En collaboration avec Sofie Platou, la designer graphique Julie Elise Hauge a fabriqué 8 raquettes de ping-pong à partir de matières différentes telles que le béton, le plexiglas, l’éponge, le marbre, le bois et le miroir. Les créations ont aussi été imprimées en posters avec un beau set design.
Making-of :
L’artiste japonais Kohei Nawa a proposé dans le cadre de la Aichi Triennale 2013 cette superbe installation Foam, plongeant les visiteurs dans une mer étrange, utilisant sur fond noir un matière poreuse telle une mousse, pour décider des nuages. Une création de toute beauté à découvrir dans la suite en images.
The Zero is yet another bottle packaging design that looks at extracting the very last drop of its contents. We saw a similar toothpaste design that used centrifugal force to drive all the toothpaste towards the mouth. The question here is, does this concept work or should designers put back their thinking caps and come up with something different? What do you say?
Designer: Yongwoo Shim
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(Wrapped Around My Finger was originally posted on Yanko Design)
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Belgian designer Carl de Smet of Noumenon has developed high-tech foam furniture that can be squashed to 5% of its original size for easy transportation and then expanded “like popcorn” by heating it up (+ movie + interview).
Under the proposal, which is still at the research stage, products made of polyurethane shape-memory polymers (SMPs) are compressed into flat, lightweight slabs (top left in the above sequence), meaning they take up very little space until they are required. When heated, the furniture returns to its original shape thanks to the “memory foam” properties of the material (see movie below).
“It’s light, so for shipping it’s almost taking up no space,” de Smet told Dezeen. “If it gets damaged and it’s heated again, [the damage] disappears. If you ship the packaging and something happens to it, it doesn’t matter because it isn’t the end product; that’s in the imprinted memory.”
The project evolved out of a research project to design a parabolic antenna for outer space that would be compressed to make a smaller payload on a spaceship, then expanded to full size when exposed to the sun’s rays. This project involved shape-memory alloys (SMAs) – advanced metals that perform in the same way as SMPs, but which are highly expensive.
“I wanted to bring it back to daily life and not only use it for high technology projects, and for that the metals were too expensive,” says de Smet. “With polymers, when you produce them in large quantities, it’s affordable.”
At the moment the items need to be placed in a large heated environment like a sauna to reach the required temperature of 70 degrees, but de Smet is researching other ways of triggering the transition from the compressed to the expanded form, for example by “programming” the material to return to its remembered form when electricity is passed through it.
“[At the moment] it’s programmed [to expand] at 70 degrees, because of the logistics of transport,” de Smet said. “For example in the summer and the truck is stuck in traffic, then inside it is building up to 50 degrees and we don’t want the furniture to pop, like popcorn.”
The foam, which is strong enough to be structural, can be turned into furniture by milling solid blocks of the material or by injection moulding.
De Smet is exhibiting the project, including scale models of a foam armchair, at the Buda Factory building in Kortrijk, Belgium, as part of the Interieur 2012 design biennale. The exhibition continues until 28 October. See all our stories about Interieur 2012.
Below is the interview with de Smet, conducted by Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs:
Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the Noumenon project.
Carl de Smet (above): It’s a research project that started five, six years ago, around the world of smart materials, smart polymers, which have the possibility to change shape. It means you can fix a temporary shape and then if you reach a certain temperature it can transform into an end product.
Marcus Fairs: What kind of material is it? It looks like a kind of foam.
Carl de Smet: It’s a kind of memory foam. Foam can have different densities; normal foam is really soft, spongy. But this one is rigid, so it’s strong, which means you can us it as a structural support. And when it becomes hot and when it wants to change form, it becomes soft.
Marcus Fairs: Is this a material you invented yourself or one that you discovered and found a use for?
Carl de Smet: These polymers have been around for 20 years but finally we are updating the material for design applications on a bigger scale.
Marcus Fairs: Was this something you discovered by mistake?
Carl de Smet: We didn’t discover it by mistake. In 2002/2003 I was doing a research project with shape-memory alloys; metals that are really well known. It was an idea to design a parabolic antenna for outer space. The idea was to bring a squeezed form out into space, connected to a spaceship. You unload it in the cold air then when you turn it to the sun the heat would open it and form an antenna. I really liked the idea of designing certain kinds of objects that have a performative behaviour. I wanted to bring it back to daily life and not only use it for high technology projects, and for that the metals were too expensive. As you know with polymers, when you produce them in large quantities, it’s affordable. That’s the reason I researched into plastics.
Marcus Fairs: So tell us how this could be used to create a product. Here you’ve got a model of an armchair.
Carl de Smet: It’s an armchair but the basic idea is that [you buy it] in a packaging shape. You buy a package, you come home to the story that everybody knows now: the special key from Ikea; you put everything together; you assemble it yourself. Here the material is making this move. The material is doing the work. Because the form in imprinted in the memory effect of the material.
Marcus Fairs: So you manufacture this chair and you compress it, you squash it?
Carl de Smet: Yes.
Marcus Fairs: How much smaller can you make it than the original?
Carl de Smet: We can reduce it to 20 times smaller. If you think about the form it’s a cellular structure, and inside the structure there is air and you can collapse this structure. Then it becomes like a slab.
Marcus Fairs: What’s the benefit of this? I imagine you can ship it much more efficiently.
Carl de Smet: It’s light, so for shipping it’s almost taking up no space. If it gets damaged and it’s heated again [the damage] disappears. If you ship the packaging and something happens it doesn’t matter because it isn’t the end product; that’s in the imprinted memory.
Marcus Fairs: How do you then turn the squashed product into the full-sized product?
Carl de Smet: For the moment it’s heat, but we are researching applications that will allow it to happen in households, because not everyone has a sauna at home where you can put furniture.
Marcus Fairs: So you have to put it in a very hot room?
Carl de Smet: At the moment it’s programmed to [expand at] 70 degrees, because of the logistics of transport. For example in the summer if there is a traffic jam and the truck is stuck in traffic, then inside it is building up to 50 degrees and we don’t want the furniture to pop, like popcorn. That’s the reason we calculated 70 degrees. It sounds quite high but when you think about logistics, that’s the minimum.
Marcus Fairs: How would you shape the product? With a mill?
Carl de Smet: It’s made with a mill but we can also do injection moulding. This is a kind of a polyurethane, or PU. In the car industry the fake leather is made out of PU. So we can do it like fake leather or fake wood; it’s just the finishing of the moulding process. It depends on the moulding and how you present it.
Marcus Fairs: What’s the scientific process that allows it to retain its memory?
Carl de Smet: If you look under a microscope at polymers you see a kind of spaghetti form. In this form you make chemical cross-links and that fixes the form and the trigger. Every time you compress or stretch it it remembers the connection points and cross links.
The post Memories of the Future
by Carl de Smet appeared first on Dezeen.
Three designers experiment with polyurethane foam to create new, unexpected forms
by Jack Shaw
While the idea of elevating industrial materials to the level of high design isn’t new, recent creative experiments with polyurethane foam have yielded work that feels undeniably fresh. Widely used in the furniture production process, polyurethane foam rarely constitutes a visible part of the final product. The material’s amorphous nature and near instantaneous conversion from a liquid to a solid not only lend to its commercial application as insulation and interior support, but have also made it a favorite plaything for conceptual designers. These projects have yielded work of unconventionally beautiful and rare intellectual appeal.
Berlin based product designer Jerszy Seymour has developed a career-spanning relationship with the polyurethane foam material. He has created an entire visual language of drips and goo, which he calls Scum. From lamps to a ‘house in a box’ kit Seymour has used the foam for projects of every scale. Seymour’s work has a humble honesty and a quality of being almost undesigned. His New Order Chair for Vitra Edition uses the foam to reconstruct a plastic garden chair into a design that is both experimental and elegant.
Like Seymour, Massimiliano Adami’s work often incorporates found objects. In his Fossili Moderni series polyurethane foam is used to suspend common plastic containers and toys (of both children and adults) before being sliced into a desired form. The resulting magma of 21st century refuse is a surprising reinterpretation of everyday objects. There is a thoughtfulness to this immortalization of the everyday object, considering it could take up to 1000 years for the average PET bottle to degrade in a landfill questioning mass design and its consumption seems entirely appropriate.
The Swell Vase, by Brooklyn designer Chen Chen, achieves its alien appearance by incorporating the contradiction between pressure and constraint into the production process. Made by injecting the expanding polyurethane foam into a net bag the tension between the two materials dictates the vase’s ultimate form. The work is made far more interesting by the idea of removing the designer’s control, and elevating the role of materials in the design process.
Jerszy Seymour has worked with such companies as Magis, Vitra, Kreo, Moulinex, SFR and IDEE. Massimiliano Adami has created designs for Cappellini, Meritalia, and Fendi. Adami and Chen Chen both currently have work on display at Moss in SoHo, New York City.
Images of New Order Chair by Hans-Jörg Walter, all others by Juan Garcia Mosqueda.
Explorations in form as artists carve out a foam-filled room
Fresh off Perrier-Jouët‘s Bi-Centenaire Project (more on that later), Daniel Arsham has a new installation and performance piece debuting this week in NYC. “Dig”, in collaboration with Arsham’s firm Snarkitecture, comprises of completely filling the gallery space at the Storefront for Art and Architecture with white architectural foam. Arsham and his fellow Snarkitects will occupy the space during the monthlong installation, excavating the foam filled gallery with simple tools to transform the space into a cavernous experiment in form.
The tunneling continues through 4 April 2011, and as performances until 22 April 2011. The exhibition is invitation-only, but passersby can sneak a peak from the street or can follow the progress from start to finish on OHWOW’s site.
Hong Kong designer Kitmen Keung has created a lounge chair and ottoman by slicing a cube of foam in two.
Called Dual Cut, it was designed for Belgian brand Sixinch.
The two pieces of foam fit together for easy storage and transportation.
Photographs are by S.Zine.
Here’s some info from the designer:
Splitting a raw rectangular foam block with only two L-shaped cut lines, the Dual Cut Chair and ottoman employs the simplest production processes true to the materials in use with minimal wastage.
It features two ergonomically comfortable seat back angle options of 6° and 23°, and the multi-formation ability to form a one seater with a side table, a chaise lounge or a corner table.
It also easily forms a neat, compact parcel for convenient storage and transportation.
Dual Cut is available in Light Grey and Dark Grey with a 3-layer-system coating making it suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.
Dimensions: stacked, w80 x h80 x d93cm; chaise lounge, w80 x h80 x d170cm; ottoman, w80 x h40 x d77cm; seat height 40cm.
Produced by Sixinch.
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| Long-d Clock by Kit Men Keung | Confluences by Philippe Nigro | Entailles by Philippe Nigro for Ligne Roset |
Here are a couple of images of SuperFoam Chair, a chair made of foam with giant bubbles by designer Rich Gilbert. (more…)
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