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Five years ago this week we chatted to Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana as they unveiled their chairs made from Disney cuddly toys in London. As Design Indaba drew to a close in Cape Town, a condom applicator designed to help prevent the spread of AIDS was named Most Beautiful Object in South Africa and we featured lighting made from salvaged plastic that had also been presented there. Designer Moritz Waldemeyer sent us backstage snapshots from Paris Fashion Week of mechanical dresses that play videos, plus we previewed the chairs that architects Kram Weisshaar planned to launch in Milan that spring. See all our stories from February 2007 » See al…

Five years ago Daniel Libeskind designed his first piece of commercial furniture, the Campana Brothers presented plastic garden furniture wrapped in wicker and Zaha Hadid recreated some of her buildings as three-dimensional wall art. (more…) View the full article

It was a busy time for architects OMA this week five years ago, as they released designs for major projects that included a large urban development in the United Arab Emirates (above) and a 300-metre skyscraper in Mexico City (below). (more…) View the full article

This week five years ago Dezeen was at the opening of the Royal College of Art’s 2007 summer show, where graduate designers were exhibiting jewellery made from sugar crystals and pencils, a chandelier-making machine and digitally recreated snowflakes. (more…) View the full article

Five years ago Zaha Hadid’s installation at the Venice Biennale (above) featured sculptural, shiny forms, which cropped up in a lot of designers’ work around the same time. (more…) View the full article

Five years ago this week, after just four months online, Dezeen already had a quarter of a million readers. We published our first story about a sex toy, as well as a globular building that Zaha Hadid had just designed for a square in Budapest. (more…) </img> </img> </img> </img> </img> </img> </img> View the full article

Five years ago this week Olafur Eliasson and Snøhetta unveiled their proposals for the 2007 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion and Herzog & de Meuron announced plans to create a new football stadium for English team Portsmouth FC that were abandoned shortly after. OMA started work on a study into urban growth in the Gulf, the results of which were presented recently as part of an exhibition documenting the firm’s working processes and lighting designer Stuart Haygarth designed a children’s nightlight filled with toys for a charity auction. Elsewhere on Dezeen we published even more high-profile projects that we’d seen in Milan, which included door handles designed by Zaha …

Five years ago this week an all-star lineup of architects comprising Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Tadao Ando released proposals for a cultural complex on an island off the coast of Abu Dhabi. Hadid’s designs were for a performing arts centre projecting towards the harbour while Gehry put forward plans for a Guggenheim contemporary art museum, Nouvel proposed a Louvre classical art gallery and Ando designed a maritime museum. All four are currently still in development. In the Netherlands, a ziggurat-like college by Erick van Egeraat opened its doors for the first time and NL Architects won a competition to design a new civic building in the northern town of …

Five years ago this week a huge new stadium by Foster + Partners opened in London, while yet more radical projects were proposed for the United Arab Emirates, including a bulging office block by Zaha Hadid and a revolving skyscraper. (more…) View the full article

Museums, galleries, exhibitions and installations were in the news this week five years ago, as Coop Himmelb(l)au’s extension to the Akron Art Museum opened in Ohio (above) and the winner of a competition to design a museum dedicated to the ice age (below) was announced for Siberia. (more…) View the full article

Curator and writer Daniel Charny has teamed up with Sugru’s James Carrigan to launch Fixperts, a matchmaking service that introduces inventive designers to people with everyday design problems (+ movies). (more…) View the full article

Seven installations lit up Oslo's harbour promenade for the inaugural Fjord Oslo light festival, each showing the effect that light can have on our emotions. Read more View the full article

This narrow house on a high street in Tokyo by Apollo Architects & Associates features a glazed ground-floor gallery (+ slideshow). (more...) View the full article

A flamethrower drone attachment that can shoot a seven-metre long stream of fire for 100 seconds is being sold online in the US by Throwflame. Read more

Milan 2010: the Tom Dixon team are assembling brass and stainless steel lamps on their stand at Superstudio Più in the Zona Tortona district this week. (more…) </img> </img> </img> </img> </img> View the full article

Fashion brand Milly's logo freezes, grows flowers and is applied like body paint in this campaign by New York design studio Sagmeister & Walsh (+ movie). (more…) View the full article

Play "spot the woman" in this photo set of an apartment that references Tel Aviv's 1950s interiors by Israeli practice Jacobs-Yaniv Architects (+ slideshow). (more...) View the full article

Designers Big-Game of Lausanne have made a series of mirrors from car windscreens. (more…) </img></img> </img> </img> </img> </img> </img> View the full article

A single piece of flat, flexible plastic serves as a whole set of measuring spoons in this invention by Polygons Design. Read more View the full article

More from French designer Mathieu Lehanneur: this time a series of rugs depicting squashed vital organs. (more…) </img> </img> </img> </img> </img> View the full article

Slices of wood are layered in different combinations to make each animal in this toy menagerie by London design studio Yang:Ripol. (more…) View the full article

This range of flat-packed furniture by Benjamin Vermeulen does away with little bags of screws, fastenings or Allen keys and simply snaps together with super-strong magnets (+ movie). (more...) View the full article

Online startup Floyd has designed a suite of flat-pack furniture to be easily taken apart and moved around, intended for young city dwellers and to offer a long-lasting alternative to IKEA products. Read more View the full article

A Vancouver-based startup's conceptual design for flat-packed recreational cabins would allow users to build for themselves, making the wilderness more readily accessible. Read more View the full article

Dezeen promotion: these space-saving stoves by fireplace manufacturers MCZ are designed to fit into tight spaces. (more…) View the full article