Little Free Libraries have been popping up all over the U.S. – and in other countries as well – since 2009. The movement began in Wisconsin, where Todd Bol built a tiny replica of a schoolhouse and put it on a post in his front yard. The sign on the box read “Free Books,” and anyone passing by was welcome to take a book and leave a book. Above: a library in Toronto.

Over the years, the movement grew. The Little Free Library boxes started popping up all over. The original was made from recycled materials, and Bol eventually teamed up with an Amish carpenter to start making the tiny libraries. You can now buy your own Little Free Library or, like a lot of people have done, get creative with your very own design.

Each official Little Free Library gets its own registration number. In January of 2015, LFL estimated that there were about 25,000 of the tiny lending boxes around the world, with thousands more being built every year. As word of mouth spreads and people get more interested in sharing books with their communities, the libraries continue to pop up everywhere.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Free Little Libraries 25 Contextual Designs Creative Reuses

A tiny 750 square foot apartment is definitely not a lot of space for two people, but this couple was lucky enough to find an exceptionally creative architect. This Tokyo home had a lot of room to grow vertically, so Hiroyuka Shinozaki Architects used floating floors and a series of stairs and ladders to create a spacious living area and studio.

The interior of the home is virtually free of walls and even features huge cutout areas in some of the floors. The architects named it House T, but the owners call it a “ninja house.” Their reasoning behind the name? The couple feels that they have to be as nimble as ninjas to navigate the innovative interior.

Large hanging lights and the wide-open space fill the combination home/studio with bright, cozy light. Part of the space is largely unfinished, with plywood floors and very little furniture. It contributes to the austere yet homey feel of the apartment.

In addition to the absence of walls, many of the home’s functions and features were built into the walls to maximize available floor space. A decent amount of storage is built into the home’s central set of stairs. While walking along ledges and tiptoeing around holes in the floor might not be for everyone, the pair who live in the apartment say that the unique layout – and the unusual way in which they have to navigate it – has made them healthier.

Technology to assist visually impaired people is progressing far beyond the dog and cane. These technology concepts  – all of which are still in the design stages and not available for purchase – could someday bring the world into focus for those who can’t necessarily see it unassisted.

The Tactile, Temperature-Enhanced Wristwatch

Watches for blind folks are all about feeling, rather than seeing, the time. This concept from designer Jung Hoon Lee is known as the Rub Feel Know watch. It puts a rather unusual twist on the expected raised bumps on the watch face. The hour hand is represented by an indentation near the center of the watch. The minute hand is a small bump which is situated closer to the outside of the face.

If feeling the positions of the indentation and the bump doesn’t give enough haptic information, there is another helpful element. The hour indicator feels warm when you touch it, and the minute hand feels cool – along with the concave and convex indicators, the temperature lets users feel exactly what time it is.

The Finger Mounted World-Seeing Camera

The 3D-printed EyeRing, developed by a team at MIT, is worn on the finger like a ring. It’s equipped with a tiny camera, a processor, a Li-ion battery, and a Bluetooth module.

To identify an object, the user only has to point the EyeRing at it and then press a small button on the side of the device. It snaps a picture, which it then sends to the user’s smartphone. After giving it a simple voice command, the app can then identify colors, currency, text, or price tag information and relay the information to the user’s Bluetooth earpiece.

The concept still needs a lot of development to be viable as a real-world product, but the creators think that they’ll be able to produce the module at a consumer cost of less than $100.

The Solar-Powered Retinal Implant That Could Restore Sight

Retinal implants are nothing new, but current iterations aren’t perfect. They’re often painful and need to have a physical link between the implant and a pair of sunglasses – an arrangement that doesn’t sound pleasant at all. Researchers at Stanford took the traditional retinal implant idea a step further by making the implant wireless.

The user still needs to wear sunglasses which contain a small camera. The camera projects images directly onto the user’s retina so – while they won’t be able to see perfectly – it will restore at least some of their vision. As a bonus, the entire setup is solar-powered so there’s no need to wear a bulky battery.

The Smart-Talking, Walk-Guiding Brick

Using a white cane to navigate sidewalks is a huge help to people who can’t see well enough to navigate by sight alone, but the cane can’t tell you where you are or how to get to your destination. The Blind Guider concept works by embedding “smart bricks” into city sidewalks that work with sensors on an electronic cane.

The cane comes with a Bluetooth earpiece that fits into the cane’s top when not in use. When the earpiece is in use, it relays information from the smart bricks. Each brick is equipped with an RFID tag that transmits information when the cane makes contact. It tells the user what intersection they are standing at and, when moved around to other parts of the brick, can give information about the surrounding areas as well.

Using this system, visually impaired walkers could easily find their way around a city with minimal knowledge of its layout. It seems that this product is just a dream, though, because the infrastructure needed to make it work would be expensive and complex for cities to install.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Blind Ambitions 11 Game Changing Visual Assistive Concepts

The idea of beautifying an outdoor space seems straightforward enough – flowers and sculptures and whatnot – but Polish street artist NeSpoon turns that idea into something so beautifully different that it transforms the ordinary into the spectacular.

Working in paint, crochet, and carving, NeSpoon gives dingy and uncared-for urban surfaces new life by adorning them with what she calls “public jewelry.” Her pieces are inspired by lace, often taking on the shapes of enormous doilies painted on the sides of exterior walls.

Other lace-inspired pieces are crocheted into or onto various rough objects to create an extreme visual dichotomy. Some pieces are carved into wood or clay, the intricate patterns looking like entire universes. And then there are the truly random pieces painted onto pieces of concrete or the sides of moored boats.

For many of the pieces, NeSpoon has permission to apply her particular type of artwork on buildings or other public spaces. But some are true urban interventions, appearing in unexpected spaces to provide onlookers with a little bit of beauty and whimsy to brighten their day.

When real estate developers come knocking, it seems that the majority of homeowners are willing to move out for the right price – but then there are some who take a stand and refuse to give up their homes no matter what. Called “holdouts” in some parts of the world and “nail houses” in others, these strong-willed folks decided that they weren’t going to move…so the developers had no choice but to build around them.

Dog Fight: Portland, Oregon

In 2005, attorney Randal Acker purchased a small Queen Anne Victorian home in downtown Portland, Oregon from which to operate his practice. The very next year, developers started buying up all of the property around the building. When they knocked on Acker’s door, they could never have guessed what was in store for them.

Acker calls the building The Figo House, named after his dog who is in turn named after Portuguese soccer player Luis Figo. Although the lawyer’s specialty is in commercial litigation, he resolved to commit as much time as necessary to eminent domain law to save this little piece of Portland history. In 2008, the developer resolved to leave Acker and the Figo house alone – but that didn’t mean they would scrap their construction project. They built a huge Portland State University residence hall around the Figo house – and amazingly, there seem to be no hard feelings on either side.

The construction of the hall to the west of the Figo house was limited to two stories so it would not block the view of the sunset, and a large courtyard lies behind the house, giving the law office plenty of natural light. PSU officials and representatives from the construction company building the residence hall even stopped by with cookies for Acker on the day they broke ground on the project. In 2011, as a nod to the situation’s similarity to the movie Up, Acker proudly flew 400 helium balloons from his chimney, adding a cheery note to this charming story which could only happen in Portland.

Middle-of-the-Motorway Nail Houses: Guangzhou, China

When city planners wanted to connect the road network to a new tunnel under the Pearl River, they needed to make space by clearing some residences from the area. What those planners failed to plan for, however, were the three families who would refuse to leave their homes.

As reported by China Daily, the plans for the four-lane flyover went ahead anyway – with the holdout households right in the middle. While we can’t imagine it’s pleasant for those families to live right in the middle of all that traffic noise, we definitely appreciate the gumption that it takes to stand your ground, even when bulldozers are right outside of your door.

The Little Jeweler That Wouldn’t Give Up: London

Anyone who has passed the former Wickhams Department Store in London’s East End has probably noticed a rather odd feature: a tiny building that seems to be stuck into the big store’s facade. That little store has a fascinating past and might be one of the greatest real estate holdout stories ever. It was formerly Spiegelhalters Jewellers, a family business dating back to the early 19th century.

In 1892, Spiegelhalters acquiesced to Wickhams when the larger store wanted to expand; the jewelers moved their shop down the street. When Wickhams wanted to expand again in the 1920s and again asked Spiegelhalters to move, the store owners refused. Wickhams, not to be thwarted in their quest for domination of Mile End Road, adjusted the architecture of their gigantic building so that it would wrap around the little jeweler’s shop.

The result was somewhat humorous – the “central” tower had to be moved to one side of the little shop, and the hole in the facade threw off the symmetry of the building. But Spiegelhalters held tight and managed to outlast the Goliath that had overshadowed them for decades. Wickhams closed in the 1960s and Spiegelhalters remained in business until 1982. In early 2015, developers again wanted to knock down the little building but were thwarted by thousands of signatures on a petition to save the shop. Sadly, all that remained of it at that point is the facade – but even that little piece of the original Spiegelhalters is a cherished landmark that Londoners won’t soon let go of.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Relentless Residents 10 More Households That Refuse To Move