Tracy Cordingley and Jamie Billing, product design professors at the UK's Nottingham Trent University, have launched a website that's something like Instructables for the recycling-minded. Called Co-oproduct.org, the site is a "web portal that shows you how to creatively ReUse your Household Packaging and Everyday Waste Materials to make new desirable objects."
The site is broken down into categories—Metal, Plastics, Glass, et cetera—though at press time, not every material had an attendant product you could make with it; presumably the community-minded site's offerings will grow over time as more people submit projects. But thus far there are tutorials such as how to make drinking glasses out of beer bottles, tables out of bicycle wheels, stool tops out of shredded paper and resin, and what looks to be about two dozen others. Below is a lamp made from plastic spoons.
The quality of photographs on the site is quite poor, another area they will need to address if they hope to draw mass attention. But the central idea of the website is sound and we hope it catches on.
I prefer Doypacks to bottles, but during my gig as a structural package designer, the corporate marketing higher-ups were adamant that the American public would never accept them. So we churned out bottle after bottle after bottle.
It's heartening to see China, with all of their one-billion-plus consumers, readily willing to put the the Doypack into common consumer use. A Chinese company called Huishan Dairy has begun using Swedish company Ecolean's Air Aseptic containers for their 240mL milk containers. ("Aseptic," in the beverage packaging world, just means "sterile.")
The Air Aseptic has two innovations, one ergonomic, the other a materials innovation. First off, pouring liquid from a Doypack is never easy as there's no good place to grab; Ecolean solves this by blowing an air-filled fin into the side of the packaging, providing a convenient handle. Secondly, in search of an alternative to plastic, Ecolean discovered they could use a minimum of polyethylene and fill out the bulk of the packaging with calcium carbonate--a/k/a chalk. Turns out the stuff is good for more than putting schoolkids to sleep; Ecolean has figured out how to extrude and layer the stuff into an efficient, not to mention bright white, Doypack.
Here Pat Reynolds, Vice President and Editor of Packaging World, gives us the rundown on the package and how the materials are put together:
Sculptor Tom Sachs happens to have his studio just up the block from me, but the goings-on inside are well-shielded from the street. I'll occasionally pass by just as the doors quickly open and close to admit or discharge one of his employees, and I always catch that distinctive shop whiff that screams they're making stuff in there.
Sachs (whose "Space Program: Mars" exhibition opens today at the Park Avenue Armory) has a quirky sense of humor fully on display in this "Love Letter to Plywood" video:
The video was directed by Sachs collaborator Van Neistat—remember his brother, Casey?--and is part of a trilogy called "Energies and Skills." Check out the other two, "How to Sweep" and "Space Camp" for more Neistat & Sachs goodness.
Atlanta-based Sonya Yong James is the textile designer and fiber artist behind Modern Fiber Lab, which produces handmade, sustainable goods from animal fibers.
I work primarily with wool fibers and various felt techniques. Felt offers an extraordinary range from two dimensional design to sculptural forms for both interiors and personal ornament. No other material is as versatile. Felt is utilitarian, decorative, and completely renewable.
I source all of my fiber from shepherds primarily in the United States. Everything here is a direct link to the natural world.
It's safe to say James has a strong passion for wool felt. In addition to creating the Knit Pod Vessels you see here, she's devoted many Flickr pixels to showing you how the material goes from sheep to studio.
If you want industrial design glory, you probably dream of pulling the sheets off of your furniture designs at Milan or the ICFF in New York. It's a minority of young designers who are determined to make a difference in the medical design field, who dream of presenting at the Medical Design & Manufacturing Conference in Philly. But each year that latter conference, now in its 30th year, draws thousands of manufacturers, designers, engineers, R&D guys, and materials experts all dedicated to producing devices that extend and repair human health.
In this first video from MD&M, IDEO's Brian Mason and Stacey Chang (Medical Products Lead Designer and Director of Healthcare Practice, respectively) discuss their approach to medical device design and explain how the peculiarities of the field dictate that creativity has to happen in the early stages of the process:
At this year's conference a company called Secant Medical's Vice President of Advanced Technologies, Jeffrey M. Koslosky, will deliver a talk on his company's specialty, Biomedical Textiles in Implantable Medical Devices. "Biomedical textiles can transform medical device engineers' design portfolios to create truly innovative and market-leading devices," says Koslosky. Secant's expertise is highly specialized, as they focus on the development of materials that need to reside within the human body. In the video below, Secant design engineer Amy Woltman shows and discusses some of these materials (starts at 0:53):
Bamboo is often presented as a green wonder material, showing up in everything from flooring to bicycles to laptop cases; but it's important to understand that while the material itself is fast-growing and renewable, the processes needed to transform it into a finished product can negate the sustainability factor.
When outdoor gear company Patagonia needed to design a warm-water wetsuit—something more in line with the temperatures in their native SoCal than, say, the frigid Dungeons of South Africa—the green-minded company looked into bamboo to provide the fiber. But research showed that roughly half of the solvents needed in the production process would end up as waste. Then they struck upon a novel material for a wetsuit: Recycled polyester. There's plenty of the stuff, and it's a sign o' the times that we can (and should) start seeing used plastic as a valid raw materials alternative to something that grows out of the ground.
In the video below—which is filled with enough beautiful surfing shots to make you hate your job—Brett Krazniewicz, Patagonia's Technical Material Developer, explains around 1:37 why bamboo got the boot and polyester got the props:
Studio Besau-Marguerre's hand-held greenhouse "Handgepäck"
Design curators and architects Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainó founded the IN Residence program in 2008 to be an annual design workshop bringing together 5-6 young designers and selected students from the 4 design schools in Torino to explore a central theme. Since then, the program has expanded to include a print publication, design talks and regular exhibitions featuring thoughtful and exploratory work around a single theme.
At this year's Milan presentations, Another Terra: Home Away From Home treated a certain feeling of impending crisis in a playful way. As we mentioned in our previous posts, many designers at this year's show addressed the uncertain future through their works or processes. Another Terra asked 15 young designers, "If you had to envisage life on some other habitable planet other than Earth, what kind of minimal hand luggage would you take with you?"
As Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainó explain in the EXCLUSIVE video interview below, the theme was inspired by NASA's recent discovery of another habitable earth. Themes that emerged included bringing tools for creation as in Tom´s Alonso's "Tools" box and Mischer'Traxler's "Tools - Knowledge - Memory" kit or packing up plants for agricultural purposes as Studio Besau-Marguerre's hand-held greenhouse "Handgepäck" or Jo Meester's self-seeding "Materra" bowls.
Check the jump for more images as well as a second serving of exhibition goodness from Brondi and Rainó's show on woven objects for Milan's Plusdesign Gallery.
Glass has two key properties, one good, one bad. The good one is that it's transparent, so we don't have to drive around in cars using periscopes to see. The bad one is that it's reflective, which can cause glare and other problems. If you've ever driven around with a white envelope or piece of paper on top of your dashboard, you know how annoying the reflection is.
The reflectivity issue is a problem with solar panels, where a percentage of that precious sunlight they're trying to soak up is uselessly bounced away. In an effort to solve this, a team of MIT researchers have found a way to etch the surface of glass in such a way that it "virtually eliminates reflections, producing glass that is almost unrecognizable because of its absence of glare." A nice side benefit of this is that water and dust will also not stick to the glass.
What the researchers have done is etched a "nanotexture"—essentially a forest of cones—into the surface of the glass, and the scale of this forest is so tiny that water droplets and dust particles cannot get any purchase. They bounce right off of the surface, as you can see in the video below. It also solves the original goal of preventing glare, as the sharp angle of the cones simply obviates the angles of incidence that a ray of light would bounce off of on a perfectly flat surface.
Celebrating it's 175th Anniversary, London's Royal College of Arts (RCA) staged the stellar show Paradise during Milan's annual design week. Over 90 students and recent graduates from the Design Products program spread out on three floors and the courtyard of a former school to, "contemplate the discovery of something or somewhere wondrous."
"Rallied by the desire for change and compelled by dissatisfaction with the present, RCA students will author their own atlases of paradise, landscaped by different paths in the quest for a better future." Wonderfully, the future is paved with process-driven material solutions of the present as exemplified by five of our favorite projects from Paradise: Polyfloss, Sea Chair, Sedimentation Ceramics, Solar Sintering and NSEPS Furniture (which we covered earlier this week). Each of these projects explore new processes to introduce a second life for the materials of today. Paradise looks pretty bright as we follow these young designers into the future.
The Polyfloss Factory is a simple enough idea: shredded plastic waste is fed through the chamber of a repurposed cotton candy machine to spin out polypropylene fibers. The "polyfloss" is then remelted to create new objects. Polyfloss gives plastics a new life through micro-manufacturing techniques and with a rainbow of color options, the material has been used to create decorative interior objects, textile-based wearables, and even headphones. The project is by Nick Paget, Emile De Visscher, Christophe Machet and Audrey Gaulard from the MA Innovation Design Engineering program.
Wool is a wonder material with a broad range of characteristics: It's hypoallergenic, it doesn't retain odor, it can insulate from either cold or heat, it's fire-resistant, it can absorb or repel water depending on how it's treated, it can be dyed many colors, and it can even be used for sound insulation, shock absorption and dampening, which is why you'll find it on everything from piano hammers to industrial machine mounts. It grows on an animal with an even temperament that survives on common grass, and it's sustainable; shave a sheep in summer and it can have its full coat back in autumn.
Despite all that—and more, according to Rob Achten of Icebreaker—the wool industry faces stiff competition from the synthetic fiber industry, which is why a five-year global initiative called the Campaign for Wool was launched in the UK, with the backing of Prince Charles himself. Now in its third year, the campaign creates global exhibits on the importance of wool; Australia's "Wool Modern" exhibition will move to the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney this Thursday, and will remain there until June. Future events will be held in France, Italy, China, New Zealand, the U.S., and other countries yet to be announced.
What caught our eye is that while wool's properties make it ideal for much more than clothing, the campaign's exhibits thus far seem to focus primarily on fashion, with the occasional rug thrown in. "Wool Modern," for example, displays the work of dozens of high-end fashion designers ranging from Alexander McQueen to Vivienne Westwood. But there's not a single high-profile ID firm on the exhibitor list. Even a casual browsing of Etsy will show amateur craftspeople producing wool goods ranging from wallets to iPad sleeves to raw sheets being sold and in past years on Core77 we've seen felt integrated into laptop surfaces, furniture, messenger bags and sexy items like Graf & Lantz's Quiver wine carrier.
Launched in 1994, Icebreaker was the first company in the world to develop a merino wool layering system for the outdoors. It was also the first outdoor apparel company in the world to source merino directly from growers, a system it began in 1997. Icebreaker merino clothing for the outdoors, technical sports and lifestyle includes underwear, mid layer garments, outerwear, socks and accessories for men, women and children. Icebreaker is based in Wellington, New Zealand, and is sold in more than 3000 stores in 43 countries.
You have to be tough to survive in New Zealand's Southern Alps. With scorching summers and freezing winters, the glacier-carved mountain range is a harsh, inaccessible environment—and possibly the last place you'd expect to find a sheep.
But the sheep that survive on the Southern Alps aren't run-of-the mill lowland sheep. They're merino sheep: hardy alpine animals with a coat that insulated in summer, breathes in summer, and is exceptionally soft and lightweight.
In 1994, Icebreaker's founder, Jeremy Moon was given a prototype t-shirt made from merino wool. It was soft, sensual and lustrous—nothing like the itchy, scratchy wool he'd grown up with. It was also machine washable, easy care and naturally resistant to odor.
The discovery inspired Jeremy to create an entirely new category around this new product: merino outdoor apparel. Icebreaker merino garments and accessories for the outdoors, technical sports and lifestyle are now sold in more than 3000 stores in 43 countries.
From Microns to Marathons
My introduction to the brand came in 1994, when Jeremy sponsored my adventure racing team. To be honest, I was skeptical—the stuff he gave us looked far too nice to race in.
After a couple of days of non-stop running, cycling and hiking, the river started rising. People were being rescued by helicopter. My team was the first out, and when we crossed the river there were TV crews waiting to interview us.
By the time I got to the transition point, I was so cold in my polypropylene layers that I was on the verge of hypothermia. I had my doubts about Icebreaker merino, but they were my only dry clothes so I decided to give them a try.
What immediately struck me was the warmth. Icebreaker merino is warm when wet, so I stayed warm even though the rain was still falling.
Adventure races are all about survival—you have to stay warm, keep your nutrition up, and protect your feet from blisters. After that, it's a mental game. I told everyone in my team how warm I was, so by the time the race ended two days later all of us were wearing our Icebreaker layers. We'd been converted.
Creating a New Icebreaker
Before we can even start designing a new garment, we think about the person who is going to use it. We think about think about whether the garment will be a base layer, a mid layer or an outer layer, and what activity it's going to be used for. This exploration helps us formulate the necessary properties for the yarn, the fabric and, finally, the garment itself.
We write a brief with specifications for the type of yarn we'll need, and that influences our sourcing. Merino fibers are ultra fine—much finer than the fibers of traditional wool—which is why our merino is so soft and non-itch. It's very lightweight and feels more like silk against the skin than wool.
Merino fibers usually range from 13–25 microns, which is about one-third the thickness of a human hair. The smaller the micron, the finer the wool (in comparison, wool fibers from traditional lowland sheep are usually 35–45 microns).
Once we've decided on the type of yarn, we brief on what sort of fabric we need to construct. For example, it could be a lightweight garment made of eyelet fabric for running, or one of our Realfleece brushed fleece mid layers for wearing outdoors in cold weather.
Finally, we do a briefing on the garment itself. This is when we talk about potential enhancements to the garment, such as increased freedom of motion or laminations to make a garment windproof and rainproof. We'll think about what season it's likely to be worn in.
Icebreaker is a layering system, so we'll ask ourselves how every new garment will work when it's worn with other Icebreaker layers.
"Hand made-high tech," is a great framework for thinking about Silo's approach to product design. The graduating RCA duo comprised of Attua Aparicio and Oscar Wanless work with industrial materials and processes and adapt them to a more craft approach.
At the RCA student show hosted in Ventura Lambrate, Silo exhibited a collection of vivid new creations utilizing hand-sewn fabric molds filled with raw polystyrene granuales. The process, developed by the duo, they've coined NSEPS—not so expanded polystyrene. The result is a highly graphic, lightweight and structurally stable collection of furniture, lighting, interior objects and personal accessories.
Nominated for a 2012 Design of the Year Award from London's Design Museum, we expect to see a lot more from Silo Studio in year's to come. We learn more about NSEPS and the process from Aparicio and Wanless in the Core77 exclusive after the jump.
Now that you've had your morning coffee, what to do with the leftover grounds? Winner of the 15th edition of SaloneSatellite, Spanish designer Raúl Laurí debuted his DECAFÉ collection last week in Milan. Created entirely of heat-and-pressure treated coffee grounds, DECAFÉ hopes to "give a second life to coffee ground as a biodegradable and renewable material while taking advantage of its emotional aspects."
Laurí's collection includes table, pendant, and floor lamps as well as decorative tableware.
We typically use the term magnum opus to refer to pinnacles of artistic achievement.
His best body of work
But that Latin phrase was originally a term tossed around by alchemists, the materials scientists of medieval times.
They've got great chemistry
Specifically, magnum opus referred to the alchemical quest, believe it or not, to create the lapis philosophorum or "Philosopher's Stone, which wasn't a stone at all but a theoretical substance that would purportedly transmute lead into gold.
Box office gold
The magnum opus had four stages of creation: Nigredo, which turned the substance black; albedo, which turned it white; citrinitas, which turned it yellow; and finally rubedo, which turned the substance red. The term rubedo thus came to mean success in alchemical slang, if you can picture a bunch of alchemists standing around saying "Dude that is so rubedo."
So why are we telling you all this? Because this year Tiffany & Co., to celebrate their 175th anniversary, has created a new jeweler's metal and it's called Rubedo.
Tiffany's new RUBEDO metal, which marries the richness of gold, the brilliance of silver and the warmth of copper. Metallurgists experimented with different ratios over a long testing period until they achieved the desired color, radiant with the glow of "first light" that awakens a sense of wonder and ennobles the spirit. In addition, this unique alloy is lightweight yet strong, polishes to a smooth luster and is exceptionally flattering to the skin.
We probably could have just told you about the new metal without showing you pictures of a shirtless Tom Selleck, pre-game mock joust preparations and a poster of a movie about child wizards, but it's a Friday. In any case, you can check out some rubedo jewelry here, or hit the jump for more eye candy.
A company called Buff Labs has developed a see-through film that adheres to the front of your smartphone and provides an absurd level of protection. Check out this first demo, which resides at the intersection of materials science and anger management:
How ridiculous is that? And did you see how thin the stuff was when he peeled it off?
Wait, it gets crazier. And kind of Gallagher-esque:
Architect Sally Mackereth certainly isn't the first established architect to try her hand at furniture design, but she's made a strong foray into that world of medium-sized design objects—material innovation and all—with CAST001, her first series of furniture, which recently debuted at Tom Dixon's MOST on the occasion of the Salone.
Mackereth has opted to forgo the easy stepping stone of the living room or kitchen and start with two matching articles of patio furniture, with future pieces to follow. CAST001 is an exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of reconstructed stone that has been 'infused' with a small percentage of metal—bronze, silver or gold—which imparts a muted sheen to the highly tactile surfaces. The designer has called on "traditional molding and casting specialists Stevensons of Norwich" to cast the pieces with distinctive textures.
Where do famous designers go when they retire? In Neal Small's case, a tiny town in Maine. "I wanted to get away from the tumult of Manhattan," the native New Yorker explains.
ID grads and design cognoscenti among you will recognize Small's name, and work, the former from our History of Industrial Design classes and the latter from the MoMA and Smithsonian. The so-called "Prince of Plastic" opened his own design firm in Chelsea in the 1960s and was an early proponent of the plastic family; notably, rather than merely using it as a replacement for wood and metal, Small was known for exploiting the specific properties of plexi, Lucite and acrylic and incorporating that into the design. This is perhaps best illustrated by his Cocktail Table from 1968, below, made from a single square sheet with just four cuts and some heat bending to make the legs.
Back in 2009 Material Connexion held a Small retrospective showcasing his lighting and furniture; since then we've heard nary a peep on the man. But a small-town paper in Hancock County, Maine, has stumbled across the retired design celebrity living in their midst and run a piece and video on him.
While the video below is not exactly a professional documentary in terms of quality and content, Small begins to discuss design and his career at about the halfway mark:
According to a 2011 study that's downloadable here, the New York City construction industry generates 7 million tons of building materials waste each year. Of that amount, just a fraction is recycled.
Remember our entry on Reclaimed Cleveland, the operation that harvests that city's abandoned buildings for raw materials? NYC has a similar organization in Build it Green! NYC, which is attempting to make a dent in that 7-million-ton figure. BIGNYC, as it's abbreviated, relies on a network of volunteers to scour and sort the various things thrown away by NYC that still have plenty of life left in them. In addition to retrieving materials from buildings about to be demolished or renovated, they also take materials from surplus donors, regular Joes and even movie shoots, which explains how they've amassed a 75-ton collection of useable stuff.
"[We have] everything from panel doors to high end refrigerators and shutters to movie props," they write. "Our mission is to keep these materials out of the landfill, while offering deep discounts on their resale." Through a distribution center in Queens and another in Brooklyn, BIGNYC sells reclaimed lumber, hardware, furniture, appliances, kitchen cabinets, flooring, masonry, paint, and more.
Some examples: Pictured up top are a bunch of salvaged doors that local architecture firm Lot-Ek turned into a reading platform for architecture & design bookstore Val Alen Books. Directly above this paragraph are the original post office windows from Grand Central Terminal. Below is a shot of reclaimed Douglas Fir floor joists that they're selling for as low as $2 per foot. And this is just a fraction of what they've got going.
Any NYC-based designers looking for reclaimed materials or products on the cheap, you could literally spend hours browsing their website and going through their broad range of salvage. And as BIGNYC points out, most of the stuff they have--remember, 75 tons--isn't even on their website. But their Astoria and Gowanus locations are open seven days a week.
Join us Tonight at Hand-Eye Supply, in lovely downtown Portland, Oregon, as fine metalworker Joe Diemer leads us in an examination of the beguiling history and material facts of Stainless Steel!
Stainless steel is now 100 years old, and has many industrial accomplishments under its belt due to its strength, beauty, and stainlessness. Yet it remains an elusive medium to many artisans because of perceived challenges (such as the cost and skill of TIG welding). This is a shame since it pairs so well with glass, wood, and textiles - and is truly beautiful on its own.
Many of these challenges have simple but hard to find answers, and I will share what I have found. We'll look at simpler pre-WW2 welding methods, discuss local suppliers, and have a demo on electropolishing: a fast method of polishing involving electricity running through acid. There will also be trivia prizes of my household wire goods.
Not in the greater Portland area? No problem! Join us live on our broadcast channel - the show begins at 6pm Pacific.
You've all heard the trope "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" California-based BigR Audio's product twist on this is to ensure particular trees do make a sound, by making headphones out of them.
These foldable headphones from BigR have "cans" made of rosewood, which according to them has beneficial sound-dampening and acoustic properties conducive to music listening.
The company brands itself as environmentally conscious; but curiously, they offer no details of how their rosewood is harvested, while they do go into detail about their sustainable bamboo packaging, below. The idea behind the packaging is both to make it so nice that consumers won't throw it away, and to use fast-growing materials to make it out of.
Sustainability. The raw materials used to make these boxes grow faster than we consume them, which means we'll never run out. Highly renewable bamboo achieves harvestable maturity in just 5 years. Comparable wood products can take more than 60 years.
Reusability. If you've ever stored anything in an old shoe box, you've already got the idea. There's no need to dispose of a beautiful, high-quality, highly functional piece of storage décor just because the gift that came in the box has been unwrapped.
We applaud the thinking of the latter object, but would like to see more details on the raw materials for the former.
As we saw in the post about bottle recycling, separating different types of materials for recycling requires a lot of machinery, energy, and effort. What we'd like to see in the future is more companies like BWAY Corporation, which manufactures the Eco-Pail. It's an environmentally-friendly twist on the five-gallon buckets you've seen everything from paint to joint compound being lugged around in. Because they've replaced the standard metal wire handle with a Plastic Eco-Handle produced from recycled materials, the entire thing can be tossed into a recycling grinder, no separation required. (And yes, the handle is just as strong.)
Besides the Eco-Pail, BWAY has 270 containers of all shapes and sizes--drums, pails, cans, buckets, bottles, you name it--all made from recyclable metal or plastic.
Most of their product--roughly 75%--goes towards industrial applications, explaining the no-nonsense designs. Another 20% goes into food packaging.
And as for that remaining 5% of their business? They make some pretty bad-ass ammunition boxes.
The military-spec containers are air-tight, water-tight, stackable, and sturdy as hell. I badly want to buy some of these, but can't decide if I prefer the ones for 7.62mm ammunition or the larger bad boys designed to hold 81mm mortar shells.
It's awesome to think we can recycle plastic bottles into polyester thread that can be used to make clothes. But when you actually see this process in action, you have to wonder—between the shipping and the factory machinery, what's the carbon balance here? Not to mention the human health cost? We think you'll be surprised to see what goes into the process:
It also makes you realize that if we could do the impossible and get people to pre-separate their recycleables, we could probably save a lot of trouble down the line. For example, if all drinks bottles were separated from their caps, and further separated by color. But that would be a massive design problem requiring multiple containers in each household, and a level of vigilance I just don't think our society is ready to undertake.
Every woodworker, carpenter or furniture builder has dreamt of making something completely out of wood scraps and cut-offs, even if that stained poplar wouldn't match the ash board and the birch ply. You just think of how cool it would be, and you wonder what it would look like.
The Eindhoven-based designer makes chairs, stools, benches, beds, tables, bowls, cupboards and cabinets all from scrap wood (presumably not his own cut-offs, unless he has the world's largest woodworking shop). The attendant prices do not place these objects within the reach of the common person; I'm posting word of the objects here primarily so you can see what they look like.
High-Low Tech is the name of an MIT Media Lab research group led by Assistant Professor Leah Buechley, and when I saw their work I immediately thought of Becky Stern. As their name suggests, the group creates objects by blending technologically-sophisticated items with traditionally craftsy materials. While their projects wouldn't look out of place in an ID program, the researchers here are not bound by our more pragmatic profession's demands for real-world applicability; they are free to create purely for the sake of creation in the hopes that they'll stumble on something wondrous.
High-Low Tech, a research group at the MIT Media Lab, integrates high and low technological materials, processes, and cultures. Our primary aim is to engage diverse audiences in designing and building their own technologies by situating computation in new cultural and material contexts, and by developing tools that democratize engineering. We believe that the future of technology will be largely determined by end-users who will design, build, and hack their own devices, and our goal is to inspire, shape, support, and study these communities. To this end, we explore the intersection of computation, physical materials, manufacturing processes, traditional crafts, and design.
Get off your phone and remember what it's like to smell the Roses. The Google[x] team just released a video about a speculative project tentatively called Project Glass that challenges users to imagine a world that not only brings information to you, but encourages you to continue interacting and living in it. Although the mockup of the actual "Glass" is not that impressive, the possibilities that augmented reality could bring to product and UX designers are infinite. Although it reminds us a bit of the Microsoft "Productivity Future Visions" video we shared late last year, it doesn't stop us from getting excited. What would you design if Project Glass was a reality? How would it shape your day-to-day reality? (See more images of Project Glass after the jump)
From Google[x]:
We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don't.
A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We're sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.
Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We'd love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?
Grass grows fast. Trees do not. And as we're surrounded by furniture and cabinetry made out of wood, of which our planet has a finite supply, our booming population could one day deforest the entire planet.
Rather than wood, what if you could use a material that was stronger, produced from fast-growing grass variants, did not need the formaldehyde and toxic chemicals needed to bind OSB/plywood/particle board together, and used only 19% of the energy to produce compared to wood products? Oh, and create manufacturing jobs and save the planet in the process?
A Cornell University research spin-off company called e2e Materials has developed such a material. Their biocomposites, formed from grass fibers and bound together by soy resin, can be produced in sheet form or molded into intricate configurations. It's fire-resistant and biodegradable. It holds fasteners better than wood and it's lighter than wood, with a strength-to-weight ratio comparable to midrange steel.
e2e Materials' TED Talk below, explaining the material and the company's mission, is a must-see. Yes it's over eight minutes long, but trust us, you need to carve the time out of your workday to watch it. (Check out the surprising stats that CEO Patrick Govang rattles off at 5:18 and learn why a particle board shelf in your apartment might actually have 21,000 miles on it.)
FRIEZE ART FAIR NEW YORK 2012
MILAN 2012: SALONE INTERNAZIONALE DEL MOBILE
MILAN 2012: SATELLITE EXHIBITIONS
MILAN 2012: BRERA DESIGN DISTRICT
Studio Besau-Marguerre's hand-held greenhouse "Handgepäck"
Mischer'Traxler's "Tools - Knowledge - Memory" kit
Studio Formafantasma "Botanica"
Silo Studio's NSEPS Table Sculpture
