Dutch students reveal car with positive energy balance

A team of more than 20 students from Eindhoven University of Technology has recently revealed their proud creation, a family car fueled by solar panels on its roof. The car, named Stella, can produce more electric energy than it consumes, if you leave it out in the sun and drive it for an average amount of time. Even in a colder climate country such as the Netherlands it will be energy-positive during 10 months of the year, which makes it much cheaper to drive than a hybrid or even a full-electric car.

 

Another advantage is the light construction with an aluminum chassis and carbon fiber body and interior panels. The total car weighs only 380 kg, making it lighter even than a Twizy. Aerodynamically, the students managed to optimize the design while maintaining a large roof area, covering all wheels, and creating enough space for the occupants inside. Other requirements, such as imposed by international law and by the race that Stella is going to compete in, were also met. Think of the location of the lights, the viewing angle, and the maximum length and width of the car.

I am personally proud to also have co-operated on the design of this vehicle, and am looking forward to the World Solar Challenge in October, where the proverbial pudding will be eaten and the proof will come to light whether Stella is a rising or a shooting star.

 

Designsoul

Here's a quick update after many months without activity on this blog.

The bad news: I'm not going to continue posting on this blog very actively any longer. Every project starts from a certain intention, and for everyone at some point that intention in a sense fades away again in order to make room for new and fresh things.

The good news: I am going to combine most of my activities on a new website, and under a new name: Designsoul. The website, www.designsoul.nl, will integrate a blog for inspiration and awareness, a part with more serious reflections that may hopefully lead up to a publishable book someday -maybe even an entire design movement, why not - and a design portfolio mostly to showcase my professional activities.

As a final word of reflection: When you may find that through design you are (co-)creating the entire cosmos, and your thought processes evolve so that increasingly greater things manifest on an increasingly greater scale, at some point you become so immersed in creative thought that you start reflecting on where all that really is coming from, and whether it's really you doing the creation and the creative thinking. The reflective part of Designsoul will take us deeper into this question, and learn through design to (re-)discover what 'soul', that currently almost unused word, really means.

Bomi Park's ethereal furniture

 Bomi Park is a designer from South Korea and has presented a series of furniture called 'Afterimage'. As objects, the pieces are made out of steel wire, but what really 'makes' the objects is the negative space in between the solid material. I think the designer has succeeded in showing how something material can be turned into something with immaterial qualities, and there it lines up well with some of Philippe Starck's (for example the Louis Ghost chair) and Tokujin Yoshioka's work.

Reuben Margolin's wavy kinetic art

Reuben Margolin creates moving sculptures with an intriguing complexity and serenity to them. He uses sine waves, movements inspired by water, and even live dancers connected to strings as input for the movements of his sculptures.

The wave is an interesting phenomenon, it seems to always capture our attention effortlessly when we see one. The movement seems so perfect and tranquil that it is can seem almost like a token from another dimension. Similarly, with these sculptures you become so engrossed in the movement that you forget that they are made out of ordinary objects such as soda cans and bike reflectors. The physical world then transfigures in a world of experience, a world of energy, a world beyond being an object among objects. Here we have a visual reminder of what intellectually quantum physics has already shown: waves and particles are nothing but different interpretations of the same underlying field.

Superflow algorithm produces candy for the senses

Ian Clemmer, an effects artist, created some beautiful audiovisual material for his Bachelor's thesis. His work is based on the Superflow algorithm, that creates parent-child relationships between objects with one pivot point. He implemented this algorithm into 3D Studio Max to create these stunning visuals that are in harmony with the music.

This video shows a very joyful example of the effect:



And here you can see other aesthetic styles, that are suited for music ranging from techno to classical. It gets pretty psychedelic:

Liquid photography by Luka Klikovac

Check out these photographic experiments by Luka Klikovac. As you might have guessed, he suspends fluids in a glass of water and then creates this dramatic lighting to make the pictures come alive more. It might remind you a bit of the good old lavalamp, but still I think this imagery is relevant today, where our environments are getting more and more complex, intelligent, flexible, and metaphorically speaking liquid rather than solid.

Neri Oxman shows 3D printing in its full glory

Neri Oxman, professor at the MIT Media Lab, has recently gone on a 3D printing spree and created a beautiful collection of objects that represent the state of the art of this additive manufacturing process. More than that, it is an interesting conceptual probe into a future where we can interweave these sorts of objects more and more with our own bodies, as 3D printing allows a sophistication in design approaching that found in nature. Professor Oxman has shown that now we can produce objects of unlimited geometrical complexity, consisting of different materials that can smoothly transition in terms of properties such as hardness, thickness, or color.

Now the first 3D printers that are interesting to the mainstream consumer have emerged on the market, we will need to see how this democratization of design will turn out. Are we entering a future where everyone will become a designer through trial and error, and even more throw-away objects are produced with these technologies than happened after the plastics revolution, or will people learn faster this time and be more careful in what they create? With this creative power comes responsibility, of course, and it might be that because people are so closely involved in the making process that it helps them taking on this responsibility, just like, say, you take responsibility for the quality of the turkey you make for Thanksgiving; it has to be exquisite. Same goes for creating objects with our 3D printers - let's all take Neri Oxman's work as a good example of the objects to come.

Eight objects of the collection, called "Imaginary Beings," have been included in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou, so it might be worth paying a visit during your next trip to Paris. Also, here is a video that shows you the objects in more detail:

Also check out her personal website, where you can see some other interesting projects she has been involved in, some of them venturing more away from raw art and towards contextualized, embodied product design. A beautiful example is the Carpal Skin glove, that can be made uniquely according to the physiological requirements of each user.