Hasta La Ideas

Now and then something appears in the local pages of Italian newspaper that deserves English translation. This is from the Turin section of today’s La Stampa:

A new eco mall will double the size of Turin’s Eataly
From green cars to sustainable food to bio-clothes

By Emanuela Minucci

Oscar Farinetti [the founder of Eataly] doesn’t stop. And stays true to his ideas. Notwithstanding the success he is having with the Eataly brand worldwide, he has chosen Turin, his first love, to try out a new concept that cannot be more aligned with these times of economic and environmental concerns.

He is planning a new complex, the first “Green Retail Park” in the world, right next to the Carpano building in the Lingotto area, where he started off in 2007 with his first mix of thematic restaurants and the sales of products that until then people could only find at the Salone del Gusto [the yearly Slow Food fair].

And the visions of the two “Eataly”‘s are closely aligned.

The new complex will host retail activities and services that in their production/creation, distribution and sales are driven by a vision of eco-sustainability and social responsibility.

Designed by Negozio Blu Architetti Associati, the 20,000 sq mt spaces are all dedicated to green shopping: from food to clothing to cars. Everything in this bio-cathedral will be “good, clean and fair” [The Slow Food motto].

A green environment…
The building will be constructed with sustainable technologies and materials. […] The south facing facade will use natural screening and shading, as well as plant walls, and the roof will be covered with grass and plants—one of the many actions to reduce the building’s environmental impact. The plants will reduce of cooling needs and the associated heat island effect, help filter the particulate pollution in our urban air, and dampen urban street noise. “We will use a range of sustainable technologies, materials and architectural interventions, including solar panels,” explains the architect Cristiana Catino.

… with green products and services
The space will host stores that sell sustainable clothing and shoes, service entities specialized in renewable energy, and companies focused on bio-construction. Also on sale will be products for the garden and the biological vegetable garden, food and biological cosmetics, and sustainable furniture and household products. There will be a quality restaurant, and a specialized wellbeing center. One can even buy a green scooter or car. The heart of the space will host an eco assistance zone, where people can go to for advice on how to save energy in their homes, how to install solar panels, or how they can have a meaningful environmental impact in their day-to-day activities.

I am not sure whether it is the first green retail park in the world, probably not, and I hope that “Green Retail Park” is just a working title, but knowing Farinetti and what he has achieved with Eataly, we can expect it to have a big impact, and not just in Turin.

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I’ve read that during the Industrial Revolution, it took a special kind of mind to envision the types of actions machines could perform. For example, early attempts to create sewing machines attempted to mimic the act of two human hands passing and plucking a needle back and forth through fabric, and those attempts failed. The purely mechanical needle, hook and shuttle system still used today was what worked, and it was difficult for all but the most gifted to work those futuristic actions out on paper.

It takes a similarly rare level of brilliance to look not forward, but backward, to find an older technology that can solve a modern-day problem. And a Tunisian start-up company called Saphon Energy has done just that, by designing a wind-capturing device that eschews the windmill form factor—a 400-year-old invention—and going with one at least 5,000 years old: the sail.

Windpower is arguably the greenest of the green, but one reason it’s not seeing massive uptake is that the turbine form factor is inherently problematic. They’re expensive to manufacture, noisy, and inefficient. Saphon Energy’s innovation is a simple disc-shaped sail that catches and dances in the breeze. The shifting energy this produces at the mounting point is captured and either stored or immediately converted to electricity.

Hassine Labaied, a Dubai banker with ties to Tunisia, was so smitten with the promise of Saphon Energy’s “Zero-Blade Technology” that he quit his 12-year finance career to pursue, as it were, a career in sails and marketing. Now serving as Saphon’s CEO, in the TED talk below he outlines the surprising statistics that make Zero-Blade look like a good bet:

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Our current linear model of ‘take-make-dispose’ is throwing up major economic and environmental challenges. Risk to our supply chain is increasing, and the cost of materials is rising sharply, putting pressure on businesses to change. We need to shift towards more circular systems and good design thinking is pivotal to this transition.

In order to make this shift, designers need to consider the system as a whole rather than focus on individual components or products. True co-creation is crucial from those involved in these lifecycles: designers and material experts, manufacturers and resource managers, brands and retailers, consumers, policy makers and government, investors & academics all working together.

The Great Recovery is a project by the RSA (the UK’s Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), aimed at building new networks to explore the issues, investigate innovation gaps and incubate new partnerships.

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Milan-based designer James Irvine has designed an I-beam shaped stool for Italian design brand Disipline to be exhibited during Helsinki Design Week this month.

The name Centanni derives from the hope that the durable design can last 100 years.

Created using larch wood and oak, the design uses no glue or screws. Instead sections are slotted together using a system of tenons and wedges.

Italian brand Discipline launched in Milan this year.  The Centanni Stool will be available at the end of September and Helsinki Design Week runs from 6-16th September.

The post Centanni Stool by James Irvine
for Discipline appeared first on Dezeen.

In an idealistic version of ID, you’d never set out to design “a pair of headphones;” you’d aim to design “a way people can hear their music, hands-free, while performing a variety of activities.” In other words you’d start with the problem and design the solution with no predetermined form factor. In the real world, of course, chances are slim you’ll have this luxury when your firm is contracted by a company in the business of making headphones.

Design competitions, on the other hand, hew more to that ideal state of ID. The danger there is that absent hardnosed clients and budget constraints, rigor goes out the window and the fanciful predominates.

But industrial designer Nick Ross’ entry in the James Dyson Award, the Axolotl Selective Bio-Harvester, hits that sweet spot: It attacks the problem of deforestation based on rigorous research, not just preconceptions, and the proposed solution is meant to solve that problem the way an industrial designer would solve it.

What I mean by that last part is this: A protestor tries to solve deforestation by chaining themself to a tree. An environmentalist activist might organize rallies. A town council might ban logging and force companies to go log some other town’s forest. A materials scientist might try to develop a viable alternative to wood. But what Ross did was design something that comes out of a factory and does the existing job in an entirely different way, one that changes the impact of the job itself. “Instead of directing this project in a ‘save the rainforest’ protest, I opted for a realizable and commercially viable solution,” Ross explains. “I felt this would increase the possibilities that my research and concept could become a viable solution that would benefit the forestry industry as well as the forest.”

First, the research part. Ross, who hails from New Zealand, spent roughly four months in Sweden immersing himself in the practical issues of deforestation:

I collaborated with 9 Swedish forestry companies. I organized various seminars during the project in which I invited company representatives, machinery operators and forest owners. A variety of research methodology was implemented, including on site ethnography of machine operators, multiple interviews with environmental and forestry specialists and field visits to witness current damage and effects. Throughout the entirety of the project my findings and conclusions were validated by the various people involved. The entire process was documented and compiled into a thorough report that was made available following presenting the research and final concept to a well received audience made up of representatives from all regions of the industry.

Secondly, the proposed solution Ross developed, much better explained in video:

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