above: first place. a project for a vertical prison examines the possibility of creating a prison-city in the sky, where the inmates would live in a “free” and productive community with agricultural fields and factories that would support the host city below. globalization, sustainability, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution, were some of the multi-layered elements taken into consideration. the designers are architecture students chow khoon toong, ong tien yee, and beh ssi cze, from malaysia.





above: second place. the project is the ‘ciliwung recovery program’ which aims to purify and repair the ciliwung river habitat. the building is designed as an ingenious habitable machine that would collect garbage, purify water, and provide housing to thousands of people that live in the slums along the river. the designers are rezza rahdian, erwin setiawan, ayu diah shanti, and leonardus chrisnantyo, from indonesia.





above: third place. the project ‘nested skyscraper’ explores robotic construction techniques for a structure of carbon sleeves and fiber-laced concrete. the building is a system of multiple layers of composite louvers which thicken and rotate according to solar exposure, ventilation, and materials performance. the designers are ryohei koike and jarod poenisch, from the united states.

the 2010 jury: mario cipresso, kyu ho chun, kenta fukunishi, elie gamburg, mitchell joachim, jaeyoung lee, adelaïde marchi, nicola marchi and eric vergne. the Jury selected 3 winners and 27 special mentions among 430 entries from 42 countries.

[via archdaily]

saves energy equal to 3,000 aaa batteries.
saves enough electricity to power a tv set for three weeks.
saves enough electricity to keep a laptop computer running for a month.
(*) compared to non-recycled plastic.

green toys says it uses recycled milk containers as the main ingredient in creating their toys. when you finish your milk and toss the container in the recycling bin, the milk containers are collected at your curb by a local recycling company who separates them from all the other types of plastic. next, the milk containers are reprocessed into super clean fresh plastic. for the plastic geeks, the plastic material is high-density polyethylene (or HDPE). this material is considered one of the safest, cleanest plastics around.

green toys

n2a motors — no two alike !

[material conneXion announces first
medium award for material of the year 2009







Grand prize winner:
above: concrete canvas. the fiber is impregnated with concrete and only hardens when you add water.

Honorable mentions:





above: abtech industries's smart sponge — absorbs oil but not water possibly solving the problem of
oil-spill cleanup.





above: objet geometries's revolutionary new 3-D printers — rapid prototyping allows you to build objects out of only one material. these printers allow prototypes to be made all at once out of multiple materials.





above: innegrity's innegra S fiber — the lightest alternative to kevlar that's currently on the market.





above: quin media arts & sciences — creates textured metal cladding for buildings which change colors via lighting and where the viewer is standing.





above: arkema's pebax renew — the first plant-based alternative, comprised of 95% plant-based materials, they reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. for example, existing rubbery foams used in sports shoes are currently resource intensive and derived from oil.





above: cellucomp's curran — has a strength that rivals carbon fiber is a "biofiber" made from
processed carrots.


Award-Winner and 11 Finalists to be showcased in an Exhibition at
Material ConneXion, January 11-February 19, 2010

[source]

the pink chair was designed in 1968, and by someone you may never have heard of, unless you’re an insider in british design circles. her name is jane dillon. below is a picture of jane, sitting in one of her other late 60s chairs.





in the late 60s as a recent graduate of the royal college of art she found her way to the milan studio of ettore sottsass. for the most part she worked on color studies for a line of olivetti office furniture for sottsass . and she also worked out some absolutely amazing chair designs.





dillon gave the victoria & albert museum some of her archival materials, including the pictures included in this blog post. above are one of the earliest development drawings – with a tentative title of ‘T-Time,’ a reference to the idea of including an integral table in the design – and a geometric study showing the plan of the chair as if viewed from above.

below is another motion study, a quick sketch in red pen. the two vignettes at lower left again show the chair in use from above. the idea being shown is that as the sitter shifts her weight from side to side, the seat beneath her (and the other elements of the chair) will move on a swivel joint.





as stylish as the chair looks today dillon’s felt it was mainly an exercise in dynamic ergonomics. the motion study above indicates this, but it’s clearer still in the final preparatory drawing below, which shows how three of the chair’s four parts swivel in coordination according to the user’s shifting posture. she thought of it as a functionalist experiment, more late bauhaus or gerrit rietveld than pop or postmodern.





the chair was put into limited production by a company called planula – sottsass made the connection for her – and was produced in several variations of shape and color, including the green version below. it was received well by the design community and it was reproduced in the magazine domus. in 1972 the chair was nearly included in an important exhibition about italian design at the museum of modern art called ‘the new domestic landscape’. unfortunately the curators decided dillon didn’t count as italian.





dillon has also designed for habitat, herman miller, and cassina. she went back to the royal college of art to teach, and more recently, she has teamed up with designer tom grieves ( studio dillon ) plus to experiment with innovative environmentally sustainable furniture; keeping up to date today seems to be more important to her than having been ahead of the curve in 1968. still, she’s able to marvel at what she came up with back then. “it’s the most amazing kind of object. only when it’s in use does it become a new kind of chair.” she was made an honorary fellow of the royal college of art in 2006.

dillon’s experimentations and her association with sottsass was timely, as 10 years later sottsass assembled the memphis group, composed of italian designers and architects who created a series of products in 1981. they disagreed with the approach of the time and challenged the idea that products had to follow conventional shapes and colors and textures and patterns. the group’s theoretical concepts mixed 20th century styles, colors and materials, positioned itself as a fashion rather than an academic movement, and hoped to erase the international style where postmodernism had failed, preferring an outright revival and continuation of modernism proper rather than a re-reading of it.

[original story]

Resources:
design museum
memphis group
memphis group-architecture
peter shire–la curbed
michael graves
michele de lucchi
matteo thun
nathalie du pasquier
george sowden
andrea branzi
ronan and erwan bouroullec
gerrit rietveld

[source]

fashion accessories made from taxidermy road kill & pest controlled vermin. innovative concept brings new meaning to recycled goods.

above two photos: #44 mvrdv—dutch design firm—gwanggyo power center.


The 50—a whopping 31 are new![last year]
1) Facebook [15]
Amazon [9]
Apple [4]
Google [2]
5) Huawei [new!]
First Solar [18]
PG&E [new!]
Novartis [new!]
Walmart [33]
10) HP [12]
Hulu [3]
Netflix [new!]
Nike [27]
Intel [8]
15) Spotify [new!]
BYD [45]
Cisco Systems [5]
IBM [19]
GE [11]
20) Disney [22]
Gilt Group [new!]
Indian Premier League [new!]
Patients Like Me [new!]
Grey New York [new!]
25) BMW Group Designworks USA [new!]
Synthetic Genomics [new!]
FiLife [new!]
Frito-Lay [new!]
Alibaba [new!]
30) Mitre [new!]
HTC [new!]
Diller Scofidio + Renfro [new!]
Firstborn [new!]
Sportvision [new!]
35) Ideo [10}
Samsung [new!]
Glam Media [new!]
Ngmoco [new!]
VNL [new!]
40) Aldi Süd [new!]
Fast Retailing [new!]
Huayi Brothers [new!]
Athenahealth [new!]
MVRDV [new!]
Alstom [new!]
Quantcast [new!]
Good Guide [new!]
Microsoft [34]
Politico [new!]
50) Twitter [new!]

Resources:
andscape forms
metro 40
bavaria deep blue 46
saeco
model byd fo
first solar company
mvrdv
alstom
fastcompany