May 9, 2019
A transformative poncho is the latest collaboration between Nike and Tom Sachs. The poncho has taken four years to arrive at this patent-pending stage of design, according to a report on designboom.com. Jarrett Reynolds, Nike’s senior design director for apparel special projects, developed the slim-line pack containing a quick-deploy and easily repacked poncho as part of a …
May 6, 2019
VISIONknit, a technical knitting company based in Toronto, Canada, and Canadian collaborators Composite Creations, have launched a 3D knitted canoe. The VISIONknit material can be used on modern flat (v-bed) knitting machines and knit into patterns, accompanying logos and other design features. According to an article in Knitting Industry, the company’s patent pending material is a …
April 29, 2019
Could microbes combined with water be guided to selectively disintegrate and then be harnessed as agents of assembly? What would the ecology of a system that included microbes, biocompatible substrates and the contextual environment look like? Those are some of the questions a team of MIT researchers set out to answer as part of the Aguahoja …
April 22, 2019
MIT and NASA researchers have developed a new shape-shifting approach to aircraft wing construction. An article in MIT News says the system is designed to automatically deform, in part or in total, in response to the roll and pitch of a plane. The flexibility of the new wing assembly system relies on hundreds of identical …
April 18, 2019
German shoe brand nat-2 has created a means to recycle coffee into sneakers. The 100 percent vegan, unisex sneaker uppers are made from sustainable recycled coffee, coffee beans and coffee plants. The coffee is applied to a layer and retains its natural coffee scent. The material covers up to 50 percent of the shoe’s surface, depending …
March 28, 2019
A team at MIT has developed a robotic gripper that uses a 3D-printed origami structure reported to be able to lift 100 times its own weight. The origami-inspired gripper consists of a 3D-printed 16-piece silicone rubber skeleton encased in an airtight skin. A vacuum collapses the gripper, which conforms around a multitude of shapes without losing strength, …
February 7, 2019
LG Electronics has introduced the SIGNATURE TV R, a rollable TV that uses organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. A recent article in Printed Electronics World states that manufacturers are trying to make large TVs less conspicuous—without sacrificing depth of color and resolution. LG may have accomplished that by creating the R version of the OLED …
February 4, 2019
NIKE has launched a lace-less smart shoe with the new platform, NIKE adapt, the company has announced. NIKE adapt for basketball is designed to be a continually updated performance product that the company ways will create a near-symbiotic relationship between the shoe’s digital app and the opt-in firmware updates. Athletes may update and evolve their shoes …
January 21, 2019
Print Your City, the initiative conceived by the Dutch-based research and design studio The New Raw, has moved from concept to city scale. Following the XXX bench prototype presented last year in Amsterdam, Print Your City has launched its first Zero Waste Lab in Thessaloniki, Greece. Implemented by Coca-Cola in Greece, the lab is equipped …
January 18, 2019
During Miami Art Week 2018, Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno presented “Albedo,” an atmospherically attuned installation created in collaboration with Swiss watch manufacturer Audemars Piguet. Reflective solar umbrellas and floating sculptures provided daily aerosolar performances that questioned how breathing will be affected in the post–fossil fuel era. Saraceno created a large-scale temporal pavilion composed of 40 …