Resilience in the Face of Crisis: Why the Future Will Be Flexible What will a post-crash, truly 21st-century world look like? For people thinking about global systems (economic, environmental, and social) one idea stands out: resilience. Resilience means the capacity of an entity--such as a person, an institution, or a system--to withstand sudden, unexpected shocks, and (ideally) to be capable of recovering quickly afterwards. Designing for resilience takes on particular relevance as we think about what happens after the current economic crisis passes. What would a more resilient world look like? Two factors stand out as core assumptions of a resilience approach: the future is inherently uncertain, so the system needs to be as flexible as possible; and failures happen, so the system needs to be able to identify failures early and not make things worse as a result. Resilient flexibility means avoiding situations where components of a system are "too big to fail"--that is, where the failure of a single part can bring the whole thing crashing down.
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution Ceramic 3D Printing at Unfold~fab clay goes digital It’s been just over a year since Belgian design studio Unfold 3D printed their first successful ceramic vessel on a RepRap. Since then, their blog Unfold~fab has chronicled their experiments with 3D printed ceramics including clay materials, printing methods, and a personal fabrication interface the studio developed for last year’s L’Artisan Electronique installation. Unfold~fab is a wealth of practical information and intriguing visual documentation of one of history’s oldest crafts meeting today’s technological potential. Below is a video of the Virtual Pottery Wheel interface which allows a user to virtually shape a virtual pot on a virtual wheel. Earlier this year, ceramic artist Jonathan Keep contributed an informative post on the qualities of various ceramic materials for 3D printing — extremely useful for anyone wanting to try ceramic 3D printing out for themselves. Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing
Innovation Camps « Invitro Innovation Many companies today have fewer competitive options, with the only path to generate greater revenues and profits is to GROW. One of the few sources of organic growth left to many firms is through innovation. But having a quality pipeline of viable ideas for execution does not come naturally to companies. Even here in Singapore, many companies do not have processes to take innovations from business problem to idea execution. The nature of business means that is usually favours more left brain type thinking, however the kind of problem solving and creative thought that innovation demands is more right brained. Some have resorted to a kind of “intervention”, where a diverse group of company talents and stakeholders gather to put their heads together to generate a stream of new ideas to fuel growth. Being invited by your company to participate in a 3 day Innovationfest can be quite the learning experience. So what exactly happens at an Innovation Camp? Like this: Like Loading...
The Idea of a Tree by Mischer’Traxler DMY Berlin 09: Viennese designers Mischer'Traxler have created a solar-powered machine that makes furniture, with the shape and colour of each product determined by the amount of sunlight available during manufacture. The machine, called The Idea of a Tree, makes benches, containers and lamp shades by drawing thread through a tank of dye followed by a tank of resin, then wrapping it around a mould that's rotated by a solar-powered machine. The project is on show this week at DMY Youngsters exhibition in Berlin. The speed at which the machine spins the mould and draws the thread is dictated by the amount of sunlight falling on it; the portion of a component made during a cloudy period will be darker and thinner than that made in bright sunshine. Each piece takes one whole day to make and the resulting variations in thickness and colour-saturation along its length record the variations in daylight and shadow falling on it throughout the day. Here's some more information from the designers:
Vers une économie résiliente Par Rémi Sussan le 27/04/09 | 13 commentaires | 8,080 lectures | Impression Intéressant dialogue, par blogs interposés, entre Jamais Cascio et John Robb sur le thème de l’après crise. Ces deux auteurs, qui figurent parmi les plus intéressants de la blogosphère anglo-saxonne ont déjà été mentionnés plusieurs fois dans nos colonnes. Cascio est un spécialiste de la prospective et a collaboré notamment à la création de “ Superstruct “. Il s’intéresse de près au Green Design (cette nouvelle tendance du design appliquée à la technologie, qu’on pourrait traduire par la “conception durable”), en témoigne sa participation au projet World Changing (le site et le livre). Dans un scénario écrit du point de vue d’un citoyen des années 2010 Jamais Cascio explore le concept “d’économie résiliente”. L’économie résiliente qu’imagine Cascio conserverait les valeurs des idéologies qui l’ont précédée : l’insistance du socialisme sur l’égalité et celle du capitalisme sur la production de richesse.
REPLICATOR — Putting the "Custom" Back In Customer Gifs have become a fixture of the web, transformed Buzzfeed into a major media entity, and brought countless millions of hours of joy to bored office drones the world over. There’s a gif search engine and a service that will turn these little moments of web zen into IRL animated pictures. So why aren’t these miniature animations used more widely for practical purposes? Do any ecommerce sites use animated gifs to show off the unique features of a product? How about replacing turgid instructional guides with gif-tastic help pages? Animated images are a perfect midpoint between static images and full on video content, but are rarely used for productive purposes, with a few exceptions. DIY.org, a kid friendly site that aims to transform little video gamers into latter day scouts uses the art form to highlight the physicality of their merit badges: Despite their obvious utility, these catchy little cartoons are relegated to cat pics and epic fails. 2. 3. HT: Nick de la Mare 1. HT: Tim O’Reilly
3D Candy Printing: An Interview with Designer Marcelo Coelho - Food Three-dimensional printers are getting a lot of hype at the moment. In February, MakerBot Industries started shipping its Thing-o-Matic desktop 3D printer, which, at just $1,225, "democratizes" 3D printing, allowing you to "live in the cutting-edge personal manufacturing future of tomorrow!" The same month, the typically restrained Economist headlined a story "Print me a Stradivarius: How a New Manufacturing Technology Will Change the World." The idea, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is pretty simple. And people are already using the technology to print all sorts of things—pesticide-free plastic bug repellents, new ears, and videogame cars. They're also printing food. For example, both the BBC and the CBC have recently reported on the 3D food printer being tested at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab (CCSL). Meanwhile, across the pond, tech company Bits from Bytes are collaborating with the University of the West of England to try to print mashed potatoes.
User-Led Innovation Can't Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea | Co.Design The user is king. It's a phrase that's repeated over and over again as a mantra: Companies must become user-centric. But there's a problem: It doesn't work. Here's the truth: Great brands lead users, not the other way around. The Apple and IKEA way Take Apple. Another hyper-growth brand, IKEA, has the same belief. Of course, neither Apple nor IKEA will say this publicly since they are both extremely closed companies and would risk offending users (and the design community) by speaking out against user-centeredness. And since no one will speak up, the false value of the user-as-leader has spread. Be a Visionary If users can't tell a company what to do, what should companies do instead? They define their own rules.The vision must come first. Create an icon The same goes for truly extraordinary products, the icons of the world. Democratic Icons These could also be termed "slow" icons. Why it's harmful to listen to the users But can't you create radical new products based on what the user wants?
L’Artisan Électronique by Unfold and Tim Knapen Another bonkers machine! This one is a virtual potters wheel by Belgian designers Unfold and Tim Knapen. Like the onion-scanning contraption in our previous story this machine, called L’Artisan Électronique, is on show at Z33 in Hasselt as part of an exhibition called Design by Performance. The device creates pots from rolls of clay in response to movements of visitors hands through a sensor. The exhibition continues until 30 May. Update 02/06/11: watch the designers explaining the project in our movie on Dezeen Screen Here's some more information from the designers (in Dutch): Unfold & Tim Knapen, L’Artisan Electronique (2010), productieopdracht Z33 Naast de keramiekprinter creëerde Unfold samen met Tim Knapen voor L’Artisan Électro- nique een virtuele draaischijf. In L’Artisan Électronique wordt het pottenbak- ken, één van de oudste ambachtelijke procé- dés voor het maken van gebruiksvoorwerpen, verweven met nieuwe digitale technieken. See also:
Thomas Chippendale Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre. Bureau chinois fait par Chippendale, exposé au musée de Carmen de Maipú, de Santiago du Chili. chaise provinciale de style Chippendale avec un élaboré dossier à tracé "Gothique". Il s'installa à Londres en 1749 où, en 1754, il devint le premier ébéniste à publier un livre de ses réalisations : The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director. Trois éditions en furent publiées, la première en 1754, suivie par une réédition en 1755 et une dernière édition, revue et augmentée en 1762, à un moment où les dessins illustrés de Chippendale commençaient à montrer des signes du néoclassicisme. Chippendale était plus qu'un simple créateur de meubles. Chippendale est enterré à l'église de St Martin-in-the-Fields en Londres. Source[modifier | modifier le code] (en) Cet article est partiellement ou en totalité issu de l’article de Wikipédia en anglais intitulé « Thomas Chippendale » (voir la liste des auteurs) Lien externe[modifier | modifier le code]
THE NEXT TRILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY: 3D Printing Printer produces personalised 3D chocolate 5 July 2011Last updated at 15:08 By Katia Moskvitch Technology reporter, BBC News The printer uses chocolate instead of ink Chocolate lovers may soon be able to print their own 3D creations thanks to work by UK scientists. A 3D printer that uses chocolate has been developed by University of Exeter researchers - and it prints layers of chocolate instead of ink or plastic. Although still a prototype, several retailers have already expressed interest in taking on the device. 3D printing using plastic and metal is already widely used in industry to speed up design work. Lead scientist Dr Liang Hao told BBC News that chocolate printing, just like any other 3D printing technique, starts with a flat cross-section image - similar to that produced by ordinary printers turning out images. "Then you do a 3D shape - layer by layer, printing chocolate instead of ink, like if you were layering 2D paper to form a 3D shape," he said. Shape and taste The machine builds up objects layer by layer Social networks
Digital Innovations at UCLA Cultural-Digital Intersections: Village Incubators, Emergent Databases, Indigenous Networks in Central Asia, and the South Asian Web Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and the Department of Design/Media Arts in the School of the Arts and Architecture Primary contact Ramesh Srinivasan Assistant Professor Information Studies (courtesy: Design| Media Arts) (310) 206 - 8320 srinivasan@ucla.edu Project description I will show a series of ongoing research projects that explicitly explore connections between cultural discourses and new media systems. Emerging Databases, Emerging Diversity (ED2): In collaboration with Cambridge University (UK) Museum of Anthropology, this project (NSF-funded) is a study of the ability of museums to re-introduce digital objects to the communities from which they originated. - Village Incubators: An ongoing project focused on two oral, pre-literate rural villages in Southern India (Andhra Pradesh).