Design

A Malaysian scientist has discovered a revolutionary method of producing aerogel using waste rice husks. Known for it’s ghostlike appearance, aerogel has many possible applications including insulation and as a shock absorber. The strong, light weight substance (it’s 99% air) is made of silica, which composes 20% of the weight of rice husks. Using husks as the source of silica for Aerogel drastically cuts the cost of production.

Treehugger reports:

Aerogel was invented in 1931. But at $3000 per kilogram, it’s use has been limited to visionary projects and unique structural applications like reinforcement of tennis raquets. But that could change soon. Halimaton Hamdan, a Cambridge-trained professor of chemistry at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (Technical University of Malaysia), has announced the discovery of a cheap process for turning waste rice husks into aerogel. Actually into “Maerogel”, as Hamdan has dubbed the “Malaysian aerogel”.

The translucent, smoky material weighs only three times as much as air. It is, in fact, mostly air; air cleverly trapped in a silicon matrix which gives the material insulating properties 37 times better than fiberglass. The image demonstrates the insulating capability as a layer of aerogel prevents a blowtorch from burning the hand below.

Aerogel can also bear mechanical pressure of up to 2000 times its weight. The combination of low weight and strength make aerogel a multifaceted green construction material.

[via Treehugger]

German car manufacturer Volkswagen have released a site called “Volkswagen 2028″ that sketches a scenario of future automotive mobility, 20 years from now. The site kicks off with a short introductory movie set in the future, where a father takes a walk with his son talking about the old times where you had to search for a parking-lot. Future times according to VW are about smart, on-demand car delivery services, skinnable car exteriors and the death of traffic jams as we know them.

A series of interviews with VW researchers and designers unveil their visions of electric-driven Single Occupant Vehicles, holographic projections, gesture controlled dashboards, and emission free automobiles.

While the entire site is in German, it’s still worth having a look at their future scenarios.

Volkswagen 2028

When’s the last time you wore a watch? With the cell phone having become an indispensable accessory, the wristwatch has become all but obsolete, worn more often for fashion or status than for its actual time-telling capability. Bringing the transformation full circle (not sure if they recognize the irony), Tag Heuer is launching Meridiist, a luxury cell phone possibly created for those who aren’t buying Tag Heuers anymore.

From Trendhunter:

The Tag Heuer Meridiist mobile phone is made from watch-making stainless steel and has two unscratchable 60.5 carat sapphire crystal displays. It displays the time in a 96×76 monochromatic OLED screen in the upper part of the phone and comes with a 2.0 megapixel camera, MP3 player and bluetooth technology.

It looks pretty nice, and judging by the attention to detail with which watchmakers approach their craft, one would imagine that the Meridiist is built to exacting specifications. At the same time, as Gizmodo rightly points out, when you take a good look at the phone’s specs, there’s not much that you can’t get elsewhere. Which leaves us wondering what the $6100 price tag really gets you, besides a really fancy way to tell time.

Yesterday we spotlighted TerraCycle’s products that make use of reused packaging. Today we’ve spotted another interesting upcycling idea from London-based designer Shiu Yuk Yuen (site is Safari unfriendly). She’s proposed the UNbrella which is a compact umbrella that can be used for short distance trips through the rain. It consists of a handle and expanding pole and ribs which you then add newspaper, cardboard, or a plastic bag over the top of. There’s a thumb screw at the top to secure it all together. Carrying around a heavy umbrella can be a pain and this concept is a nice alternative for times when you get caught out in the rain.

[via Yanko Design]

As her final project for Central Saint Martins, designer Olivia Lee created a series of limited edition designer dolls, literally. Each figurine takes the likeness of an iconic designer of our time, including Zaha Hadid, Karim Rashid, and Jaime Hayon. In Lee’s own words:

It came from the observation that increasingly today, designer personalities are quite literally become synonymous with the objects they design. In studying the visual characteristics and distinct personalities of the designers as well as their products, I wondered what would happen if I merge these two entities together. What would happen if the designer became a product? How would that differ from the designer being closely associated with the product?

via noticias arquitectura / dezeen

TerraCycle made a name for themselves producing a line of plant fertilizer products that were organically made by worms and sold in recycled soda bottles. Not content to watch lots of other potentially reusable materials head to the landfill, the company is expanding operations to produce a line of cleaning products, supplies for school and the office, and yes even fashion accessories. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the company has inked deals with a number of companies to collect some of their packaging waste and ‘upcycle’ it into new products. The company is already offering these products for sale at Target and hopes to be shipping to Walmart and Home Depot soon.

TerraCycle is committed to getting consumers involved. They have setup a nationwide collection network to source recyclables. Anyone can sign up via the website to collect a specific type of packaging. TerraCycle handles all the costs of transport back to their production facility. For every item sent, a donation is made to the charity of your choice.

To complete the circle, some companies like Kraft are already starting to put the TerraCycle logo on it’s packaging as a way to build awareness and encourage consumers to upcycle. For its part, TerraCycle looks to expand the product offer even more. Potentially on the horizon are shower curtains, umbrellas, lunch boxes, and backpacks.

We’re excited to have Andrew Hoppin, co-founder of NASA CoLab, joining us at PSFK Conference San Francisco 2008 on our “Collaboration & Co-Working” panel. Alongside Ezra Cooperstein from Current TV, Andrew will be discussing how collaboration can be utilized to engage communities (even ones as big as NASA!).

First, who are you and what do you do?

Though a planetary geologist and environmental scientist by training, I came back to NASA in 2006 because of my experience as a social entrepreneur, Web strategist and grassroots political organizer. There, I helped create NASA CoLab, which builds collaborative communities for NASA, online and offline, in service of a more transparent and efficient Federal government.

I also recently co-founded Brazil’s first online political technology company, and Mission Ad Network, an online advertising network for Socially Responsible businesses.
My volunteer work includes representing the Space Generation Advisory Council at the UN, and the advisory board of the New Organizing Institute.

You’ll be speaking on our Collaborative Co-Working panel -can you sum up your views on how collaborative work is changing how companies engage with their customers, staff, partners, and the community?

Collaborative co-working puts more people on the creative “edges” of workgroups by fostering informal but vocationally relevant peer-to-peer interaction across boundaries of bureaucracy, organization, and in the case of NASA with Second Life, physical geography. Cultural cross-pollination results, making organizations more contextually aware, nimble, and responsive. Co-working creates more human points of contact within an organization, melting bureaucracy away and generating creative juice from the meltwater. Now, after more than a year of building communities for NASA through online, offline, and virtual reality co-working at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, we’re turning our attention to bringing these practices to other NASA Centers around the country, and collaborating with colleagues at other Agencies to share this learning across the Federal Government. There has been a lot of rhetoric about “change” in this year’s Presidential Election; we like to think we’re helping to build the DNA necessary to implement rapid change into the Federal bureaucracy.

Five sites that provide you with inspiration?

Open NASA
CharityFocus
BarCamp
X PRIZE Foundation
Twitter

Thanks, Andrew!

NASA CoLab

Hear more from Andrew at PSFK Conference San Francisco 2008 - get your tickets now!

Zaha Hadid has created a spectacular pedestrian bridge across the River Ebro at Zaragoza for a festival in Spain. Dezeen features some great shots by Luke Hayes. In the Arts & Architecture blog in the Guardian Jonathan Glancey says that it could point to the future of bridges within cities:

It shows what sort of imaginative bridges we might yet have in cities around the world and it might just encourage an intelligent development of the river banks on either side of it. One of the great things about this enclosed structure - made largely of concrete, steel trusses and glass reinforced concrete cladding - is that offers a walk across the wide river in the shade. It might have rained heavily in Zaragoza recently, causing the Ebro to flood, but for much of the year, this is a blazingly hot city and Hadid’s parasol across the water seems heaven sent.

If the twin-span exterior of the bridge is spectacular, its interior is intriguing; it offers not just a curving walk across the Ebro, but a pair of exhibition halls. In the future, these might be used for any number of purposes, although there is a fear, expressed locally, that given its remote location, the bridge might become the haunt of thugs, ne’er-do-wells and weirdos as well as that of innocent walkers and the inevitable skateboarders.

Zaha Hadid Architects
Zaragoza Expo 2008

Frequent readers of PSFK will note we’ve been keeping an eye on inspired school designs that aim to create innovative places for learning. The recent renovation of the Fuji Kindergarten in the Tokyo suburb of Tachikawa definitely got our attention. The project is the result of work by Tezuka Architects and a collaboration with designer Kashiwa Sato (who contributed to the design of the New York Uniqlo store) to expand the building but retain the schools unique spirit. Fuji is known for it’s Montessori teaching methods and open-minded policy that all children are welcome no matter what economic background their families have.

The architects resulting design is a circular building with a large interior courtyard. The building’s roof is a wooden deck that the children can use as a play space. The site contained several existing trees which the architects left and built the structure around. There’s rope ladders on the trees that the kids can use to climb on. The most striking (and controversial) part of the interior of the building is there are no solid walls. Even the bathrooms are as barrier free as possible. The intention was to create as open a space as possible and to reduce the confining barrier of walls in regards to learning. Even signs with school rules were kept to a minimum to emphasize personal responsibility in the young students.

Adjacent to the school is a farming area where the children grow vegetables and keep rabbits and goats. The school intends to plant grass in the courtyard for the goats to graze on and use the milk to make cheese for the children.

540 students attend the school and there is a huge waiting list to enter. The staff intends to expand the enrollment to 650 soon which will make Fuji the largest kindergarten in Japan in a single building.

More photos here.

[via Archinect]