The entrance is purposefully mysterious, finished in black steel with no apparent function. The intention is to raise expectations for the interior space, taking inspiration from the entrances of traditional Japanese shrines. Carving the new retail space right into the thick concrete walls and leaving their unfinished contours in place, the architects create the sense of penetrating into a deep, dark cave or bunker. Seeing all the watches lined up on their pristine white and steel shelving, one wonders if they’ll find the Batmobile around the next corner.

The architects intentionally chose materials that would be in conflict with the rough nature of the concrete to create a visual tension. Shallow beds of gravel make the transition between the original surfaces and the new tile flooring. Most fascinating of all, perhaps, is the choice to subtly highlight the brokenness of the concrete in some areas with gold powder in the spirit of “kintsugi,” the Japanese art of repairing broken vessels with gold to highlight the beauty of their imperfections.

“By laying gravel between these spaces, we express a sense of calmness and beauty reminiscent of a Japanese garden,” say the architects. “The floor was finished by old lumber and floated in the space as a stage for encountering rare products. The stainless steel showcase makes a sensation of an otherworldly bank vault and the rarity of the product stand out more. The display stand of the watch uses natural stone as it is, and by contrasting it with the natural beauty of the stone, it enhances the attractiveness of the artificial beauty of the wristwatch, which can be said to be the crystallization of advanced craftsmanship.”

The firm adds that “you can bring your favorite products to the negotiation booth and carefully examine them. The booth is a neutral space finished with white steel and plastic and surface emission from the ceiling makes [it so] you can concentrate on the detail of the product. The strong contrast of various materials makes each space stand out independently. And through those ‘space’ experiences, you can feel the connection with the concept of ‘time.’”

There’s a certain poetry to Kenta Nagai Studio’s approach to this project, especially given the history of Shinjuku City. Now known as Tokyo’s major commercial center, home to the busiest railway station in the world and most of the city’s skyscrapers, Shinjuku was almost 90 percent destroyed during the Tokyo air raids in 1945. Only its roads and rails remained, preserving its pre-war form for post-war reconstruction. In this sense, those roads and rails are almost like the gold lines of kintsugi passing through the city, knitting together old and new.

The post Old Tokyo Building Sliced Open for a New Store and Repaired with Traditional Japanese Kintsugi first appeared on Dornob.

Grytten, a freelance product and transportation artist living in Barcelona, devised his brainchild to resemble the roof of the Porsche 917 (the winner of both the 1970 and 1971 Le Mans competitions), which itself boasts a contoured glass windshield and matching hatch overlooking the engine. The new timepiece idea mimics the slope of that glass, elevating the middle of the face with a view of four analog time-telling dials. The design also pays tribute to the Porsche’s dashboard, with two odometer gauges implanted on one side.

“The watch industry is a crowded market, mostly based on tradition. It is therefore very challenging to stand out, without being too complex or too futuristic,” says Gyrtton on his Behance product page. “For this project, the goal was to use Porsche DNA and philosophy. Indeed, they have proven for many years that by mixing classic and modern, disruptive & essential, the result is always unique. For Porsche, it is necessary to do more than just adding their logo on a regular watch.”

According to its website, Porsche is led by a “clear design philosophy: optimize function.” That includes reducing form down to the essentials and being willing to overcome the familiar to discover new and exceptional solutions.

Grytten took that sense of optimizing function to heart with this newest creation. “Nowadays, too [many] luxury watch makers expose the movement, instead of the time,” he explains. “Sometimes telling the time is even secondary. That’s why the key idea on this concept was to expose the dial as the ‘masterpiece,’ instead of the mechanical movement. To give more importance to it, inspiration from old odometers seemed the most logical way to go. It allows us to give more volume to the watch, creates completely new shapes, and also confirms the automotive heritage.”

Porsche, the “world’s only car manufacturer with its own watch company,” has been producing timepieces for 40 years now, but its current collections include nothing as distinctive or unexpected as Grytten’s notion. It would be a major aesthetic shift for the company were they to pick it up.

The schematics also call for orange, white, and black band options made from several different materials. The dial colors would also be available in the same range of colors. The sleek end clasps allow for any size adjustment, while the sides feature Targa branding, perhaps as a nod to the Porsche 911 Targa 4S.

As an independent designer, Grytten has taken on all sorts of theoretical projects. His Behance page showcases plans for things like a NASA bike for Mars, an autonomous sailing and exploring boat for Mercedes, a self-driving BMW “Drunk Car,” and a solar wind farm for use on other planets.

More of his drafts can also be accessed on his Instagram account #gyttren_simon.

The post New Concept Watch Lets You Wear the Porsche 917 first appeared on Dornob.

Everything moves in time, but the speed of time can be different depending on your location and perspective — and in outer space, time moves slower. So does that make wristwtches totally useless to astronauts? They may not tell them the exact hour and minute of their relative location while they’re floating around outside Earth’s atmosphere, but when the watches are this cool, who really cares?

The Gamma Series from Divided by Zero is a new collection of timepieces inspired by NASA and outer space, each bearing its own unique eye-catching design. The watches are named after famous scientists and astronauts, including Hawking, Tyson, Bruno, Villard, Aldrin, Grissom, and Shepard. The first four come in dramatic black with luminous markings that offer a glow-in-the-dark surprise when the lights are out, while the latter three designs feature signature NASA colors and materials influenced by spacecraft.

The Gamma series was created using Swiss Super-LumiNova pigments by Tritec for a superior long lasting glow, and the straps are made of lightweight polyurethane for a high-tech look. The intricate Armstrong and Aldrin watches take inspiration from the first two astronauts to walk on the moon, while the watches named for prominent NASA astronauts and commanders Al Shepard and Gus Grissom have a more minimalist look.

The Bruno model, named for Giordano Bruno, is “a reference to schematic and simplistic observations on space in the past,” while the model named for scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson references the event that first made him fall in love with outer space: observing the moon through binoculars as a child. The watch named after French chemist and physicist Paul Villard nods to his discovery of gamma rays, and Stephen Hawking’s namesake design is a “conceptual reference to the attempts to find order in the chaotic reaches of space.”

The designers “calculate every part of the design and construction of the watches with the help of actual mathematicians and engineers, combining pure aesthetics with a pragmatic and appealing look. Each collection is devoted to the greatest minds of the past and the present, honoring their remarkable discoveries that left traces in our history. To capture these amazing moments in a wristwatch format is what [they] aim to achieve with every collection.”

“Each watch has a black PVD-coating on steel parts, a new reworked case that weighs lighter than [its] predecessor, and it runs on Japanese-made Miyota 1S13 movement. All timepieces from the Gamma series are equipped with black leather straps with a signature blue edging.”

The Gamma wristwatch series is currently raising funds for production on Kickstarter, with preorders starting at just $158. Divided by Zero’s previous Alpha and Beta collections, featuring watches named after even more famed scientists and thinkers throughout history, are also available for purchase on the company’s website.

The post New NASA Edition Wristwatches Take Inspiration from Space first appeared on Dornob.

The world is changing and as people increasingly turn their backs on waste and excess, the minimalist lifestyle grows in popularity. At its core, this movement is about simplicity and necessity, bringing life back to the basics of form and function. It is easy to see why this is the case in the modern world because our lives are busier than ever and efficiency is key.

This is where Grovemade steps into the picture. This Oregon-based company designs and creates their own products in house with a distinctly minimalist aesthetic that allows quality to take center stage over extravagance. Wood and leather iPhone cases, small wood speakers with amplifiers, and even catch-alls, their products tend to be eclectic in function, but they all fall in line with the same vision: thoughtful design and superior craftsmanship. We at Dornob took a closer look at two of Grovemade’s products for a better idea of how well the company achieves this vision.

Grovemade’s bifold wallet side-steps the idea that “more is more” and presents a streamlined, unisex solution to how you carry your money. It holds four to eight of your most important cards (do you really need more than that?) and still has room for a few folded bills. Thanks to the tiered set up of the internal sleeves, your cards are easy to access, and a full wallet can even fit in the notoriously tiny front pockets of a girl’s skinny jeans (so long as the pockets aren’t fake). One of the only downsides is that there is no coin pouch; however, in the world of debit cards and Apple Pay, many people do not carry coins anyway, so whether this is truly a problem depends on the individual using it.

While Grovemade sets out a very simple look with this product, it still doesn’t lack for class. It is made with natural, vegetable-tanned leather and hand stitched by master Japanese leatherworker Yonezawa Leather, so it is soft and smooth in your hands and more than comfortable in your pocket. It’s also durable, yet flexible, and will only develop a more distinguished look with use, as many leather products do.

For all those times you want to go without a bulky wallet or a bag, whether you’re going to a club or on a rollercoaster, this simple piece has you covered.

The company chose a different route for one of their watches, opting for a modern update to the traditional look of a timepiece instead of scaling back. Where an ordinary analog watch has two hands for telling time, this one uses two large dots (one white and one orange) passing through 12 holes in the hand-sanded maple or walnut watch face to tell time. The watch functions no differently than any other, leveraging a shift in style over innovative function with its design.

However, style is something it has in spades. This watch comes with a vegetable-tanned leather strap that can fit both men and women, and Grovemade offers the design in both round and square faces, as well as stainless steel and gold-plated metal workings. From a distance, it provides an eye-catching profile that draws others in to look more closely at the craftsmanship and design, which are both quite impressive. The unique hands, however, might put off some people, as precise time is harder to read with circles than thin lines. This aspect speaks to a more relaxed approach to one’s day-to-day life, where exact time is less important, so while a businessman from a fast-paced company might want to take a pass, others may relish in the opportunity to shift their focus with this stylish piece.

Grovemade finds a niche as a company providing useful products on a large scale with the quality standards of a small town company. Both of the items we spent time with at certainly had something to bring to the table, but they too fill a very specific place in the market.

The post Grovemade Takes Life Back to Simplicity with Hand-crafted Products first appeared on Dornob.

The post Eco-Watch: Time to Plant Trees first appeared on Dornob.

If you find yourself too focused on the time throughout the day, perhaps a more free-form style of time telling can help you relax. The Scent Rhythm watch was made by hardware designer Aisen Caro Chacin as a way of harnessing and reinforcing our natural circadian rhythms. The watch has no face and no numbers; rather, it gives an approximation of time.

Every six hours, one of four fragrances is released. Each is designed to both indicate the approximate time of day and stimulate certain chemicals in the brain. In the morning, the scent of espresso wakes you up and gets you ready to face the day. During the working hours, the work or school-related aromas of books and tarnished silver help you focus. The evening hours, when you are unwinding from the day, are marked with the calming (depending on who you are) scents of whiskey and tobacco.

At bedtime, the calming smell of chamomile sends you off to sleep and helps your brain rest up for the following day. Although the watch won’t help you keep any appointments, it does help your body adapt to your personal schedule.

By releasing these aromas – and stimulating the corresponding brain chemicals – at pre-determined times throughout the day, your body becomes used to your personal schedule. Your internal clock remembers the rhythm of the scents and synchronizes your brain and your body to your daily routine, making it easier to transition between the stages of your day.

“Scent Rhythm is timekeeping device that maps relational olfactory sequences to the body’s circadian cycle. The sense of smell is a chemoreceptor, which means that these sensors can detect chemicals. The sense of time, chronoception, is not based on the function of a specific organ, but rather the result of the interaction of the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia. This device attempts to keep a chemical watch on the circadian rhythm, by administering fragrance+supplement concoctions associated with the daily activity of the moment to promote the production of certain neurotransmitters, such as chamomile+melatonin during sleep, espresso+caffeine during the awaken state.”

The post Scent Rhythm Wristwatch Emits Aromas to Tell Time first appeared on Dornob.

Fragrance is powerfully connected to our memories of certain people, places and times in our lives – and this unusual concept watch takes advantage of that fact in order to tell the time of day. The Scent Rhythm Watch by Aisen Caro Chacin releases a particular scent every six hours, mapping the fragrances to the body’s circadian rhythms.

Each scent corresponds to a particular state: waking up, being active, relaxing and sleeping. The idea is that our bodies will remember what each scent ‘means,’ and begin to go into the correct state as soon as it’s released.

The watch features four glass bulbs, each containing one milliliter of a unique fragrance. Theoretically, those bulbs could be filled with any fragrances the wearer likes, but the designer has chosen scents from Demeter that correspond quite fittingly to each period of the day: Espresso for the morning, Paper/Tarnish for the daytime, Tobacco for the evening and Chamomile for night.

The watch runs on a rechargeable LiPo battery and uses an Arduino Pro Mini microcontroller board to time the release of the fragrance.

More from the designer

“Scent Rhythm is timekeeping device that maps relational olfactory sequences to the body’s circadian cycle. The sense of smell is a chemoreceptor, which means that these sensors can detect chemicals. The sense of time, chronoception, is not based on the function of a specific organ, but rather the result of the interaction of the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia. This device attempts to keep a chemical watch on the circadian rhythm, by administering fragrance+supplement concoctions associated with the daily activity of the moment to promote the production of certain neurotransmitters, such as chamomile+melatonin during sleep, espresso+caffeine during the awaken state.”

About Aisen Caro Chacin

“Born in Boston, MA, Aisen Caro Chacin is a regenerating composition of cells that produce a woman, a Venezuelan, a Spaniard, an U.S. American, and an animal whose patterns of migration are not based on seasons, but rather chance, chaos, and opportunity. Her curiosity led her to research the intersecting fields of art, science, and technology driven by conceptual forms of inquiry. . Her work has exhibited in at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference, The New York Hall of Science, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Maker Faire, and Dorkbot.”

The post Scent Rhythm Watch Spritzes Perfume to Tell the Time first appeared on Dornob.

The post Wall-Mount Butler Organizes Keys, Phone, Wallet & Glasses first appeared on Dornob.

It is a bitter moment when you realize only at the store that you forgot the very list of things that sent you shopping in the first place.

Hence, the self-adhering Post-It watch that wraps your wrist and reminds you of your next meeting or upcoming mission.

It might not be the most stylish accessory, but attire aside it is definitely handier to keep your hands free for running errands.

The post Wrist-Watch Post-Its: Clever Hands-Free Reminder Notes first appeared on Dornob.

Black, then white, then back to black again, this large light-sensitive wall clock shifts colors as day turns to dusk then dawn again- the Organic Light-Emitting Diodes display dark-colored numerals during daylight hours and light numbers into the night. Visually, it is almost like a vertical-hung, room-illuminating, wall-surface version of the vintage LED wrist watch.

Each over-sized digital number is independently attached to a surface (and completely wire-free) so you can place and space them as you wish on any interior wall, a contemporary decorative touch that also tells time. Softly-rounded rectangular corners make these child-friendly and relatively easy to install as well – that is, once these prototypes from Kibardin Design find a manufacturer and go on sale for real.

The aesthetic of the idea are recognizably patterned after the familiar giant-sized, billboard style numerals we are used to seeing on everything from small nightstand alarm clocks to huge sports scoring boards. It might not keep time at the atomic level, but its energy-efficient power system should last a long time – and cheap materials will hopefully keep the price down as well when the time comes you can buy one. Touch-sensitive panels let you change the time without moving them. More durable than wood or glass and lighter than metal, the unique hybrid polycarbonate surface is sustainable as well as durable by design.

“Digital clock: only figures, no case, only the necessary – only accurate time. Each figure has self-contained power supply and independent control, it can be fixed to any surface autonomously. A light sensor will switch the clock to an invert mode: the figures are white in the dark time of day and black at daytime.”

“We are still working on the Black & White Clock, but due to the high price of OLED screens and accumulators it is not currently possible to produce the clock commercially. We are working on a solution to bring such a clock to the market but do not expect a solution in the nearest-nearest future.”

The post OLED Color-Changing Wall Clock first appeared on Dornob.

Talk about retro design, how about a watch that goes all the way back to the ages of the hourglass? Digital does not have to mean LED when it comes to clocks as this cool contemporary Hourglass Watch concept demonstrates.

Of course, this clever gadget also has an attractive digital display with ordinary numerals for telling standard time, but a sleek hourglass stop-watch brings a vintage touch to what is otherwise an attractive ultramodern fashion accessory.

The post Digital Hourglass Stopwatch Tells Time in Sand Pixels first appeared on Dornob.

Whether or not you plan to go so far as to buy a glossy, colorful, offbeat or time-telling drain stopper for your own sink or tub, these decorative drain stoppers remain a good reminder that every object in a home can be the subject of design. While some of these are only ornamental the watch-shaped ones might be quite handy.

Some of these are resin-based with trapped bubbles and objects to add three-dimensional interest while others are simply shiny and deeply colored like jewels visible at the bottom of a pool of water.

One of the more clever (and arguably less kitchy) variants available is the watch-style clock design – great for seeing if you are on time when washing your face and brushing your teeth in the morning and more potentially useful than its decorative cousins.

The post Useful & Stylish Multi-Functional Drain Stopper Clocks first appeared on Dornob.