Who could forget that famous scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when Cameron throws a fit and accidentally kicks his father’s Ferrari out the glass garage and into the woods.  Well, now you can own Cam’s home for a cool $1.65 million, because it recently hit the market!  The Highland Park, Illinois home is located at 370 Beech Street on a one acre lot with 43,560 square feet.  The house, designed by famous architects A. James Speyer and David Haid and built in 1953, contains 5,300 square feet of living space including 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, and floor-to-ceiling windows.  Interested?  Here’s the actual listing.  And don’t worry–the garage has been fixed up since the 1986 mishap.  You know what’d be really cool?  If the same person who won the auctioned Ferrari 250GT Spyder California used in the movie also purchased the home.  Check out shots of the interior after the break.

[Via HuffingtonPost] (Click here for more…)

DYI handyman Marc DeVidts has gone ahead and create the coolest door I’ve ever seen.  (It’s certainly not the biggest or most aesthetically pleasing, but’s it’s the coolest.)  He’s created a switch that opens the door (and can hold it open or closed), above the door is an air vent and that’s where the air from the air compressor (located in the attic) gets released when the door closes, and next to that is a control panel that allows him to disable the door and shut off the air supply. So go on, click play and watch the door open and make the “whoosh” sound when it closes.  DeVidts succedded in what he set out to do: construct “the perfect, most geek-ified entryway for [his] bedroom.”  If you are feeling the urge to build a door like this in your home, head over to Instructables where you’ll find a step-by-step guide authored by DeVidts himself.

[Via Gizmodo]

Much like Helex’s I-Vision, firespace designer Safretti has beautifully integrated a fireplace with a flat-screen LCD HDTV.  The eco-friendly “Double Vision” setup includes an ethanol fireplace and can be installed with a 37-inch or 47-inch TV.  The mirrored design would fit right into any contemporary, modern home.  Creator Jan des Bouvrie says, “This specific design is a beautiful symbiosis between two products, each of which strengthens the other with force.”  Look in the gallery below for additional shots.

[Via Trendir; Safretti]

These are two wall accessories I wouldn’t mind displaying in my dream home.  The minimalist magazine holder is called “Guidelines” and it’s designed by Amsterdam-based agency Fredrik Roijé.  It’s made from two powder-coated metal strips that meet at a maze of right angles.  ”The resulting form places [magazines] at a pleasant, relational distance from one another, achieving aesthetics from legibility and functionality.”  And as for the cloud shelf?  Well, how cool would it be to say that you store your physical media on the cloud!?

[Via DesignBoom; DesignTorget; Gizmodo, here & here]

This year IKEA commissioned a study by The Future Laboratory, a UK-based think tank that prides itself for “its innovative approach to trend forecasting, consumer insight and brand strategy”, to come up with various visions of how kitchens will function in the year 2040.  “In thirty years time, the kitchen will be so technologically advanced that it will almost be alive” claims the study.  One possible future kitchen scenario is dubbed “INTUITIV”:

As you walk into the INTUITIV kitchen of the future, LED light projections adjust to your mood – it will know if you have a hangover via sensors that will read your brainwaves. Aromatherapy infused walls will be synced to your calendar, calming you before a big meeting or energising you before a gym session. The fridge will have selected some breakfast options, identifying the essential vitamins for your day via sensors. When you get home, a hologrammed chef will be on hand for recipe inspiration.

Two others are the ELEMENTARA (the “back to nature kitchen”) and the SKARPP (the “smart kitchen”):

The ELEMENTARA kitchen will encourage you to grow your own food and be self-sufficient with a garden or mini allotment as a standard extension of the room. Food will be kept cool through cold larders and recycling facilities will be seamlessly incorporated into the kitchen.

[The SKARPP] kitchen will be intelligent, predicting its inhabitants’ needs with smart technology. Synchronized appliances will make everything happen at the touch of a button, communicating through iPad style devices which will act as the brain of the kitchen, making our lives easier.

In essense, the study finds that our kitchens of the future will “respond to your energy levels, nutritional needs and mood, even with a high use of technology, it will also be sustainable and eco-friendly.”  Celebrity chef holograms, 3D food printing, sixth generation iPads.  Most of this tech is being developed today; I say we speed up the process and make all this a reality within the next ten years!  Who’s with me?  Official PR is after the break.

[Via Engadget] (Click here for more…)

Peep this glorious couch inspired by the classic video game Space Invaders.  Designer Igor Chak has outdone himself with this latest creation.  The couch is all leather, features two glass surfaces, and is lined with memory foamed.  The black-on-white color scheme and the wild shapes and spaces are excellent design choices if you ask me.  I wish this were a real couch and not a mere concept…because I would have already ordered one by now.  Check out more images in the gallery below.

[Via IgorChak; Kotaku]

One Ryan Hoagland has a created a DIY virtual window of sorts using two 46-inch Panasonic plasma displays, a Mac Pro workstation, a Wii-mote with a custom-built IR-emitting necklace, Bluetooth, and custom software called Winscape.  If everything is implemented correctly, it should result in two large virtual windows that could theoretically project any scene you’d like.  And thanks to headtracking technology, the windows will create an illusion that you are actually peering inside this virtual realm.  Oh, and you can control scene selection with an iPhone app.  Intruiged?  You can build one of your own virtual landscapes come this July when Hoagland plans to sell basic kits for under $3000.  Look after the break for a timelapse video of its construction.

[Via RationalCraft; Engadget]

(Click here for more…)

This epic chandelier of the ages is designed by expert glass artisan Robert Kaindl.  And it should come with a warning: Do not stand directly underneath the chandelier unless you want to die.  But don’t you love the design?

[Via Design-Milk; Gizmodo]

Take a long gander at the Vitrahaus, a house-upon-a-house designed by architects Herzog and de Meuron.  DesignBoom’s got the scoop:

The five-storey structure is comprised of 12 ‘houses’ – five houses are set at the base in which seven other houses are stacked upon one another.  Each of the structural volumes appear as if they have been shaped by an extrusion press and are cantilevered up to 15 metres in some places.  The floor slabs intersect the underlying gables, resulting in a three-dimensional assemblage or ‘pile of houses’.

Located between the border of Switzerland and Germany at Weil am Rhein, the Vitrahaus resides as a presentation space for Vitra, a Swiss furniture manufacturer.  To no surprise, the interior of the home is just as flat-out spectacular as the exterior.  It oozes modern and minimalistic curves and other unconventionalities.  Definitely worth a look in the galleries below.

[Via DesignBoom, here & here; Gizmodo]

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Change It!  Designed by Amirko.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to have the ability to change the look and feel of the rooms in your home without the hastle of dealing with messy paint?  Concept designer Amirko has thought up a way to do just that.  The wall of colorful squares you see in the image above is actually made up of many small triangles.  Each triangle features a different color; some are black, white, and rainbow-colored.  With slight manipulation you can spin the triangles to create various designs to decorate an entire wall.  Neat, huh?  Check out the gallery below for some more designs.

[Via YankoDesign; Gizmodo]

The MercuryHouseOne, designed by Architecture and Vision, is built from Carrara marble and the rooftop is fitted with solar panels to power the interior space.  This bubble home can be occupied as ”a portable pavilion, an outdoors office, a room, or even an off-grid natural retreat.”  I can totally see myself using it as a “blogger’s pad,” a place to retreat when times get busy.  The roundess and space-age theme add to the modern touches that I have become accostomed to.  Well done, A & V, well done.  Additional images below.

[Via Inhabitat; Gizmodo]

So I’m sure you’ve heard of the all-in-one PC, but I bet you’ve never seen an all-in-one toilet!  The “Home Core Integrated Toilet” designed by Dang Jingwei combines a toilet bowl, sink, mirror, and vanity table into one.  The “main theme” of this one of a kind toilet is its eco-friendliness.  When you use the sink to wash your hands you have the option of choosing to use this “gray water” to flush the toilet.  In other words, the water you wash your hands with becomes the water that resides in the toilet bowl that eventually flushes away your bodily fluids and excrement.  Nothing like an all-in-one, highly efficient and design-savvy toilet, eh?  Oh, it also features four different water pressure levels.

[Via YankoDesign; Gizmodo]

This giant tree house dubbed “The Wilkinson Residence” is located in Portland, Oregon.  It is made entirely of natural wood and contains modern archetectural designs such as curved edges and round windows.  Take a peek into the gallery below for some detailed exterior and interior shots of the home.  Just imagine living in this thing!

[Via Gizmodo]

Helex’s “I-Vision” integrates the two main focal points of your living room–a fireplace and a flat-screen television.  The HDTV is covered with a glass panel and completely disappears above the gas-powered fireplace when it’s turned off.  This fireplace-HDTV hybrid holds a modern, sleek look that can turn any ordinary living room into a technological marvel.  And now it’s on my list of things to install into my future home.  Additional shot after the break.

[Via Bornrich; Gizmodo]

(Click here for more…)

Though this particular room was set up by researchers and taped under controlled conditions and safety measures, it serves as a healthy (albeit scary) reminder to keep an eye on your tree and what you place near it.  Sooo..happy holidays!

[Via Wired]

XXXLamp.  Designed by Bart Lens.

At 13-feet in diameter and 5.25-feet high, the XXXLamp is the largest ceiling lamp in production.  The giant lamp uses three light sources, but it can be ordered with RGB LEDs that allow you to remotely control the color it emits.  It’s inspired by a Chinese lantern.

The twelve-segment construction makes the connection with the lantern, but a pumpkin is perhaps the first association that comes to mind, while the suspension system recalls an upside-down hot-air balloon.

[Via KanyeBlog; Gizmodo; Deezen]

Ok, this deck is not a vortex in disguise, but it sure looks like one.  This trippy, mind-bending deck belongs to Jeff Dauber, an Apple senior executive of all people.  “I wanted someone to barf when they look at it,” says Dauber.

The Japanese maple in Jeff Dauber’s San Francisco backyard is not at the center of a carbon-sucking vortex. Sorry, sci-fi fans, but the Berkeley-based architect Thom Faulders’s perfectly flat deck only looks like its far corner has its own warped gravity. Ever since Francesco Borromini’s Gallery Spada, in Rome, forced perspectives and architectural patronage have gone hand in hand, but whereas the Renaissance architect employed a mathematician to make that arcade seem longer through foreshortening, Faulders used 3-D–modeling software to achieve Deformscape’s dipping effect.

[Via Gizmodo; Metropolis Mag]

Microsoft holds an annual charity campaign.  When fall comes around MS “donates products, services, and experiences” for their elite employees to bid on.  It’s a yearly extravaganza when it comes to watching for the highest bid to tour of Bill Gates’ Lake Washington home.  Last year the winning bid was a measly $8,600.  One lucky Microsoft employee and a few of his friends will be taken on a personal tour of the Gates estate by Bill himself–in exchange for $35,000!  MS matches the donation too, so this philanthropic venture is whole-heartedly (very) good in nature.

Oh, what I’d do to go on a personal tour of Bill Gates’ home…  I bet there’s all kinds of insanely awesome gadgetry and futuristic, out-of-this-world stuff that would just make my tech heart melt.  For some reason I can imagine a Massive Dynamic feel to the place, with Melinda taking the place of Nina Sharp, of course.

[Via Gizmodo; TechFlash]

Carbon 451 Lamp, by Marcus Tremonto.

“The complexity of curves and required thinness could not be duplicated in any other material while still maintaining its ability to support itself completely.”

[Via Gizmodo; Contemporist]

I’d fancy having one of these on a future home of mine.

[Via Gizmodo; ApartmentTherapy]