background preloader

Open Source Design

Facebook Twitter

OpenMaterials | DIY smart materials. Shapeways - Make, buy, and sell products with 3D Printing. Front. Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space? The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialise free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined.Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialised through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.See the movie of the process of making a sketch into a piece of furniture in just one pen stroke. Click here The Swedish design group FRONT has been working in Japan since September. During this time they have developed and explored the technique they used in the making of Sketch Furniture which they showed in Art Basel Miami / Design with Barry Friedman Gallery Ltd ( New York ).

Front make design as a performance. Motion Capture is a technique that translates motions into 3D-files. Rapid Prototyping is a technique that materialises 3D-fi les. SketchChair by Diatom Studio. Fab.com - Everyday Design. MOST Salone Milan Design Week - instigated by Tom Dixon.

The Fab Blog. 이로운닷넷. The Thread Wrapping Machine by Anton Alvarez. Threads and glue replace joints and screws in the furniture that emerges from a custom-made machine designed by Royal College of Art graduate Anton Alvarez (+ movie). The Thread Wrapping Machine creates objects by binding components in hundreds of metres of thread while coating them in glue. Above: photograph is by James Champion Pieces of material such as wood, steel or plastic are passed through the machine as it spins round, controlled by a foot pedal.

Above: photograph is by Märta Thisner As the object is moved through the machine and wrapped in thread, additional components can be added to create chair legs, seat backs and other elements. Varying the colour and type of thread used creates different patterns around the final objects, which so far include chairs, stools and benches. "I have full control over the development of the machine," said Alvarez, explaining that the set-up allows him to be independent from industry as well as from tradition.

Laser cutting

3D printer. Arduino. Laser cutting machine. Main : markus kayser. The Solar Sinter by Markus Kayser. Show RCA 2011: German designer Markus Kayser has built a 3D-printing machine that uses sunlight and sand to make glass objects in the desert. Called The Solar Sinter, the device uses a large Fresnel lens to focus a beam of sunlight, creating temperatures between 1400 and 1600 degrees Celsius. This is hot enough to melt silica sand and build up glass shapes, layer by layer, inside a box of sand mounted under the lens. Solar-powered motors move the box on an x and y axis along a computer-controlled path and a new layer of sand is sprinkled on top after each pass of the light beam. Light sensors track the sun as it moves across the sky and the whole machine rotates on its base to ensure the lens is always producing the optimum level of heat. Once all the layers have been melted into place the piece is allowed to cool and dug out from the sand box.

Kayser developed the project while studying on the MA Design Products course at the Royal College of Art. See all our stories about Show RCA 2011 » Phil Cuttance. Faceture by Phil Cuttance. London designer Phil Cuttance has built a machine to cast faceted vases that are unique every time. The Faceture series is made of water-based resin, rotated inside a folded mould as it hardens. The mould can be altered before each casting by pushing and pulling parts of the folded plastic net inwards and outwards. Royal College of Art graduate Julian Bond developed a similar process in 2010 by pushing plaster rods back and forth to continuously alter the cast form. See his work here. Other projects by Cuttance on Dezeen include vases made by welding plastic offcuts together and coat hooks made from toy animals.

Images are by Petr Krejčí and Phil Cuttance. Here's some more information from Cuttance: FACETURE vases The FACETURE series consists of handmade faceted vessels, light-shades and table. The FACETURE process First the mould of the object is hand-made by scoring and cutting a sheet of 0.5mm plastic sheet. Each vase is handmade, unique, and numbered on the base. Available in two sizes: C-Fabriek production lines curated by Itay Ohaly and Thomas Vailly. Dutch Design Week: twenty-five designers set up their own production lines inside a former textile factory in the Netherlands last week, making furniture, lighting, clothes, shoes, food, paper and more with the help of visitors. Above: The Invisible Line by Francesco Zorzi, using heated tools to make monochrome drawings on thermal paper. Curators and initiators of the C-Fabriek project Itay Ohaly and Thomas Vailly invited designers to create their own production lines, machines, tools and products for what they call "the New Factory.

" Above: CONSUMER LABORatory by Joong Han Lee and Thomaz Bondioli, involving customers in the customisation and production of jewellery. Each installation is a combination of studio, factory and shop where consumers can watch and collaborate on the manufacture of their goods. Above: Printing Lab – An adventure in Graphic Design & Manual Printing by Olivia de Gouveia, an open printmaking workspace where participants print their own image of a factory. Open Source Architecture Manifesto at Istanbul Design Biennial. Visitors to the Adhocracy show at the Istanbul Design Biennial are confronted with a plotter taking the text of the Open Source Architecture Manifesto from a Wikipedia page and writing it onto a wall. (+ slideshow) Created by Walter Nicolino and Carlo Ratti of Carlo Ratti Associati, the plotter updates the text as the Wikipedia page changes. The project began last year when Joseph Grima, editor of Domus magazine and curator of the Adhocracy show, asked Ratti to write a manifesto for open-source architecture.

"I said yeah sure, but let’s do it in an open-source way," Ratti told Dezeen. "So we set up a page on Wikipedia. " Ratti, who is director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT, invited contributors including Nicholas Negroponte, John Habraken, Paola Antonelli and Hans Ulrich Obrist to contribute to the page to create an evolving document that was published in Domus in June 2011. The plotter is based on similar principles to Hektor, a wall-mounted plotter that paints with a spray can.