SHARED LIVING

Shared living has made a big come-back, and not limited to students only. The benefits of co-living are described as the “3 E’s” – Environmental, Economic and Emotional”. Urbanisation and the increasing number of singles and elderly will expand this life of communities into more shared living and more shared experiences. Humans are naturally social.

MY CHOICE

It’s the “Age of the Consumer.” That’s not news. The lead articles on retail are chocked full of stories about how consumers are now empowered through their mobile devices and online shopping. Consumers have indeed changed their behaviours, and more importantly their expectations. With the ability to shop any time anywhere, consumers have come to

CATS

Cats are already the stars on youtube where worldwide 100 hours cat videos are uploaded every minute. Now a real life trend initiated in Asia is swapping over to Europe. The world’s first cat café, “Cat Flower Garden”, opened its doors in Taipei,Taiwan. The Taiwanese cat café eventually became a tourist destination, attracting tourists from Japan

SPORTS

The shift from an industrial society to an information society initiated a body awareness trend. In the agricultural society, we worked our bodies hard doing our daily chores. Similarly, during our industrial period we did physical work on the job. As we moved into an information era, the demand on physical efforts shrank dramatically. We

DESIGNER FOOD

No, that’s not – not yet – the latest product from the Louis Vuitton collection, but the creation from the Japanese artist Kazuki Guzmán. He describes his style as part of a playful exploration of ideas and materials. „I enjoy taking jokes seriously, until they become „art“, in one way or another.” Considering that the

swapping

Once upon a time people exchanged one goods against other ones, or against services. I’ll give you a stone axe if you help me kill a mammoth – but such arrangements take time. You have to find someone who thinks an axe is a fair trade for having to face the 12-foot beast that doesn’t

COMICS

  Everybody may remember the exciting feeling in one’s childhood when a new comic book came out. Well, as visual culture is taking over, comics are getting more and more part also of the grown-up world. Comics are used in political, religious and social contexts. Comic Republic, a Nigerian comics startup based in Lagos, is

URBAN OASES

Quality of life is a big topic and with growing cities and increased travelling, it becomes an always bigger challenge. Urban oases, hubs to where to escape, are an important component to find balance in our hectic lives. This aspect led to the SLEEP BOX created by Russian architecture firm Arch Group. This is a

healthy fashion

The German fashion designer Anke Domaske has applied her knowledge as microbiologist to create a fibre produced out of milk. Milk protein fibre is a kind of fresh fibre that has very healthy functions. It contains eighteen amino-acids that are beneficial to human health. The fabrics made of these fibres nourish and take care of

vertical farming

Insung Tec, in Yongin/Korea, is operating the country’s first industrial vertical farm. The 165 square meter (1,776 square feet) factory floor has four seven-level plant beds. Green sprouts rise from each fluorescent-lit level. Vegetables such as kale, romaine and green lettuce, and basil grow here, where nutrients are fed into the soil through tubes. There is