re-thinks the blades.

Travoca's award-winning off-grid eCooler, by industrial designer Dave Gibson.

BMW unveils their striking M Concept Neue Klasse.

How smelly people were historically dealt with: Mass deodorizers from antiquity.

Soccer-inspired asymmetrical linking chairs, by industrial designer Peter Otto Vosding.

Design Professor Phil Renato's clever 3D-printed two-part wire bending jig.

Butterfly Doors for a House!

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People's Architecture Office is a Beijing-based firm that works across architecture, product design, art, and urbanism. As the name suggests, the firm believes that design should be for the masses, and they focus on social impact projects.

Hutongs are Beijing's traditional alleyway neighborhoods. They're a far cry from modern apartment towers, being low-rise structures packed with lower- and middle-income residents. PAO modified one such structure with this incredible butterfly door, which turns into a light-admitting awning:

"[It's] wonderful to witness @peoplesarchitecture's years of work," writes design curator Shirley Surya, who shot the video, "that enabled inhabitants to remain in the hutong fabric by integrating modern amenities and providing spatial options thru attractive/affordable/appropriate 'plug-in' solutions."

A Design Professor's Clever 3D-Printed Two-Part Wire Bending Jig

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Phil Renato is a Product Design professor at Ferris State University's Kendall College of Art and Design, in Michigan. A hands-on guy, Renato created this 3D-printed jig for bending wire:

"Some subtext here: I absolutely hate pliers," Renato writes. "Even though I have a jewelry background and I don't use that much wire in my work anyway, I absolutely of abhor even very good jewelers pliers. I recognize their value, I know that other people can use them in precise ways that don't ding up the work etc. But I am almost always someone who will use a jig and pieces of wood or plastic mallets and vise jaws lined with brass etc. to keep from having to bend things with pliers for reasons that only my imaginary counselor can really understand."

Renato has posted the .stl files for the jig on Thingiverse.

Soccer-Inspired Asymmetrical Linking Chairs

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This Spielbein chair concept is by German industrial designer Peter Otto Vosding. (In German, spielbein refers to the kicking leg in soccer, as opposed to the standbein, or supporting leg. The name makes sense when you look at the design.)

Seating people in rooms of any kind, you always have to answer the question of how many seats will be necessary. Placing benches instead of chairs is an elegant way of answering this question. Depending on the amount of people in one room, you can move together, or take more space for yourself. However, a disadvantage is, that benches are bulky and cannot be varied in length. This is where Spielbein comes in:

The chair has an extension of the seating surface towards one side. This extension closes the gap between aligned chairs, that build a bench in their entirety. However, the backrests still clearly define single seats, whereas the seating surface invites people to budge up and offer someone else a place without relinquishing it themselves.

I'd love to see further refinement. Would it be possible to modify the design so that the chairs can stack?

Smart Design for a Handheld Trenching Tool

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Out here in the country, you see a lot of ditches and trenches being dug. It's how plumbing and electrical infrastructure reach houses. By the side of the road, you'll often see contractors using machines or tractor attachments made by a company called Ditch Witch:

Some properties aren't accessible by these machines, either because they're remote or because existing fencing prevents it. In those cases, workers have to resort to using narrow spades called sharpshooters. It's obviously hard work.

However, Australian tool company ArborTech invented a portable, powered trenching tool that eases the task. The chainsaw-like form factor of the Ditch Witch wouldn't work for a handheld tool—the kickback from trying to dig into hard dirt would wrench the tool out of the worker's hands. So instead, ArborTech's AllSaw uses two U-shaped oscillating and reciprocating Trench Blades:

The alternating motion of the dual blades completely eliminates kickback; the blades simply shift through the dirt in an alternating pattern, ejecting material while the user guides the tool.

Rather than investing in their own proprietary battery, the company shrewdly partnered up with DeWalt. The AllSaw runs on DeWalt's FlexVolt batteries, making the tool an easy buy for contractors already on board with Big Yellow.

How Smelly People were Historically Dealt With: Mass Deodorizers from Antiquity

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Modern civilization works hard to dispel unpleasant smells. Deodorant, air fresheners and scented detergents are a multibillion-dollar industry.

Obviously this industry didn't exist in antiquity. But here's an early solution for dealing with stinky people.

Image: Ajuntament de Sant Vicenç de Montalt, CC BY 3.0

As civilization developed, small cities were formed and houses of worship erected. Now you've got dozens or hundreds of bodies crammed inside a single structure, and none of these people have access to hot running water, Irish Spring or Febreze. These early temples stank.

This was a global problem. Thus the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Europeans all looked for things they could burn to cover the smell in temples and churches. Frankincense, sandalwood, cloves and other herbs were used.

These were called incense, and placed inside metal vessels called censers. The censers were loaded with hot coals. The smell of the incense helped mask the smell of the unwashed masses, and the rising smoke came to symbolize prayers in visual form.

Image: Lacma

Image: Shakko, CC BY-SA 3.0

Image: Tbatb, CC BY-SA 4.0

In Spain, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela has an extreme version of a censer. From the late 900s, Christians from across Europe would make pilgrimages to Santiago, because the Cathedral was believed to hold the remains of St. James. As the church filled up with pilgrims, the interior would become pretty rank. So sometime around the 1200s, the clergy developed this crazy overhead-swinging censer called the Botafumeiro:

As you can see they still use it today, out of tradition.

The thing weighs 80kg (176 lbs), so they presumably put a lot of care into their rope selection.

BMW Unveils Striking M Concept Neue Klasse

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A couple of years ago, we were excited to see BMW's Neue Klasse; the designers, we felt, had come back down to Earth with some shockingly clean design. Now they've unveiled their concept for the performance-oriented M version of the Neue Klasse, answering the question: What should an electric M-series look like?

A forward-facing shark nose and a light signature with depth effect characterise the front end. Headlights and kidney grille form a single unit. The new M Yellow Lights create a focused view of the road. The yellow light icons are set to become a new signature feature of future BMW M automobiles and reference GT racing cars as well as the BMW M Hybrid V8.

The front apron of the BMW M Concept Neue Klasse adopts a trimaran-style bumper, inspired by the form of high-speed sailing boats. The three-part design underlines the vehicle's technical appearance. It also provides structural support for the front splitter – an aerodynamic element at the lower edge of the front end.

Another new lighting accent for future BMW M automobiles are the three-dimensional Track Lights located in the outer sections of the front apron.

Track Lights and trimaran design also shape the rear apron of the BMW M Concept Neue Klasse. The Track Lights frame the trimaran element above the floating diffuser. A striking ducktail spoiler improves aerodynamics, increases downforce at the rear axle and at the same time sets a striking accent within the clean surface design of the rear end.

"The new BMW M design language forms the expressive spearhead of the Neue Klasse – determined and purposeful," says BMW design chief Oliver Heilmer. "This project is truly special to me because it carries the BMW M character into a new era."

The industry buzz is that this isn't just a design study, but a near-production design slated for 2027 or '28.

Travoca's Award-Winning Off-Grid E-Cooler, by Industrial Designer Dave Gibson

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Industrial designer Dave Gibson specializes in outdoor gear; indeed, he's a Professor of Outdoor Product and Industrial Design at Utah State University. Gibson was recently tapped by Travoca, a Milwaukee-based outfit that makes overlanding equipment, to design a different sort of cooler. The result is their Rigel+ eCooler:

While it resembles a traditional cooler in appearance, this thing has a Toshiba compressor wedged inside; it functions as a full-blown refrigerator/freezer and is aimed at overlanders.

While it can run off of 12V (plugged into your car) or 110V (plugged into a household socket), Travoca has higher aims: Full off-grid capability. To that end, they also produce this Vega Sol 200, a weather-resistant foldable solar panel, which charges their Vega 1500 Power Station, a portable battery.

The idea is that you keep the eCooler plugged into your car's battery as you drive. Once you've arrived at your off-grid destination, you plug it into the Power Station (which you'd ideally have topped off at home). The Power Station provides about 18 hours of runtime for the eCooler, and you can keep charging the Power Station using the solar panels; five hours of sun can get the Power Station from 0% to 80%.

None of this is cheap, of course. The eCoolers come in 25L, 35L, 45L and 60L capacities, running $650, $830, $930 and $1,030 respectively. The Vega Sol 200 solar panel's a further $340, and the Power Station runs $850. But for those with the budget, being able to keep things cool for days on end without ice is a huge game-changer.

For his troubles, Gibson's being awarded a 2026 Red Dot Design Award next month.