at the cooper hewitt’s lackluster ‘design for the other 90%‘ exhibit i was puzzled by the ‘day labor station:’ a well-intentioned shelter for immigrant day laborers who – at least in california – seek day labor by standing around home supply stores waiting for an unscrupulous contractor to pick them up. the solution – for […]
Category Archives: fabrication
carpenter shelter
Also posted in architecture, conviviality, marketing, possessed products
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stop&chop
i’ve been posting for a long time about open design, or the free dissemination of design knowledge. ponoko is a site that allows you to share designs for furniture cut out of sheet material like the plywood pepe baby’s chair (above). on the one hand, paying $120 for a tiny plywood chair seems expensive, on […]
Also posted in customization, futurecraft, open objects, possessed products, product design
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snug-fab
mass customization is only slowly gaining ground in industries such as automobiles, and usually only with cosmetic choices like the color of seats. a number of shoe manufacturers have interfaces for customers to select colors and styles, but use standard forms that compromise fit. unfortunately not all countries have craftspeople cabable of custom shoe-making, in […]
Also posted in 3d, futurecraft, marketing, product design
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paperCAD
papercraft is the most versatile personal fabrication system: all you need is a printer, scissors and glue. now there’s a CAD for papercraft called pepakura that unfolds any three-dimensional model, adds the tabs and prepares the pattern to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper. Using tyvek or felt you can even make durable, […]
Also posted in customization, futurecraft, product design
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cuddlebot
i shot this video of dan stiehl presenting his ‘huggable’ robotic companion teddy bear at the aarp conference in boston two weeks ago. this project is another attempt at making companion robots that elicit positive emotional response, what makes this one unique is its execution. the bear looks and sounds like a real creature, even […]
Also posted in evil robots, livingbreathing, soft/glowing, surveillance
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shake a wrist
master cyber-seamtress leah buechley showed her ‘bracelets‘ at the siggraph 2007 unravel fashion show. amazingly she can make circuits completely soft, such as this supple LED-studded bracelet with an accelerometer that propagates lights beams when shaken. from the catalog: Woven bracelets—created on traditional bead looms out of beads, conductive thread and surface mount LEDs—function as […]
Also posted in futurecraft, product design, soft/glowing, visualization
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public display of affection
i taped barabara layne’s ‘jacket antics‘ at the siggraph 2007 unravel fashion show – a set of jackets woven with LED marquees on their backs. the displays are an extension of the woven fabric, with the added ability to connect two people holding hands into a single display. from the catalog: Jacket Antics feature unique […]
Also posted in futurecraft, materials, product design, soft/glowing
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how things are taken apart
panasonic has a highly evolved electronics recycling program, in part because of japan’s mandate that half of materials be re-used or recycled by manufacturers. their metec site shows the extend to which televisions, air conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines can be broken down to their component materials for re-manufacturing. aside from the advantage of such […]
Also posted in futurecraft, marketing, materials, open objects, product design
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