Shopping carts are anything but sleek and modern, often dysfunctional and generally associated with a boring chore, at least until this (re)creator came along.

Etiënne Reijnders is a Dutch designer who decided to test the stylistic limits of grocery carts, cutting, sawing, folding, forging and welding them into stunning new shapes.

The resulting seats utilize almost all of the material from the original carts, carefully planned to minimize waste while also creating beautiful and functional seating.

Reijnders is not the first designer to think of recycling everyday materials into furniture (the example above comes from another designer), but the results in his case somehow manage to bridge the gap between looking both like the recycled object but also something dynamic and new.

IKEA has announced a new lightweight bicycle with a rust-resistant chain, aluminum frame and low-maintenance construction all aimed to make it easier for more casual bicyclists to hop on and enjoy the ride.

A joint project by Oskar Juhlin, Jan Puranen and Kristian Eke from Swedish studio Veryday Design, the easy-upkeep bike comes in a few basic models with a series of adjustable features.

It is simple and unassuming at a glance, but aimed to be a go-to, easy-to-use object just like IKEA’s furniture and furnishing lines (just presumably more robust than some). For many would-be bikers, the prospect of maintaining the bicycle itself is a barrier to entry that IKEA hopes to eliminate as a concern.

Bike racks, bags and a two-wheeled trailer can all be added via click-to-attach mechanisms to allow for easy adjustments. At $750 it won’t be the cheapest model on the market, but affordable for its quality.

Supermarkets? More like Stupor Markets, amiright? That’s the case with these 11 abandoned supermarkets where “checkout” is more than a state of mind.

Cleanup in aisle… well, all of ’em actually, and you’d better bring a hazmat suit along with a bucket & mop. Almost 30 years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident turned Pripyat into a creepy radioactive ghost town, the city’s snazzy supermarket recalls the good old days – Soviet style – when the shelves were stocked and the shopping carts had wheels.

Urbex ubergeek Florian from Abandoned Kansai visited the abandoned supermarket just off Lenin Square back in January of 2011 and lived to tell the tale – and post the images above. According to Florian’s native guide Maxim, Pripyat was a privileged place before the 1986 disaster and the central supermarket “was one of the few places in the Soviet Union that actually sold Chanel Nº 5.” Now it just stinks.

Well, ByeVee

The soaring “V for Victory” signpost standing resolutely Ozymandias-like in the Iowa summer sun indicates the above abandoned supermarket above was once a HyVee. Flickr user Andrew T…has left the building captured the forlorn state of the place in June of 2012, sometime after HyVee consolidated their two existing Newton, IA stores into a newer, larger complex.

Howard’s End

Abandoned in 1999, the old Howard Park Super Pride supermarket on Liberty Heights Avenue finally succumbed to the wrecking ball after ShopRite selected the site for their new store.

Though it’s good to see any neighborhood revitalized, the oddly gentle demolition of the Super Pride’s landmark sign had to bring a tear to more than a few local eyes.

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Deserted Aisles 11 More Creepy Abandoned Supermarkets