Yanko Design

Not every art installation earns the right to exist in a landscape. Most feel like intrusions, objects dropped into nature rather than grown from it. OAS/S-AETHER, the latest work from Beijing-based Zhide Architectural Design Consulting (ZDC), is one of the rare exceptions. Standing on the sandy coastline of Aranya in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, this winged structure of interconnected metal rods and glowing acrylic lightboxes manages to feel both ancient and alien at the same time, and that ten

The budget laptop category has a long reputation for disappointing displays, short battery life, and builds that feel provisional rather than considered. Most sub-$300 machines get you to the internet and not much further before something creaks or slows down. It’s a price bracket that tends to ask buyers to accept tradeoffs that shouldn’t really be necessary in 2026, and ChromeOS devices have historically been no exception. The ASUS Chromebook CM15 and Chromebook CM32 Detachable tak

Wireless charging on Android has been a bit of a mess. Most phones support it, but the speeds tend to lag behind proprietary fast-charging standards, and the Qi2 situation has been particularly awkward. Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series supports Qi2 speeds but skips the built-in magnets, meaning you still need a special case to get the alignment right. Other Android phones that did include magnets weren’t hitting the full 25W Qi2 ceiling. It was always one or the other. The Motorola Edge 7

Bang & Olufsen perfected the idea of audio equipment as art, creating speakers so sculptural and beautiful they demand to be looked at long before they are ever heard. This approach turned hi-fi systems into statement pieces, architectural elements that shape a room’s aesthetic just as much as they fill it with sound. The price for such artistry, however, often places it in the realm of museum-worthy gallery objects. A new design is taking a similar run at that “look at me” audio

Nearly a year after Open Tools first introduced the idea, the Paris-based startup has released its first video of a working prototype of the Open Printer, a fully open-source inkjet that prints in both monochrome and full color. For a project that’s been generating buzz since its Crowd Supply debut in 2025, actually watching the thing print is a meaningful moment. Concepts are easy. Hardware is hard. That said, the prototype arriving is only part of the story. Pricing hasn’t been con

Some buildings sit on a landscape, and then there are buildings that seem to belong to it. The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, designed by Oslo and New York-based studio Snøhetta, is firmly the latter. Rising from the dramatic terrain of Medora, North Dakota — just outside the boundaries of Theodore Roosevelt National Park — the structure feels less like architecture imposed on the land and more like something the Badlands quietly exhaled. Snøhetta won the international design competiti

Remember the movie Big? Tom Hanks, the carnival Zoltar machine, a kid who just wanted to grow up overnight. That film had a way of making wish-granting feel both magical and slightly unsettling, because the machine didn’t really know you. It just read the room and gave you what you asked for. Now, almost four decades later, Australian art and technology studio ENESS has built something that does the same thing but with significantly more data points, and the result is one of the more thoug

Four-player chess is not some internet-era gimmick dreamed up for group game nights. Variants of it have existed for centuries, from Indian Chaturaji played with dice, to Victorian England’s fascination with elaborate cross-shaped boards designed specifically to seat four rivals at once. The format never quite dethroned standard chess in popularity, mostly because building a proper four-sided board was always a pain, and because the rules needed serious rethinking to keep games from spiral

The landline died because of the wire, not because of the idea. A physical phone tethered to a wall socket made sense in 1985 and made increasingly less sense every year after, until entire households simply stopped bothering to replace them. Pinwheel’s new release makes the case that the object itself, the tactile handset, the dedicated cradle, the single purpose design, was worth keeping around long after the copper wiring became a liability. Strip out the jack and run the whole thing ov

Diamond Atelier has side stepped the traditional custom motorcycle scene with the DA#22 ULTRON, a one-of-a-kind machine that the Munich-based workshop describes as the world’s first hyperbike. Publicly revealed at the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed, the road-legal prototype is designed to narrow down the gap between high-performance superbikes and exclusive hypercars. Rather than modifying an existing motorcycle with premium components, Diamond Atelier began the project by creating a completely

 Our homes are filled with appliances that have become smaller, smarter, and more independent over time. Vacuums now navigate rooms on their own, and countertop ovens can execute complex recipes with minimal input. Yet the world of garment care has remained stubbornly analog and labor-intensive, still revolving around large tumble dryers and the manual work of an iron. The category has been waiting for a device that truly understands the constraints of modern living, particularly for those in

We all have different adventure needs. If your lifestyle requires you to go beyond the paved roads and into the wild, you need a capable setup that’s designed with comfort and convenience to go where you want it to. A new entrant among the likes of Adventure Pro Mini 2.0 or the Polydrops P21X is the Fortress Explorer camping trailer that is built for genuine off-grid comfort. The explorer gains off-grid capabilities without having to compromise on its comfort or the capability at any point. New

The asterisk earned its name from the Greek word for little star, and most of us spend our whole lives treating it as a footnote marker, the small thing that points at some other, more important thing. Raw Color, the Eindhoven studio behind STELLAR, looked at that humble little glyph and decided it deserved top billing. Their new watch for Anicorn’s Trio of Time series puts three asterisks right on the dial, in orange, green, and pink, and sets the whole lot spinning. It is the rare watch

PROS: Fun, quirky, and stylish design Create rotating solution to typical stands and mounts Functional and tactile fabric exterior 66Wh built-in battery for hours of use Built-in Google TV with officially licensed Netflix needs no extra dongle CONS: A bit pricey Single 5W speaker 750W ISO lumens lamp requires a darker environment RATINGS: AESTHETICSERGONOMICSPERFORMANCESUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITYVALUE FOR MONEYEDITOR'S QUOTE:The TCL PlayCube isn't trying to be the

Most portable lights exist to solve a problem. They help you see when there’s no overhead fixture, charge your phone during a power outage, or keep your campsite from going completely dark. They’re useful, and that’s about where the conversation ends. Designer Benjamin Mtonya clearly thought that wasn’t enough. His student project, Fluted, just earned a Student Notable honor at the 2026 Design Awards, and it deserves more attention than that modest title suggests. Because

Every few years, the FIFA World Cup does what few things can: it makes the whole planet pay attention to the same thing at the same time. Brands, naturally, line up to be part of that moment. Most of them shouldn’t bother. The average World Cup campaign is either a celebrity-filled spectacle that forgets to say anything, or a half-hearted logo slap on a football kit. And then IKEA Canada goes and does something genuinely clever. Assemble the World is a social-first campaign created with De

The airport shop is a tax on poor planning. Everything in it exists to solve a problem you should have solved at home, at a price that reflects the fact that you have no other option. The five products here are the ones you pack deliberately, not desperately. Each one earns its place through considered design, genuine function, and the kind of quality that makes the airport version of the same thing look like a last resort. The selection covers everything a considered travel kit needs: audio tha

Some of the most interesting design work starts not in a studio, but in a family home. For Korean designer Kim Gayoung, it started with a chest. Not just any chest. A Bandaji, a traditional Korean dowry chest that her great-grandmother brought into her marriage. When that piece was passed down to Gayoung, it became more than furniture. It became a question: what do you do with an heirloom that feels too meaningful to set aside and too fixed to actually live with? Her answer is ænd, a modular fur

The original Hello lounge chair launched in 2002. Over two decades later, it’s back, and Patricia Urquiola has had her way with it. The result is the kind of redesign that makes you wonder why it took this long. Haworth’s Hello collection has been a reliable fixture in offices, lobbies, and collaborative spaces for years. The bones were always good: solid frame construction, thoughtful ergonomics, and a form language that leaned into comfort without abandoning function. But the origi

When a company known for vacuums and hair dryers unveils a concept car at CES, as Dreame did this year, the initial reaction is usually a cynical eye-roll. It feels like a marketing stunt, a desperate grab for headlines in a crowded hall. But sometimes, these seemingly absurd concepts are a window into a company’s soul, a statement about what they believe their core business truly is. Dreame does not think it is in the appliance business; it believes it is in the high-performance robotics