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 […]
Category Archives: open objects
fragrant upcycling
Also posted in fabrication, product design, soft/glowing, upcycling
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product anatomy
now that the craft of technical drawing has been replaced by computer-aided drafting, there’s something uniquely human about painstaking hand-drawn illustration, elevating it to an almost-art and imbuing the drawings with personality and worth they didn’t have before. these painstakingly rendered anatomical drawings of a furby are part of kelly heaton‘s work which culminated in […]
Also posted in evil robots, possessed products, visualization
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DIY Death
there are some kinds of technology that are so ubiquitous that they can be found in any human civilization, like fire and weapons. just as the combination of widely available cell phones and discarded explosives in iraq feed the constant carnage of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), firearms are made just about anywhere on this earth, […]
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product jammin’
open source has been transforming the distribution model for software, in large part because it’s so easy to make and distribute software nowadays. at the same time open-source has been proposed as a better way to design products, initially by now-defunct thinkcycle and more recently through opensourceproductdesign. the idea is that a lot more efficient […]
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product tattoo
lately it’s become trendy to decorate things with personalized etchings, like these lasercut products by adafruit. it’s just like a tattoo: adding decoration to a minimalist design. it makes me wonder why consumer electronics are so plain, and whether they couldn’t be more ornate (like ancient instruments) – and whether they couldn’t be more meaningful […]
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signed work
this morning my office neighbor jim discovered something while taking apart a joystick: the plastic enclosure’s baseplate is embossed with the signatures of the design team, visible only once you unscrew the plastic base. this is special: first, for acknowledging the role of individuals in the design of a commodity object, second, for expressing pride […]
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cell chop
does this look like the future of electronics? i think so. this cell phone by mehmet erkök is just a stripped-down nokia, modified with a few choice elements to make it his own. at the same time as the phone becomes a unique craft object rather than a cheap commodity, it gains interestingness(TM), hackability, customization, […]
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legoCAD
one definition of open source is when the knowledge and tools for making something are available to anyone. take LEGO’s Digital Designer: a free software design tool that lets you build three-dimensional LEGO models, upload them and have them delivered in the parts and colors you want with customized instructions and even a custom-designed box! […]
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