Never mind Google Chrome, let's look at the real stuff.
American designers' love affair with chrome has certainly cooled a bit since the 1950s, but it's still the go-to material when you want to express high-quality plumbing or mechano-fetishism. (Sorry, don't know if that's really a word, I suspect I just made it up.)
But designers who spec out chrome, and who know what goes into making it, might feel a tinge of guilt; the electroplating process required to produce the stuff uses awful chemicals that make for some hazardous waste that can poison groundwater when it's dumped.
Luckily M.I.T. researcher Dr. Christopher Schuh has recently developed a chemically different variation of chrome, sexily named nanocrystalline nickel-tungsten alloy, that gives the shine and the toughness without the environmentally-deadly byproducts. The material is currently being tested out as (what else) truck bumpers, and if it proves to be as tough as its forebear, you'll one day be washing your hands from a tap made out of the stuff.
In other chrome news, here's a picture of a tasteful chrome Mercedes from that bastion of subtlety, Dubai:
It's scary to think an entire generation of us reading this was raised on baby bottles made with BPA (bisphenol-A), an estrogen-mimicking ingredient of hard polycarbonate plastic. BPA is thought to be a carcinogen.
A new product slated to hit the market in late July is the Weil Baby Bottle, which uses a new copolymer called Tritan. Developed by Eastman Chemical Company, Tritan has the qualities of hard plastic that you need in a reusable bottle--clarity, toughness, and dishwasher-machine-weathering heat-resistance--without the BPA.
The Weil Baby Bottle's launch is still about a month away, so their website hasn't gone live yet. Images are still scarce, but you can expect to see it cropping up on parenting blogs in 30 days or so. In the meantime, materials geeks can learn more about the Tritan stuff, which should be cropping up shortly in consumer and medical products, here.
Alissa Walker is obviously charmed by the frozen stuff (we all scream!), but her new Gelatobaby Patches are just about the sweetest things we can imagine. Pictured above left are "Salted caramel and dark chocolate," and right are "Triple scoop of vanilla, rosewater and tangerine." No Etsy yet, but she says that you can drop her a line if you'd like one.
I'm guessing you can order custom too. (My childhood favorite? Dutch Maid Burgundy Cherry.)
Holly Brubach's got a really great story today in the Times today on the making of the Steeler's 6th Super Bowl Ring, delving into the various stakeholders, design constraints, and just plain gaudiness of the thing (cheers to that!) Hard to know what to quote here, but try this on for size:
Although the Lombardi Trophy is produced by Tiffany & Co., Super Bowl rings are designed and made by companies that compete each year for the honor. Only four have produced the rings to date, with Jostens, of Minneapolis, and Balfour, of Delran, N.J., both specializing in high school and college class rings, responsible for the majority.
The contract is awarded by the team. The bill is footed by the league, with a $5,000 allowance per ring, adjusted for increases in the price of gold and diamonds and not including tax. By most estimates, the rings turn out to be a loss leader, with the companies absorbing any overruns in return for the prestige and permission to sell a line of related "friends and family" jewelry.
If you're looking for something to build this weekend, Instructables has you covered: Cardboard Lumber. The text on the glueing step is the best:
Lay our your cardboard on a flat surface and get your first layer ready. Apply a VERY large amount of glue to one section by POURING it on the surface and spreading it evenly. If you think you used too much, then you almost have enough glue on. Now apply glue to the piece to be put on for the second layer. Don't think of this as glueing cardboard together! Think of it as paper mache WITH cardboard! Lots of glue!
And in that vein, does anybody wanna silkscreen up some Core77 t-shirts for us?: "If you think you used too much, then you almost have enough glue on."
Package designers looking to spec out green materials: Check out NatureFlex. The transparent and glossy film can be used to wrap and seal things for freshness, but it isn't plastic; it's cellulose-based, derived from wood, and completely compostable.
It can also be metallicized, as seen above in the Twinings tea packaging, but the material still biodegrades.
The Ample Sample design competition was one way to recycle unused carpet scraps; a company called Universal Fiber is using a different method to recycle entire tracts of post-consumer (i.e. used) carpet.
Universal diverts literally tons of post-consumer Nylon 6,6 carpet from landfills, separates the face fiber and conducts multi-step cleaning processes, making the fluff suitable for making more than 70 designer shades of carpet yarn. No toxic or heavy metals are involved; no effluent streams are created from traditional dyeing; all polymeric manufacturing waste is recovered and reused. This domestically-made product reduces oil consumption [and] clearly saves energy.
The resultant product, dubbed ReFresh Fiber, just won New York House magazine's Innovative Green Design Award in the Flooring/Floor Coverings Category.
Material Intersections latest podcast is all about blending digital media (video that responds to stimuli like human interaction, light and sound) with physical forms, such as the interior of a car or a wall.
"In the architectural world, a structure is traditionally created to remain static and unchanged for years," said Hess. "In this podcast, we use 3D technology to explore the idea of an adaptive environment and how a form that interacts with something external, such as light or human touch, continuously changes rather than remaining stagnant."
You can watch or download the podcasts here at Art Center's CMTEL website.
Upcoming podcast topics include Sustainability, Slow Tech, Lightweight, and Durable - so stay tuned!
We've always been fans of Tricycle's AmpleSample Design Competition, and this year's version offers up a gallery of designs submitted so far and the ability to comment on 'em! Deadline is May 6th, so for all you designers out there, fire up your tablets, or get your mat knives on!
Image above is "LAPPYglove" designed by Russell Dow [Studio369 (a lawrence group company)]
Thonet-stoel repaired by Harco Rutgers. Photograph by Leo Veger
You've seen Platform 21's Repair Manifesto before. If you will be in Milan this month don't miss the Premsela Design Forum, a discussion on the value of repairing things in a throwaway society:
At the Design Forum in Milan on Wednesday 22 April, Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion, will focus on an all-but-forgotten alternative to recycling: repairing broken and damaged items.
Speakers Piet Hein Eek (designer), Corinne Poux-Bernard (Director of Innovations, Hermes), Satyendra Pakhale (cultural nomad) and Joanna van der Zanden (Artistic Director, Platform21), led by moderator Marco Bevolo (independent author), will share their views on the value of repair in the context of the global economic crisis.
"MOY koncept is made for generation who uses technology as a means to express themselves and communicate with others.
The idea behind MOY koncept is that everyone can design their own car on their own computer and then apply the design to the vehicle using wireless data transfer or share it with other people through web-site, forum, e-mail etc.
To those who lack the necessary skills or time to create their own design, we offer the option of downloading ready made designs. The vehicles are interconnected, so the change is possibble in motion. Movement recognition technology enables us to draw on the car in real time. Since MOY can display both static images and videos, it can be used as a new medium of promotion.
Vehicle is powered by batteries that charge electromotors set in wheels and controlled by drive-by-wire technology. The body of the car is made of outer and inner policarbonate layers, with layers of liquid cristals, LED diodes and electrochromic foil (film) inbetween. "
"Acclaimed toy sculptor Dave Cortes' first designer toy - Pugzee is a gangster Pug from Red Hook Brooklyn. While working for the mob bosses in the old days, he got knocked and was serving jail time. When he heard that his old stomping grounds of Red Hook, Brooklyn was undergoing changes (gentrification), he decided it was time to break out of jail and reclaim his old hood. Pugzee is out!
Standing at about 4.5" tall, the piece comes with a removable hat, cigar, baseball bat, comic book, thought bubble cards and a dry erase marker to express your Pugzee's mood by writing on the thought bubble cards!
Limited pieces. First 100 pieces sold through Cookies -n- Cream will be signed by Dave himself!"
Following hot on the heals of the 'Inside Job' Free iPhone Earbud Winder comes DC-Design's Earbud Speakers! We haven't tried this ourselves, but the designer claims that you're only 4 business cards away from aural bliss.
View all the 1 Hour Design Challenge Business Card Hacks right here, and upload your own. The 5 top designs will win 1000 free business cards from our sponsor, UPrinting.com.
Inhabitat's got the top 15 of their Spring Greening reuse design competition up, and a few of the entries are pretty nice. We love the bookshelf by Richard Jennions (not-tom.com), but the blender lamp by Melinda Marinsky kinda breaks our heart. (Really, the thing couldn't be fixed? That's a pretty sweet blender.) Oh well, now it's a pretty sweet lamp. Vote for your favorites now!
The new Herman Miller Materials sampling program is officially a go!
Herman Miller has launched a new program designed to make all 1,600+ materials accessible, understandable, and fun to explore. Samples of all materials are bound into a 15-volume set of reference books--each the size of a hardcover novel--that breaks with the industry tradition of three-ring binders with removable pages. Books in the reference library are constructed using a proprietary process that welds the pages into a cover, thus enabling a closed-loop reclamation program consistent with Herman Miller's sustainable goals.
A new website has been launched that features all 1,600+ materials. A custom algorithm displays all swatches in continually shifting color arrangement governed by multiple search criteria. The website was designed to replicate the real-life experience of browsing and designing with actual materials.
We are not at all sure what this photo is supposed to signify--that sharp kitchen knives can cut paint?--but Silicone Zone's new ceramic knife is, if the hype is to be believed, the wave of the future. Whereas all kitchen knives were once made with metal blades and wooden handles, this one's got a ceramic blade and silicone handle. The former is supposed to stay sharp for 10 times longer than a metal one, and the latter is supposed to be more comfortable.
In addition to the strange product photography, the knife line is peculiarly named the Rock-N-Hold series. It's not coming out 'til later this year, but the Red Dot jury saw fit to give it an award for "High design quality."
Coming off our review of The Big Necessity, we were inspired by a recent email concerning the PeePoo, a plastic bag-cum-toilet for the developing world. So we got in touch with the co-designer of the device, Peter Thuvander, to provide some first-hand reflections on the project. Here's Peter:
It could be that the cruel reality of shit has escaped you. To let you in on the numbers, approximately 2.6 billion people lack sanitation. The consequences of this are horrific. One child in the world dies every 15 seconds due to contaminated water. If there ever was a holy grail of design and technology, this is it.
When long-time client (and now friend) Anders Wilhelmson, the famous Swedish architect), presented a vision of a world-changing system of sanitation, he was extremely passionate: "What if one could shit or pee in a bag? A bag that would sanitize the feces, and then later on break down itself, all becoming manure?"
"Well, yes Anders, that would be fantastic, but how?" I replied.
"GIVE PLASTIC WASTE A NEW LIFE", says this poster in Dutch. At this very moment, a national Plastic Heroes campaign is inspiring the population of the Netherlands to collect all plastic waste on a completely voluntary basis.
"Plastic bags, magazine wrappers and all kinds of packaging for supermarket vegetables will also be recycled from now on," says Sven Noordhoek of Nedvang, the organization that represents the Dutch packaging industry. Together with official bodies, Nedvang designed the infrastructure for the collection of both household and commercial waste in the Netherlands.
The Ministry of the Environment has set the packaging industry the ambitious targets of 38% recycling of plastic packaging by 2009 and 42% by 2012 - objectives that are far above the European targets.
Last month we got you excited about the Green Sled Design Challenge, and now the results are in. If you weren't able to contribute this year, don't worry, the event is going annual.
The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) Boston hosted their first ever Green Sled Design Challenge 09, a contest that required participants to think, design and build a green sled made of 90 percent recycled materials.
For prizes, the Greenest Award went to team Epic from Ecovative Design for their recycled cardboard sled. Radius took the Best Aesthetic Award with its ironing board sled. Best Overall was awarded to team Dwight Ideas (a Mass Art student team) for a design that combined recycled skis and bicycle parts to create a unique and high performance sled.
Other entries consisted of sleds made of recycled/reused soda bottles, mailing tubes, tree limbs and chairs, among other things. The Co-sponsors were extremely pleased with the results. "The eco-benefit, industry support, and great turnout have us planning a 2nd annual Green event next year" - said Mario Gonzalez, Event Organizer and Designer at Radius Product Development - "It's a good way to keep everyone thinking green while having fun doing it."
Winners of an honorable mention at this year's Green Dot awards, 60 Bags is a line of biodegradable bags that can last as long as you like or decompose in approximately 2 months. So why not give a present to your garden after you are done buying something for yourself?
60BAGs are the perfect natural answer to the environment's needs. They are biodegradable carrier bags made our of flax-viscose non-woven fabric. Its material was scientifically developed and manufactured in Poland. The flax-Viscose fabric is produced with flax fiber industrial waste, which means it doesn't exploit any natural resources and requires minimal energy during its production. This highly innovative technology enables the bags to naturally decompose approximately 60 days after being discarded, which means they don't require expensive recycling or disposal in landfills.
60BAGs a breakthrough advance over the so-called "green bags" produced with polypropylene material, as well as the thick plastic bags given away by most clothing retailers. 60BAG is a great commercial opportunity for the companies committed to supporting an eco-friendly lifestyle.
Accoya Wood considers itself a "new wood species" with properties that match those of the best tropical hardwoods, yet it eliminates the need for logging in our precious rainforests.
How? Accoya is able to process soft, fast-growing pine into long lasting durable wood with a non-toxic treatment. Their technology is based on wood acetylation that reduces the ability of the wood to adsorb water is greatly reduced, rendering the wood more dimensionally stable and, because it is no longer digestible, extremely durable.
Designer Michael Jantzen is already a big fan and used Accoya's wood to realize this M-Velope (photo), an interactive structure that can be turned into various spaces. With durable wood like this surely more fans and designs will follow!
If you haven't seen the Second Lives gallery on Core 77 yet, you can check it here.
But if you live in New York City, we recommend checking out the Second Lives Symposium this Saturday from 1-5pm. Speakers include: MAD curators, Curator Namita Gupta Wiggers of the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Former ID Magazine Editor Steven Skov Holt, art historian Mara Holt Skov, along with artists Boris Bally, Sonya Clark, and Devorah Sperber.
Since the opening of its new building on Columbus Circle, the Museum of Arts and Design has had overwhelmingly positive response from the public with over 160,000 visitors since the end of September, doubling both last year's attendance numbers and projections.
In response to this great demand, the Museum is extending its inaugural exhibition Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. Second Lives, a thematic exhibition featuring 54 contemporary artists from 18 countries who transform commonplace objects into astonishing works of art, will run for an additional two months until April 19, 2009. A new work, The Hope Throne, by Mozambique artist Goncalo Mabunda, will be added to the exhibition. We caught up with Chief Curator, David Mc Fadden to talk about the ideas behind Second Lives.
For MAD's visiting information click here, or buy tickets for the symposium here.
Mide's Shape Memory Alloy Starter Kit is targeted at universities and product design labs. The kit contains "invaluable theoretical and product design information the engineers at Mide have developed over a number of years of working with SMA," along with SMA sheets, wires and tools to manipulate them.
So what are Shape Memory Alloys, or SMA?
Shape memory alloys are a unique class of materials that possess the ability to dramatically alter their shapes based on heat stimulus.
Imagine a future where the only tool in an auto body shop was a hair dryer! Or a damaged mail box could pop back into shape on a sunny day. A future where safety relief valves, such as sprinkler systems, would work every time. And a future of morphing surfaces, where submarines and aircraft could alter their shapes to improve performance over varying flight conditions. All of these scenarios are possible due to the amazing ability of shape memory alloys (SMA) to alter their state.
The stuff sounds cool, but these guys definitely need a better PR crew--the promotional video is a bit underwhelming:
This Bluetooth device is permanently implanted beneath the skin. It is flat, flexible, silicon and silicone. This device communicates wirelessly with the world as well as with other devices implanted in the same body. It is always present, always on, but out of sight and non-obtrusive. It also continually monitors for many blood disorders, alerting the person of a health problem: A human version of the check engine light. Product styling is the latest and coolest downloaded display interface showing on any tattoo on the block. This product is waterproof and it is powered by pizza.
Inspired by this design? Register now, fire up those rendering tools, and enter this year's Greener Gadgets Design Competition! Remember that top entries will be online for public voting, and the top 10 finalists entries will be judged LIVE at the Greener Gadgets Design Conference.
REGISTER FOR THIS YEAR'S COMPETITION!
DEADLINE: JAN. 15, 2009.
We've shared with you Joshua Allen Harris's street art before here and here, but Frank just emailed us a link to a Wimp/New York Mag video with a bunch of his pieces. We will NEVER tire of watching these. (Even on video!)
(Sorry no embed; you'll have to click on the link.) Thanks Frank!
NEW YORK DESIGN WEEK 2009
MILAN DESIGN WEEK 2009
PICTOPIA FESTIVAL 2009
HOME AND HOUSEWARES SHOW 2009
TRANSVERSALE 2009
NEW YORK CITY TOY FAIR 2009
IMM COLOGNE INTERNATIONAL FURNISHING SHOW
NORTH AMERICAN INT'L AUTO SHOW '09
TOKYO DESIGN WEEK 2008
LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2008
BICYCLE
100 PERCENT DESIGN SHANGHAI
