for the past few hours i’ve been modeling a shoe and trying to get to the heart of what makes it so fascinating – this timeless object – and i decided it’s the opacity. not because it’s hard to use (although it takes practice) but because a shoe appears to be a homogenous, solid mass, […]
Category Archives: fabrication
fragrant upcycling
since many people have shown interest in john habraken’s wobo beer bottle bricks and up-cyling in general, i thought i would bring up yet another example: my favorite architects’ (lot-ek) 1994 chromo-lamps, crafted from discarded detergent bottles found on the streets of new york. both the quasi-lamp (top) and omni-lamp (bottom) are painstakingly assembled by […]
Also posted in open objects, product design, soft/glowing, upcycling
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virtual tailor
the college of human ecology at cornell has a 3D scanner that they have turned on the human body, not for medical research, but to help design clothing that is automatically custom-made on-demand. they show how, in fact, it’s hard to know how mail-order clothing will fit you. if you have a (recent) three-dimensional model […]
Also posted in customization
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marketing making
only very few companies give an insight into their design and manufacturing processes. maybe this is for secrecy or from ignorance or shame – in any case when someone goes to the trouble to showcase how they make things, it’s pretty neat. hopefully the ease with which we can video- and photo-document nowadays will make […]
Also posted in product design
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bookmaker
the espresso book machine can print a bind an entire 300-page book in 3 minutes for $3! if only it were like the dishmaker, it would recycle your old books into new ones on the spot.
Posted in fabrication
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sewing circuits
leah buechley makes some beautiful electronic fabric with clever solutions to long-standing problems, such as washing and flexibility. the best thing, however, is that she has detailed do-it-yourself instructions for sewing your own clothing 2.0: via edgy product
Posted in fabrication
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self-maker
when IBM announced that it was going to implement a new self-assembly process to reduce computer chip feature size, increase processor speed by 35% and reduce manufacturing energy by 15%, i looked into exactly what was meant by “self-assembly.” one-time medialab colleague saul griffith’s phd thesis proposed completely physical systems for self-replication inspired by biological […]
Posted in fabrication
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pop-up products
with flat-pack all the rage, it seems like we are destined to make things that can compactly store themselves and pop into shape to serve our needs. two new advances demonstrate that you don’t always have to be the one that assembles it yourself: parisian researchers have developed miniature pieces of material that form three-dimensional […]
Posted in fabrication
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