Blow Dry Bar

The hair and beauty industry is well established and saturated with businesses on every corner. Taking weekly visits to the hair salon is a costly and time consuming luxury that not everyone can afford. To alleviate this problem, a new trend is emerging which focuses on a niche segment of the hair salon market, the "Blow Dry Bar".

With little to no hairdressing knowledge to his name, Founder of Blow Dry Bar Nathan Cuneen has brought the concept to Australia after spotting the concept in New York about a year ago. With 12 salons operating in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Blow Dry Bars are a chain of express beauty salons offering a Blow Drying service only.

For $35, a complimentary glass of champagne and 30 minutes later, women can get the Hollywood look and still have time to have lunch within there lunch break.

Perfect example of new concept targeting a niche problem area of a well established saturated market.

I can hear the "Blow Dry Bar" franchise train coming!

Urban Squeeze Living

With the world's population growth dramatically increasing every year and space for urban living at a premium, we are witnessing architects and planners becoming more creative with urban design and utilisation of space.

With an interior space that is 133 centimeters at its widest and 72 centimeters at its narrowest spot, the Etgar Keret house in Warsaw's Wola district takes urban living space to another level.

Classified as an "Art Installation", the hybrid house was designed by Architect Jakub Szczensy for the famous Israeli writer Etgar Keret as a studio and home. Once built, the house will be situated in a narrow space between two buildings that is currently been used as dumping ground by locals. Completion date is planned for December 2011.

Szczensy's utilisation of marine style plumbing technology and use of innovative building materials, creates an compact minimalist open plan living space that takes architectural urban design to an innovative and sustainable level at the same time revitalising a wasted space.