Hasta La Ideas

Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Ethan Frier & Jonathan Ota – Carnegie Mellon University
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Category: Transportation
Award: Student Winner

Project Aura

Project Aura is a bicycle lighting system designed to address the issue of nighttime urban bike commuting. The system challenges the current paradigm of bike lighting, and it was our intention to create a functional safety lighting system that riders want to use and want to be seen using it.

Core77 has been excited about the project since we first posted about it in May and have been highlighting different bicycle safety lighting systems like Benedikt Steinhoff’s LEDs and Emily Brooke’s virtual bike lane ever since.

The need for an improved Bicycle Lighting System solution is explained by the Project Aura Team:

Attachable front and rear lights are great at making riders seen, but they are not always the most effective way of increasing visibility to all motorists, especially from the side. Additionally, front and rear lights do little to identify a biker as a biker as opposed to an ambiguous blinking point of light. Many bikes have reflectors on them, both on the wheels and the frame. But reflectors are only effective when they are in the direct headlight of an automobile, an inelegant solution at best. By Illuminating the rims, we have created an immediate formal context for drivers to identify bikers as bikers and take the appropriate measures to drive safely in their vicinity. The goal of the project was to rethink the paradigm of bike lights, while increasing convenience and safely and integrating everything into a package which did not detract from the pure aesthetic of the bike coveted by riders.

Core77: How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

Jon and I are in different cities this summer so we couldn’t be together when the judging came out. I was at work, and the internet was too slow to watch the live stream so I was glued to the Twitter feed. Jon was able to watch the live stream, he was actually on campus at the time. Right after we found out we called each other pretty much in disbelief. It was a pretty exciting and validating moment for us.

What’s the latest news or development with your project?

We are absolutely thrilled to have won the award, but the project is still very much in its infancy. Currently we are in the process of getting involved with some startup incubators on campus at Carnegie Mellon to help us bring Aura out of the prototype phase. Our goal is to see Aura out on bikes in the real world, but we still have work to do.

What is 1 quick anecdote about your project?

We had to work on a pretty tight budget, so we tried to use parts we already had lying around as much as possible. Towards the end of the project when we had finished fabricating and wiring everything, all we had to do was put the tubes and tires on the rims. The tires we had from before were much too narrow for the new rims but we had almost no money left in our budget. In Jon’s words it was like “A duck trying to give birth to an elephant”. We fought these tires for over an hour until our hands were literally bleeding and both tire levers we had were broken in the process. Eventually we finally got them on, I honestly don’t know how. But when we went to ride it suddenly the bike didn’t work. Needless to say the tires had to come right back off again. Later that afternoon after we fixed the lights we were so fed up we just rode down to the local bike shop and bought new tires after all.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Adam Harvey – Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Location: New York City, New York, USA
Category: Speculative Objects/Concepts
Award: Student Winner

CV Dazzle: Open Source Camouflage

CV Dazzle is camouflage from face detection. It is a response to the growing prowess of computer vision technology and the resulting phenomenon of shrinking privacy.

This project arose out my interest in photography and our changing relationship to surveillance and privacy. I was excited by the revolutionizing effect of digital photography in the last decade but also concerned about the repercussions of our increasingly interconnected cultures and sophisticated visual-data mining tools. The impetus for designing a camouflage against face detection was to show how we could adapt to occularcentric, surveillance-societies without retreating into anonymity, and, in doing so, celebrate style and augment privacy.

Core77: How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

I was sitting in my studio during the NYC heat wave and tuned into the livecast from Palo Alto. It was great to watch it as a livecast and to see and hear the jurors during their decision making process.

What’s the latest news or development with your project?

I’m going to be porting my codebase over to OpenFrameworks and starting a GitHub project where others programmers can download what I’ve done so far. Non-programmers will also be able to contribute by submitting photos of makeup and fashion accessories to an online inspiration repository. Offline, I’m going to be working on several fashion accessories.

What was the inspiration behind your project?

It was inspired by my friend’s duplicitous halloween costume.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Thomas Hurd
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Category: Furniture/Lighting
Award: Student Winner

Polytope X-Board Seating

Polytope is an environmentally conscious flat-pack seating system ideal for temporary seating needs. Comes pre-cut, flat-packed and can be assembled in 15-30 seconds. Polytope is light for easy stacking and redeployment, allowing for dynamic use of space. The shape of Polytope allows for various seating configurations and opportunities for branding.

A large amount of exploration into the Xanita board through a series of directed esquisses which enabled me to better understand the material and its limits, and how far those limits could be pushed. A very quick process of sketching took place but the real design work came about with the use of quick 3D prototype with paper and card and some experimentation with origami, which gave a realistic impression of the limits of folding the paper and how fitting different pieces would actually work (as paper can be bent without damaging the material where as 10mm thick Xanita doesn’t quite allow this) After the initial concept was chosen the aim to transform it in into a one piece assembly began, which in itself proved to be a design challenge, involving a lot of tinkering with dimensions and structures.

Core77: How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

I set my alarm at 3am (the local time of the announcement) figuring I’d probably sleep through it or turn it off and go back to bed. I managed to wake up, but in my 3am daze got confused and thought the winner had been announced, and as I went to turn it off, there came my project! Definitely made the 3am wake up call worth it!

What’s the latest news or development with your project?

Currently I’m working on perfecting my design for mass manufacturer. I’m hoping in the near future to have the first batch produced to start selling online and to event organisers. I’ve had many ideas about maximising the screen printing abilities of the material and this is something I’d like to explore.

Any interesting experiences in developing this project?

While I was doing this project I was having to catch the train back and forth from uni to home with my prototype. I used to get some pretty strange looks, because honestly, who brings their own seat on the train? Although one guy thought it was a great idea and it beat standing during peak hour.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! We have been delighted by the breadth and depth of this year’s submissions and look forward to taking a moment to honor this year’s awardees. For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

One of three carrying actions for the “Load Carrier for Labour”

Designer: Vikram Dinubhai Panchal – NID
Location: Ahmedabad, INDIA
Category: Products/Equipment
Award: Professional Winner

Load Carrier for Labour
“Load Carrier for Labour” project is an innovation to improve the working condition of labourers and workers at many places globally—construction sites, factories, ports, railway stations, etc. The objective is to prevent various occupational hazards and demonstrating Product design and ergonomic consideration for the welfare of human life.

The principal object of the innovation is to facilitate three methods of lifting and shifting of the loads by worker, such as above the head, at the back and push or pull action. The new device main structures are made from cane materials, plastic and metal components. It is possible to make the entire structure in plastic or metal.

The new design has two major parts, one that holds the load and the other that rests on the shoulder. Device has two knobs, which facilitates the change of required function manually from one to another in one minute duration. This allows three modular functions for carrying lighter loads on the head, medium loads at the back and heavier loads to push or pull as trolley. Ergonomically the load is distributed on the shoulder and at the lumber support by softer material. The total weight of device is 2 Kgs. and would cost approx rupees. 300/- in mass production.

Core77 Design Awards: How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

I learned that I was recognized by the jury from my student Varun Prabhakar who wrote me an email:

hi,
Sir, saw this on Core77…
http://www.core77designawards.com/recipients/load-carrier-for-labour/
u have amazed everyone, as always..
heartiest congratulations!!!
Regards,
Varun Prabhakar

What’s the latest news or development with your project?

At present, I will be interested to find sponsorship, marketing or a manufacturer to take this design further to the end user. I would like to make this design principle more versatile by using metal and plastic. I am open for any organization who are interested in sponsoring, marketing or manufacturing.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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