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 […]
Category Archives: environment
busting out
Also posted in energy, fabrication, futurecraft, materials, open objects, product design, supply chain
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homeless polluters
Despite the plethora of personal footprint calculators out there, I have always had the nagging feeling that personal choices make almost no difference on the environment – that the shift of responsibility for environmental woes to individuals is a corporate strategy meant to reduce pressure on producers and legislators to regulate radical improvements to industrial […]
Also posted in conviviality, energy
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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, fabrication, furniture, futurecraft, materials, 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, fabrication, furniture, materials, product design, upcycling
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media wallet
Another find from Last week’s Designersblock: these wallets made from old cassettes split in half, gutted and joined with a zipper (by Marcella Foschi). She also authored these brilliant chandeliers made from tank tops:
Also posted in fabrication, product design, soft/glowing, 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, materials, possessed products, product design, traceability
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Clear Conscience
Philippe Starck is showing his concept for a transparent home-sized electricity-generating windmill at the Interni Green Energy Design exhibit at the Statale in Milano for the next two weeks. It is a small prototype windmill that is designed to function in urban settings, and it has even been designed to be transparent so as not […]
Also posted in energy, materials, product design
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personal climate
Saul Griffith has made available his notes and slides for a powerpoint entitled ‘The Game Plan‘ detailing the necessary steps to be taken as individuals and society to reverse climate change. He begins with a logical framework (including an introduction to energy measurement) to talk about climate change based on the temperature increase we are […]
Also posted in energy, visualization
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