No matter your personal position on religion and church; whether your a believer or not, I think we can all agree that these churches designed by various architects are awe inspiring, so much so in fact, they may have seen an increase in attendance. In time for Good Friday - the best of the best.

Top to bottom: Church of Light by Tadao Ando in Osaka, Japan. Church of the Holy Cross by KHR Architecture in Denmark. Church in Foligno, Italy by Fuksas Architects. Maastricht Bookstore in Church by Merlex+Girod. Holy Rosary Church Complex by Trahan Architects, Louisiana. Rainbow Church Exhibition by Tokujin Yoshioka in Seoul. Notre Dame Du Haut by Le Corbusier in Ronchamp, France and the Farewell Chapel by OFIS Architects.

At the moment you may have noticed we have a fascination with raw minerals - we have written about them here and in our latest newsletter, but it's this project by designers Joy Charbonneau and Ed Zec that's also caught our attention. They've created a set of cast metal sculptures based on scientific measurements of North America's great lakes. Made from bronze and aluminium, the lakes have been made to scale and are based on bathymetric information from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. Although it's not raw minerals - the lakes remind us of the stone Pyrite, and it seems the perfect way to marvel at these bodies of water. As shown from top to bottom: Lake Superior, Lake Huron and Lake Ontario.

We love this new collection for porcelain company Lladró by Jaime Hayon. Named Parrot Parade, unsurprisingly it features parrots perched on a whole manner of household objects from candlesticks to vases. Any of these items would be a nice addition to his previous Fantasy Collection which we wrote about recently in our latest issue.

Jaime Hayon for Lladró is available locally from here.

Swarovski crystal palace is collaborating with Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka on an installation named Stella to be presented at the upcoming Milan design week in April. Stella will bring together explorations made in Yoshioka's previous work with the intentions of creating a star - a large spherical illuminated crystal mass descending from the sky. Yoshioka says, 'I am drawn to the beauty, transparency and poetry of crystals. Crystal is transparent, but it catches the light and brilliance. What is important for me is not just designing another new chandelier with crystal, but to create a star which shines into the viewer's heart'. We look forward to seeing it in April...

We admit that vending machines have served us well sugar-wise in times of need - but never has a vending machine been so in line with our interests. Launched in Berlin Hauptbahnof, the city's central station, design store Berlinomat has made many of their design goods available in a vending machine. Including 42 Berlin designed products ranging from clothing accessories to gifts, this could be the future of fast-paced transport shopping.

Fancy making furniture within a one-hour time frame out of items from your trash. It wouldn't work in our office which is flooded with paper and CDs - but a small conceptual furniture studio based out of Tel Aviv, Israel, must have slightly more robust items lining their bins. Named Godspeed, they hatch furniture out of anything they find and bypass the sketching-conceptual phase opting to jump right into the build. They're not items we'd put into our homes, but like a stream of consciousness, it's good to see what can be turned out in such a short space of time.

If you ever wanted to wile away the minutes in one hour, this could be a mesmerizing and slightly hypnotic way to do it. Marc Newson's hourglass for Ikepod is a sixty minute counter made of high-grade glass with sand comprised of carbon or nickel-plated nanoballs. The saying, time is in your hands, has never seemed so apt.

Last Thursday evening, local design showroom Domo (known for representing the luxury outdoor brand Dedon) formerly introduced a new brand into their space. French brand Grange (known for traditional French furniture making) harks back to a time of the past - and it's this bookshelf that particularly caught our attention. Fully modular and custom made, there is the option of a ladder that you can simply slide across - it seems like the perfect space to house our ever-growing collection of magazines and books. We even envisaged incorporating a fireplace into its base.

This home, located at 57 Tivoli Road in Melbourne, designed by BE Architecture is on a rare inner-city corner site with internal courtyards. A key feature of the home is the six metre long window in the living room that slides open to reveal a vast view of the city. The architects broached the issue of working on an exposed corner site by aiming to create both visual and acoustic privacy for the owners. An external material was chosen to best solve this issue and bluestone was selected for its durable nature and for its availability locally. To soften the industrial nature of the exterior, wood paneling is used extensively throughout the interior of the home to add softness. A twisting staircase separates the two levels and serves as a modern reference to spiral staircases of the past.

For a thoughtful inexpensive gift, London designer Aimée Furnival of A Studio has designed a series of greeting cards that easily fold-out into miniature gardens. Each postcard (aptly named Postcarden) comes equipped with a seed tray and cress seeds, featuring a botanical garden, allotment or cityscape. Not a bad edition to your desk and artificial lighting.