Hasta La Ideas

During a fire breakout, something as simple as calling for help might mean the difference between life or death. However, it’s impossible while wearing a face mask. Yells are muffled but taking off the mask puts the wearer at risk of smoke inhalation. This innovative solution reimagines the face mask with a built-in whistle. With each exhale, the whistle is activated with a distinct sound that can help emergency personnel locate the victim even when visibility is restricted. With this simple addition to the mask, chances of rescue and rescue times are drastically improved.

Designers: Junkai Huang, Tengbin Li, Weilun Lyu, Xinxin Lyu & Xiang Liu

While this video is primarily about how to wring way more functionality out of your drill press, there are also several great tips in here about workflow efficiency, dust collection, and a wickedly easy way to create a micro-vacuum for through cleaning. Here industrial designer Eric Strebel shows you how to hack your drill press into a milling machine and more:

A group of 10 designers from the Netherlands have teamed up with manufacturer Low & Bonar to create a set of products made from its non-woven Colback textile.

For an exhibition during this year’s Dutch Design Week, the 10 participants presented their own interpretations of the material, which is typically used for technical applications – from insulation and carpeting to building dykes and roads.

Each of the designers were intentionally invited from a wide variety of disciplines, including interior, graphics and product design.

“The project started purely with the material,” graphic designer Dana Dijkgraaf told Dezeen. “The company approached me and the other designers with one challenge: to research the aesthetic and functional features of Colback, and in the end, create a project with it.”

For her offering, Dijkgraaf developed a visual language inspired by the title of the exhibition – In4Nite.

Using silk screening, digital and foil printing, she created rainbow-hued panels spread over folded layers of Colback.

Dijkgraaf also developed the catalogue for In4Nite from the same concept, using holographic typography on a Colback sheet reflected on silver paper.

“For me, the project was about the endless outcomes of the combination of different designers using the same material. It sounds like one plus ten is eleven, but for me the results are infinite.”

Joris de Groot, inspired by the production processes of air filters, designed a pleated chair partly made from Colback. He collaborated with two factories, one specialising in laminating textiles, and the other specialising in pleating.

Klaas Kuiken created a collection of lampshades using laser-cutting techniques. Reminiscent of the moon and the sun’s phases, the lamps play with the translucent qualities of the material.

Rick Tegelaar, a product designer who often focuses on materials, developed a 3D print-like technique to “print” Colback fibres directly onto non-woven Colback material.

The designer built a machine that can “iron” the Colback yarn to the non-woven Colback. This customised FDM (fused deposition modelling) printing process adds rigidity to materials, and the result of his experiment was a series of six panels each featuring a different aspect from the study.

“Through pragmatic experiments and theoretical research, I discovered that Colback can be 3D-printed exceptionally well due to the unique core-skin composition of its fibre,” said Tegelaar. “This triggered my interest to really look into the fibre and research its capabilities.”

Tegelaar’s project – and the exhibition as a whole – aimed to prompt other industries to explore different possibilities of the Colback material.

“We’ve now started a research project with a global footwear brand to try to implement the printing technique in their process.” Tegelaar said. “In this way, we can potentially eliminate the use of glue in the fabrication of shoes.”

Other pieces on show at the exhibition ranged from acoustic panels and window coverings, to a vertical garden and a cavernous chair.

In4Nite was on show during this year’s Dutch Design Week, which took place in Eindhoven from 21 to 29 October 2017.

Also during the festival, Dezeen hosted a series of talks discussing how design can answer some of the world’s big problems – these talks are available to watch via our Good Design for a Bad World page.

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Studio Roosegaarde has restored a set of flood defences in the Netherlands, impregnating the floodgates with a new retro-reflective material that glows in the headlights of oncoming cars.

The Gates of Light are the permanent part of the Icoon Afsluitdijk exhibition on a 32-kilometre dike, along with two temporary installations that will run from November to January.

Daan Roosegaarde and his team were commissioned by the Dutch State and governing bodies of the local regions to repair the historic floodgates and imbue them with iconic status.

“Dikes in the Netherlands are as holy as cows in India, normally you cannot touch them,” Roosegaarde told Dezeen.

“We looked at a design that wasn’t about adding objects, but about enhancing what is already there. They are beautiful buildings, they’re shaped like temples.”

Originally designed by architect Dirk Roosenburg in 1932 and built mostly by hand, the Afsluitdijk is a dike that doubles as a causeway stretching from Den Oever in North Holland Zurich in Friesland province.

The dike forms a central part of the Zuiderzee Works, a system of man-made flood defences that protects the Netherlands, most of which sits below sea level.

The sea barrier is exposed to the elements and much of the existing concrete structures had rotted through.

As well as restoring them, Studio Roosegaarde wanted to find a way to turn the structures into light sculptures, but there were several obstacles to overcome. Traditional methods using electric lights and cables would quickly deteriorate exposed to wind and saltwater.

The team was also determined to avoid adding any light pollution that might disturb local birdlife or contribute to the consumption of fossil fuels.

Global warming, after all, is directly responsible for the rising sea levels threatening the low -lying Netherlands. So Roosegaarde turned to nature for inspiration.

“We looked at the wings of butterflies, how they use reflection to create colour. It’s very interesting, it’s not pigment so it doesn’t fade away,” he said.

The team spent three and a half painstaking years developing durable micro prisms to coat the surface of the floodgates.

“We also wanted to make something that would last for 50, maybe 100 years,” said Roosegaarde. “It was like a puzzle, the restrictions pushed the design.”

When cars drive along the causeway at night their headlight beams catch the material, reflecting the light back at them. The effect lights up the outline of the monumental floodgates on each side of the road.

“The effect is like you are driving through Tron, the Matrix, it’s like science-fiction,” said Roosegaarde.

The effect might be sci-fi, but Roosegaarde hopes the project demonstrates a very real and pertinant way of thinking about designing with light.

“You’re highlighting the blueprint of the architectural history, and at the same time you are making a futuristic statement about energy friendly, energy neutral landscapes,” he added.

The Icoon Afsluitdijk exhibition also includes Windvogel, smart kites that create green energy as they twist in the wind through a dynamo generator attached at the base. The string of the kites are luminous, so they glow in the dark.

“You have these beautiful dancing lines of light floating in the air and at the same time producing green energy,” said Roosegaarde.

Windvogel was conceived when Roosegaarde came across a project in the archives dreamed up by the late Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels.

Ockels, who died in 2014, had started developing an electricity generating kite. Studio Roosegaarde worked with his widow and students from the Delft University of Technology to realise the kites, which can generate 100 kilowatts of electricity.

Another installation, called Glowing Nature, demonstrates the potential of using bioluminescent algae as a natural light.

Studio Roosegaarde spent two and half years nurturing their algae population. Under the correct conditions, the single-celled organisms emit light when touched.

The team flooded one of the historic concrete bunkers on the Afsluitdijk to create a temporary space where visitors can interact with the algae.

“It’s a statement about the future of light. What can we learn form nature, how can we make things more natural? It’s also a very intimate, very personal experience,” said Roosegaarde.

“I love to make things that have this poetic, but at the same time very practical attitude. Maybe that is also a Dutch thing.”

In an interview for Dezeen’s Good Design for a Bad World project Roosegaarde called on fellow designers to ditch creating luxury items and focus on solving issues such as pollution.

A few months ago Studio Roosegarde unveiled the Smog Free Tower in Beijing, a 7-metre tall air purifier they hope could hoover up the Chinese capital’s deadly pollution problem.

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