15MayA stackable electric city vehicle

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I had previously posted on cars that fly, swim or shrink. I mainly referred to the retractable scooter that Bill Mitchell showed us at the Media Lab Open House’08. It is an impressive piece of gear that I cannot wait to get!

cars.jpg

However the city car is pretty neat as well …
City car

The City Car is designed by the smart cities group at MIT Media lab directed by Prof. Mitchell. The project is created by Ryan Chin, Wayne Higgins, Mitchell Joachim, Will Lark, Raul-David “Retro” Poblano, Peter Schmitt, Andres Sevtsuk and Franco Vairani at MIT.

The City Car is the coolest idea: a stackable electric city vehicle for use in dense urban areas! Vehicle Stacks will be placed throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing infrastructure such as subway and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility. The stack receives incoming vehicles and electrically charges them. Similar to luggage carts at the airport, users simply take the first fully charged vehicle at the front of the stack. The City car is NOT a replacement for personal vehicles, taxis, buses, or trucks; it is a NEW vehicle type that promotes a socially responsible and more effective means of urban mobility!

I looked at the process and strategy used by Will Lark, one of the researcher working on this project. He studies and constructs physical representations of architectural details of varying sizes and materials, then apply shape grammar rules for new geometry generation. His strategy is to use the software CATIA, a parametric modeling CAD program, used to design the complex geometry. The shapes are then fabricated through various media: 3D rapid prototyping, 2D rapid prototyping with 3D assembly, and full manual construction. Comparisons are then made between the automated and manual construction.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

in architecture, culture, interaction design, product design, technology and toy. 0 Comments

14MayAll you can eat!

… and you can eat even more!

Foodproducts

In the spirit of eating your keyboard, your pencils, eating candies in the form of pills, drinking latte with laser printed patterns, up to making coded silverware … the field of food products is quite large by now!

I recently found a tie that is made of breakfast cereals by Bryony Birkbeck. The artist proposes a series of eatable ties exploring the redundancy of the tie in modern society by giving the garment a new set of functions!

tie2.pngtie.pngtie3.png

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

in art, culture and interaction design. 1 Comment

13MayCrayons en chocolat / Chocolate pencils

Chocolat

Following up on the work of Oki Sato (at Nendo), I found these chocolate pencils in his earliest work (2007). Nendo collaborated with patissier Tsujiguchi Hironobu, the mastermind behind popular dessert shops like Mont St. Claire and Le Chocolat de H. So these pencils must be delicious indeed!!!

The process: Tsujiguchi created a new dessert based on his impression of Nendo after their conversations, and the designers proposed new tableware for them, including plates presenting the the beauty of meals and desserts like a painting on a canvas, thus the creation of the chocolate pencils.

Interaction: The “chocolate pencils” come in a number of cocoa blends that vary in intensity, and chocophiles can use the special “pencil sharpener” that comes with the designed plate to grate chocolate onto their dessert. Pencil filings are usually the unwanted remains of sharpening a pencil, but in this case, they’re the star!

Check also the chocolate keyboard!

Chocolat +

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

in craft, culture and product design. 0 Comments

12MayPortable Life Size Camera Obscura

Passionate about photography, I am excited about this project, the perfect portable camera obscura designed by Allison Roberts also discovered on Zones of Emergency.
camera.pngpobscura.png

Capturing large format pictures is the dream in photography. Making a lightproof “tent” to captures the life-size outdoor is a fantastic idea. Allison explains that this is meant as a solution for an urban gardener to still be able to have a greenhouse, or simply anyone else who wishes to do indoor gardening: this portable alternative to a permanent grow room can be assembled in about 25 minutes without any tools! Once assembled, you have an indoor greenhouse that is completely sealed and virtually light proof.

render.png

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

in art. 0 Comments

12MayDIY videos by young artists

New Urban Arts is a nationally recognized interdisciplinary arts studio for high school students and emerging artists that promotes youth voice, collaboration, and self-directed learning toward a lifelong creative practice. It provides studio, exhibition space, and mentoring for young artists who explore the visual, performing, and literary arts through yearlong free out-of-school programs. Founded in 1997, New Urban Arts serves 125 high school students in the Providence Public High Schools and 15 artists each year. They have been named one of fifty premiere arts and youth development programs in the country for four consecutive years.

Discovered on Zones of Emergency, New Urban Arts offers online videos for DIY explorations. For instance How to Screenprint? How To Sew A Ruffle? or How to make a silicone Mold (below):

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

in craft and culture. 0 Comments

11MayHappy mother’s day!

… to all mothers and mothers of mothers of mothers!

By Wikipedia:

In the United States, Mother’s Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother’s Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states.

in culture. 1 Comment

10MayA chair to peel

A chair to peel
The Cabbage Chair, 2008

Nendo designed the cabbage chair for XXIst Century Man exhibition curated by Issey Miyake to commemorate the first anniversary of 21_21 Design Sight in Roppongi, Tokyo.

Miyake asked the designers to make furniture out of the pleated paper that is produced in mass amounts during the process of making pleated fabric, and usually abandoned as an unwanted by-product. The designers’ solution to his challenge transformed a roll of pleated paper into a small chair that appears naturally as you peel away its outside layers, one layer at a time.

Peeling

Resins added during the original paper production process adds strength and the ability to remember forms, and the pleats themselves give the chair elasticity and a springy resilience, for an overall effect that looks almost rough, but gives the user a soft, comfortable seating experience.

Opening
Photo by Masayuki Hayashi

Since the production process is so simple, the designers thought that eventually, the chair could be shipped as one compact roll for the user to cut open and peel back at home. The chair has no internal structure. It is not finished, and it is assembled without nails or screws. This primitive design responds gently to fabrication and distribution costs and environmental concerns, the kinds of issues that face our 21st century selves. Thus, the cabbage chair fits active, optimistic and forward-moving “21st century people”, the kind of people who, to borrow a concept Miyake expressed during a meeting with Nendo, “don’t just wear clothes, but shed their skin”.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

in architecture, art, body, culture, environment, fashion and interaction design. 1 Comment

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