Since Facebook bought Instagram for nearly a BILLION dollars in cash and stock, many users, bloggers, economy experts have thought Instagram should build an actual “instant” camera. Designers have begun conceptualizing some pretty amazing ideas. Say, “Cheese!”

Socialmatic would be the first Instagram photo camera, with a lot of amazing features:

- 16 GB mass storage;
- Wifi and Bluetooth;
- 4:3 touchscreen;
- 2 main lens, first for main capture, second for 3D filters, webcam applications and QR Code capturing;
- Optical zoom;
- Led Flash;
- Internal printer to make your Instagram photos real;
- Paper cartridge with Instagram Paper Sheets;
- Dedicated 4 colors ink tanks;
- InstaOs 1.0, which put together Facebook and Instagram App feature;

Take your shoot with Instagram Socialmatic, and share it directly on Facebook trough the powerful InstaOs.

You can print directly on Instagram Paper Sheets, thanks to the internal printer. Each of the Paper Sheets has a retro side with a glue strip, just like a post-it.
Every Instagram printed photo reports on front side your Instagram nickname and a QR code, to be followed by another Instagrammer, simply pointing his/her Socialmatic on your printed QR Code.

No, New York and Mumbai are not underwater (not yet, anyhow). The pool is a clever attention grabber for HSBC by Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai ad agency. HSBC wanted to raise awareness on the dangers of global warming, so the agency glued an aerial photo of a city’s skyscrapers to the base of a swimming pool … the effect – a submerged metropolis. Well done.

Hel Yes designer Linda Bergroth customised a run of the mill greenhouse and turned it into a chic summer getaway. By adding steps made from reclaimed bricks, solar panels and a wooden floor, the structure blends in with its surroundings and offers a beautiful view from the inside out.

While living in San Diego a few years back I had a 400-square-foot studio apartment in the University Heights district. In an effort to conserve space I bought a sofa bed from IKEA, a cleverly designed piece with wheels that locked into place, making it easy to fold and unfold. I soon realized that I was usually either too busy or too tired to make the change (or to replace the upholstery with bed clothes), and would end up either sleeping on the ‘sofa’, or entertaining on the ‘bed’.

Gary Chang would no doubt be disgusted by my inefficient use of space. In 1988 Chang, a Hong Kong architect, paid $45,000 for a 344-square-foot apartment in Hong Kong’s Sai Wan Ho district. It was the same apartment he had lived in with his entire family (6 people in all, including 1 tenant) since he was 14 years old. What followed over the years was a series of transformations, all with the same goal of maximizing space and creating more flexibility of use

The latest iteration, completed in 2006 and dubbed “Domestic Transformer” by Chang, has 24 possible configurations, allowing for a variety of uses – living room, library, kitchen, laundry, lounge, spa, dining area, wet bar, and a screening room complete with a hammock – achieved with a series of sliding wall units on overhead tracks that shift to create and reveal completely different rooms.

Chang, who operates the architecture firm EDGE Design Institute out of Hong Kong, hopes his creation will inspire others, particularly developers, to be more creative in their approach to space planning, helping to alleviate the overcrowding and space shortage problems prevalent in many Hong Kong homes.

The very best of design finds magic in the mundane, purity in the overwhelming knotty. There’s a reason so many people look at contemporary art and design and flippantly tell themselves, “I could do that.” It’s seems that simple. It’s not, and they can’t. Alexander Chen can.

The interactive designer and musician’s latest, Conductor: mta.me, animates Massimo Vignelli’s classic 1972 New York City subway diagram in crafting an interactive string instrument out of the MTA subway schedule… in realtime and progressing through a 24 hour loop of actual train departures. The attention to technical detail is seriously astounding (train nerds can look for decommissioned lines like the 8 train running as ghost trains between 12am and 2am!). Chen developed a system of rules that allowed him (and the MTA) to conduct a sweetly serene piece using code, technical data, sound and now legendary graphic design. It’s pure and magical, and no, you couldn’t have done it.

All images and video copyright Alexander Chen.

Some products, like the Aventador LP 700-4, do sell themselves. And for those products, there’s still sex. Lamborghini just builds it in.

All images copyright Lamborghini.

Instantly one of the world’s most stunning libraries, The Stuttgart City Library by Yi Architects is a cavernous gem where the books and visitors provide the color to an otherwise neutral environment.  The visual center is its grand atrium, a five-story open chamber reminiscent of New York’s Guggenheim museum.

Commissions couldn’t come much darker than that of enshrining the memory of 91 murdered souls on a treeless, granite coast along an unforgiving sea at the world’s end. Bringing light and perspective, both figuratively and literally, to that work might seem an impossible responsibility. Yet, the Steilneset Memorial for the Victims of the Witch Trials in Vardø, Norway, seems to memorialize the events of the former fishing village’s dark past in a way that is poignantly sympathetic to its somewhat bleak future and does it with surprisingly fragility.

A quixotic verging on confusing collaboration between the incomparable Peter Zumthor and the late French-born artist Louise Bourgeois, the Steilneset Memorial owes much of its success to the Swiss architect’s masterful play of material, controlled use of light and understanding of the vernacular; the memorial’s gangling diagonal wood framing and punched openings (all 91 of them illuminated with a single lamp each representing a “witch” burned at the stake during the trials) are direct interpretations of the fish drying racks and small, curtainless windows prominent in the seaside village. Unfortunately, Bourgeois’s installation of an eternal flame burning from an aluminum chair in a separate Cor-Ten and glass pavilion (also by Zumthor) is heavy-handed and unnecessary given that Zumthor’s 410-foot longhouse of wood and cable suspended fiberglass alone brings surprising power and light within its stark, hauntingly morose context.

This is the home the Kardashians would want if they had real money. But, alas, the owner of this apartment in Amsterdam, the Netherlands has the kind of money that could book Kim to wear a diamond bikini and collect coats at the door of a Sweet 16 party hosted at this place; and when you have that kind of money, you can hire Marcel Wanders to give you custom made EVERYTHING. This particular space features hand-carved wood paneling, custom plasterwork, Bisazza tile, hand-laid floors in Wenge, Walnut and Afromasia and custom furniture from appointment only showrooms and the designer himself. And, clearly, that’s just scratching the surface of the luxuriousness we’re talking about here.

Marcel Wanders is the type of designer that architecture professors and scholars hate, but none of those people have ever snorted medical grade cocaine off of a hand polished titanium ANYTHING while Russian models hold their drink. We’re not suggesting that Mr. Wanders has either, but that’s happening right now in at least one of his spaces, promise. That’s not an indictment; there is just something about the opulence and theater of Mr. Wanders’ interiors that literally demands you submit to the indulgences of the design.

All images copyright Marcel Wanders

We think geeky is TOTALLY sexy… and you know how we feel about design.  So if you’re producing design ideas that somehow tightly marry sophisticated attention to detail with Star Wars references, you’ve got our attention.. and our hearts.  These holiday cards, a series of three from up and coming design house PREACHER, arrived just in time for Christmas… and to save us from monotony and tired offerings of the season.

Each card displays a different, beautifully illustrated snowflake constructed using iconic imagery of George Lucas’s spaceship designs from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.  At first glance, the card series, riffing off the traditional Peace, Joy, Hope season’s greetings standard and drolly named [A New] Hope in witty reference to the often forgotten subtitle of the original film, views as a pretty but traditional trio of wintery snowflakes; the real joy of the collection, though, is in the details.  Fanboys and girls will spot R2 in the back of the X-wing and rejoice the inclusion of the under appreciated Y-wing Starfighter, but everyone should swoon over the line work of the always geeky, sexy, cool Millennium Falcon.  The Force is strong with this one. Happy Holidays!

All images copyright 2011 PREACHER