Originally coming on the scene with a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, the SwitchBot Curtain Rod is a small device that can open and close almost any type of curtain. Attaching to the curtain rod between folds of fabric, it can be controlled via the SwitchBot phone app for individual movements or on preset schedules. From the app, users can program the curtains to open as a wake-up call in the morning, to close when they leave the house for work, or even just to open up for more backlight while on a virtual call. A built-in light sensor even allows the curtains to open and close automatically at sunrise and sunset based on the amount of light outside.

The tiny gadget packs a mighty punch, pushing up to 17 pounds worth of curtains across a rod. Tab, grommet, and ring top curtains are all no problem, and the SwitchBot wheels are designed to easily glide over the bump of telescopic rods. The smart mover can also be modified to fit into curtains attached to tracks.

This little device obviously fulfilled a latent public need, as it raised nearly $1.5 million during its first fundraising campaign. The product was shipped out to customers in early 2020 and quickly garnered praise from users, earning the Good Design Award and going on to become a finalist at the IDEA 2020 awards. In 2022, it also received the Red Dot Design Award as a simple yet extremely efficient gadget.

The SwitchBot Curtain Rod got a more recent update this year. Instead of removable clips that had to be separately attached with the first iteration, the SwitchBot 2 is self-contained with spring-loaded clips. The wheels also got an upgrade, being enlarged by 1.6 times — and taking inspiration from off-road vehicles — for smoother travel along the rod.

New add-on devices are also available to increase the SwitchBot’s productivity. A SwitchBot Hub Mini (available for $39) allows the bot to bridge to a home Wi-Fi network, allowing users to control the curtains outside the house, too. By itself, the SwitchBot connects via Bluetooth. Using the Hub Mini, users can also pair the bot with devices like Alexa and Google Assistant for easy voice control.

A hanging solar panel (available for $19) is also newly available as a compatible device. While the bot itself has a 3350 mAh battery big enough to control curtains for up to eight months, attaching the solar panel provides virtually unlimited power, eliminating the need to bother with changing batteries.

While some reviews complain about the bulky shape of the SwitchBot and its inability to blend in with most curtain fabrics, the overall product gets plenty of thumbs up from customers for its smart functionality and ease of use. The SwitchBot Curtain Rod 2 is currently on sale for $99 on the company website.

The post The Latest in Smart Home Technology: Smart Curtains first appeared on Dornob.

Usually, opening an enclosed space to the fresh air means your window panel or door needs somewhere to go. Traditional windows might slide or pivot the movable pane out of the way, but that usually means there’s still a visual barrier. To open up the space completely, disappearing panes are the way to go. With the new Air-Lux descending window, you can open the whole entire width of the window, with the pane lowering into a slot in the ground.

No fixed elements are needed for the window to slide in front of, and when they’re open, no threshold is visible. Whatever your floor material, the company can disguise the top of the window so it’s barely noticeable at all. Another benefit to this system is you can have a maximum open area of up to 25 square meters (or 269 square feet), a very generous size.

These countersunk windows are both completely retractible and 100-percent leak-proof thanks to a unique air sealing system incorporating a circumferential inflatable ring. Seals adapt to the moving sash element and close the gap between the sash and the fixed element to make sure no rain, wind, or noise can penetrate the space when it’s closed. A concealed gutter drains rainwater through a drainage opening. The opening and closing process is smooth and silent, too, according to Air-Lux. The lowered window rests on a supporting structure connected to a counterweight and operates with an electric drive. You just push a button to operate it.

Is there a catch — aside from the price? Kind of. Installation requires a technical room beneath the space where the descending window is installed. This space will house the control unit, motor, drive shaft, and counterweight and needs to be accessible for maintenance work. This is also how you manually access the descended window if the power goes out and you need to close it.

If your home already has a basement, that part will be easy. Otherwise, adding this system will be an even more expensive undertaking. Prices, by the way, are only available by contacting the company, which you can do at their website. Or maybe just add this product to your fantasy home accoutrements list alongside that glass-bottom infinity pool and a secret car elevator that descends below your driveway.

To complement the descending window, you might want to check out the Air-Lux pivoting door. It uses the same inflatable ring seal to protect against the weather and can be as large as 16 feet high and 10 feet wide. Both the Air-Lux pivoting door and descending window won the German Design Award 2020 for Excellent Product Design — Building and Elements.

The post Air-Lux Descending Window Disappears into the Ground on Demand first appeared on Dornob.

As Ferraro explains on his website, the optical phenomenon of bright shapes that are projected when illuminating a transparent object is called “caustics.” The photons that don’t pass directly through the object form the object’s shadow, while the others can be bent in different directions by slight variations in the surface flatness of an object. Sometimes these photons overlap, making certain areas brighter. To mimic this effect in order to produce a particular image, Ferraro distributed just the right amount of concavity and convexity onto the surface of acrylic.

“To gain some intuition for how it is done, consider a traditional convex lens. This lens forms the simplest possible caustic. If all the incoming light is from a single, very distant light source like the Sun, this lens focuses all of its incoming light into a single point. The caustic image from this lens is dark everywhere with one very bright spot in the center.”

Being the aerospace engineer and software engineer that he is, Ferraro goes into a lot more detail to lay out exactly how this happens using mathematical equations. If you aren’t a math genius, it probably sounds like gibberish, but suffice to say it’s all about careful control of incoming light using the thickness of the acrylic slab. He created a “height map” of an image of his cat to define the gradients of darkness and light. You can think of the cells of the lens as pixels in an image, whereby enlarging or contracting them bends the light in different ways. The height map forms the back surface of the Magic Window, while the front surface is flat.

Once he had his image mapped out, Ferraro translated it to a physical object using Fusion360 computer software, which sets up a roughing tool path for a CNC router or mill. The machine carves the surface finish, which is then wet-sanded and polished so all the fine details can literally shine. The result is a startlingly three-dimensional hologram that changes shape according to the angle from which you hold it in front of a light source. Can’t you already imagine large-scale Magic Windows installed in buildings, creating all kinds of incredible holograms all around us? No doubt, somebody is going to figure out how to turn this code into a program that makes it easy for designers to do just that.

If you’re interested in reading the full scientific explanation of how all of this light-bending works, Godspeed. It involves vectors, Snell’s Law, velocity potential ,and Poisson’s Equation. If you know what any of that means, check it out on Ferraro’s website. And if you’re interested in making a Magic Window yourself, Ferraro has shared his code under the MIT license, meaning you can use it for anything you want, including hobbyist, educational, and business uses. He only asks that if you use it to make something, you share the results with him.

The post Invisible Images Hidden in Windows Reveal Themselves When the Sun Shines first appeared on Dornob.

That fact is evidenced by the popularity of various flight-themed adventures offered in 2020. Back in July, the Taipei Songshan Airport furnished passengers with “a flight to nowhere,” complete with check-in, security, and boarding procedures for a seat on a grounded plane. With only 60 seats available, more than 7,000 people applied. Companies like EVA Air followed suit with sky-view sight-seeing treks that typically sold out in minutes.

When Australian airline Quantas started selling its excess business class pajamas, nostalgic flyers snapped up all 10,000 pieces within hours.

And of course there was the viral TikTok video of a dad who missed flying so much that he purchased a pair of First Class Delta plane seats and installed them in his living room. He’d also buckle his seat belt, pull out the safety information card, and listen to sounds of turbulence to fully recreate the flying vibes.

The latest air travel-simulating contribution is a view that can turn your workspace into a jet cabin. The Sky Scape digital airplane window looks just like the real thing with a plastic frame and faux shade handle, while the 22-inch high-resolution display provides a circulating view of takeoff, in-flight clouds views, and landing scenes. The atmospheric light in the ultra-realistic picture also cycles between sunrise and sunset, providing both brilliant blues skies and deep purple vistas.

A joint effort from Japanese companies Joled Inc., an OLED screen maker, and LandSkip Inc., a digital display and installation firm, the Sky Scape window was actually under development long before the coronavirus struck. The timing of its release turned out to be serendipitous. Originally designed to be another relaxation tool in the LandSkip arsenal of digital landscape offerings, it now offers a way to soothe socially-distanced employees in their cubicles or home offices.

“I’ve found that it really helps with concentration,” says LandSkip Chief Executive Officer Kazuki Shimomura. “Time passes in a very productive way.”

Joled, a company formed in 2015 when Sony and Panasonic merged their organic light-emitting diode technology (OLED) divisions, saw this project as a way to make their tech more accessible to individuals.

“We wanted to get our panels into the hands of many users while enhancing their value,” says Masayuki Ono, Joled’s Director of Business Development.

For those interested in looking down on the clouds during the workday, the Sky Scape will be available to rent on a subscription-style basis and will be less than the $290 charged for the LandSkip’s larger displays typically installed in hotels and hospitals.

And for those who still find air trips stress-inducing, the companies have also produced the more earthy Terra Bonsai, a digital display of the traditional manicured Japanese tree. A symbol of being in harmony with nature, the tree moves through the stages of the seasons: budding spring pink blossoms, lush summer foliage, falling auburn leaves, and snow-covered branches. The dark background surrounding the ethereal floating Bonsai morphs serenely from fluttering butterflies to a peaceful koi pond.

The post Travel-Deprived Frequent Flyers Can Get Their Fix with Digital Airplane Window Screens first appeared on Dornob.

While people have been aware of the dirty doorknob dilemma for decades now, the pandemic has motivated professionals from all kinds of fields to develop creative solutions that could revolutionize the ways we enter and exit rooms and buildings.

The CleanKey

Ziad Salah from Edmonton, Alberta was motivated by his personal situation. His wife is pregnant with their first child, and their older parents are at high risk for contracting the virus. He was following all the protective protocols, of course, but he still felt it wasn’t enough. He says that “it’s not enough to socially distance from being around people. You have to socially distance from things that are publicly shared, too.”

Working with his friends Abed and Ammar Shawar, Salah brainstormed possible solutions. They ultimately came up with a small key-shaped tool with a hook on the end that fits into any pocket and opens doors weighing up to 70 pounds without the hands ever making contact with a knob or handle. The CleanKey can also help you avoid hand contact with keypads and touch screens.

Although CleanKey is among an assortment of portable door-openers currently on the market, Salah and the Shawar brothers believe their curved hood design is more stable than those of their competitors — not to mention more competitively priced at $7. Salah explains that “we’re getting orders for five to six of them at a time, one for every member of a family, so we don’t want the total cost running to $100.”

Free for All

Instead of carrying a tool to open doors, engineers at Materialise (one of Europe’s largest 3D-printing operations) came up with a device that can be easily installed on existing door handles. Perhaps most impressively, it took them only three days to devise, produce, improve, and make public online printing blueprints for it.

Just to clarify, Materialise’s primary focus is the design and 3D-printing of medical equipment, so their aim was never to mass-produce the handles. Instead, they made the blueprints available free online so any individual or company with a 3D printer could use them to create their own. To date, over 100,000 blueprints have been downloaded, equal to around one-tenth of all 3D-printer owners in the world.

The “Less is More” Solution

Arjun Kaicker, head of workplace analytics and insights at London-based Zaha Hadid Architects, thinks voice-activated doors will someday be common. Until then, he suggests a much simpler answer to avoiding germy doorknobs.

“Meeting room doors are going to be propped open, and only if you have a meeting requiring absolute privacy will a person close that door with a handkerchief. And when people move into the offices straightaway, they might just take doors off meetings rooms and offices and put them into storage until things change.”

The post COVID-19 Sparks New Innovations in Door Design first appeared on Dornob.

Doormats keep dirt and moisture from being tracked around your home, and good ones also add a personal touch to your space. Unfortunately, lots of traditional doormats are just short-terms solutions that result in unwanted waste when their owners decide it’s time for a change. The Tile Mat is a multi-functional doormat that offers versatility for your entryway and reduces the number of mats you’ll end up tossing into landfills as the years go by.

Tile Mat is an idea born from duo Joanna and Johnny (the owners of Letterfolk), who took the basic concept of a letterboard and adapted it to create a mat that could represent the changing of things like seasons or moods. Like standard mats, the Tile Mat has a rubber backing that is both durable and non-skid. The mat is topped with vintage-looking white hexagon tiles, which fit snugly under black tiles (sold separately) to form custom words or images.

Arranging the tiles is as easy as performing the simple push and turn motion that locks them into place. The designers assure that each tile will stay in place whenever you wipe your feet, shake your rug out, or vacuum it. When it becomes dirty, just wash it in a sink with a bit of soapy water. The tiles also come with an accompanying mesh bag, in which they can be washed in the dishwasher.

The mat boasts a universal design that can be used in and outside the home. Put one in front of the kitchen sink or stove, the laundry room, or even the bathroom, where it can be used in front of the sink or as a bath mat. With two different size options, 18” x 30” (standard) and 24” x 36” (large), you can also purchase different mats to meet your needs in different areas.

There are virtually endless messages you can lay at your front door with the Tile Mat. “Enter,” “Come In,” “Friends Welcome,” “Happy Birthday,” “Joys of the Season,” and “Grad Party” are just a few classics. But then again, words are just one option. You can also create geometric designs, patterns, or a personalized combination of your last name and your favorite flower. Plus, other tile colors will soon be available in addition to black to further enhance your artwork options.

While the creative aspect of the Tile Mat is fun, the eco-friendly aspect of it is notable, too. After all, it’s pretty careless to toss out a functional doormat just because you tire of the design. This leads to significant unwanted waste. Yes, the Tile Mat will probably replace several mats you normally would have gone through during life changes and seasonal transitions.

The Tile Mat recently had a Kickstarter campaign up that closed on the morning of September 13th, 2019. Originally requesting $15,000 to begin production on the mats, over 2,500 backers had pledged over $300,000 at the time writing of this article. It seems that Joanna and Johnny are on to something with their ultra-personalized home decor pieces.

The post Tile Mat is Versatile and Endlessly Customizable first appeared on Dornob.

Designers prefer to think about a whole composition than a single piece, yet the way home hardware works does not always lend itself to this approach. Take the classic dichotomy of door+handle, for example – no matter how classic or modern, these are generally considered separate objects.

Albed has taken a slightly different approach, dispensing with knobs altogether and building the opening-and-closing functionality straight into the cores of doors themselves. Now if only they could do something about those hinges, too (so cleverly concealed but no doubt still there when the doors are opened). Handle-free doors might sound strange, but they operate in a cool way.

From recessed pull handles (and push buttons) to curved built-in handles that seem to fold out of the surface, these designers have developed a line of (both real working and concept models) that illustrate various other ways to reconsider the age-old relationship of major opening and minor fixture. Fad, trend or timeless design? Hard to say – we will see how people feel about getting so closely in touch with their everyday door.

“Venturing beyond the limits of imagination: RING is INNOVATION capable of surprising us once again; the handle is a circular hole hiding a SOPHISTICATED opening technology.”

“Habits are hard to lose, but when faced with the ELEGANCE of the BLOW door, one is faced with the essence of simplicity. The vertical grip of the handle becomes a natural operation. The door panel is no longer fl at, its form shapes into a wave and the handle is its inside groove.”

“Albed was founded in 1964 with the idea of making high-quality design aluminium complements. It has developed its style and its own production skills, while maintaining its original goals. Our products are made entirely in italy, with raw materials that comply with all environment and safety criteria.”

“A wide ranging production of doors, room dividing systems and walk-in wardrobes. These solutions can adapt to any space, to furnish rooms while creatively optimising every area of the home and office in a refined, thoughtful and innovative manner. Technology, know-how and our production cycle that is entirely an internal process, allows us to make products and offer a “tailor-made” service for every furnishing need.”

The post Knob-Free Doors with Built-In Handles first appeared on Dornob.

A new piece of furniture by designer and architect Volodymyr Dereznichenko does just that, taking the concept of a window seat and pairing it with the compact size and rounded shape of the tiny apartments in Tokyo’s beloved Nakagin Capsule Tower (built in 1972). The most iconic example of the Japanese avant-garde movement called Metabolism, this capsule building has gone on to inspire countless hotel designs around the world.

The creator of the building, Kisho Kurokawa, always stressed that the biggest benefit of the Nakagin Capsule Tower was its adaptability. More specifically, he explained that individual capsules could be added, removed, and updated as necessary to keep up with the times, with each one boasting a 25-year lifespan. Unfortunately, Kurokawa didn’t anticipate the fact that the capsules would prove too costly to replace. Today, many of the building’s 140 individually owned units have fallen into disrepair, while others have been abandoned altogether.

When a crowdfunding project called for ideas to renovate one of the units, Dereznichenko responded with this concept. It “leans into” the most recognizable aspect of the building, he explains, which is its rounded windows looking out onto the city and the Tokyo Bay beyond. Each one is perfectly sized to accommodate a lounging resident.

The “Capsule” design is a piece of furniture custom-shaped to fit into the walls of these apartments. Dereznichenko explains that back in the 1970s, technology took up a lot of precious space inside the 107-square-foot living cubes. But thanks to the wonders of modern tech, we can now fit all sorts of functions into incredibly compact packages, allowing the window unit to incorporate speakers, chargers, and more. Its light, sound, and air conditioning features are all controlled by an accompanying smartphone app.

“The resident is able to adjust (metabolize) the space depending on one’s preferences,” says Dereznichenko. “The resident, when moved in, receives instruction on how to set up space, making it, in a sense, the electronic device itself because the truly futuristic concept of a capsule home should not be omitted.”

The designer calls “Capsule” an “allegorical spaceship,” helping to make dilapidated yet unique and promising apartment units feel livable again. In the custom-built apartment version, the piece includes built-in storage space, while smaller standalone units demonstrate how they could be used even without a window, just to get a bit of personal space. Each one features a circular privacy shade that can be opened or closed as little or as much as the occupant desires.

While rounded window seats are often built right into the walls, “Capsule” proves that a bit of imagination and some carpentry skills could net you a custom circular window nook for just about any space. And who says your window even has to be round? Place it up against a spacious square window, and you’d never know the difference when looking at it from inside.

Nakagin Capsule Tower image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The post Capsule: The Custom Window Seat Inspired by Tokyo’s Iconic Tiny Apartments first appeared on Dornob.

“All sliding doors can be shipped nationwide, including Canada. If your product is local, our installation team is available to lend a hand on your door project. Our in house CAD team will be able to pen down all aspects of your design concept to ensure a seamless installation.”

The post 5 Custom Sliding Door Solutions first appeared on Dornob.

Fresh and creative window shade designs range from hand-cut paper blinds and custom printed blackout shades to robust and colorful sliding glass panels. Here are a few of our favorites:

Artistic Cellular Paper Blinds

Upon creating these surreal-looking blinds, designer Natchar Sawatdichai took the typical cellular concept and freshened it up with fun pleated patterns. She notes that most materials used in home decoration are “over-qualified” and could be replaced with materials like paper, which is “often overlooked and not commonly used in home decoration because of its low-value appearance and doubts of its durability.”

“In some ways, we might not have found the appropriate applications yet, which can enhance its value and change the belief about this material.”

Designed to work with consumer cycles of disposability rather than trying to fight them, these blinds allow the user to recycle or compost them when they want something new, all the while keeping the reusable hardware. Each one is cut and folded by hand, and all of them can easily be trimmed to fit various window sizes.

Custom-Printed Window Shades

When shopping for window dressings, there’s no need to limit yourself to the solid neutral colors offered by most retailers. Virtually anything you can envision can be custom-printed onto the shade type of your choice, including light filtering, blackout, and solar screen fabrics. Companies like Creatively Different Blinds, Blinds Galore, and Orange Piel make it easy to design and upload your own artwork or choose from libraries of premade graphics and patterns. Either way, you’re sure to end up with works of art that are entirely your own.

Glass Curtains

If you’d prefer something much sleeker and more durable with ultra-low maintenance to boot, these modern sliding glass curtains from Sprinz are definitely worth considering. Available in a wide variety of colors and patterns from transparent to opaque, these “curtains” offer shade, privacy, and heat reduction from sunlight streaming in through the windows. Functioning much like sliding glass doors, they follow a track and can easily overlap each other when you want them out of the way.

City Skyline Roller Shades

Turning day into night with a flick of the wrist, blackout shades are essential for anyone who works overnight shifts, lives in a place with high light pollution, or just loves a good nap. Cut the shapes of cityscapes into those shades and you’ve got instant scenery, not to mention the ability to see how bright it is outside without letting in too much light.

What was once a noteworthy concept design is now available for purchase internationally from a Ukrainian company called HoleRoll. The collection includes the skylines of London or New York, each featuring iconic landmark architecture like the Gherkin and the Empire State Building, as well as a dazzling night sky effect.

The post Beyond Blinds: 4 Fresh and Creative Ways to Dress Windows first appeared on Dornob.

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“Oak Coordinates” Block

This handcrafted solid oak marker reminds you just where your home is. It comes with a rope and oak handle for easy moving, and the wood is protected with a Danish oil finish. If you prefer, you can choose to inscribe names or quotes on it instead of coordinates.

“Great Wave” Doorstop

British artist Clive Roddy created his “Great Wave” doorstop as a tribute to a legendary artist. “The design is both a functional doorstop and small wooden diorama that pays homage to the iconic image ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’ by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai,” he explains. This doorstop is made from six layers of high-quality birch plywood and boasts a nonslip rubber pad on its base.

“Elegant Cat” Doorstop

Japanese company Issiki sells this clever doorstop, which can be mounted flat onto a door. The cat just sits there until you call it into action by flicking its tail down to keep your door open.

Javanese Batik Doorstop

These colorful handmade doorstops have been patchworked together from offcuts of genuine Javanese batik cotton. That means that no two are alike, but it also means that you can’t buy one in the color or pattern of your choice. They are shipped empty to save postage but should be filled with rice, pebbles, or sand upon arrival.

Soldier Doorstop

This “green army man” will protect your door from accidentally closing and give you a flashback to childhood, probably. This upgrade on the kid’s toy weighs just under 3 pounds and arrives ready for duty.

Burlap Poppies Doorstop

You’ll feel like you’re bringing a little bit of the outdoors in with these wild poppies (available in bright red and charcoal gray) in your home. They’re embroidered onto hard-wearing burlap, which is in turn lined with natural oatmeal cotton canvas and finished with cotton rope ties. These doorstops are made to order and can even be inscribed with names or monograms.

Ice Cream Doorstop

The quirky folks at Fred and Friends have created “soft-serve doorstop” that we just had to throw on this list. While we generally don’t see anything funny about dropped ice cream, we felt the need to make an exception in this case.

Hodor Doorstop

So, how do we talk about this doorstop without unleashing spoilers? (Some people may not be all caught up on Games of Thrones.) Perhaps we can just say that Hodor is happy to, um, assist you. This doorstop was 3-D-printed using biodegradable thermoplastic from renewable resources and features anti-slip backing. Order it in a standard or “huge” size. The designer says that if you order three, you’ll receive a free “Starks of Winterfell Sigil and Coat of Arms,” too.

The post Eight Unusual Doorstops That Are Sure to Add Character and Whimsy to Your Home first appeared on Dornob.

When you think about it, many of the buildings we live, work, eat, and shop in are often so inundated by harsh rays of sunlight, we already have to block them out with blinds or curtains. That’s a whole lot of potential solar energy, and the majority of us are letting it go to waste every single day. SolarGaps wants people to capture that energy and use it, and their blinds don’t require any complicated installation. Unlike most solar products, SolarGaps was created with apartment dwellers in mind, and it’s designed to look like a set of traditional window blinds, so you don’t have to worry about it being an eyesore.

Everything you need to produce your own solar energy and sustainably power your electronics is included in a single set of SolarGaps blinds. Got a super sunny south-facing office window? Screw these blinds on outside, and you’ll be ready to juice up your laptop, phone, and other gadgets while simultaneously saving money on your electricity bills! All you have to do is plug them in, and they immediately start harvesting and generating energy.

If you buy multiple units and produce more power than you need, you can always store it in the SolarGaps battery bank to use later on in the event of an emergency. Alternatively, you can choose to feed excess energy back into the grid through a two-way meter to earn some credit from your utility provider. The coolest part is that the blinds automatically track the sun and adjust their own angles to it for optimal power production throughout the day. If you ever feel like it, you can monitor how much sunlight they’re receiving and how much electricity they’re generating from the accompanying SolarGaps smartphone app. SolarGaps is easy to integrate with smart devices like Echo, Nest Thermostat, and Google Home, so you’ll be able to control it via voice commands, too. You can even program the blinds to open when someone enters the room and close when they leave.

According to SolarGaps, you can reduce your apartment, home, or business electricity bill by up to 70 percent. That number might seem large, but it makes sense considering the blinds generate 100W-150W of renewable energy for each 10 square feet of covered window space: enough to power 30 LED light bulbs or three MacBooks. The company allows you to order as little as a single blind slat, which can single-handedly charge your phone, tablet, or mp3 player. For a lower price, you can buy a non-automated version of SolarGaps. A three-room apartment with south-facing windows can produce up to 600 watt-hours per day, and in an office or retail building, there’s potential to generate ten times that much.

In short, SolarGaps are one of those inventions that make you say, “why didn’t we think of that earlier?”

The post Solar Panel Blinds Provide Shade and Produce Energy at the Same Time first appeared on Dornob.

Attics and upper-floor spaces with angled roofs can feel stuffy and constricting, often cut off from both daylight and fresh air. Instead of renovating the roof to add attic windows or balconies, you could have both in one. European window manufacturer Velux offers dormer windows that transform into outdoor spaces in seconds, the bottom half featuring pop-up banisters and the top half opening vertically into an overhang.

The Cabrio system fits snugly into the roof when closed, but becomes an instant balcony just by pushing both panes open. Available in single, double or triple formats, they bring daylight, fresh air and a view to rooms under sloping roofs, making the space inside feel dramatically larger and more open.

The top-hung section rotates 180 degrees for easy cleaning, and protects the indoor space in case of sudden rain. Previously unusable floor space butting right up to the ceiling becomes an indoor/outdoor lounge space.

If you want an instant balcony that’s a little larger, there’s also an option for a triple window with bottom panes that swing out to the side, creating a full-sized door leading to a small terrace with a standard balcony railing.

“VELUX CABRIO balcony opens in seconds to give your loft space a place in the sun. The innovative balcony adds air, light and a great view to your home. For added convenience, the VELUX CABRIO balcony fits flush with the roof when closed.”

“Enjoy a balcony instantly – VELUX CABRIO® goes from roof window to balcony in seconds. Bring the outside in – let in more natural daylight and fresh air. Roof window or balcony – your choice – the top half opens like a traditional roof window.”

“With a small investment, you can dramatically transform any room in your home with daylight and fresh air. In the long run, installing roof windows will help you save on your utility bills. Costs vary depending on the number of roof windows and your ceiling type.”

The post Attic Window Transforms into Pop-Up Balcony first appeared on Dornob.

The world’s largest pivoting windows are so tall, they make a person standing between them look like an unusually realistic miniature figurine. Standing 20 feet in height and weighing nearly four tons, the windows open from the dining room of an Antwerp home into the garden outside.

They’re part of a nearly all-glass extension to the home by Belgian architecture firm Sculp IT, connecting the original part of the residence to the outdoor space. A previous addition was demolished to make way for the glazed volume, which brings daylight pouring into the interior and lets the residents look out onto flowers and greenery.

It’s the hardware that makes these glass “door” panels technically windows rather than doors. The firm went with a pivoting design instead of conventional door hinges. Clearly angling for its place in the record books, Sculp IT is also known for designing the narrowest house in the Netherlands, and the world’s largest floating swimming pool.

The addition features several lofted areas to make optimal use of the triple-height space, so the views can be enjoyed whether you’re cooking a meal in the kitchen or getting some work done upstairs. While the entire inside of the home has been modernized, its historic facade was left intact to retain its “bourgeois radiance.”

“A town house ready for the next century. The façade keeps its historical function and bourgeois radiance, neatly in line. The contrast with the rear is ample. All incorrect additions are replaced by a unit of space and light. Daylight and contact with the garden are introduced. The simple, contemporary glass rear has the world’s largest pivoting window – 3 meters wide by 6 meters high – and makes this house ready for the future.”

“Bell etage, so no connection on the same level with the garden.  Clients wanted to have that connection and a more modern approach in connection with the old details. We broke down the rear part of the building to make this connection on the same level, and give the house a nice view to the garden from the different floors. We wanted to make also a connection with the different floors.  This happened with a triplex in the new built rear extension.”

The post World’s Largest Pivoting Windows first appeared on Dornob.