Nothing limits the design of interfaces like the QUERTY keyboard, however, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't try.Our personal favorite here is the Ergodex panel which can be configured to mimic the cockpit controls of many aircraft, including an F16.

Rapid deploy structures have an extreme design function, the ability to be built extremely quickly. This requirement brings architecture directly into the realm of gadgets with lightweight high tech construction and innovative forms.Here are a range of instant buildings from military command and control centers, disaster shelters and dedicated portable hangers for aircraft such as the B2 and stealth fighter. The buildings come in bags or on planes or with their own trailers and are even flat pack assembled like military IKEA buildings.

Manhattan is an antique modern city, dark, decaying, malevolent and at the same time wonderful. The most recent screen versions of Batman have captured this dark feel perfectly. Here are our picks for the buildings and elements of Manhattan that make up the real Gotham city.

Our sister site, Cribcandy, has a roundup of prefabs, currently on the market.

Post war prefabs from Nissan huts to Trailer parks, were the epitome of substandard dwelling, however today they represent the high end with a build quality that is far superior to in-situ construction.This change is more than mere fashion, it represents the commoditization of buildings as products as computerized manufacture allows for mass customization, which is a pre-requisite for large scale prefab delivery.Here are our favorite pre fab brands currently available.

Why would you buy a horrible plastic fan this summer, when Ebay is full of better alternatives at reasonable prices? Vintage fans are a perfect piece of machine age Americana with streamlined Moderne or Art Deco styling. Here are some of our favorite picks, available on Ebay at the time of writing.

Forget the kinds of kitchen gadgets you see on infomercials, if you want the real deal you have to go to the pros. Who doesnt want a computer controlled Instant Noodle machine, a bagel production line, a 2000 piece and hour sushi robot or a 60 foot long mobile smoker. Vote for your faves.

Despite the title of this list, several of these housing projects were designed by some of the world’s most famous architects and lauded at the time. The undeniable squalor of 19th Century slums combined with modernism to produce and attempt to clean things up and create a crystalline utopia. The end result was often an anti-septic vision of hell, a place devoid of organic spaces and evolves social interaction.The architectural crime that started with Corbusier’s insane proposal to demolish the historic center of Paris and replace it with something like the worst of the South Bronx and culminated in the White and Black racially segregated human silos of St Louis's Pruitt-Igoe, continues to this day and even as middle class, owner-occupied dwelling such as those in Hong Kong. Its principal feature is de-humanizing alienation. Vote for your worst…

Mechanical calculators are the genealogical ancestors of today's computers. They also occupy a special place in the cultural history of gadgets, since they form the essential component of the mythical Steampunk alternative reality.Even if these clockwork beasts were steam driven, however, their electro-magnetic counterparts would inevitably have eventually replaced them. Vote on your favorites.

iCandy - the best Apple concept mockups. Despite the huge number of 3d rendered mockups of Apple products on the web, few even come close to genuine Apple design. The exceptions seem to be Isamu Sanada and Yann Le Coroller, who between them account for the majority of well executed 3rd party concepts. Here are our favorites, and why we chose them. Vote for yours.

Solar cookers are reflectors which focus sunlight enough to heat food, but they are a simple eco-friendly gadget that happens to look interesting and comes in a large variety of interesting forms.Because solar cookers are shiny and look like satellite dishes, they have a particularly futuristic appearance which often creates an extreme contrast with the surroundings where they are used, as some of these testify.

A bicycle makes for an excellent machine even when stationary, something that is shown nowhere better than in the home-brew design phenomenon of bicycles and knife sharpeners. This is a design typology that spans continents and traces back to 19th century pedal powered machines. Here are our favorite examples from around the world.

Obviously the design criteria for four wheeled vehicles are somewhat different on other planets. This has yielded some of the most bizarre and fascinating vehicles ever proposed, from the giant Mobility Test Article test driven by Wernher von Braun to todays rovers which have ditched the most expensive component of all, the driver.Here are a variety of some of both classic and unusual space rovers from prototype to flown.

Pocket sundials can be over 1000 years old, arguably making them the world's first watches - and with no moving parts to break. Typically they were carried by shepherds, where there are a variety of designs, from the French Pillar Sundial to the Tibetan Time Stick.

The history of computers is not all digital, from the humble slide rule to hydraulic models of the economy there is a rich history of both electronic and mechanical analog computers. Here are some of our favorite examples. These computers have certain advantages over their symbolic counterparts. They measure continuous variables in parallel and therefore their accuracy is limited only by the granularity with which their results are read and their speed is not limited by sequential operations.

Chandeliers are all about opulence and excess. When decoration became cheap to mass produce, in the early 20th century, minimalist modernism was in and things like chandeliers were out. The tide is turning, now that Ikea can stamp out designer modernism for the masses, designery magazines are starting to show decorative things now. Bu why buy a horrid crystal monstrosity for $10K when you can make a chandelier out of almost anything. Here is a selection of chandeliers made out of inexpensive things or found objects - including human bones.

Its strange to think that the now obsolete VCR or VTR has a half century history, from the giant Ampex and RCA machines used in TV stations to the multiple, competing format, consumer cassette players that culminated in the dominant VHS standard.Today you can by a DVD player for the same price as a DVD itself, due to the small number of moving parts and emerging market labor. However, VCRs were always relatively expensive because of their complex mechanisms, latterly involving gimballed rotating heads.In terms of design, aside from the robust utilitarian looking professional models, VCRs were ugly devices from the outside, but complex marvels inside.There are several great sites dealing with VTR history, including the excellent: http://www.totalrewind.org

We could go on about how empty pools, once awash with liquidity and fun are a metaphor for the wreckage left after the credit bust. But then again, there is something cool about empty pools, period. Here are our faves.