Hasta La Gadget!

As apartments and flats get smaller, the demand for compact and modular home furnishings consequently goes up. The latest of the bunch is the Ecooking, a vertical, modular kitchen that packs a number of appliances and storage spaces into a neat, floor-standing structure.

Designed by Massimo Facchinetti, Ecooking serves as a hub for sustainable cooking. The design emphasizes energy saving and retrieval systems so that energy isn’t wasted when it’s in use. For starters, the entire kitchen is powered by energy produced by solar panels mounted on the system – taking advantage of skylights when possible.

A small vertical garden is installed on one wall of the module, so you can plant herbs and select produce to use in your dishes. Water from the sink is run through a filter, where it is used to run the dishwasher afterwards, saving water in the process.

Other features include a retractable tap that disappears into the sink when you’re not using it; a rotating hood that follows you around the room while you do your thing; and an air treatment system in the hood that purifies ambient air.

[via Moco Loco via Dvice]

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You’d think you could do most things in the kitchen with a knife and a good mixing bowl. Apparently not, according to the spate of highly specific single-purpose kitchen gadgets that exist. We showed you a few last month, but it turns out there are so many more horrors that we missed. More »

Being able to grow a garden if you’re a shut-in is pretty much impossible considering how much light plants need on a regular basis. But a new garden called the Smart Herb Garden may allow those of you who completely shun the daylight to finally be able to grow those “herbs” you’ve been dying to have.

The Smart Herb Garden uses an LED growing lamp to grow your herbs and a few select vegetables without any need for that dastardly sun. All you need to do is snap in your plant cartridges, fill in the water reservoir, and sit back to have the Smart Herb Garden do all of the actual growing for you. The garden doesn’t even use soil as it uses a nanotech material that’s been specifically engineered to supply the plant’s roots with the amount of oxygen, water and other nutrients it needs to grown. (more…)

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