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Marutaro is an absolutely awesome hedgehog who generously poses for pictures with illustrated masks that his human made for him.

If they've already paved paradise and put up a parking lot, an innovative way to use an vacant lot or urban space in decay is to introduce an old shipping container. We've noticed container shops and restaurants popping up from San Francisco to London to Christchurch, New Zealand. The mall of the future, it seems, is one that brings resourceful architecture and small businesses together. Here are 10 of our favorite uses of castoff containers.

N.B.: Have a look at our exploration of container homes in our previous post, 10 Houses Made from Shipping Containers.

Above: Jon Darsky's Del Popolo Pizza Truck is made from a transatlantic shipping container mounted to a Freightliner M2 truck. The container houses a 5,000-pound Stefano Ferrara wood-fired brick oven to make Darsky's Neapolitan pizza. For more, see our post: Gastronomy on the Move: Del Popolo Pizza Truck.

Above: Opened in 2011 in Shoreditch, London, Boxpark is a shopping mall made from stripped and refitted shipping containers for a series of low-cost, pop-up stores (the mall will be open through 2015).

Above: San Francisco floral designer Baylor Chapman's shop, Lila B. Design, utilizes a shipping container as office and retail space alongside her open-air floral studio. For more on the shop, read our post on Gardenista, Lila B. Design at Stable Café in SF's Mission District.

Above: An inspired shipping container pop-up restaurant from an unexpected source: Hellmann's mayonnaise company opened a 45-square-meter restaurant to serve free sandwiches for a day in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Above: Set up temporarily for Design Forum Finland in Helsinki, SIS Deli + Café featured a fully functioning bakery with Tassel Lamps by Aalto + Aalto and furniture by Tero Kuitunen, two up-and-coming Finnish design studios. Photograph from Weekday Carnival.

Above: Evergreen Brickworks, an environmental community center in Toronto, has a welcome hut made from a repurposed 20 foot shipping container that architect Levitt Goodman renovated and painted bright green. He installed a rainwater chain to direct excess water into a rain barrel on the side of the hut. See Photograph by Ben Rahn via Inhabitat.

Intrigued by rainwater chains? Have a look at Gardenista's 10 Easy Pieces on Rain Chains.

Above: In collaboration with Muvbox, a company that specializes in shipping container conversions, product designers Guillaume Noiseux and Guillaume Sasseville opened Porchetta Box, a temporary restaurant in Montreal during the summer of 2012. Photographs courtesy of Guillaume Noiseux via Design Boom.

Above: Architects Envelope A+D, members of the Remodelista Architect/Designer Directory, put a shipping container to use when designing Suppenküche's outdoor German biergarten. The restaurant is part of the Proxy Project in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood. For more, see Restaurant Visit: Suppenküche Biergarten in SF. Photograph by Janet Hall for Remodelista.

Above: In London's Southbank, Softroom Architects designed a two-story building from eight shipping containers for Mexican restaurant Wahaca. The upper story container has an outdoor terrace on one side and large sliding glass doors on the other. Photograph by Joseph Burns via Design Boom.

Above: Envelope A+D collaborated with Thierry Gaugain and Chris French Metal Studio to design the storefront for LA-based tech clothing company Aether. The shop, located in SF's Hayes Valley, is built from three stacked shipping containers. To see more, go to The Shipping News: Aether in SF Opens.

For more small living ideas, see our post on 10 Airstream Trailers for Living Small and our Small-Space Living Room Gallery.

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• Living in an Architectural Landmark, Seattle Edition
• An Off-the-Grid Cabin in Vancouver, Candlelight Included
• The Architect Is In: An East Village Penthouse Taken Back in Time

Italian manufacturer Smeg needs no introduction – a cheerful brand keeping vintage dreams alive through modern technology. Their latest small home appliances designs complete the lovable Smeg 50’s Retro Style collection. Bright colors and a curvacious visual appeal was spotted by WSGN Homebuildlife at Milan Furniture Fair 2014. Inspired by the homey feeling of a 50s, Smeg’s distinctive design and quality brings curvacious shapes to your kitchen.

The decade’s glamor was borrowed to showcase respect and love for quality and history. These rounded kitchen accessories can visually improve the domestic space, alongside large home appliances like refrigerators and freezers, fires, dishwashers and washing machines with the same retro design lines. The kettle, slice toaster, blender and stand mixer are available in a wonderful range of colors and made for “a kitchen full of creativity”.  “Curved and compact products, star characters of the kitchen, developed for people who want to dabble at being a chef, but not only.” Don’t you just absolutely love them?

You're reading Meet the New Smeg 50’s Retro Style Small Home Appliances originally posted on Freshome.

The post Meet the New Smeg 50’s Retro Style Small Home Appliances appeared first on Freshome.com.

a contraption that encourages the care and physical exchange between humans and plants.

The post dossofiorito magnifies their love for plants with the phytophiler appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Ten years from now, cars may still look and drive just like the cars on the road today. But in between that time and now, we’re likely to see some major changes in automotive technologies being integrated into 2015 models and beyond, redefining the relationship between car and driver beyond hand on wheel, foot to pedal… even relieving us of these current driving responsibilities.

BMW i8 LCD Key Fob
BMW’s future-forward i8 sports car is already poised to be something special, with a checklist of fuel efficiency and connectivity technologies engineered from the ground up. But it might be one of the smallest components accompanying the i8 which may turn the most heads. If these leaked images are to be believed, BMW is upgrading the standard remote key fob into a data display unit connected to the i8′s recharging and fuel system, alongside macro-programming for comfort and access use, upgrading car keys from purely mechanical to informational.

Audi Online Traffic Light Information System
As long as there are drivers, there will always be those who risk speeding through signal lights. Audi’s icon-based Online Traffic Light Information System purports to take the guesswork out of the equation for would-be Speed Racers, serving up seemingly precognitive data for drivers to hit green lights more regularly while connected wirelessly with a city’s traffic-light network system. There’s even an engine-revving inducing countdown feature displayed while drivers are waiting at a red light, making getting stuck at a red light a little more bearable.

Microsoft Windows in the Car / Apple CarPlay
Both technology giants are vying for the hearts and minds of our biggest mobile device: our cars. Drivers will soon say goodbye to clunky and slow user GUIs with menus turning slower than grandparents looking through restaurant options. Swipe, touch, and tap is quickly being adopted as the same tactile language of vehicle technology as that used already with phones, tablets, and computers, though simplified for safer driver use, with many of the same recognizable apps and services powering car console’s as our mobile screens. Questions and concerns about road safety still remain (and rightfully so, in this age of texting while driving). For now, most drivers would likely be content with more responsive menu systems for basic cabin and audio system controls.

LED Laser Headlights
First there was Xenon bulbs, then LED headlamp technology, and now cars might soon be lighting up the roads with super bright and energy efficient laser beams of white light. Three times brighter than already bright LED headlights, yet 30% more energy efficient, BMW’s laser headlamp will boost hi-beam distances up to 1,800 feet while relying upon LEDs for regular driving. Concerns about blinding oncoming traffic is being addressed with a camera system which automatically adjusts beam power and direction downward, sensitive enough to recognize cyclists. Also, check out these laser beam lights debuted at CES by Audi.

Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Systems
V2V stands for “Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Systems”. Get used to hearing about it, as nothing will change the public’s relationship with cars in the next few years more than this developing technology. Improving human reflexes and hazard assessment by allowing nearby vehicles to exchange speed and distance information at up to 10 times per second, haptic feedback notifies drivers through the car seat about collision-avoidance and other nearby roadside hazards. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration predicts integrating V2V will reduce annual car accidents by 80%, with goals for mandatory manufacturer integration planned for 2017.