Hospital Ward= First-Class Cabin

London design house PreistmanGoode has just released their “healthcare manifesto” and proposal. Britain’s Design Council asked PG to rethink and redesign the hospital ward. Their solution is space-efficient, pre-fabricated bedroom units very similar to that of a first-class cabin. If you think about it hospital wards and aircraft cabins do have many similarities. They both need to be easily accessible by nurses or stewardesses, they both need to be space efficient and they both need to offer some kind of privacy and homey feeling to the patient or passenger. PG’s design consists of pre-fabricated, lie-flat beds and room dividers, very similar to the first-class cabins that they designed for Swiss Airlines. The arrangement of the units allows nurses to easily access the patients while still maintaining some sort of privacy. I think the design is very smart but in practice I don’t know if I would really work out well. These units would take the place of private room, offering less privacy for patients, which they would not like. Also the design does not take into consideration bathroom and patients who need to be quarantined.

(See original core77 post here.)

Gecko Adhesive

Kellar Autumn, biologist and professor at Lewis & Clark College, and other scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, including Mark Cutkosky, have developed a type of synthetic adhesive based on the kind of adhesion that geckos use on their feet. The tape is very strong and reusable and best of all does not leave behind any kind of residue. Autumn, an expert on geckos, says, "Geckos have millions of microscopic hairs on their toes, each with hundreds of tips that adhere to surfaces, with no residue left behind. Their hairs can stay attached indefinitely." In order for the adhesive to stick it must slide across the surface not just simply be pressed up against it. The plastic is not sticky itself rather when the millions of microscopic contacts work together they can stick to anything. They have also developed a "Stickybot" which is essentially a gecko robot. Unlike any other kind of robot it can climb up walls and move vertically. Curtkosky says "We are continuing to try to improve the dry adhesive itself, but independent from that; we are working on a new stickybot. Right now stickybot doesn't have any sensors, so if it's climbing and starting to get into trouble, it doesn't know that and may fall." The team thinks that the product is ready for development and that it could be seen in commercial products within the next 3 to 5 years.

(See NYTimes article here.)

VitraHaus

This unique architectural creation is called the VitraHaus. It was designed and built by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Basel-based architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron Architeckten. It is located in Weil am Rhein, Germany on the Vitra Campus and is used as a showroom for the Vitra Home Collection. This crazy design looks like a dozen houses, like the ones you drew as a kid: a square with a triangle on top, haphazardly stacked on top of one another. "The concept of the VitraHaus connects two themes that appear repeatedly in the oeuvre of Herzog & de Meuron; the theme of archetypal house and the themes of stacked volumes." The whole structure is 5 stories tall and is made up of 12 houses. The interior is very open with high ceilings and long spaces and large windows letting in a lot of natural sunlight. The large windows also allow the houses to look lit up at night.

Here is a good photo gallery showing the exterior and interior of the VitraHaus.

(See core77 post here.)

Seymourpowell's Aircruise Concept

London design company Seymourpowell is looking at travel in a different way. They envision that in the future, in terms of travel, time will be the luxury. So instead of creating a faster aircraft, they have come up with a concept that can be described as a moving, luxurious hotel in the sky. Seymourpowell describes their new Aircruise concept as "a giant, elegant clipper in the clouds' airship". Essentially it is a long, narrow, diamond-shaped blimp with a very luxurious interior. The airship will move at about 100 to 150 km/h, making a flight from London to Shanghai in 90 hours and London to New York in 37 hours. They say, "In a world where speed is almost a universal obsession, the idea of making a leisurely journey in comfort is a welcome contrast". The design is about 12,000 feet high and is designed to hold only a couple of passengers. It is powered by and is able to float by the use of hydrogen fuel cells contained in four "flexible envelopes". All the onboard technology would be powered by solar panels, making it silent and pollution free. The concept poses a very large engineering challenge and i am not quite sure hot it will be solved successfully. Big-name electronics company Samsung is very interested in this new travel concept and has asked Seymourpowell to refine their idea and create a computer animation of the Aircruise experience.

(View core77 post here. See more pictures of the concept here.)

Rapid Prototyping Fashions

Stockholm's Beckhams College of Design and Konstfack University College of Arts, Craft, and Design students Naim Josefi and Souzan Youssouf collaborated to produce these crazy looking 3D printed polyamid shoes. They made five pairs for Naim's "Melonia" collection shown at last month's Stockholm Fashion Show. In order to create the shoes they used a type of rapid prototyping called Selective Laser Sintering. This manufacturing technique uses high powered lasers to fuse together small particles of plastic, metal, ceramic, or glass powders in order to create a 3-D mass.

I looked up other rapid prototyping fashions and came across this article. Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenburg have created a jewelry line called Nervous System in which they use a type of rapid prototyping to produce their designs. The two founded the company in 2007, just two years after graduating from MIT. The inspiration for their pieces comes from natural, organic structures and forms like coral and interface patterns.

(See original core77 post here.)

Marcelo Coelho's Digital Gastronomy Machines

Designer and researcher Marcelo Coelho has created a series of very interesting “digital gastronomy machines” that I would not necessarily call small kitchen appliances. These machines, the Digital Fabricator, the Robotic Chef, and the Viruoso Mixer, make you look at cooking in a whole new way. They digitally create meals, manipulate solid food objects, and create new ingredients.

Digital Fabricator: The Digital Fabricator stores, mixes, cooks, and then deposits thin layers of ingredients. In simplest terms it can be described as a printer for food. The canisters hold and refrigerate the user's favorite ingredients. They are piped into a mixer and then into an extruder head where they can be deposited into different combinations very preciously. While the ingredients are being deposited, the food is cooked by the heating and cooling tubes which are located on the printing head. The touch screen interface allows the user to have control over the origin, quality, nutritional value, and taste of each meal.

Robotic Chef: The Robotic Chef can transform any single solid food object by either localized and precise manipulations or by global transformations. The machine is essentially an mechanical arm made up of a toolhead, two robotic arms, and an underling bed. The toolhead houses drill bits, mineral and spice injection syringes, and lower power laser diode, which can cut, cook, and spice the food object that is held by robotic arms. The underlying bed holds a heating plate, which can heat and cook the food object that is being manipulated by the arm.

Virtuoso Mixer: The Virtuoso Mixer machine is a three-layer rotating carousel that mixes different ingredients in order to experiment and create different food variations. The top layer is made up of 8 containers that house off-the-shelf ingredients. These containers have weight scales, and temperature and humidity sensors in order for the user to monitor the properties of these ingredients. The middle layer is 8 containers that have crushing and mixing devices in them. The bottom layer functions as a tray where the final ingredient mixtures are deposited. These bottom containers have an array of thermoelectric heating and cooling devices and an insulating glass cover. The chef can design and create different ingredients through the use of the digital interface. The user can taste the ingredients during experimentation and can save the final digital recipes on the machine.

(See original core77 post here)

The Digital Fabricator, being somewhat of a food printer, reminds me of the "organ printing" idea in medicine. As of now researchers can print out living human tissue and they believe that with further development they could print out full living human organs. This "organ printing" could drastically change the world of medicine by making organ donating obsolete.

Gesture Cube

IDENT Technology AG, ZINOSIGN, and LUNAR Europe have teamed up to create a unique design that they call the Gesture Cube. So what is a Gesture Cube? It is a concept design that uses spatial movement tracking in order to operate. Instead of a touch screen, the gesture cube is activated by the movement of your hand. The gesture cube allows you to access music, the internet, and interact with friends and family. It can even connect to a cell phone and access information stored within the phone. One can easily use and navigate through multiple applications at once. The whole idea behind the product is that it can be used throughout your house and move with you from room to room. This video shows how this unique technology works. DENT Technology AG devleoped the touch-free GestlC technology used in the product, ZINOSIGN designed the user interface on the cube and the website, and LUNAR Europe created the overall design for the cube. (More info about the creators.)

This new form of movement tracking technology does not seem that helpful. I feel like if I was to move anywhere close to the surface of the cube that I would accidently active it. I think a touch screen is more practical and easier to use then this kind of technology. Im also guessing that with this new technology the product will be very expensive. Overall I am not a fan.

(See original core77 post here.)

AT-AT Walker Lamp

The dynamic Swiss product design team called Lifegoods, headed by lead designers: Oliver Burgisser, Sophie Depery, and Singal Moesch, had just released a new lamp design that they call the AT-AT Walker. As suggested by its name, the design is inspired by the AT-AT Walkers in George Lucas’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The influence is clear with the lamps long legs and rectangular "body", but the design definitely could not be a combat vehicle. When I first saw a picture of the lamp i though it was actually a table with a glowing drawer. There is no explanation as to how the lamp operates on the designer's website but from my observations it seems as if the lighted part does act very much like a drawer. When open it illuminates and when closed it turns off. Also I'm not sure about the actual height of the lamp but with its long legs it seems like it is a floor lamp rather then a table lamp. Overall I think it is an interesting design, I just wish that there was more information on the product such as dimension, price, how to buy, ect. I looked for other AT-AT Walker inspired design the only thing I came across was his guy's AT-AT Walker DIY Loft Bed for his Star Wars loving son. (See original core77 post here.)

Class Notes 2/9/10

Serif: typography that has serifs (serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols)

- originated from the way that letters were carved into stone during Roman antiquity.

- in publishing: typically used in body text and captions

ex: serif

Sans Serif: typography the does not have serifs at the end of the strokes.

- in publishing: typically used in headlines and subheaders

ex: sans serif

Leading: the spaces between lines of text

Kerning: the spaces between letters

Fixing the Ketchup Packet- New Dip & Squeeze Design from Heinz

Unfortunately most of us have opened a ketchup packet and had it explode all over our white shirts! Heinz has set out to solve that problem with their new Squeeze & Dip packet design, which they unveiled last Thursday. The original packets, which we use now, were created in 1968. Heinz designers have found that these packets work fine when the eater is seated at a table, but when on-the-go, in the car, like most fast food eaters, they pose many problems. 2 years Heinz purchased a minivan to analyze the problems that their packets pose to fast-food eaters in the car. They found that they needed a packet that could hold enough ketchup for a whole meal, that could rest on the armrest for the driver's use, that you could dunk or squeeze, and one that was easy to open. The new design is shaped like a small shallow bowl. The corner can be peeled back for dipping or the end can be torn off to squeeze out the ketchup. Best of all the packet holds three times as much ketchup as the old packet, so you don't have to grab multiple packets for one meal!

Heinz is the biggest ketchup maker and sells more than 11 billion packets a year. They have exclusive contract with some fat-food chains including Wendy's and Burger Kind. The new design will only costs a little bit more than the original but whether or not the major fast-food chains will switch is up to them. There is also no information as to whether or not the new design is green. But the fact that it holds 3 times as much as the old packet means less packaging waste.

I think that Heinz has solved the problem of the messy ketchup packet very well. The new packets seem to be more convenient and easier to open. I like that they can be used in two separate ways, to dunk and to squeeze. I also like that it holds more, because then people will be more inclined to only use one or two packets, leading to less waste. If Heinz is able to produce the product using recycled plastic that would also be a big plus. I think that they will be seeing the new Dip & Squeeze packets at all the major fast-food chains very soon!

(See the following article for more info: Chicago Tribune article, The Christian Science Monitor article, and

core77 post)

One of the standout designs of this year’s NYIGF 2010 was the unique lighting designs by Australian design company Electric Firefly. The company was founded by Sydney designer Simon Goldstein in 2002 and has been sold in shops all over Australia and been featured in multiple magazine publications over the past few years. The company has been makings strides to make their factories and products environmentally friendly. They use Australian made polymer sheet that is 30-50% recycled material and completely non-toxic to create their products. Their factories recycle their own waste as well as that of their customers.

Electric Firefly offers four different designs: The Daisy, Nimbus, Sol, and Orbital. Each design can be used as a pendant, table, or floor lamp. All the designs have beautiful curves and are elegantly understated. They are made up of many small pieces of polymer sheet cut into a certain design. The identical pieces connect together to form the light; no glue or adhesive is needed for assembly. On their website they have video tutorials that show you how to assemble each design. Each light comes in a bunch of different colors, which can be mixed and matched to create your own unique design! You can order them online and they range in price from $89 to $250 depending on size and style.

(see original post here.)

With the Vancouver Winter Olympics fast approaching, the Victory Ceremony podiums and metal trays were just unveiled this week. The pieces were designed by James Lee, an industrial designers from Vancouver, and the late Spanish designer Leo Obstbaum, who was the design director of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. The design of the podium is meant to “echo the undulating peaks and ridges of the Coast Mountain Range”. The 23 podiums are made up of 200 individual pieces of precision-cut wood. The lumber used was harvested from British Columbia forests and was donated by businesses, organization, and individuals from the area. The wood is coated with a thick acrylic medium, which is meant to resemble the texture of snow. Lee and Obstbaum also designed similar looking trays, which the metals will be placed on during the award ceremonies.

The layered, ripple-like look of the podium and the designer's idea of echoing the patterns of mountain ranges reminds me very much of the wavelike undulations seen in Wade Kavanaugh's installation work, especially his many collaborative works with Stephen B. Nguyen. This interview with Kavanugh in 2008 explains his philosophy, which is the main inspiration of his artwork. I saw Kavanaugh's most recent show, Falsewood, at Cynthia Reeves Gallery in Chelsea last year. Whenever I look at Kavanaugh's work I am also reminded of Maya Lin's sculpted landscapes. Her work is also similar to that of the podiums, especially her Wavefield at Storm King Art Center last year.

Wacom's New Wireless Tablet

The Intuos4 wireless, Wacom’s new wireless tablet, is due out in a couple weeks. The 8 x 5 inch tablet offers 40 square inches of ample workspace. The wireless grip pen features new tip sensor technology, making it work and create even more like a real brush, pen or marker. The tablet charges by USB and uses Bluetooth technology in order to connect to any computer up to 33 feet away. It will retail for $399 in the US. The Intuos4 wireless works much like Wacom’s other Intuos4 tablets, except for the fact that it is of course wireless. (See original post here)

ekokookawhat?

Designer FALTAZI has come up with a new, extremely green idea for your kitchen. The system is called Ekokook and it makes use of all your kitchen waste. The unit looks like a stainless steel kitchen island with a double sink. Glass, paper, plastics, metals, and other solid waste is separated and smashed down into the smallest size possible. Water is colleted in the double sink where it is then filtered into two pitchers that can then be used to water houseplants. For all of your organic food waste, Ekokook uses actual earthworms to breakdown this garbage. The worms and waste are kept in a drum that slowly rotates and after 3 months the waste is turned into compost. The system also separates out the water waste from the drum, which is then purified and can also be used to water plants. This system seems pretty radical, but with the number of green products today the idea of someone having an Ekokook in their home may not be that far away. (Here is a video explaining the system in further detail, but unfortunately it is in French!)

Off the Roll Tape Sculpture Contest

Scotch tape brand is having it's first annual Off the Roll Tape Sculpture Contest this month. In order to participate, all you have to do is create a unique sculpture using Scotch packaging tape and then submit 1 to 3 photos of your creation on the contest's website. (Deadline is February 28th) Plenty of entries are coming in, ranging from what looks like a oversized goldfish in a plastic bag to a life-size scale model of a bicycle. Scotch is asking people to vote for their favorites online! These votes will count for 10% of the final judging by artists Mark Jenkins, Joe Davidson, and Jesse Nolan. The judges will base their decision on each entries creativity, execution, and presentation. The grand prize winner will receive $5000. There will also be three 1st place prizes of $500. (The winners will also receive a case containing 36 rolls of Scotch Packaging Tape!) Not to mention, all of the contestants work will be displayed on the contest website's gallery. Go and browse the gallery now and vote for your favorites! (see original post here)

Typeface Designer's Struggle With Techno-Glitches

Currently there are many factors that make a font appear very different on different computer screens. Designer Jonathan Hoefler explains: “The Web site is delivered by one cluster of hardware to another, often with a different operating system, different browser and, in some cases, different pieces of software. That’s a very long chain.” Because of this problem, designers are trying to make their typefaces clearer by using little tricks, like making the enclosed spaces in certain letters bigger than they need to be. Designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobais Frere-Jones have been working together to create new fonts since 1989. They draw inspiration anywhere from 19th-century circus posters to an old Port Authority Bus Terminal sign in New York. The team just released 29th type family called Vitesse this past month. Considering the amount of work that goes into their fonts consisting of over 130 different designs they are very frustrated when their designs are distorted through the web. Hoefler and Frere-Jones are collaborating with software engineers in order to solve this technology transfer problem. (See original article here)

Super Light, Super Strong: Steel Foam

North Carolina State University’s Afsaneh Rabiei has created a super light, ultra-high-strength composite “steel foam”. This new material can save energy and lives in the aerospace, medical, automotive, and other industries. Rabiei’s metal foam is not the first of its kind, but it is the strongest created thus far. As shown in her research, by inserting two pieces of this metal foam behind the bumper of a car the impact of a crash at 28 mph could only feel like an impact at 5 mph. Since this steel foam is only a third the weight of bulk steel, it could very well attract car manufacturers to use it in their bumpers to improve safety and gas mileage. This steel foam could also be used in plenty of different lightweight structures, including airplanes and boats, which need protection from impact. (See original post here)