My office recently bought a couple nifty Brompton fold-up bikes for the staff which are pretty cool but what about a bending bike that becomes it’s own lock? We’ll just put aside the thought of what might happen should you take a spill. Some text from Design Boom:

Design student kevin scott designed this unusual bending bike that not only folds up tightly but can be used to locks itself up. The de montfort university industrial design student designed the bike to make its safer and easier to lock up your bike in the city. His design looks like a normal bike when in riding mode, but a simple level on the frame triggers the frame to go from rigid to pliable. A ratchet system built into the frame enables the bike to simple be bent around a pole fitting one side of the handle bar into a closure under the seat, locking the bike in place. The design just won runner-up for the business design centre new designer of the year award at new designers. Scott will be using his prize money to further develop the bike, building more iterations for a full testing of its viability.

images via Design Boom

A trip to the ocean with another couple allowed us to score a really cool vacation beach house, obviously owned by some sort of designer that probably built many things themselves. There were a lot of great details throughout with great uses of wood and metal, like the ledge in front of the fireplace in the image below. A nautical theme ran throughout expressed through clean lines and interesting use of materials like the image above where metal cleats where attached to a wood strip for use as coat hooks. This detail was also in the bathrooms for towels.

The house actually sat along the edge of a lake just a block inland from the ocean and in an effort to reduce the disturbance along the lake edge, the house was raised up on metal beams, allowing the natural vegetation flow underneath with a simple gravel path to the staircase leading up to the entry deck.

A rain chain connects the roof to the ground with a stone splash block…

The deck leading to the canoe launch didn’t take out any trees…

The gravel driveway and the vegetated swale…

There were also some fun pieces of art and furniture. My favorites were the chair at the entry that was a simple piece of metal with a strip of tan leather through the top for a seat and especially the fabulous set of 3 paintings of frying eggs in the kitchen.

I happened upon this piece of unique art piece during a recent trip to my hometown of Port Angeles and I thought it was so simple and lovely. This resident installed an old bike wheel upon one of the poles on his chain link fence and attached some glasses to it in order to catch the wind. When it spun in the light breeze it was really quite lovely, especially when it hit the sunlight.

Beware that if you have your sound on, the ferry was leaving right as I shot the video thus picking up the very loud blast of the horn.