Tag Archives: collapsible

This portable dish rack can collapse down to 1.2 inches in just a second

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It’s easy to take for granted how much space things take up in the kitchen until you find yourself suddenly running out of places to put stuff. Some kitchen appliances and furniture might be non-negotiable, but other tools and fixtures could probably do a bit of rethinking. Some of them might be redundant, while others don’t even have to be out of the closet all of the time, especially when they’re not in use. A dish or draining rack, for example, doesn’t serve a purpose once all the tableware has been stored away, but most of them still take up precious space anyway. Not to mention, you can’t easily bring a dish rack with you when you go camping because of their very fixed forms. This rather novel rack, however, fixes all those problems by implementing a collapsible design that will let you easily put the draining rack away once its job is done.

Designers: Sugata Mono Studio for Ishikawa

Click Here to Buy Now: $68 $75 (10% off at checkout). Hurry, Easter sales end in 48 hours.

Truth be told, there aren’t a lot of things in the kitchen that can be put away after use aside from tableware, utensils, and cookware. That’s why there’s always a need to optimize the space being occupied by tools and equipment, which requires a bit of creative thinking and design. You won’t always be drying wet plates and pots, for example, so having a permanent draining rack might not be the greatest idea for some kitchens. In theory, it’s something that you should be able to take out and put away as needed, just like other tools, but the convention just so happened to use rigid designs made of plastic, metal, or wood.

This collapsible draining rack throws that convention out the window to save you space in the kitchen and make it more convenient to have meals outdoors. It uses a patent-pending spring system that gives the rack an accordion-like design, allowing you to expand it to a full 14″ (36cm) length or shrink it down to just 1.2″ (3cm). The best part is that the mechanism is so easy and smooth that you can do that in just a second.

It’s a simple design change, but one that has massive implications. You don’t have to reserve space in your kitchen for a draining rack and can use any flat surface as an ad hoc area. Once you’re done, simply collapse the rack and then shove it in a drawer. It also means it’s easy to transport so you can have the same experience while camping outdoors. The rack is so light and slim that you can actually carry it in your pocket. You don’t even need a flat surface since the rack’s design lets it conform to curved or uneven objects like tree trunks and boulders.

Despite that form-changing design, this collapsible draining rack is still made for durability and reliability, with SUS304 stainless steel parts that are resistant to rust and scratches. The shape that each wire rod takes is intentionally simple to reduce the chances of dirt accumulating in hidden nooks and crannies. And if you’re not that confident in your manual washing skills, the collapsed rack can just as easily be cleaned inside a dishwasher. Whether you’re drying plates or pots indoors or outdoors, this accordion-like collapsible draining rack delivers a simple yet effective tool that gets out of the way once its job is done.

Click Here to Buy Now: $68 $75 (10% off at checkout). Hurry, Easter sales end in 48 hours.

The post This portable dish rack can collapse down to 1.2 inches in just a second first appeared on Yanko Design.

This charming origami-inspired cube brings both light and power anywhere you need them

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Daytime isn’t the only time you can enjoy the freedom that summer brings. The night can also be a source of adventure, fun, or even relaxation, especially when experienced outdoors and away from your usual abode. Staying outdoors at night, however, can bring up a few anxieties, not least of which is having a convenient light source or, more importantly, a power source for your indispensable gadgets. That often means lugging along some lantern or lamp in addition to a power bank, two things you need to be mindful of and two things you could potentially lose. Consider your worries now calmed with an innovative and sustainable travel companion that will illuminate your darkest nights, save your dying phone, and even protect you from mosquitoes!

Designer: Alice Chun

Click Here to Buy Now: $38 $65 (42% off). Hurry, less than 72 hours left!

MEGAPUFF is easy to open and goes flat pack with a quick twist! The origami design is simple and elegant.

They say that looks can be deceiving, and the MEGAPUFF definitely lives up to that aphorism, but in a very good way. At first glance, the white box looks like a simple yet beautiful paper lantern, not so different from traditional lanterns used in Japanese festivals, except perhaps for its cubical shape. The MEGAPUFF is, of course, quite literally a lantern, but that’s just the proverbial tip of the iceberg of what this is capable of. Because despite its minimalist appearance, it packs quite a lot of features that will make any activity more memorable, day or night, indoor or outdoor, no matter the season.

MEGAPUFF is both a portable lantern and power bank and unlike other combination products, it makes no compromises on either. A 4,000 mAh battery delivers all the power you need to charge up your mobile device through a USB-C port or deliver sufficient light to let you see in the dark of night or the darkness of your room. MEGAPUFF can be juiced up via the same USB-C connection, or you can charge it under the sun, providing you with a sustainable way to enjoy the conveniences of modern life, wherever you might be.

Seven light settings.

The light that MEGAPUFF provides is nothing to scoff at either, reaching a maximum of 300 lumens at its brightest. You won’t blind yourself, of course, especially with seven different settings for different light temperatures and intensities, including warm or bright, low or high, or a combination of both. There’s also a blinking red light setting that you won’t find in any portable lamp. This unexpected feature helps keep you safe in the dark, whether you’re riding a bike or signaling for an emergency. Red light therapy is also cited to help treat anxiety, depression, and PTSD, but it seems to have the opposite effect on mosquitoes and drives these bloodsuckers away instead.

Best of all, MEGAPUFF won’t take up much space in your car or camping gear. Thanks to origami technology, the 6.2×6.2 inch cube collapses down to a 0.75-inch high flat-packed square with a simple twisting motion. You don’t even have to turn the light off before collapsing or expanding the lantern, making it trivial to pack up or set up in a flash. This transforming cube is made from durable and eco-friendly sail cloth, leaving you with no worries about the product’s longevity or its effects on the environment. Whether you’re enjoying the great outdoors or lounging indoors, the MEGAPUFF collapsible lamp and battery will give you both light and power so that you can stop fretting and start enjoying your time.

Click Here to Buy Now: $38 $65 (42% off). Hurry, less than 72 hours left!

The post This charming origami-inspired cube brings both light and power anywhere you need them first appeared on Yanko Design.

Portable washing machine can fit in your suitcase and let you do laundry anywhere

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Traveling might be an exciting and enriching experience, but it can also be stressful when you consider the preparation and maintenance involved. Packing can be a frustrating puzzle game of fitting as many clothes in a suitcase as possible, which can be problematic the longer your spend away from your home base. It’s definitely impossible to pack enough clothes for more than a week’s trip, and you’d be forced to do laundry one way or another, which can itself be a source of stress when trying to survive in a foreign land. Wouldn’t it be grand if you could bring your washing machine along with you in the first place? Fortunately, that’s actually possible, at least for small and light pieces of clothes, with this collapsible washing machine that can even fit inside your suitcase.

Designer: Modern-G

Truth be told, it’s always possible to do laundry on your own in whatever hotel or AirBnB you’re staying at, but it’s not exactly convenient nor affordable. Not all accommodations even provide such an amenity, forcing guests to search for laundry machines or services elsewhere. Given how washing machines work, it’s almost inconceivable that you’d be able to bring one along with you, not to mention cramming it inside a travel suitcase, but that’s exactly the miracle that this portable washing machine tries to pull off.

You’d be forgiven if you mistake this odd appliance for a gigantic collapsible silicone cup because that’s exactly the same mechanism that the G-Soak uses to implement its shape-changing feat. Its collapsed form lets you stow it inside a suitcase, though you will have to sacrifice some space for it. When expanded, it has a size of 6 liters, large enough to hold 4 shirts or 10 pieces of underwear at a time.

It functions pretty much the same way as a regular washing machine, except on an extremely smaller scale. It spins soapy water around together with your clothes to take the place of manual scrubbing. It can even “dehydrate” or spin dry clothes, though we all know how effective that is in actually drying clothes. Still better than having to hang dripping clothes inside the room. There’s a special drain valve at the bottom to make it easy to remove the used water without having to tip the whole container over.

As far as appearances go, you can’t really say that the G-Soak is inspired, but few washing machines are, anyway. The focus, after all, is on portability, and in that arena, there are few or even nothing like it in the market. It’s not going to solve all your travel laundry problems, though, especially when it comes to heavier and bigger pieces of clothing, but it will most likely get you by without having to stress over where to do your laundry in an unfamiliar place.

The post Portable washing machine can fit in your suitcase and let you do laundry anywhere first appeared on Yanko Design.

Portable washing machine concept folds down like a collapsible silicone cup

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We live in an age of many conveniences empowered by technology, and yet there are still some things that remain just as burdensome as they were centuries ago. Sure, we now have smart laundry machines that can go through each stage of the process automatically without human intervention, but there are still aspects of the chore that have to be done manually. That’s especially true for certain types of clothing that might be too delicate to lump with everything else. Washing machines themselves can be quite a literal burden because of their size, limiting their use to a single location only. While that might be fine for the general use case, there are some more specific needs that aren’t covered by regular washing machines. Those corner cases are what this design concept tries to address, and it takes its unique form after one popular style of reusable coffee cups.

Designer: Kai Xia

Today’s most advanced washing machines can wash, drain, spin, dry, and refill water all on their own. They can’t, however, segregate clothes based on color or prevent delicate pieces from getting mixed in the pile. This still has to be done manually, and on some occasions, people have to wash smaller or more delicate clothes by hand. Large washing machines might also be a bit overkill for people living alone, especially if they can take those larger pieces of clothes to a laundromat or similar. What they need is a smaller machine, which is what this foldable washing machine design is aiming for.

If the base design of this washing machine looks a little too familiar, then you might have seen one too many collapsible cups. In fact, these two things share a lot of similar properties in that regard, with the top part of the structure folding down onto the smaller base until it becomes a shorter and more portable device you can carry around or even keep in storage. And like a silicone cup, this concept also uses thermoplastic elastomer or TPE to make it more resistant to aging, yellowing, and corrosion. Sadly, that material isn’t the most long-lasting nor the most sustainable option around.

Despite its rather deceptive appearance, it’s still a washing machine, but one that is designed for a very specific purpose. Its low power consumption and limited capacity mean it can run at gentler speeds, providing the perfect settings for washing smaller clothes or ones made with sensitive material. While it sounds unnecessary to have yet another washing machine, presuming you already have a normal one, it certainly beats having to hand wash those few pieces yourself.

The folding washing machine is also designed for a specific demographic, specifically single-person households that are trying to economize both space and expenditures. The machine doesn’t take up too much space, but it can be compressed even more when not in use. Its power and water consumption are also significantly lower than a regular washing machine. As a bonus, it can also be equipped with antimicrobial blue light to disinfect clothes, which is especially useful for underwear or baby clothes.

The post Portable washing machine concept folds down like a collapsible silicone cup first appeared on Yanko Design.

This collapsible lantern kit is the only light you need to keep the darkness at bay – indoors well as outdoors

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Extreme weather and natural disasters are becoming frighteningly more common these days, so preparedness for any eventuality is no longer really optional. People are advised to have an emergency “go bag” always ready with important supplies and tools that will help them survive a disaster or a few nights in an evacuation center. One of those essential survival tools, whether for emergencies or camping, is a flashlight, but the harsh directed light that it produces isn’t always ideal in all situations. When you need a softer light to illuminate an area, you’ll probably reach out for a lantern instead, and this handy, space-saving lantern kit ensures that you’ll always have one in your bag and within reach whenever you need it.

Designer: Yuji Yanagisawa

Click Here to Buy Now: $35.10 $39 (10% off). Hurry, sale ends on August 15th.

Flashlights, especially the smaller LED ones, are great for shining light on a specific spot, not so much for lighting up a room, a tent, or shared space in some evacuation center. The bright, directed beams of flashlights can, in fact, be harmful, intrusive, or even disconcerting for people seeking shelter from an emergency. A lantern would be the best solution, but even the smallest ones are bulky and take up space inside your go bag. Some creative people place a PET bottle with water on top of a flashlight to diffuse the brightness, but that setup is flimsy, inconvenient, and not always possible in some circumstances.

With those limitations and ideas in mind, designer Yuji Yanagisawa envisioned the Tomori Lantern Kit. Rather than providing a ready-made lantern, Tomori is actually a kit that lets you quickly set up a lantern and then quickly put it away when you no longer need it. The best parts about this lantern kit are that it takes up almost no space when collapsed and can also use any conventional flashlight that can fit inside its clamps.

The base of the kit is a foldable cardboard piece that serves as the flashlight holder and stable structure of the lamp. The kit comes with a rather nondescript LED flashlight that you can use on its own when not docked inside the lantern. In fact, the cardboard base can hold any cylindrical flashlight that is less than 30mm in diameter and 160mm in length. This means that you can use the same flashlight for the lantern as well as for typical uses, or you can have a set of backup flashlights when one’s battery goes empty.

A lantern wouldn’t be a lantern without a lamp shade, of course, and the kit comes in three varieties. Gray/Gradient tries to mimic a more traditional lantern look, with a gray cardboard base and a yellowish plastic shade reminiscent of well-used vintage lanterns. Blue/Stripe has a more modern aesthetic, sporting a blue interior and a translucent plastic cover with thin white stripes encompassing the lantern. Last but definitely not least, Yellow/Cross adds a bit of visual flair with a yellow body and a clear lampshade marked by crisscrossing lines.

The entire kit, excluding the flashlight, folds down to a flat A4-sized package, perfect for stashing in bags or drawers, ready for use in an emergency. While the design and purpose of the lantern kit were originally intended for those emergencies, its usefulness extends far beyond dire situations. It can be used for camping, for example, as long as you keep it out of the rain, or it can be used to gently light a room at night. Its open design makes it possible not only to use different flashlights but also to create different lampshades of your own. The lantern kit’s simplicity belies its sophisticated design and flexibility, promising you a stress-free night in the darkness, wherever you may be.

Click Here to Buy Now: $35.10 $39 (10% off). Hurry, sale ends on August 15th.

The post This collapsible lantern kit is the only light you need to keep the darkness at bay – indoors well as outdoors first appeared on Yanko Design.

This flexible vase expands in size (like an accordion) as your plant grows bigger

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Only 3% of plants survive being repotted when they grow too big for their old, smaller planter. I’m making that statistic up, it’s absolute nonsense… but here’s something that’s absolutely, undeniably true – Repotting plants as they grow bigger is a headache. You need to be incredibly gentle to avoid damaging the root system, and once you introduce a plant into a new, bigger pot, you need to hope and pray that the plant adapts to that shift. Repotting plants is a painstaking (and frankly messy task), although Lidia Gómez has a pretty clever solution.

The FlexVase by Gómez is an expandable vase made from hard-silicone. It uses an accordion-shaped profile to expand vertically in size, allowing you to simply stretch the planter as the plant inside it grows. As the planter expands in size, it creates more space for the roots to grow, as well as breaks the soil up, aerating it so the roots get more oxygen.

The FlexVase sports a set of folds that run along its width from top to bottom (looking sort of like pottery lines but much more uniform). Tug on the upper lip of the FlexVase and the folds open one by one. This allows you to increase the vase’s height in increments, making it taller as the plant grows. A similar design detail even exists in the Que Bottle, which uses a silicone construction and a spiral-shaped accordion detail to expand and collapse, making it easier to carry around while in its compact size.

While the vase’s innovative detail is functional in nature, it does lend a unique form to it too. When closed, the FlexVase looks like a normal vase, but expand it and it takes on this interesting wavy, fluted appearance… something that looks even more eye-catching when combined with the vase’s wonderful color palette!

Designer: Lidia Gómez

This lamp’s collapsible design also controls its brightness

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The Z-Lamp’s collapsible feature isn’t just to make it portable enough to carry around with you. That ridged silicone shade does allow you to expand or contract the lamp’s overall design, but in turn, it helps control the lamp’s overall brightness too.

Derived from ‘zhé’, the Chinese word for ‘fold’, the Z-Lamp comes with a collapsible silicone clad that sits over its LED-base. The clad’s ridged design allows it to expand and contract, allowing the lamp to grow bigger or smaller. Expand the entire silicone cover and it acts as a large diffuser, scattering more light in all directions… compact it and the diffuser’s size reduces, dimming the LED’s intensity. Simple, smart, and engaging!

The Z-Lamp is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2020

Designers: Ren Peng & Ye Jitong

Flexible Origami-inspired bottle folds down to a compact, pocketable size!

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There’s a certain, undeniable convenience to the plastic bottle. It’s easy to just take off the shelf, drink from, and then throw away once you’re done. You don’t need to worry about carrying a bulky bottle along with you that occupies the same amount of space, even when empty. The convenience of plastic is addictive, but it comes at a price. There’s a garbage island the size of Texas floating around in the pacific sea, COVERED with plastic bottles we used and threw away without batting an eyelid. Plastic bottles are preferred because they’re more convenient than carrying your own bulky empty bottles around with you, but the Origami Bottle may have a solution to that convenient problem.

Designed to be reusable, but more importantly, be collapsible, the Origami Bottle folds down to 20% of its original size when not in use. Small enough to easily fit into any bag without occupying much space, the Origami Bottle neatly folds down to a nice, portable puck that’s easy and convenient to carry around. When you need to fill it up, the bottle opens up to a full size of 25oz (750ml).

Made from a food-safe non-toxic TPE, the Origami bottle is characterized by its network of creases that cover the bottle’s sides. These creases act as fold lines, allowing the bottle to collapse and expand whenever you want it, but here’s where the Origami bottle’s design shines through. When entirely expanded, the bottle remains rigid and upright, thanks to the Origami bottle’s curved walls which become robust when the bottle’s opened out. When you need to fold the bottle down, just unscrew the cap and push against the horizontal crease lines and the bottle goes back to its small, portable form factor.

The bottle comes with a spill-proof leakproof cap along with an integrated carry-ring that lets you suspend it from your backpacks. Perfect for hot beverages as well as cold drinks, the Origami bottle can be used as a regular bottle during your day-to-day outings as well as while traveling outdoors. Aside from helping take plastic bottles out of circulation, the Origami is made from a proprietary material called Arnitel Eco, allowing it to be “closed-loop recyclable”, which means the bottle’s materials can be 100% recycled to the same quality. Pretty neat, eh? Did I also mention they come in a bunch of colors, and since they’re collapsible they’re also ridiculously easy to clean??

Designer: DiFOLD

A backpack for rural schoolchildren that converts into a writing desk!

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Developed for schools in rural India, where it’s still pretty common for students to sit on the floor and study, Deskit provides children with a writing table attached right to their backpack. The standard canvas backpack comes with a collapsible hard-surface and legs built right into its front, giving kids a prop-up schooldesk to write on with their backpack right beside it, making it easier to access books and supplies while at school. Designed for PROSOC Innovation, the schoolbags are affordable as well as lightweight, enabling children with the tools to help them study better and more comfortably. Today, more than 20,000 school children are using DESKIT in ten different Indian states!

Designer: Eshan Sadasivan forPROSOC

The only bottle that isn’t a hassle to carry around

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An empty bottle can often be quite a nuisance. It’s essentially a useless, hollow, bulky and heavy container that holds nothing, but occupies space in your bag. Space that could be used to carry other valuable stuff. While this isn’t an incredibly burdening problem, it’s an annoyance and an inconvenience that man could do without, so we can focus on the real issues (like global warming, or relocating to Mars); and that’s where the Space Shaker helps us. It takes our minds off the burden of space-occupying empty bottles so we can perhaps achieve interplanetary travel a little bit faster!

Made using a bellow, the same kind you’d see in accordions and jack-in-the-boxes, the Space Shaker is a 600ml bottle that collapses down to practically a third of its size when empty. Designed for anything from water, to juices, to even protein shakes, the Space Shaker bottle conveniently stays small when you need it to be compact, and opens out into a bottle with 600 milliliters of capacity when opened out. The bottle comes made from a 100% BPA free, food-grade plastic that’s flexible enough to allow the bottle to collapse and expand at will, and comes with a silicone O-ring at its mouth for a perfect, air-tight seal, allowing you to use the bottle for making protein/supplement shakes. The bottle comes with a regular metal cap as well as an additional infuser/mixer cap that allows you to create infusions or blend protein powders into your water/milk.

The bottle’s bellow-shaped body proves extremely useful when it comes to traveling with it. Its space-saving design allows you to carry three bottles in the same space required for one single bottle, and the bellow’s ridges allow you to create frothy, creamy shakes. The obvious down-side is cleaning the bottle, since a lot of liquid would accumulate in these ridges. The Space Shaker, however, is dishwasher friendly, which makes cleaning it slightly easier. A perfect bottle to take with you on the go, the Space Shaker fits easily in bags, backpacks, and even in fanny packs. Its water-tight design ensures that aside from being an incredibly convenient, compact solution, it’s also a complete no-hassle sort of bottle. So lets move on to conquering our bigger problems! Mars 2030!

Designer: Space Shaker

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