The fashion industry is the poster child for un-sustainable practices, as we’ve already seen from the myriad of social and environmental problems plaguing the cotton trade. Fashion designers share the responsibility, because they are so remote from the means of production – usually outsourced to Southeast Asia, Africa or South America – that their designs […]
Author Archives: leo
Heat Local
Last week John took me to see Highland Wood Energy, Scotland’s largest biomass heating company. While the idea of burning wood is not particularly new, modern chip and pellet furnaces provide a uniquely sustainable solution for regions with a natural overabundance of wood (whether from natural growth or industrial waste). In particularly isolated regions like […]
Posted in maps, supply chain
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The Food Tastes Better
It’s been a while since I’ve posted to this blog – not out of laziness, but because the Sourcemap project has taken hold of all my attention. That’s how I forgot to mention this video, shot with Matthew Hockenberry this past August, which depicts our first users ever: Robert Harris of Season to Taste Catering […]
Posted in food, maps, supply chain, traceability, visualization
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Prison Flight Maps
At the MoMA last week I stumbled across the elegant map-based visualizations of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia’s School of Architecture. The Million Dollar Block project (pdf) explores the impact of incarceration on specific neighborhoods of New York City and Brooklyn in particular. The staggering visualizations at once depict the incredible expense of […]
Posted in 2d, conviviality, maps, supply chain, traceability, visualization
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Pocket Wikipedia
UPDATE: This is the wiki reader, a device available for $99 and that runs for one year off a pair of AAA’s. Last night Wikimedia board member Mako Hill showed me his prototype of a new mobile device for searching Wikipedia, using a simple reflective display and touch screen and an SD card to contain […]
Posted in conviviality, open objects, product design
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Lego Papercraft
Goro Motai pointed me to this collaboration between Muji and Lego to augment plastic building blocks with papercraft figures. Using a custom paper puncher, sheets of construction paper can be made to clip onto the plastic nubs on regular lego blocks. Although the construction paper is treated as a flat medium, this merging of 2D […]
Posted in 2d, 3d, children, customization, fabrication, open objects
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Bike Brights
Gus writes “Have you made or do you know of something that both of us could wear that would enhance our visibility as bicyclists?” There are a number of ways for us bicyclists to stand out day or night, ranging from the ultra-geeky to the super-fashionable. Here they are in that order: 1. Make your […]
Posted in augmented reality, conviviality, fashion, lighting, materials, product design, soft/glowing
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Structural Problems
The Bridgehead buildings in Linz (Austria) have a tortured history: they were built as the Fuhrermuseum, to house Adolf Hitler’s own collection of stolen art. This past year Linz celebrated as cultural capital of Europe, and a powerful series of interventions to one of these buildings sought to (literally) uncover the history of their construction. […]
Posted in art, supply chain, traceability, visualization
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