Towering work in a brown paper wrapper

March 8, 2010 at 10:54 am
Filed under Design education, Exhibit Design, Green Related, Materials, Placemaking, Public Art

A ten-meter tower made entirely of recyclable cardboard, brought to the Carton Plein! exhibit in a small delivery truck, and erected in nine hours with no scaffolding.  Oh, and it’s student work. — A.M.

Prefab concrete

February 12, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Filed under Architecture, Materials

From the February issue of Architectural Record, a new product innovation in prefabricated concrete. For the Hämeenlinna Provincial Archive building in Finland, Helsinki-based architectural firm Heikkinen-Komonen worked with Finish concrete design firm Graphic Concrete to create a patterned concrete surface for the building facade. The images, patterns, and symbols incorporated in the facade were taken from the archive historic documents. Graphic Concrete uses a technique where a special membrane is coated with surface retarder, which slows the hardening of the concrete in the mold. When the membrane is removed, the unset concrete is high-pressure washed to reveal the design. Read the full article here. — S.N.

Tape art

February 11, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Filed under Arts and Crafts, Materials

Don’t know much about Richard Spinner, an artist who works with 3M tape as his medium.  But if you’re still snowed in and have a bunch of tape around, it’s an endeavor worth considering. — A.M.

Spray-on glass

February 11, 2010 at 8:54 am
Filed under Materials

“Yep, you read it right, spray-on glass. It could revolutionize the fields of agriculture, medicine, fashion, transportation – really, it would be easier to list where it might notbe applicable. The remarkable product, called Liquid Glass, was developed by the German nano-tech firm Nanopool GmbH. Their patented process, known as ‘SiO2 ultra thin layering’ involves extracting silica molecules from quartz sand, adding them to water or ethanol, and then… well, they won’t tell us what they do next.

Liquid Glass can sprayed on within seconds, creating an anti-microbial, easy-to-clean barrier that will last from one to several years, depending on the surface. It has already been used at Ataturk’s Mausoleum in Turkey, in certain UK hospitals, on a train, and on furniture.” — A.M.

Metal foam

January 31, 2010 at 11:07 am
Filed under Materials

Afsaneh Rabei has “invented a space-age material so light and strong that it could revolutionize everything from vehicle bumpers to armor to biomedical devices.

Rabiei’s invention isn’t the first metal foam, but she says it’s the strongest. The main weakness of existing metal foams is the varying sizes of their cells —

tiny pockets of space inside the material. Instead, Rabiei used cells of standard sizes and combined them with a metallic matrix to support the cell walls.” — A.M.

Wooden textiles

January 10, 2010 at 9:01 am
Filed under Green Related, Materials

Elisa Strozyk creates fluid fabrics by affixing geometric wooden shapes to a fabric substrate.  Since she’s using offcuts of wood veneer, it’s all very green. — A.M.

Hack things better

December 1, 2009 at 10:15 am
Filed under Materials

“This is Jane. She’s from Ireland and she’s lovely. Jane was studying product design at RCA London when she had an idea: ‘I don’t want to buy new stuff all the time. I want to hack the stuff I already have so it works better for me.’ So she phoned some clever materials scientists called Ian and Steve and together they invented an interesting new material for hacking things better. It’s called sugru and is a little bit brilliant.” — A.M.

Bomb-proof wallpaper

November 17, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Filed under Interior Design, Materials

Surely, some SEGDster out there is working on a project that would benefit from wall covering that can survive attack.  If so, your devoted blogger doesn’t want to know about it.  If you tell her, you’ll have to kill her. — A.M.

Best Of What’s New 2009: Bombproof Wallpaper Test from PopSci.com on Vimeo.

Make color matching a snap

October 8, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Filed under Materials

Sherwin-Williams ColorSnap is a free app for the iPhone that allows you to snap a picture of anything and then scroll around the image until you pinpoint the color you like, at which point ColorSnap will match the hue and bring up its closest Sherwin-Williams paint swatch and RGB.  There are probably limits to its accuracy but it might be a way to get started with a match.  Hmmm…Note to Self:  You could then look up the LRV of the color on the S-W swatch deck. — K.E. 

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Steel hook and loop fastener

September 11, 2009 at 8:41 am
Filed under Materials

“Developed by German engineers, this new version of Velcro is dubbed Metaklett, and it can support 35 tons at temperatures up to 1472 degrees.”   Or fasten one awesome pair of Nikes. Or attach a sign to a wall. — A.M. Sonny

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