Hasta La Ideas

News: police have seized parts of a suspected 3D-printed gun during a raid on a property in Greater Manchester, England.

In what is thought to be the first such discovery, Greater Manchester Police officers found a plastic trigger (top image) and clip capable of holding bullets, which they believe had been 3D-printed using a MakerBot Replicator 2 that was also discovered at the property.

If verified, the discovery “demonstrates that organised crime groups are acquiring technology that can be bought on the high street to produce the next generation of weapons,” said detective inspector Chris Mossop of the city’s organised crime unit.

Update: Greater Manchester Police issued a new statement following these claims after the 3D-printing community pointed out they may be harmless printer upgrade parts.

“This is a really significant discovery for Greater Manchester Police,” said Mossop. “In theory, the technology essentially allows offenders to produce their own guns in the privacy of their own home, which they can then supply to the criminal gangs who are causing such misery in our communities. Because they are also plastic and can avoid X-ray detection, it makes them easy to conceal and smuggle.”

Forensic experts are analysing whether the parts found could be used to make a working weapon, but Greater Manchester Police already believe this is the first discovery of 3D-printed gun parts in the UK.

The world’s first 3D printed gun was successfully fired in May this year by US anarchist Cody Wilson, triggering a global debate about the social and ethical impact of 3D-printing. Wilson’s gun was acquired by the V&A museum in London last month.

“There’s been a lot of technocratic optimism around 3D printing, particularly in the design world,” senior V&A curator Kieran Long told Dezeen in an interview about the acquisition. “I don’t believe everyone should be carrying guns and that’s not what we’re advocating here. What we are saying is this is possible and we might have to do something about it if we don’t want these things to happen.”

“These could be the next generation of firearms and a lot more work needs to be done to understand the technology and the scale of the problem,” said Mossop. “If what we have seized today can, as we suspect, be used to make a genuine firearm then today will be an important milestone in the fight against this next generation of homemade weapons.”

MakerBot’s Replicator 2 printer went on sale earlier this summer. Open-source designer Ronen Kadushin warned last year that 3D printers could allow people to “print ammunition for an army”.

Read our feature on how 3D-printed weapons are transforming warfare.

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by police in Manchester appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: the penultimate stop on our Dezeen and MINI World tour is Eindhoven. In our first video report from the city, co-founder of Dutch Design Week Miriam van der Lubbe explains how the small industrial town has become one of the leading centres for design and technology in the world.

“Eindhoven is actually a very small city compared to the big capitals in Europe or the world,” says van der Lubbe. “It’s a group of about seven villages that grew together into Eindhoven.”

It is also not a very pretty one. “The centre of Eindhoven really got destroyed [during the Second World War],” Van der Lubbe explains. “They built it up in the fifties and it became a really ugly city. In Eindhoven, it can only get better.”

Despite its size, the city has been a site for technological innovation since the industrial revolution, thanks almost entirely to Dutch electronics giant Philips.

The company was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 and, although it moved its headquarters to Amsterdam in 1997, its blue logo still adorns many of the buildings in the city.

Once Philips moved out, many people were afraid Eindhoven would become a “non-area”, Van der Lubbe says. In fact, the creative industries were quick to take advantage of the large amounts of cheap space Philips left behind.

One example Van der Lubbe takes us to is Strijp, a former Philips industrial complex that is now one of the central areas of Dutch Design Week.

“Strijp is a major part of Eindhoven centre actually,” says Van der Lubbe. “The owner of Strijp bought these industrial buildings and gave them to the creative people.”

An abundance of designers ready to take up these former industrial spaces graduate each year from Design Academy Eindhoven, which has gained a reputation as one of the foremost design schools in the world.

Former students include Hella Jongerius, Marcel Wanders and Tord Boontje and many graduates, such as Piet Hein Eek plus Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farrasin of Formafantasma, choose to stay in the city.

Van der Lubbe, herself a Design Academy Eindhoven alumni, shares a studio in nearby Geldrop with fellow academy graduate Niels van Eijk.

“It grew out of Philips, because they saw that design was an important aspect of products,” she says of the school.

“It used to be that as soon as people graduated they left. But now they’re coming back because they see that there’s something going on here that’s interesting.”

There is still an emphasis on science and technology in Eindhoven. Van der Lubbe takes us to the High Tech Campus on the outskirts of the city, where many technology companies are based, as well as Eindhoven University of Technology.

Having design, industry, science and technology in such close proximity is the key to Eindhoven’s success, says Van der Lubbe.

“There is a huge opportunity for Eindhoven because it has all these aspects in it,” she says. “It has the academic world, it has science, it has the creative world, it definitely has industry.”

“The potential of what is here is just starting to come out and there is so much more that can actually happen here. I really believe that.”

We drove around Eindhoven in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Family Music by Eindhoven-based hip hop producer Y’Skid.

You can listen to more music by Y’Skid on Dezeen Music Project and watch more of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour movies here.

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and it has industry” appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Apple has announced that its latest Mac Pro desktop computer will be available worldwide from December, after the sale of its predecessor was banned in the EU earlier this year due to safety regulations.

Apple announced the launch date of its black cylindrical Mac Pro desktop computer at an event in San Francisco yesterday.

Made in the US, the tube-shaped workstation is smaller and more difficult to customise than the previous model, which was released in 2006.

In March this year an EU health and safety amendment set out regulations dictating the amount of protection required around cooling fans and electrical ports, so the sale of the older machines was banned in most European countries.

The design of the latest Mac Pro was first unveiled in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in California, along with the iOS7 software interface.

Yesterday Apple also launched the iPad Air, a new thinner and lighter model in its range of tablets.

Following similar slim design principles to the company’s MacBook Air laptop, the latest tablet weighs just 450 grammes, measures 7.5 millimetres in thickness and has narrower borders around its screen.

Apple’s $5 billion Foster + Partners-designed campus in California was unanimously approved by Cupertino City Council last week. In a movie published by the council, Norman Foster has revealed that Steve Jobs called him “out of the blue” one day to ask him to design the ring-shaped building.

Via The Guardian.

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launch date appeared first on Dezeen.

L’animateur brésilien Daniel Rodrigues a imaginé cette jolie vidéo d’identité pour l’évènement Think with Google 2013. Un rassemblement de courtes séquences vidéos du plus bel effet réalisées pour présenter et introduire les différents intervenants à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Dutch Design Week 2013: designer Daan Roosegaarde has unveiled a “Lego from Mars” installation consisting of hundreds of wireless LED crystals that light up when placed on the floor (+ movie).

Crystal, a permanent installation that has opened in Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week, allows visitors to arrange the glowing crystals in patterns – and even steal them.

“We made thousands of little crystals which have two LEDs in them,” Roosegaarde told Dezeen. “When they’re placed in the area that you see here, they light up. It’s a sort of Lego from Mars. You can play, you can interact, you can steal them.”

There’s no battery, no cables,” he added. “The floor has a weak magnetic field, which gives light to the Crystals by wireless power.”

The installation is located in a void created at the newly refurbished Natlab, a building that once contained the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (Philips Physics Laboratory) and which played a key role in the development of products including the electric lightbulb and the compact disc.

“This location is quite special. Philips produced the lightbulb here; Einstein worked here on a lot of ideas,” said Roosegaarde. “So the city commissioned us to think about the future of light, where light gets liberated. It jumps out of the lightbulb and becomes free.”

LEDs are housed inside plastic tokens which visitors can tesselate to form patterns or words. Roosegaarde plans to publish the designs so that people can produce their own open-source versions in future.

“Every month we will make new crystals,” said Roosegaarde. “We will open-source how to make them, so students can make their own in different colours and shapes. New crystals will arrive and I will have nothing to do with it. People can do whatever they want. In that way it becomes an eco-system of behaviour. That’s going to be super-exciting, to let go of control and see what will happen.”

Visitors to the installation have already used the Crystals to write messages, including a marriage proposal. “We had one lady whose boyfriend proposed to her last night. He wrote ‘Marry me’ and he brought her here.”

Today Roosegaarde also unveiled a concept for an “electronic vacuum cleaner” that could remove smog from urban skies.

Here’s some text from Studio Roosegaarde:

Innovative Crystals of light in Eindhoven

Daan Roosegaarde: “People can play and share their stories of light”

At the start of the Dutch Design Week on Saturday 19 October the interactive light artwork CRYSTAL can be experienced in Eindhoven. The permanent artwork consists out of hundreds of LED-crystals which brighten when people touch them. Artist Daan Roosegaarde calls them “Lego from Mars”. The name refers not only to its futuristic design, but also to its endless potential to play. CRYSTAL has been previously exhibited in Amsterdam, Paris, Moscow and is now permanent in Eindhoven NL.

The Crystals are placed in a black tunnel at the Natlab, the place where Einstein once worked, where Philips produced its lightbulbs, and the first CD-ROM was presented. They are part of the light program Light-S which wants to create new experiences between people and space. CRYSTAL is a perfect match, the Crystals are white geometric shapes with LEDs inside. The local floor has a magnetic field which allows the Crystals to light-up. CRYSTAL is therefore one of the latest innovations in light. The artwork CRYSTAL can be experienced at night at Natlab, Kastanjelaan 500 in Eindhoven NL.

Interactive crystals

CRYSTAL is not only innovatie in terms of appearance, but also the interactive element makes the artwork unique. With Crystals people can share their creativity. For example someone used Crystals for a wedding proposal to his girlfriend by writing the letters ‘Marry me’. Artist Daan Roosegaarde describes this phenomenon as “Facebook Square”, where social media and light are combined to create new public places.

The future with CRYSTAL

Studio Roosegaarde will continue to make new Crystals with the vision that light is enhancing the relation between people and their environment. The coming years the studio will develop Crystals with different shapes and colors together with high-tech companies and cultural organisations. Crystal keeps on growing.

About Daan Roosegaarde

Daan Roosegaarde (Nieuwkoop, 1979) is artist, innovator and ambassador of the Dutch Design Week 2013. With his Studio Roosegaarde he explores the relationship between art and technology to make the world more interesting, better or beautiful. Interactive designs such as ‘Dune’ and ‘Smart Highway’ have been exhibited around the world. www.studioroosegaarde.net

About Light-S

Light-S is an innovative project by the city of Eindhoven and Park Strijp Beheer. Within Light-S several projectteams are researching how light can create new experiences between people, space and technologies. www.light-s.nl

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by Studio Roosegaarde appeared first on Dezeen.