Have you ever wondered why cars are painted? Is it to attract scratches? To stimulate the car wax industry? In addition to begging for a fender bender, painted panels are expensive to make, nearly impossible to repair or reuse, and they are toxic to people and the environment. The Think City car is purposely designed […]
Author Archives: leo
bristle branch
At the London Design Museum a number of ‘sustainable’ projects were shown, seeking to highlight the design opportunities afforded by the use of renewable materials and traditional craft. The CLEAN series by CinqCinq uses bent branches to secure synthetic bristles in a series of cleaning brushes. The use of bright red to indicate the mass-produced […]
Posted in fabrication, futurecraft, materials, open objects
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fish it yourself
A lot of people would rather not know where things come from: in the US, you have to ask your fishmonger to keep the head and tail – it makes most customers queasy to realize their fillet had eyes. In Chinese culture, on the other hand, the head and the tail of a fish are […]
Posted in food
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community radio
Most sustainable design is focused on preserving the life-support systems of our planet, but true sustainability relies on a balance between survival of people and the persistence of culture. The Magno radio is at once a consumer product made from renewable materials, while at the same time it creates a means for a people to […]
Posted in environment, fabrication, materials, product design, supply chain
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dinner globe
The Dinner Table Game by Luckybite was one of the nominees at this year’s British Insurance Design Awards. The maquette I photographed (below) represents a full-sized dinner table at the London Science Museum (above) projected with virtual food on white place settings. A globular lazy susan allows visitors to understand where food comes from and […]
Posted in augmented reality, energy, environment, food, visualization
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laser dress
At the London Design Museum’s spectacularly designed Hussein Chalayan exhibit my favorite piece was a laser-studded outfit with miniature red diodes illuminated in sequences all over the body. They’re exhibited behind tinted glass to avoid blinding the viewer; their aggressive beauty is reminiscent of Adam Whiton and Yolita Nugent’s No-Contact Jacket, though in this case […]
Posted in fashion
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ayah bdeir
Les Années Lumière ( 14/2/05 – 14/5/08 ) from ayah bdeir on Vimeo. Ayah Bdeir is speaking at TEI ’09, where she will be showing her latest work.Les Anees Lumiere (The Enlightenment Years) is a map visualization that documents the bombings of her native Lebanon over the past three years in an eerily beautiful way. […]
Posted in art, fashion, soft/glowing, visualization
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paper products
In a small shop in the basement of the Axis Building in Tokyo I saw this elegant little dustbin and brush made from two sheets of paper fastened with pieces of string.
Posted in materials, product design, soft/glowing
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