The IDSA provides a suite of readings on ecodesign, including this 2003 survey on the ecological performance of electronic products (pdf), in which a survey of product designers sought to reveal the mechanisms for indluencing sustainable design in consumer electronics. This bar chart struck my eye because it represents exactly what needs to change in […]
Category Archives: materials
designers = form-givers
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soft car
Now that buildings have been wrapped in soft materials for years, BMW is proposing that cars could replace their bulky bodies with stretchy fabric – with a lot of elegant consequences for those pesky door lines, headlights – not to mention the entire vehicle could now act as an airbag.
Also posted in fabrication, fashion, livingbreathing, soft/glowing
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open threads 3
Burdastyle is an open-source sewing resource where members upload patterns and visitors can consult instructional references (below) or download pdf patterns (above). By providing instructions for how to sew at the same time as open source ‘code’ for what to sew the site is a real open source free fashion resource. As with free software, […]
Also posted in blogogracy, customization, fabrication, fashion, free & open, futurecraft, open objects, product design, soft/glowing, universal design
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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, open objects, product design, supply chain, upcycling
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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, open objects, product design, supply chain
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mesh and re-mesh
A the Lexus installation at the Salone del Mobile there was an interesting installation about generation of mesh structures which provided hints for their eventual re-generation and re-use. The chair above was manufactured using a 3D printer from 2kg of fused Nylon powder. As part of the exhibition a series of models depicted how the […]
Also posted in customization, energy, environment, fabrication, furniture, futurecraft, product design, soft/glowing, upcycling
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fibrous furnishings
Aside from the rare up-cycled or open design project at this past week’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, there were very few radically new concepts and a lot of kinda-pretty-but-useless stuff. Very few designers targeted the environment in radical new ways, and almost none contributed significant inventions. One booth, however, had two promising new materials […]
Also posted in energy, environment, fabrication, furniture, product design, upcycling
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opportunity carbon cost
Another beautiful product (soon to be released) from KithKin‘s “Some Rights Reserved” open-source design collection is Matthew Appleton’s “Afterlife” poster – it builds on the growing trend of product dissections for good by depicting the relative geometric footprint of a printer’s many parts as compared to a pencil. The project claims to show how complex […]
Also posted in 2d, energy, environment, possessed products, product design, traceability
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