No more searching around for a pencil sharpener in the bottoms of pen pots or backs of drawers: this waste-paper bin by Korean designer Giha Woo has a sharpener in the lid so it's waiting right where you need to use it.
Called Circle or Dot, the trash can has a large circular aperture in the top for normal waste and a tiny hole (or dot) to push pencils into the sharpener, so the shavings fall directly into the bin below.
Woo's design also allows you to conserve your efforts for more essential work in the studio by honing your pencils with just one hand.
It might prevent colleagues walking off with your pencil sharpener too, unless it's the sort of office where your whole bin tends to go missing and mysteriously reappear beside another desk, in which case you're robbed of two items in one fell swoop.
If that doesn't float your boat, check out our stories on a wooden bin that's burnt along with its contents or a waste-paper basket with layers of liners like cup-cake cases or a very minimal version here.
Other projects by Giha Woo include an MP3 player combined with an electrical plug, a clock with batteries in place of hands and another clock with a single spiralling arm to indicate the time in cities around the world.
Here are some more details from the designer:
The lid of trash can has one circle and one small dot. The waste is thrown through the large circle and it sharpens the pencil with the small dot. And the pencil waste is automatically thrown into the waste can.
Recently, people do not sharpen pencil that much. But when they need to sharpen the pencil, the pencil sharpener is hard to find. The pencil sharpener in recent day is not really used that much that it is not available when needed. This is the waste can that is attached with the pencil sharpener on the lid.
This is the design needed for all the time but is the design for certain moment of occasional use. The infrequently used pencil sharpener does not have to be splendid looking. It does not need to show itself off to take certain space either.contains the dynamic relationship of reduced value of pencil sharpener and new environment.