Soft-Architecture
Lighting studio Flos recently unveiled Soft Architecture, their latest system that uses aninnovative composite material to seamlessly integrate lighting fixtures with theirsurroundings. The material received a silver cradle to cradle certification
http://www.soft-architecture.com
Reef
a collaborative installation between Rob Ley of Urbana Studio and Joshua G. Stein ofRadical Craft, at the Taubman Museum of Art.
Using new technology this piece involves a cloud like covering made out of hundreds oftranslucent panels and shape-memory wire which responds to it's audience. By utilizingan interface fed by an RGB camera and special software the pieces seem to move like anorganism that is breathing curling and uncurling. These movements are programmed tooccur as reactions to specified stimuli coming from the audience such as color of clothingproximity to the installation and amount of people that approach it. Therefore the wholeenvironment is shaped according to the people who are in it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-TSgVT8JxM&NR=1
Woven Light
London based textile designer Kathy Schicker’s got a fabulous collection of colorchanging and light emitting textiles. No joke. Some of them react to sunlight when theysee it, some of them react to the absence of it once it’s gone. Color changes in thedaytime, color emitting in the night. They’re a matching of textiles, design, scarf wearingand science – pure, fabulous, wonderful science!
www.kathyschicker.com
Aerogel
Sometimes explained as looking like 'frozen smoke' - this is truly an amazing materialthat possesses some incredible qualities (density, thermal, weight to strength ratio). It isan engineered or manufactured solid that has the 'lowest bulk density of any knownporous solid'
Check out the video of this crazy stuff:http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/quest-lab-aerogel
Nitinol
Fever Chair
This website contains products from Tara Mullaney's Emotional Objects collection.
I do not know how long this chair will last, but I was drawn to the user engaging featuresof the chair. I am also curious as to what the chair/finish of the chair will be after thethermal element wears away. Enclosed is a video of the chair over time....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyWW-zvCT0&feature=player_embedded
Water Based Plastics
Scientists at the Univ. of Tokyo created a new material that is composed of 98 percentwater. Besides water, the new material is also composed of clay mineral that issometimes used in cosmetics, sodium polyacrylate, which is a chemical that is used indiapers to absorb moisture and an altered form of a medical compound known as G3-binder. The strength of the new material is almost the same as the strength of silicon usedin plastic surgery. If researchers use more clay, they can make the material more rigid.When cut, the material "self-heals". In addition, the water based invention can withstandtemperature as high as 100'c.
Electro-Active Polymer
Hyper Drive is a start-up company that partnered with SRI's scientists looking tocommercialize the device's energy-gathering capabilities. This demonstration is thegenerator’s second run; the first was in August 2007 in St. Petersburg, Florida, when abuoy was tested in relatively placid Atlantic waters to determine if it could operate in amarine environment. This time the investors at Hyper Drive and the scientists from SRIInternational were looking for more active waters to determine whether or not theirinvention—a rubber-like material called Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscle(EPAM)—c ould use the heaving motion of the waves to generate power
http://www.santacruz.com/News/2008/12/09/SRI_Tests_Wave_Energy_Generator_Off_Santa_Cruz_Shore
