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Stunning portrait, by photographer Robert Maxwell for the New York Times, of US Olympic swimmer Dara Torres who is preparing to compete in her fifth Olympics at the age of 41.

Love this Obama poster by Brazilian graphic designer Daniel Molin.

Via The Year in Pictures.

The Dolly folding chair, designed by Antonio Citterio and Oliver Low for Kartell in 1998, is just one of many beautiful items to be found on house42[friends] - an ongoing ‘catalogue project’ based around the apartment and life of two friends, Em and Gi.

Organized in five categories, house, furniture, objects, lifestyle and places, it’s like ‘Through the Keyhole’ for design geeks. Not much content on the site at the moment but what there is looks pretty sweet and their blog is worth a visit too.

This lady robot storyteller, from Kyoto University’s Robo-Garage, will recite Murasaki Shikibu’s classic The Tale of Genji, whilst drawing you deeper into the story with subtle movements.

Styled after a Japanese noblewoman, with a kimono, traditional headress and a fan it’s able to hide up its sleeve, the only drawback to us Westerners is that it it only speaks in Japanese.

Via DVICE.

German designers neongrau.id have created veloheld, a bicycle for urban cycling. OK - so the world is already overflowing with overpriced single/fixed speed bikes but I like the pared down, neutral aesthetic of this example. The bicycles come in black or white and veloheld frames are available separately in 3 sizes for those who want to build their own bike.

Renounced of all unnecessary detail or excessive graphics the veloheld bike shows how pure cycling can be.

Photographer Branislav Kropilak’s stunning portfolio of haunting urban landcapes includes a collection of beautifully precise compositions of billboards.

Via Cool Hunting.

It’s 1975 And This Man Is About To Show You The Future..!

Splendid work  from Brooklyn based Swedish designer, Peter Sunna.

Via FormFiftyFive.

I have just been signed up for beta testing of Indxr, a self contained web application from Andreas Pihlström, dedicated to both presenting and archiving mixed media formats through the browser. Mirroring FTP content and with the ability to add and edit content remotely, Indxr is intended for project management, client access and portfolio showcase applications. Design studio Visuaal have even built their website using it.

Watch this space for reports on how I get on with it.

Morphogenesis Chaise follows studies by furniture designer Timothy Schreiber into naturally evolving structural systems, resulting in an organic and contemporary design for a chaise lounge.