The concept of making source code Open Source typically refers to opaque products whose construction cannot be discerned from their appearance – but even seemingly transparent products, such as buildings or clothes, hide a code of their own. The project Hacking Couture seeks out the hidden aesthetic code and its history in order to liberate […]
Category Archives: open objects
open threads 2
Also posted in customization, fabrication, fashion, free & open, futurecraft, product design, soft/glowing, upcycling
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public objects
‘Products of Service‘ are an alternative to cradle-to-grave life cycles where consumers only temporarily rent goods from manufacturers so that their valuable components can be directly re-used. In lieu of such enlightened manufacturing practices, a social network has been introduced where anyone can rent out their own possessions to reduce waste: Zilok is a Zipcar […]
Also posted in conviviality, energy, environment, futurecraft, marketing, product design, retail, supply chain, traceability
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phone-maker
The brilliant Schulze & Webb have done it again with the Metal Phone, a completely recyclable cell phone enclosure developed for Nokia. The project is a complete cradle-to-cradle life cycle process: a cell phone encased in a lead alloy (ok, solder) can be disassembled and melted down to be re-cast into a new cell phone […]
Also posted in customization, energy, environment, fabrication, futurecraft, materials, product design, supply chain, upcycling
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open wide
As Mako Hill argued in his presentation at CHI 2008, the best software is made by users and not by designers. The best examples are targeted applications made for niche applications, such as odontolinux, a free and open dental office management software based on Debian. Together with Open Dental (pictured), another open-source (but not free) […]
Also posted in free & open, universal design
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busting out
The hundreds of millions of electronics thrown out each year are depleting precious resources and creating vast deposits of toxic materials, most of which are difficult or impossible to isolate almost by design. Active Disassembly is a promising technique for recycling electronics that relies on shape-memory connectors inside devices to pop apart under heat, separating […]
Also posted in energy, environment, fabrication, futurecraft, materials, product design, supply chain
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open source threads
We’ve seen do-it-yourself kits for wearable technology; now Studio 5050 has released the first open-source modular wearable technology collection, a series of hardware components that can be used to create computational clothes such as the temperature sweater which contains a discrete luminous numerical display in its cuff (pictured below), the masai dress which generates music […]
Also posted in customization, fabrication, fashion, futurecraft, product design, soft/glowing
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local lamp
When is the last time you worried whether your furniture was locally produced? I saw this tag on a lamp at the Milan furniture fair, where the whole world comes to find which furniture to import. My favorite part about it is that the lamp was not only made in Italy; it was conceived there. […]
Also posted in conviviality, fabrication, product design, supply chain, traceability
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creative commons kiosk
Last week at the Fuori Salone the most memorable event was designersblock: held at a dilapidated public pool in Milan’s Tortona neighborhood, it featured booths by designers and collectives organized under the London-based design collaborative. One of the exhibitors was KithKin’s “Some Rights Reserved,” a kiosk offering creative commons-licensed digital wares at low low prices […]
Also posted in 2d, 3d, blogogracy, fabrication, futurecraft, marketing, product design, retail
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