It's good to see entrepreneurs popping up who are taking 3d printing to the next level, and searching for business opportunities for new products manufactured by this technique. One of these entrepreneurs is Siavash Mahdavi. He is especially looking into optimization of form through intelligent weight reduction and force redirection, and has come up so far with prototypes of orthopedic implants that bone can grow into, optimized shoe soles that vary in support and cushioning, an engine block with 22% weight reduction, and a structure that he intends to use for docking shuttles at a space station.
Of course it's nothing new that rapid prototyping techniques are giving rise to wildly innovative three-dimensional shapes. It's also nothing new that these techniques are still quite slow and very expensive, so still not interesting enough for design for the masses. It is still interesting though to see what kind of form repertoires different designers are coming up with, within this radically enlarged scope of potential. Some designers keep it minimal and functionalistic, some try to create more elegant, abstract versions of nature, some develop a more edgy and sharp style, and others go a bit more extreme and create very organic, chaotic and often alien-looking shapes.
Lionel Dean, founder of the company FutureFactories, belongs to the latter category. He develops objects that seem to be taken directly out of the jungle of Pandora, that extraterrestrial realm in Avatar. His work is closer to bio-fantasy than biomimicry, as he seems to emphasize artistic freedom more so than functional constriction. A quite innovative aspect of his products is that he uses scripting to generate the forms, while only providing a fixed 'meta-design' to the computer. The designer here, as a blend of man and machine, creates completely unique products.
In an assignment for Nissan, architecture firm su11 has envisioned a modular, future-oriented system for charging electric vehicles. The system consists of several 'E-VINE stations' that have a central unit to charge and reprogram the electric vehicle, with leafs above it to capture solar energy. These leafs are envisioned to be separate modules that can link up, so that the amount of leafs at a station can be adjusted according to the local energy needs. This is important, according to su11, because the transition from gasoline-based fuel to the fully electric vehicle is likely to proceed gradually. The system, like a vine then, can grow over time towards a fully electric and 'green' future.
Bruce Pollock is a Philadelphian artist who tries to bring people an experience of infinity through his paintings. He translates microscopic and macroscopic patterns and principles onto his canvases, and manages to create very vibrant and captivating compositions by letting a painting emerge from an inner logic that Pollock explicates over time through his brush strokes.
Each painting uses a limited set of elements and ordering principles to give rise to a perception of a living three-dimensional realm. Here, no object is separated from another object, and the purpose of the object is to transcend its, say, 'it-ness', and start co-creating the whole. As an observer then, we are given the opportunity to not seek something individuated in these paintings, but to stop pointing the mind to any particular object, and have ourselves connect viscerally to what we see. From this visceral experience then, our mind is invited to contemplate more abstract notions such as the order of the cosmos, and our individuated consciousness within that order.
You can't say that the people at Festo are very creative, but their creations are nevertheless astonishing for the technical accomplishment and techno-spiritual, light feel to their work. Here it is for the first time that we see an artificial bird that at first glance is pretty much indistinguishable from a real flying bird. Festo has accomplished this through an extremely efficient motion of the wings, that can rotate at different angles.
Be ready for a future in which we make our own animals.
(If I were a mouse, I would definitely make this into my mansion.)
Mathias Bengtsson had the idea of creating a chair based on the cellular structure of bone tissue. The result of his intensive work is the 'Cellular chair' that not only is very funky in appearance, but also interesting from a technical point of view. For each chair produced, the internal structure is devised by a piece of medical software that is usually used to simulate the regeneration of bone tissue.
This work definitely pertains to the 'trend' of creating products based on biological structures, as for example seen before in the 'bone chair' by Joris Laarman. I have termed this movement 'biological modernism' earlier, because 'good design' here seems to rely upon how well the product is in line with how biological processes would have created the product. For a product of today, the cellular chair is a beautiful example of what can emerge from this kind of thinking. It is interesting that in this work we see that in the details, or just by not exactly following biological thinking, the designer has room to still give a product a certain appearance. Where many of these bio-inspired product look very futuristic, sleek, and a bit unapproachable, this chair has a funky social quality to it.
A next step would be to create a chair that dynamically adapts its structure according to the forces that it is subjected to. Biological structures such as bones and wood do this too in order to spend the least amount of energy and material on creating a good structure. A chair that does that too could for example have a base structure with extra reinforcement material that can flow along the underlying structure and solidify at the place where it is needed.
Great stuff from the Mercedes Benz design department. Apparently they have been working on the development of an entirely new form language, and it is promising. The free and flowing forms they came up with are not just sculptures arisen from the unbound human imagination, but based on natural structures that have optimized themselves over many generations. As a result, the design language has become extremely beautiful, and it simply seems to 'fit' to Mercedes-Benz. Where modernism has mainly resulted in mass-produced 'soulless' objects, including biological processes into it may bring this back and make the ultimate union of form and function. When humanity for a moment thought that modernism took away all individuality, biology is here to show us how we can be united and individuated at the same time.
It seems that Mercedes is looking for a name for this language -that really is much more than a language- as they call it 'Sculpture Aesthetics No. 2'. I would suggest 'biological modernism' as the umbrella term for this class of design -which, again, is much more than just a class or style of design but more like a new paradigm. Take a look at their promo video, and some pictures of the prototype, sculptures, and sketches they made.
Most of the Western cities have just emerged bit by bit, which can cause quite the inefficiencies in a changed, high-paced and interconnected world. Other cities have been based on a grid-like system which works as a system for living but completely takes the 'soul' out of a city. Then there are a few cities that have been based on a different kind of plan, as a more artistic approach, such as the city of Brasilia as designed by Oscar Niemeyer. This has turned out to be quite a failure as it was not anticipated how the people would actually live there.
Vincent Callebaut has another idea, which is also based on a preconceived plan mostly, yet it's a piece of intelligent, somewhat holistic and environmentally responsible thinking. And the structure he proposes is extremely beautiful too. His concept is to create floating cities along the coastline that somewhat look like Lilypads. Each of the cities can provide residence to 50.000 people, which could be people that have lost their home in a traditional city through a natural disaster. Beside aesthetics the unique aspect of these cities is that they have zero emissions, and even process carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This, the Belgian architect envisions, can be reached through using energy from the sun, the wind, from biomass, and from the tidal waves.
I like the thinking and the design, and I think this can work if we can get the money together. Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong, anyone?
Japanese artist Mio I-Zawa has created this informative tumor to represent the CPU load of the computer one is interacting with, to give rise to a visceral embodied connection between human and machine.
Sometimes the only thing you need is someone, or something, that listens to you and understands you in an intuitive way. Something that just responds minimally and does not talk back. As most partners do not fulfill this requirement, the Japanese at SegaToys filled this gap in the market by introducing for once not a robotic fembot, fish or chick, but a cute little plant called Pekoppa.
This wiggly artefact moves its stem and leaves in a surprisingly expressive way, and because it's shape and movements are so ambiguous it gives people all the space to create their own narrative around this artificial plant, especially because it actually reacts to human voices. The following movie mainly shows some Japanese people getting things of their chest with this little healer, but some simply seem to have a nice social conversation with it, or decide to sing a song for it.
It is interesting that this 'device' is marketed under the nickname 'Healing Leafs', and I strongly believe that such developments can have significant psychological impact on society. It is maybe not very noticeable, but humanity is undergoing an enormous psychological crisis, desperately labeling any anomaly as yet another disorder, and rates of suicides, addiction, and depression are staggering. We lost a connection to our selves, are distracted by all sorts of fairly meaningless chunks of data and abstract goals imposed upon us mainly by the mirror of the media, and society, and I believe strongly that technologies can help us reconnect and have us reflect more, in a playful, empowering, and motivating way.
This blog reports and reflects on intellectual and technological developments that can give rise to a liberated feeling of oneness with the whole of being, and an awakening of creative intelligence that empowers people to feel and act as inextricably linked with their lifeworld.
Special attention in this blog is paid to embodied intelligence, complex emergent behavior, applied behavioral economics, technology for physical behavior modification, and the merging of digital and physical experiences.
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The author
Ralph Zoontjens is a product designer from Tilburg, the Netherlands. He has graduated with a Master's Degree from the Industrial Design program at the Eindhoven University of Technology with an interactive jacket that gives feedback for yoga practitioners. He has worked for the Philips Design Probes group and currently does product design for Motio Development in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In his spare time he pursues his many interests, does yoga and distance-running, and tries to immerse himself into creative processes as much as possible.
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