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Friday Five with Ayah Bdeir of littleBits

This week’s Friday Five subject is Ayah Bdeir, a New York City-based engineer and interactive artist. She’s also the founder of littleBits, an open source library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets. Only six months after its creation, litteBits was acquired by MoMA for the museum’s collection, won best of ToyFair, and called by Bloomberg TV “LEGO for the iPad generation.” Bdeir earned a Masters from the MIT Media Lab following her studies in Computer Engineering and Sociology in the American University of Beirut. Bdeir has taught graduate classes at NYU and Parsons, was a mentor on a reality TV show, “Stars of Science,” and had a fellowship with Creative Commons. Let’s see what inspires this Renaissance woman. We recently shared a Deconstruction of the littleBits MoMA store window.

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1. cstunners
Work by incredibly talented Kenyan artist and TED fellow C. Kabiru.

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2. Giuseppe Zanotti Crystal Bootie
Need I say more?

Photo via ZME Science

Photo via ZME Science

3. Arthur Ganson’s Wishbone
My very favorite piece of kinetic art by the brilliant Arthur Ganson.

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4. Labneh
The most delicious staple of Lebanese cuisine.

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5. Meccano
One of my first memories of construction kits I had as a kid.

Marni Elyse Katz is a Contributing Editor at Design Milk. She lives in Boston where she contributes regularly to local publications and writes her own interior design blog, StyleCarrot.