Japanese decluttering guru Marie Kondo has released a product she claims will help people organise their homes – a set of three empty, shoebox-style containers she calls the Hikidashi Boxes.
Kondo is known for her KonMari Method, a technique that encourages people to live with less. She asks people to hold their possessions one by one in their hands, and to keep the items that “spark joy” and ditch those that don’t.
The Hikidashi Boxes are intended as spaces where cherished items that have passed the spark joy test can be stored and organised. They are named after the Japanese word for “drawer”.
The tidying expert came up with the idea for the product after working with clients in America. She noted that keeping a stock of boxes to use as storage is a unique Japanese custom, and isn’t understood in the USA.
As a result, many people that started the following the KonMari Method were unable to maintain it.
“She searched for the ideal tidying boxes here in America but could not find any that brought her and her clients joy,” said the KonMari team.
“Marie then set out to create a set of simple and beautiful boxes that could be used to bring order to her clients’ homes.”
Kondo collaborated with Apple’s head of packaging materials Cecylia Ferrandon on the design of the Hikidashi Boxes, according to FastCompany.
“My job was to create a seamless unboxing experience, while also ensuring that the packaging properly protected the product and was sustainable,” Ferrandon told the website.
The boxes come in three-piece sets that feature a large, medium and small box. There are four different designs: Clarity, Harmony, Balance and Wonder.
Each box is made of reinforced fibreboard, composed of recycled paper, to reduce environmental impact. The board is topped with laminated premium paper to add durability and all the materials are FSC certified, meaning they come from responsibly managed forests.
Inside, they are lined with prints selected by Kondo herself.
Included with each purchase of the Hikidashi Boxes is an online step-by-step guide for using them, delivered to the customer in a series of short videos and helpful tips.
Kondo launched the KonMari self-help philosophy in 2011 with her internationally bestselling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organising. Her particular art of decluttering is also the subject of an eight-episode Netflix series, which is yet to air.
NASA has selected the five winning designs in the latest stage of its 3D-printed Habitat competition, which include a community of modular pods made from the Martian surface, and a vertical egg-like container.
The On-Site Habitat Competition invited groups to design a sustainable shelter for a crew of four astronauts on a mission to Mars, using construction techniques enabled by 3D printing technology.
Teams had to come up with a solution that tackles the issues of transporting materials from Earth to Mars, as well as the differences in atmosphere and landscape on the new planet.
Each was required to create digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of a house on Mars using specialised software tools.
Arkansas-based team Zopherus was awarded first place with its 3D-printed modular habitat concept
“We are thrilled to see the success of this diverse group of teams that have approached this competition in their own unique styles,” said Monsi Roman, programme manager for NASA’s series of Centennial Challenges.
“They are not just designing structures, they are designing habitats that will allow our space explorers to live and work on other planets. We are excited to see their designs come to life as the competition moves forward.”
The top five teams were selected by NASA in partnership with Bradley University of Peoria, Illinois, out of 18 groups from around the globe. Ranked using a points system, they will all share part of a $100,000 prize depending on what score they achieved.
The winning Zopherus habitat is built from materials taken from the Martian surface
Arkansas-based team Zopherus was awarded first place with its modular habitat for humans on Mars, 3D-printed without human interference with materials made from the Martian surface.
In the concept, a lander would scan its surroundings and select an optimum print area, while autonomous robots are deployed from the vessel to gather materials for the 3D printer.
The lander seals to the ground to provide a protected, pressurised print environment, and then mixes materials, and begins to print the hexagonal structure.
Each Zopherus habitat is 3D-printed using a mixture of ice, calcium oxide and Martian aggregate
Thanks to its hexagonal structure, multiple Zopherus habitats can be printed to stand close to one another, creating a community.
Each structure is built using a specialised composite Martian concrete material – made from ice, calcium oxide and Martian aggregate – which are collected by rovers and fed into the lander for mixing.
A large window on the mezzanine level of each habitat provides expansive views of the Martian landscape, as well as allowing light to nurture a small hydroponic garden for growth of vegetation and production of oxygen.
AI SpaceFactory’s habitat boasts an egg-shaped design to deal with atmospheric pressure
AI SpaceFactory came in second place with its vertical, egg-shaped structure, which is designed with a double shell system to deal with the internal atmospheric pressure and structural stresses that would occur on Mars.
Like the Zopherus habitat, the Marsha design is made using materials harvested from the Martian surface, removing the dependency on rockets to transport materials from Earth.
Each Marsha habitat stands alone as a separate structure
The team developed an innovative mixture of basalt fibre, extracted from Martian rock, and renewable bioplastic (polylactic acid) derived from plants that would be grown on Mars.
Unlike the communal format of the Zopherus habitats, each Marsha habitat stands alone as a separate structure.
Kahn-Yates’ design features a series of holes to allow daylight in
Third place team Kahn-Yates also designed its habitats as individual volumes, with sleek, oblong forms intended to minimise the impact from potential dust storms.
After the space-faring module arrives on Mars, its exterior shell would split off as it lands, leaving behind a pre-fabricated core. After landing, a five-axis print arm would extends from the top of the core and print a foundation using materials found on the Martian landscape.
The arm then prints a concrete shell, while secondary nozzles print HDPE (high-density polyethylene) layers on either side of the shell, effectively sandwiching the Martian concrete in the middle.
Daylight is allowed into the habitat by means of reducing or eliminating portions of the central concrete layer in the exterior shell makeup, to have just the HDPE layers as the skin. This would aid gardening and food production, according to the team.
SEArch+/Apis Cor’s habitat features a double-shell structure to provide protection from solar radiation
In fourth place is SEArch+/Apis Cor, which submitted a habitat boasting a double-shell design to shelter the structure from galactic solar radiation. The habitat designed by the fifth-place team, Northwestern University, features a unique spherical shell and outer parabolic dome.
The On-Site Habitat Competition is the third phase in NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Centennial Challenge, which was created to explore construction technologies needed to create sustainable housing solutions on Earth, the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Northwestern University designed a dome-shaped habitat with a unique entryway system
Phase one, the Design Competition, took place in 2015 and required teams to submit architectural renderings. Submissions included Foster + Partners’ proposal for a 93-square-metre habitat printed from regolith, the loose soil and rocks found on the surface of the Red Planet.
Phase two, the Structural Member Competition, took place in 2016-2017 and focused on material technologies, asking teams to create structural components.
There are still four more phases of the challenge to follow, culminating in a head-to-head print of finalists’ designs in early 2019.
A team from the Technical University of Munich has topped previous hyperloop speed records with a capsule that hit 467 kilometres per hour, at a competition run by SpaceX.
The WARR Hyperloop team, made up of over 40 students from the Technical University of Munich, raced their prototype in the Hyperloop Pod Competition, held at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California on 22 July 2018.
It is the third time the aerospace company — headed by billionaire engineer Elon Musk — has run the competition, and the third time WARR Hyperloop has won.
By reaching a top speed of 467 kilometres per hour, the team beat the record they set at last year’s competition by almost 50 per cent.
Self-propelling capsules created for 2018 competition
SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition challenges university teams to build the best capsule for its high-speed transportation system, first mooted by Musk in a white paper in 2013. As a point of difference to previous competitions, the 2018 competing pods had to be self-propelled.
“That was optional in the previous years; it was also possible to use SpaceX technology,” said WARR Hyperloop team leader Gabriele Semino. “But we’ve had our own drive since 2017. This meant we were able to further develop our concept in principle.”
WARR Hyperloop’s pod reached a record-breaking speed of 467 kilometres per hour at the SpaceX competition
He said for this year’s entry, the team focused on reducing weight while increasing drive performance. They built the shell from lightweight carbon fibre-reinforced composite materials and designed a more aerodynamic shape.
They also replaced the previous model’s 50-kilowatt motor with eight smaller motors.
Test pods still slower than Musk’s vision
While 467 kilometres per hour is well below the 1,200 kilometres per hour that Musk imagined for the eventual hyperloop — close to the speed of sound — the length of the test track limits what engineers can achieve, for now.
“The tube in front of the SpaceX building in Los Angeles is only 1.2 kilometres long, and the pod has to accelerate to full speed and then brake again within this distance,” said Semino. “This is a gigantic challenge. Our pod accelerates five times faster than an airplane during take-off.”
The previous record for a hyperloop pod among competing companies working on the same technology — Musk open-sourced the design back in 2013 — is 387 kilometres per hour. That was reached by Virgin Hyperloop One at its 500-metre DevLoop test track near Las Vegas in December 2017.
This year the Hyperloop Pod Competition invited entries from 18 teams across the USA, Europe and Asia.
Pods not yet capable of carrying passengers
In addition to the WARR Hyperloop team, the finalists came from Delft University in the Netherlands and ETH Lausanne in Switzerland. They reached 142 kilometres per hour and 85 kilometres per hour respectively.
At just two metres long and 30 centimetres high, WARR Hyperloop’s pod is not fit for human transportation and can’t be directly scaled up.
“The technology is still in the development phase and our prototypes are built with the initial objective of testing various technologies,” said Semino. “However, this way we can contribute to making the hyperloop vision a reality one day.”
The pod, which is not yet scaled to be large enough to carry passengers, was tested along SpaceX’s track in California
For this reason, the team also built a second pod to showcase its levitation and frictionless drive systems.
The idea of hyperloop transportation has captured the imagination of some of the world’s top engineers, architects and designers over the last five years. Foster + Partners and BIG are both collaborators with Virgin Hyperloop One, which is working on a system to connect Dubai and Abu Dhabi in 12 minutes, while PriestmanGoode has designed cabins for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, which is conducting feasibility studies in India, Europe and the USA.
Michael Arad, the architect behind New York’s 9/11 Memorial, has revealed plans for a monument dedicated to the victims of a shooting massacre that took place at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church.
The Emanuel Nine Memorial will recognise those who were killed and wounded in the racially motivated Charleston church shooting on 17 June 2015. White supremacist Dylann Roof opened fire during an evening service, murdering nine African American attendees and injuring five.
Located on the church grounds, Arad’s monument will comprise two longs benches facing each other across a courtyard, with a low-level marble fountain in between. Water will emerge from a cross-shaped opening in the dipped basin and eventually spill over its sides, where the names of the nine victims will be inscribed in gold.
The design offers a small-scale interpretation of the 9/11 Memorial that Arad completed with landscape architect Peter Walker in 2011 to commemorate the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center.
Huge waterfalls cascade into pools that trace the exact footprints of the destroyed Twin Towers, with the names of those lost inscribed around the edge.
At the Emanuel Nine Memorial, the seats facing the water feature will have high rounded backs to cocoon visitors. Each will rise in height from the rear to the front to create a swooping shape.
An opening between the benches will lead to a small altar, located in a corner at the rear of courtyard. Here, a white cross will be mounted onto a brick wall, and low pews will be provided for pause and prayer.
Accessed via a pathway from the courtyard, a garden will feature six stone benches and five trees that represent the five who survived the attack. The sixth bench represents the church.
The Israeli-American architect intends the Emanuel Nine Memorial to not only recognise the shooting, but also acknowledge the history of the 202-year-old church. Established in 1971 as a union of both free black people and slaves, it is recognised as having the country’s oldest black congregation historically.
“The inspiration for this memorial draws on Mother Emanuel AME Church as a historic place and as a congregation,” said Arad in a statement. “Throughout its 200-year history, it has endured slavery, discrimination and racism. When worship and assembly were banned, the church resisted and provided a place of fellowship and sanctuary.
“The Emanuel Nine tragedy marks another dark moment for the church, though faith helped to heal and bring light into the darkness,” he added.
Also in the American south, a memorial and museum dedicated to the legacy of racial violence and injustice in the country opened in Montgomery, Alabama, earlier this year.
The Pet Collective put together this entertaining collection of their picks for the best and cutest pet videos that hit the Internet during the month of July 2018…(Read…)
Unimatic , the Italian company releases its latest U1 designs with high-contrast dials and plenty of black. The new U1s come in silver or black PVD with 40mm steel cases, 120 click mono-directional bezels, Super-Luminova illumination, aluminum or sapphire inserts, 1000ft water resistance, and automatic Seiko movements with 41-hour power reserves. Pricing for these are €485 for the U1-D (approximately $525 at time of publishing) and €585 for the black version (approximately $635). There will be 600 pieces and 300 pieces for these models, respectively…(Read…)
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