21 Origami Influenced Flux Chairs Can Be Stacked to a Height of Just 1 Foot!

Origami influenced and easy to carry, the new foldable Flux chair is perfect for both events and to compliment any apartment. Designed by Douwe Jacobs and Tom Schouten, the Flux quickly folds into a sturdy chair in just ten seconds. Made from a single sheet of weather-proof plastic, the resulting chair looks like a modern sculpture without the weight or the cost. The Flux is ideal for event planning companies as a way to ship or transport a large volume of chairs at low cost and energy. Each chair weighs in at only 10.6 pounds, but more impressively, a whopping 21 chairs can be stacked into a height of just one foot, making it easy and inexpensive to pack and ship. Small apartment dwellers (hello, New Yorkers!) can easily store extra chairs virtually anywhere – under the couch, in closets – and also offer an impressively stylish chair that looks more design store than traditional folding chair. Plus buying furniture in New York can be a hassle, as most of us don’t have cars, so this design helps a lot. The chair is also sturdy enough to support 352 lbs, so it can double as a step stool. The Flux comes in 8 candy colors, with optional cushions to make them even more comfortable. The weather proof chairs can be used in your apartment or brought to the park, an ideal low cost, low energy chair for the design loving city dweller. Flux chairs are available exclusively at YLiving for $199…which includes shipping!

As NYC Expands Greenways, Another Brooklyn Bike Lane is Under Review

Biking in the New York City should be filed under extreme sporting, but NYC’s Department of Transportation (DOT) is attempting to curb the dangers of biking by upping the number of bike lanes and connecting already existing lanes throughout the city. The battle of the Prospect Park West bike lane in Brooklyn has been widely publicized, but there’s another battle currently underway over how to handle bikers on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge. Greenpoint Avenue is a heavily used truck route with some 26,637 commuters each day, and while there is not an official report on the number of cyclists, estimates from some transportation groups put the number of daily riders around 500. The proposed lane would be a part of the already started $5.8-million resurfacing project for the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, which runs over Newton Creek and connects Brooklyn and Queens. The original design would have taken the 4-lane bridge down to two lanes for vehicles, which would then provide two lanes for cyclists as well as a large 9-foot buffer between them and the cars. Currently, the bike lane on Greenpoint Avenue ends just before the bridge which puts cyclists into the mix of vehicular traffic where the street widens from two lanes of traffic to four. The intersection is prone to both vehicular and pedestrian collisions. The plan would put the intersection on a road diet and increase safety for more sustainable transportation – but it could also add to the already congested throughway which is one of the biggest issues facing the DOT. Transportation planners will hold several meetings with residents and business owners in the area to talk about potential designs. With New York City’s aim to increase bicycling commuting over the next few years coupled with its devotion to increasing the already expansive bike network, this proposal would be great, not just for cyclists, but also for pedestrians and drivers. Some residents and store owners say they don’t see many bikers on the bridge, but maybe this is a case of “if you build it, they will come."