Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Taiwan’s Carton Restaurant, Where Everything Except the Food Is Made from Cardboard

Posted: 10 Oct 2012 05:09 AM PDT


Located inside the Carton King Creativity Park, in Taichung City, Taiwan, the Carton Restaurant is a unique eatery where everything from the furnishings, to the decorations and even the plates are made from corrugated cardboard.

Unless you’ve actually been to Taichung, I assure you haven’t seen anything like the Carton King Restaurant before. Except for the food, the waiters and some cutlery, everything inside this place is made from cardboard and paper. It seems almost impossible, but you actually sit on cardboard chairs, sip drinks from cardboard cans, and eat your food out of cardboard bowls at a cardboard table. The food is pretty average, according to the reviews I’ve read, a bit on the pricey side, but that’s to be expected considering the amazing venue it’s served in. What’s great about this place is the recycling potential. In case anything breaks or becomes damaged, it’s simply recycled. That was actually the point of the whole Carton King Creativity Park, to show the real power of paper and cardboard, and convince people it can be used for a lot more than generic packaging.

Photo: Brian’s Taiwan

The brain behind this amazing Taiwan attraction is Huang Fang-liang, founder and general manager of Chin Tang Paperware. After graduating from high school in Taichung County, he spent a few years working for paper and printing companies in around Taiwan to learn about  industry. In 1984, he returned to his hometown of Taichung to set up his own workshop.  Huang knew a small startup would be no match for the large companies manufacturing commercial and industrial paper products or for the older paper mills in Taiwan that dominated the market for craft and handmade paper, so he decided to give paper and cardboard packaging a try. This was also a very competitive sector, so he decided to focus on unique packaging items. ”Those who had been in the trade a long time said to me that they had seen more paper items than the number of grains of rice I had eaten,” Huang says. “They told me paper products were only good for printing, drawing and wiping up messes. I wanted to use paper in the same way as plastic or wood is used to create dimensional packaging, but to them it was pretty much a joke.” But while it took him longer to create his special kind of packaging than conventional ones, the ambitious entrepreneur made his customers happy and slowly built a reputation for his small business. With his creative outside the box thinking, Huang Fang-liang became the go-to man in the packaging trade, and Chin Tang Paperware one of the most respected companies in Taiwan. In 2007 he built the Carton King Creativity Park just to show the world what could be done with underrated materials like cardboard and paper.

Photo: Xinhua/Zhu Jiagen

And just in case you’re afraid those carton chairs are to frail for your Rubensian physique, here’s what Xue Sheng-yi, deputy general manager of Chin Tang Paperware, has to say about that: ”People often wonder if the tables or chairs are going to fall apart. We bring out our chef, who weighs more than 100 kilograms, to sit on a chair. Then one of the waiters sits on his lap. After that, there aren’t any more questions about how strong they are.”

 Photo: jimmyandcha

Photo: My Sweet Hut

 

Taiwan’s Carton Restaurant, Where Everything Except the Food Is Made from Cardboard was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Japanese Robo-Fish Looks and Acts Like the Real Thing, Needs No Maintenance

Posted: 10 Oct 2012 03:51 AM PDT


Fish are regarded as the most low maintenance of pets, but even they need a minimum degree of care, like making sure they’re fed every day and cleaning their tank from time to time. But the Robo-Fish invented by Japanese company Takara Tomy A.R.T.S. makes having a pet fish a carefree job.

Robo-Fish are not only meant to look like real exotic fish, but they also act like them when powered on. They scour the bottom of their tank as if they’re looking for food, and rise to the surface looking for floating bits of food. The only thing that gives them away as robotic fish is a small gap between their tail and the rest of the body, but other than that they look and move like the real deal. People too busy to even throw their live fish some food every once in a while need only go to Amazon and spend $37 for one Robo-Fish. The worst that can happen is the robotic fish runs out of battery, but that’s easily fixable.

Photo:REUTERS/YURIKO NAKAO

This is the beginning of the end, I tell you! Today they’re rendering exotic fish obsolete, tomorrow it may be you and me. But damn these Robo-Fish are cool!

 

via RocketNews24

Japanese Robo-Fish Looks and Acts Like the Real Thing, Needs No Maintenance was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Russian Artist Creates Amazing Straw Paintings

Posted: 10 Oct 2012 02:36 AM PDT


Irina Parosova, a self-taught artist from the Russian city of Syzran, creates mind-blowing artworks from straw. Work on just one of these masterpieces can take from one day to a whole month, depending on the complexity of the project.

Straw is usually defined as an agricultural byproduct that is mostly used for livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and basket making. But for Russian artist Irina Parosova straw is a complex artistic medium that can be turned into amazing artworks. The self-taught master started making straw art as a child, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She was 11 years old when her geography teacher came back from a holiday and brought them a photo album as a souvenir. But it wasn’t the photos that caught Irina’s attention, but the straw-inlaid cover of the album. She went home, climbed to the attic of her house where some straw-filled mattresses were stored, pulled out a few pieces of straw and started replicating the photo of a ballerina she found in an old magazine. It wasn’t her best work, but at that age she already thought of it as a masterpiece. But then she abandoned straw for the next 21 years. it was only after the birth of her second child that she rediscovered this amazing art form, when she used it to provide for her family. Her Russian husband had problems with the Uzbek language and couldn’t find a job, so she had to use her artistic skills to feed her children. Her straw art helped them overcome the financial crisis and since then Irina Parosova has become an acclaimed Russian artist.

Making straw paintings is not as simple as some might think, It’s not just a question of placing the straws on the canvas and gluing it into place. First, Irina has to pick out the right kind of straw. She works with a variety of cereal plants, from wheat, rye, oats and barley, to rice and buckwheat, but she can’t just buy them from anywhere. She either has to plant them herself or pick them out by hand from the field, because the ripeness of the plant plays a very important role in the quality of the straw. Once she has the raw material, it needs to go through processing. Each straw tube is boiled in hot water with ammonia for 3-5 minutes , then they are cut to size and ironed on several layers of newspapers which absorb all the moisture. Then   she uses white glue to stick the straws onto paper, from which she cuts all the desired shapes for her artworks. Some straws are bleached with perhydrol, others are darkened with pyrography techniques and some are simply dyed.

The simplest of Irina Parosova’s straw paintings sell for as low as 60 Russian rubles ($2), while more complex ones range from 600 ($20) to 6,000 ($200) rubles and her most impressive masterpieces cost up to 10,000 rubles ($320). She’s had problems competing with cheaper Chinese artworks coming in, but says demand for her work is slowly rising again. Some people however just don’t understand the time and effort that go into each one of her incredible creations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russian Artist Creates Amazing Straw Paintings was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

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