This time last year architects and designers around the world were rallying to come up with creative ways to raise money for Japan, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that had just struck Sendai. Designs included a video appeal, a variety of posters and images for sale and instructions for making origami cranes.
Elsewhere, industrial designer Yves Behar unveiled a mobile phone with staggered square buttons, while architects BIG won a competition to design some prefabricated wooden housing in Finland and a sculptural low-energy light bulb was named design of the year by the Design Museum in London.
We featured some offices inside pulped paper caves, as well as some 3D-printed shoes that one reader thought resembled a futuristic vision from the eighties.
One of our most popular stories of the week was about some houses with facades that look like numbers and our readers were delighted with the rainbow colours of both a kindergarten with a rotating facade and a cafe bench.
See all our stories from March 2011 »
See our review of last year »