Jordan Kushins

Stunning massive sundog captured over Moscow

Imagine looking up on your daily commute and catching this crazy visual trickery in the sky! Yesterday, Youtube user melkiy582 captured a massive halo of light was seen around the sun on the horizon in Moscow—a cool atmospheric phenomenon known by an even cooler name: Sundog. The scientific title for the pair of bright spots…

Watch Artists Turn Plain Old Masking Tape Into a Trippy 3D Light Show

It’s not tough to make friends at hostels, but if you need a solid convo starter for that attractive stranger nursing a beer at the bar, Generator in Berlin has got you covered. Audiovisual artist Jacques-André Dupont recently set up a trippy multi-media installation with plain old tape and 3D mapping projections. Boom. The brief…

Reconfigure This Lamp’s Magnetic Arm For Light Exactly Where You Want It

Bulky incandescents are pretty rare in desktop lamps these days, and it’s interesting to see how lighting designers are taking advantage of smaller bulbs—reducing lamps down to their absolute bare minimum. Take Jella, a super slim aluminum stick that’s embedded with both LEDs and magnets, so you can reconfigure it any which way you want…

This Slick Steel Bucket Holds a Flame Or A Fern: Your Choice

What’s classier than a tiki torch, tougher than a luminaria, but less commitment than a big ol’ backyard pit? Well hey, it’s this cool Fire Bucket. And whoa, it can do double duty as a planter. Neat! Norm Architects designed the piece in powder-coated stainless steel to weather whatever crazy seasonal elements you’ve got going…

14 Complex Data Visualizations That Take The Form Of A Tree

Infographics might seem like a modern phenomenon—citizens of the internet love nothing more than a nice and tidy presentation of catchy stats—but data viz dates way, way back. In The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, interaction designer Manuel Lima examines a recurring theme: more than eight centuries’ worth of trees used as diagrams,…

These Awesome Olympic Souvenir Concepts Are Better Than the Real Thing

Souvenirs have a tendency to skew way, way kitschy, especially when they’re tied to major events like the Olympics. But these souvenirs—designed by a group of industrial design students—put a totally new spin on the traditional tat, and the results are pretty awesome. The designs were done by students at the Swiss design school ECAL…

13 Nail-Biting Images Of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge Under Construction

In the battle royale between landmark San Francisco bridges, the Golden Gate will probably always get the glory. But after seventy years, its sister span to the east is coming into its own. The Bay Bridge: A Work in Progress is an upcoming exhibition at the city’s De Young Museum that chronicles the earliest days…

8 Otherworldly Songs Performed On Instruments Made Of Ice

We’re smack-dab in the middle of winter and baby, it’s cold outside (or so I’ve heard; I live over in LOL). I imagine that it might be tough to find the beauty in yet another day of sub-zero temperatures, but for some enterprising creative types, bone-chilling frost is more than a major nuisance—it’s the stuff…

String Theory: Watch This Pile of Wood Transform Into A Functioning Chair

Ooh Monday, why you gotta be such a drain? Everything just seems more difficult at the start of the week. Somehow, designer Hui Chun Chen’s Constructing Memory collection manages to embody that feeling in furniture that takes extra effort to put—and keep—together. The chair, in particular, requires a level of engagement that turns the act…

You’d Never Guess These Shelves Are Made From Earthquake Rubble

Mother Nature is lovely, but relentless; more and more, it seems like recovery-mode is standard operating procedure for large swathes of the world. On a small scale, some designers are finding ways to give new life to the damage left behind by natural disasters. Following a 5.9 earthquake that shook northern Italy in 2012, prolific…

This Disco Ball Floor Lamp Is A Classy Take On A Kitschy Icon

Attention all sophisticated super freaks: this one’s for you. Say hello to the Disco Dish, a flashy light fixture from the off-kilter creative mind of Dutch designer Bertjan Pot. The series is a new take on his Disco Dome pendants, that flipped the familiar glitter ball inside out; these are two new models—floor and pendant—and…

23 More Amazing Museums Where You Can Sleep Next to History

Well, wowza. On Friday, we posted about museums that host sleepovers. And it turned out that you had a ton of great suggestions to add to the list, filling Kinja with amazing anecdotes and tips. We’ve compiled them here. Lots of folks had fond memories of a night at a museum, either recently or as…

8 Amazing Museums Where You Can Bring a Sleeping Bag and Stay the Night

Have you ever slept beneath the bones of a T-Rex? What about next to the Declaration of Independence? It’s been nearly three decades since I read From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, but the plot—two kids run away from home and take up residence at the Met, eventually solving a mystery,…

Explore Old Manhattan In Pics From Street Photographer Bill Cunningham

A few years ago, a documentary came out that introduced longtime New York legend Bill Cunningham to the world at large. The film was fantastic—now streaming on Netflix!—and made it pretty much impossible not to fall in love with the octogenarian photographer who, for decades, has biked boldly through the Big Apple’s crowded avenues capturing…

Get All Starry-Eyed With This Indestructible Tyvek Constellation Map

I am a dope when it comes to constellations; identifying Orion’s Belt and the Dippers (Big and Little) is about as deep as my skills go when it comes to eyeballing the heavens. This Crumpled Sky Map by Palomar seems like it would be an awesome tool to help me and my fellow heavens-blind folk…

Screw Your Murphy Bed, This One Flips Over Into a Desk

Would you ever walk into a stranger’s home and ask to buy the necklace draped on their side table? Or offer to give them cash for some of their cutlery? No? Well, meet Mira Schröder. She lives in an apartment that functions as a part-time showroom, where everything—including the amazing flippable bed above—is available for…

As the polar vortex puts an unprecedented deep freeze on America, it’s business as usual at Sweden’s Icehotel, where people have been paying to experience a night in the cold for 24 seasons. This year, French architects Les Ateliers des Germains carved out a Parisian skyline in one suite—the perfect setting for visitors to act…

14 Fascinating Maps of Places Hiding In Plain Sight

Paper routes. All the swings in Harlem. Lost souls. The maps encased in Where You Are, the latest offering from the lovely ladies at London-based publisher Visual Editions, won’t actually get you anywhere—but they sure are fun to look at. Sixteen creative types contributed a personal entry for the collection in their own unique style…

Make Stars Fall With These Five-Pointed Dominoes

Vegas is going wild this week in an all-out consumer electronics bacchanal, but sometimes it’s nice to tool around with an old-timey, offline distraction. Like these Japanese dominoes, which are are about as no-tech as toys come. The set contains 100 beech wood pieces in eight different colors, all wrapped up in a pretty gold…

This Interactive Chandelier Shines With Data From All Over the World

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently opened the doors of a brand new HQ in Washington DC. But it might be tough for visitors to tear themselves away from the foyer, which is home to the Global Data Chandelier—a pixelated fixture composed of 425 LED pendants arranged in the shape of a…