New materials for industrial designers

These days we see a lot of searching by designers and artists for new materials that better fit the global mindset of today. Many of these materials though are only applicable for a small set of products, need a laborious production process, or are simply too expensive to make it to the mass-markets. And thus most of our products are still made of the conventional materials, with especially plastic being the material that we will want to replace soon. So what materials have real potential to become wide-spread in consumer products of the near future? I created a small collection of such materials, and put them in a document which you can download here.

Here is my personal top 5 of favorite materials:


1. Liquid wood
Arboform, nicknamed ‘liquid wood’, is an injection moldable and extrudable material composed of lignin, a natural polymer, and cellulose. It has the look of wood, but is cheaper, although more expensive than regular plastic, while almost being carbon-neutral. A unique property is that Arboform can be produced to be anywhere between flexible and rigid. It has been used in shoe soles, egg cups, toys, and for Ford’s automotive interiors.


2. Hydrogels
Hydrogels can be made by mixing water with a small amount of clay, salt, and organic components, which can then be molded into shape. The polymers will have bonded with the water, so the resulting hydrogel cannot be dissolved into water anymore. Maybe contrary to intuition, a hydrogel can have an exceptional mechanical strength when bonded to clay. Depending on the amount of clay used, a hydrogel can be highly transparent. Other unique properties of hydrogels are that they will heal themselves very rapidly, and will slowly recover their shape even after being subjected to high stresses. Their possible biodegradability, furthermore, makes hydrogels a chance-worthy candidate as a replacement for plastics. The research into this material is recent, so it is not ready yet for mass-production.


3. Liquidmetal
Liquidmetal is a metallic glass that looks like metal and can be processed like plastic – blow molding, injection molding, it’s all possible. It’s twice as strong as titanium, and almost unbendable by hand. This makes it possible to create parts with extremely thin walls. Apple has already licensed the intellectual property rights to the material worldwide, and is likely going to incorporate it in the chassis for devices like the iPhone, Macbook, and iPad. Other applications are sporting equipment like skis and baseball bats, USB drives, and watches.
Since using Liquidmetal does require a complete change in manufacturing structure, only few companies will allow themselves to take the risks coming with that, though in the future this material might become widespread pretty quickly.


4. Electroactive polymers
Polymers have been developed that change shape when subjected to electrical impulses. So far they’ve mostly been applied in robots, but it’s not hard to imagine these materials being used in self-actuating product exteriors of the future. You can also think of these being used in soft architecture, car bodies that can change shape, and studies are being done as well to incorporate EAPs into car tires in order to dynamically change their tread.

Compared to shape memory alloys such as Nitinol, electroactive polymers are superior in their spectral response, lower density, and resilience. A disadvantage to both shape memory alloys and electroactive ceramics is the lower actuation stress of EAPs.

Smart polymer gels are another class of cutting-edge shape changing polymers. These swell or shrink up to a factor of 1000 in response to stimuli such as temperature, light, magnetic fields, or a solvent. It is even possible for a polymer gel to change from opaque to transparent. Applications of smart polymer gels are mainly chemical, biological, or medical, but we can imagine these gels being used in future products. A hard drive may swell as it stores more data, a piece of jewelry might change shape, a toy animal may breathe, or a shirt may become tighter in order to simulate a hug or comfort people who can use it to calm down.


5. Auxetic foam
Imagine a foam – now pull it, and as you pull it, you will probably imagine it to contract due to the stress. Now picture the foam to actually expand as you stretch it. This is an auxetic foam, which has a zigzagged, bowtie-like internal structure, not unlike the famous Hoberman spheres, that makes the foam expand when pulled. Such a foam absorbs more energy and low-frequency sound than a conventional foam, at about 2 to 3 times the price. The material is usually a thermoplastic foam, but it’s also possible to create thermosetting and metal auxetic foams. Potential applications are in medical, athletic, and cleaning products.

Life inside a cell animated

This is what the common human being needs; a visually interesting depiction of how a cell works, not with words and science, but pure visuals. It is stunning, and it's hard to imagine that every cell of our bodies is as complex and coordinated as a universe, but this does give us a better idea of the incredible system that our body is. The molecules you see are modelled after the structure of real molecules, although a lot of assumptions had to be made. But more important than scientific accuracy is how it can open the mind of the common human being.

Watch the animation here:



You can also watch the animation's predecessor, that has already been featured on this blog, here:

Space tourism by 2014

Space tourism might be available by 2014, if it's up to the Dutch airline company KLM. Conveniently one of Holland's colonies, Curacao, was deemed appropriate to launch a rocketship from for anybody who is willing to pay between 70.000 and 100.000 euros. This first version of the space shot is minimal both in duration and distance: you go up just beyond the boundary of Earth's atmosphere, and spend only about 4 minutes up there before spiraling back to earth.

If you are interested in doing it, wait a few years, fly to Curacao and look for the following futuristic building:



In case you are interested but don't have the money, there is always YouTube:



For those who are going to do it, and think this is worth the money, here is a perspective to perhaps take along: you can see your flight as a mission towards a different state of mind, triggered by the direct perception of the cosmos. This is your chance to awaken directly that you are not just a being in a social group, not even a global being; you are a cosmic being - cosmic meaning here that the whole you are part of has no limits whatsoever. Your perception can now come to confirm this by getting you out of your head and fully in tune with what you are perceiving. It can make you see that what you are perceiving right now is the only thing you'll ever need, and the most profound thing available. But with everything you learn in a specific environment, your task is to bring home what you learned and apply it there as well. You learned that there is a state of perception that brings you in tune with the cosmos; but the cosmos is not just out there beyond our atmosphere - it is here as well. Everywhere, although it is easier visible in more complex things such as trees, eyes, clouds, and the ocean, than, say, in your washing machine or desk lamp. The rocketship is the psychedelic technology that will change your mind and your personality towards the ultimate wholeness.

Streetlight trees

This invention is a terrific example of how nature and technology are blending to create a humanized nature that is in ways better and more beautiful than the kind of nature we used to live in.

Taiwanese scientists, in their search for better light sources, have unintendedly created luminescent tree leaves. They implanted gold nanoparticles into the leaves, and after subjecting them to UV light they started emitting a reddish glow. What's more, this glow creates a kind of internal feedback loop in that the leaves' cells will photosynthesize more and thus further reduce carbondioxide in the air.

Unbelievable as it may sound, this might be the streetlight of the future. So if we invest more into researching the possible transformation of natural, seemingly useless things into 'products' with direct economic value, our cities can come to feel a great deal more 'natural.'

Nanofactory

Nanotechnology to the common eye seems to be a little veiled in mystery, and to make it visible on a concrete level how this all could work, there is this video of a 'Nanofactory' as imagined by Eric Drexler. It seems almost incredible, but if we could ever manage to create this, it would be about the apex of the modernist dream and we will have almost completely taken control over nature. Watch it here:



I don't think it's impossible in the long term, but I tend to think that the enormous amount of resources that this will suck in building and maintaining it so it stays in tact, as well as controlling all the unforeseen errors that will happen from time to time, make us have to treat this as, and forgive my language, a kind of utopian nano-porn for the extremely wealthy.

The shape-shifting kitchen

Along the lines of Jens Dyvik's sculptable hotelroom is Michael Harboun's equally sculptable 'living' kitchen. He imagines that through nanotechnology we will be able to design into physical structures preprogrammed movement paths, so that with the flick of a finger you could have a faucet, a plate, or a cutting board pop out of any surface in your kitchen. Of course nanotechnology is still mostly in the early 'hype' phase and we are probably decades removed from having anything like this, but at least this way we are exploring the conceptual canvas a little first.

Jens Dyvik's wild concepts

Jens Dyvik is a product-, concept-, and interaction designer from the Netherlands with some very interesting work I'd like to share with you.

First, he has created a movie to reflect on the notion of the 'superstar designer', which can help all creatives from time to time to remind themselves that there is more to work than fulfilling personal ambitions. Watch it on http://www.dyvikdesign.com/ or http://www.susanchristianen.com/.

In another project he imagines a hotelroom with a floor that is completely sculptable through a gesture-based input device. You enter the hotelroom, and the floor is white and flat. But with a few well-pointed waves of the hand you will have a bed, a partysetting, or even a bowlingalley in no time.






His graduation project at the Design Academy Eindhoven is the current summit of his work, if you ask me. He designed a wearable device that directly feeds back, in a simple but not simplistic way, the emotional state that the wearer is having. It is a quite biological looking bracelet with a head and a tail section that can lift up to show for example your tenseness. This way, the emotion is objectified, which is a very powerful mechanism for the mind. Think, for example, of spit. Yes, saliva. It's always in your mouth, being one with you, you could say. But once you put it 'out there' as an object of spit, say, you put it onto your hand, you suddenly treat it completely differently, and will probably not want to put it back in your mouth again. Also putting your thoughts or emotions 'out there' makes you instantly get into a reflective relationship with them, which can help you bring awareness to yourself so you're not just getting dragged into emotional patterns like a robot.