At its core, the design of a bicycle is traditionally comprised of two circles and two triangles. Since its inception, there has been a constant desire to continue improving the simple (but clever) machine. Bold use of carbon fiber, daring geometries and swooping…
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Royal College of Art graduate Yu-Chang Chou has developed a “return and reuse” packaging system to help online retailers reduce waste (+ movie).
After watching his wife throw out perfectly useable packaging from her online shopping purchases, Yu-Chang Chou was inspired to develop a sustainable alternative, using a similar model to the bottle-return system used in many European countries.
The customer would opt for for the packaging when they make their purchase. Once they receive the product, they simply fold and reseal the Repack bag and post it back to a central address, in exchange for a refund of the deposit they paid when ordering.
Royal Mail – the UK’s national postage system – would then collect the bags and resell them through local post offices.
“One of my favourite parts of the Repack system is using postboxes as return spots,” Chou told Dezeen.
“Letter volume has decreased significantly and is expected to keep decreasing. Therefore in the future, maybe post boxes will become useless. Using postboxes as the packaging return spots for Repack can give them a new life and function.”
The Repack bags are made of two parts – an outer bag and an inner cushioning. The external layer is constructed with durable polyester fabric made from recycled PET bottles, which is screen-printed and sewn together. The cushioning is microcellular polyurethane, often used in protective sportswear. Both materials are durable and recyclable.
The bags are expected to last for 200 cycles, after which Royal Mail would be able to repair or recycle them.
“Repack provides packaging as a service in collaboration with existing postal systems rather than as a one-off product,” said the designer.
“Using these durable Repack bags to send parcels not only increases packaging efficiency and saves packaging costs per use, but also significantly reduces the environmental impact of producing new packaging.”
“Through return and reuse, Repack makes online shopping more environmental friendly and cost-effective for both the retailer and costumer,” he added.
Chou worked on the project while studying on the Innovation Design Engineering course at the Royal College of Art and presented the work at the graduate show, which concluded on Sunday.
Other designs at the exhibition included an inflatable bag to keep electronic devices safe and an umbrella made from just six parts.
The post Yu-Chang Chou develops a reusable packaging
service for sustainable online shopping appeared first on Dezeen.
La collaborazione tutta olandese tra Tenue de Nîmes e Pastoe non poteva essere più azzeccata. La FM06 è la storica lounge chair che in questa versione viene imbottita con denim giapponese.
Solo per veri duri che masticano tabacco e si lavano se va bene una volta alla settimana. La trovate qui.
Disegnato dallo svizzero Lucien Gumy, ogni documento o biglietto da visita resta incastrato tra i blocchi del portacarte.
La tomaia della Air Max perde tutte le sue cuciture e si fonde con la suola Nike Lunarlion. Nasce così la Air Max Lunar 1, in vendita già oggi nei migliori punti vendita Nike Sportswear.
I’ve never been a fan of the Zombie Apocalypse narrative. Who needs the fictitious afflicted undead in order to feel insecure in their relationship to resources and humanity? Not this guy. Instead, I get my social-framework-challenging kicks by thinking about real societal failings and foibles. Modern ruins, abandoned buildings and the aftermath of economic or political hubris are great stand-ins if you need your neck hairs lifted by something a little more believable than actors done up with gray facepaint and bloodshot eyes. The most recent addition to my real world ‘creep canon’: zombie satellites.
Zombie satellites are closer to what they sound like than you might think (and not too far off from the recurring theories about MH370 either, but let’s not go there). These satellites are inactive but still mobile, abandoned by their creators to wander the galaxy. Sometimes their abandonment is due to mysterious “illness”—a glitch or immobilizing malfunction. Sometimes they are simply casualties of their own technical limitations, their aging hardware no longer able to communicate with the indifferent world advancing below.
Here are a few of my favorite examples of space-bound technological zombies and our ongoing relationships with them.
Fitting that SkyCorp HQ is an abandoned Macdonald’s? I vote yes.
ISEE-3, the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, has spent 36 years in space and 17 years abandoned. Originally used to view solar activity between the sun and earth, the little craft was later redirected to visit the tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner. Charted by the satellite’s flight director, the redirection enraged solar scientists who accused him of stealing their satellite, to which he responded that he was “just borrowing it” and would return it eventually. Seems legit. Since the Giacobini-Zinner visit, ISEE-3 has been looping through the solar system on a 30 year course that would bring it (yes, eventually) back in striking distance of our moon. It’s still on track and still transmitting, but, in the meantime, the old transmitters for communicating with the little guy were literally thrown out.
Design duo Jessica Pinotti and Stephen Cheetham are forces to be reckoned with separately, so it makes sense that together they have created…
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During his travels, professional food photographer Henry Hargreaves has kept an extensive, related hobby: collecting and photographing to-go cups from coffee shops. Now showcased on a recently launched …
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Cape Town architect Mark Thomas and engineer Henry Fagan have completed a sinuous wooden walkway that meanders through the treetops of a botanical garden on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain (+ slideshow).
The project was initiated to celebrate the centennary of the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in 2013, and was developed by Thomas and Fagan as a permanent attraction that provides a different vantage point of the garden’s arboretum.
The walkway is called Boomslang, after a species of venomous sub-Saharan African snake, and follows a roughly crescent-shaped path across the undulating terrain of the site.
Related story: A Path in the Forest by Tetsuo Kondo Architects
“The concept comes from the terrain,” said Thomas. “There isn’t a straight line on the terrain, so the snake starts by running in between the trees, then it winds through the trees and then sails above the trees.”
From concrete launch pads at either end of the plan, the path rises gradually along its 130-metre length, in places reaching a height of 12 metres above the forest floor.
Deep concrete foundations anchor ten steel columns, supporting galvanised steel components that were laser cut and fabricated off site, before being transported to the gardens and craned into place.
The position of the columns and the route of the walkway was determined by the location of key trees within the arboretum and the need to minimise disruption to the delicate ecosystem of the forest floor.
“It’s more of a sculpture than a structure that we created,” said Fagan. “We started with what was structurally needed and [tried] to limit that to the minimum. It’s a single frame with ribs that form the hand railings.”
A round pipe fixed to the tops of the columns forms a spine from which ribs curve upwards to support the decked walkway. The ribs also create stanchions for the handrails and the mesh side walls.
The decking is made from stained pine battens, with sustainably harvested Paduak wood from west Africa used for the curving handrails.
Holes have been cut in the decking at one point to accommodate existing trees that emerge through the surface.
In two places, the pathway widens to form a viewing area high above the treetops and a sheltered rest area, both with wooden benches that follow the curve of the handrail.
To encourage the forest to colonise the structure and help it blend in with the natural environment, a special paint that attracts algae was applied to the galvanised steel surfaces.
The columns are also surrounded by a trellis that will eventually be covered by climbing plants.
Photography is by Adam Harrower.
The post Boomslang walkway by Mark Thomas and
Henry Fagan extends over a forest canopy appeared first on Dezeen.
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