When you’re generating a surplus of energy — similar to these solar-powered homeowners — having a sporty electrical vehicle seems to make sense.  EVs and plug-in hybrids are becoming more popular, and I’ve seen all sorts of garage products for charging them.  Perhaps one of the more interesting models of late is this EVSE-RS Plug-in charging station by AeroVironment.  The portable, DIY charger just needs a dedicated 240-volt service and the station can be mounted and installed in a pinch.

That means the charging system may be used by renters, because it can be uninstalled and taken to a subsequent location.  Or, one could install an additional bracket somewhere else — perhaps a cabin retreat, work, or a friend’s place — and charge there too.

The AeroVironment product is “the preferred charging station of the Nissan LEAF, BMW Active-E and Mitsubishi i-MiEV,” according to claims in a product listing with Amazon.

The EVSE-RS Plug-In is SAE J1772-compliant and UL-listed for indoor applications.  It installs on a 30A “pigtail” wall plug, and the cord is 25-feet long to accommodate more than one vehicle.  Additionally, the charger restarts in the event of a power outage, has ground-fault monitoring, and protects against live power.  The MSRP is $1,099, but I’ve seen the price drop below that when listed on Amazon.com.

[+] Buy the EVSE-RS Plug-In EV Charging Station on Amazon for $1,099.

Credits: AeroVironment. 

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Istanbul Design Biennial: this project by Antwerp design studio Unfold explores how 3D-printed objects created from identical digital files can be as varied and unique as hand-made objects (+ movie + slideshow). (more…)

It’s no surprise to learn that hardwood furniture factories aren’t the most sustainable of operations. But it is a shock to hear just how wasteful. According to two students at London’s Royal College of Art, as much as 80% of the timber used in the average factory ends up in the trash, in the form of wood chips and shavings. So for every chair produced, nearly the same amount of wood ends up discarded.

Marjan van Aubel and Jamie Shaw see no reason for the waste. As part of a group of students invited by the American Hardwood Export Council to develop wood chairs for the Michigan woodworking studio Benchmark, the duo decided to pursue a design that would make use of the timber swept off the factory floor into the garbage. This July, they travelled to Benchmark to spend a week testing new ways of manufacturing wood furniture using the wasted shavings. At night, they camped on the lawn of Benchmark’s director ("amazing,” says van Aubel).

“We went around to all the different machines in the furniture factory, and collected the different types of shavings,” remembers Shaw. They discovered that if they mixed the shavings with bio-resin, an explosive chemical reaction would occur, creating what they call foamed wood. "It’s the result of a bizarre reaction between sawdust and bio-resin, which causes it to expand massively and unpredictably into exciting, strong, lightweight forms," they explain. "By adding color dye and varied-sized shavings from different workshop machines, a colorful, lightweight and moldable material was created, reinforced by the fibers in the hardwood shavings." The “porridge-like" foam hardens over the course of a few minutes. Once van Aubel and Shaw perfected the ratio, they poured the stuff into a mold built from an old polypropylene chair, and affixed the seat to a base of simple ash legs.

Well Proven Chair, which debuted at the V&A during London Design Week, is smooth and strong on the seat side, explosive and drippy on the bottom side, where the foam was packed into place. "We applied the foaming material by hand to the mould which then rises up in an unpredictable manner which creating a surprising and fascinating form," the duo adds. Different types of wood produced shavings in a multitude of textures and shades, so each chair is unique, ranging from reddish brown of cherry to bone white of Aspen.

Because the chairs are simple and cheap to produce, they’ll soon be available commercially. But Benchmark is quick to point out that chairs made from cherry wood shavings, obviously, may not be as strong as actual cherry wood chairs. “The biggest uncertainty is with the bio-resin for which little clear data is available,” warn the AHEC and Benchmark. “Van Aubel and Shaw have used it in a very different way from the manufacturer’s recommendation, and so it is hard to judge how durable the chair will be.”

We wrote about van Aubel earlier this summer, when she released The Energy Collection, a glassware set imbued with the ability to collect and store energy (based on the same chemical process used by plants). Though they couldn’t look more different, Well Proven Chair and The Energy Collection come from a similar place, conceptually speaking. Van Aubel is rediscovering resources hiding in plain sight--the sunlight in our kitchens, or wood shavings on a factory floor.

[H/t Design Boom]

There's a recycling party in the pants.

Your next pair of Levi jeans may include black trays, brown beer bottles, clear water bottles, and green soda bottles. The new WasteLess collection uses polyester fiber made from crushed plastic recyclables. The bottles are collected from municipal recycling programs around the country.

Both jeans and trucker jackets will be available. Plastic pants don't sound very comfortable, but the plastic parts only take up about 20 percent of the cloth. The recycled fiber is mixed with cotton fiber so you get a pant that feels like regular denim.

Related stories

• Let Kinect find the best denim for your derriere
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• Jeans let you use your smartphone in your pocket

The WasteLess collection will use more than 3.5 million recycled bottles. Each pa... [Read more]

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Toto USA has released two new models of dual-flush, high-efficiency toilets in the Maris suite. They have wall-hung (starting at $450, not including the in-wall tank) and two-piece (starting at $850) models featuring a current style that pays tribute to mid-century modern design. Push for a light flush of 0.9 GPF or pull for a full flush of 1.28 GPF on these ADA-compliant, WaterSense-compliant commodes. Toto says homeowners won’t have to worry about cleaning every solid stop either — a common complaint with some dual-flush toilets — because the SanaGloss-coated, cyclone-inspired flush system “spins away debris, matter, and bacteria, which reduces the time needed to clean the unit.”

[+] Visit Toto USA to find a local dealer of the new Maris.

Credits: Toto USA.

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When glitches occur in the digital world, they’re a nuisance. But the work of London-based digital artist Matthew Plummer-Fernandez proves that when we introduce them into the realm of the physical, the results can be unexpectedly stunning. For his latest collection, Digital Natives, Plummer-Fernandez transformed mundane objects like teapots and detergent bottles into jagged works of art.

Plummer-Fernandez, a graduate from the Royal College of Art, uses a digital camera to make a 3-D scan of the objects, distorts them with the help of some home-brewed algorithms, and then fabricates the newly transformed pieces out of colorful resin with a 3-D printer. But where we’re typically at the mercy of the glitches we encounter in our video games and computer programs, Plummer-Fernandez’s self-built software gives him a bit of control over their effects on his work. "Different equations create different effects," he told me. "The simplest are simple multiplications to stretch an object, while more advanced formulas can twist or smooth the object, or go as far as adding new features such as spikes."

And how exactly does one command a glitch? Plummer-Fernandez says he can "control an algorithm’s effect via sliders" that he’s added to his object-editing interface. The artist’s software is even responsible for determining the subtly shifting colors of the objects--"complex gradients that would be very difficult to solve by eye," he says.

While some artists use digital tools with the aim of creating perfect works of art--pieces that hide all the blemishes of the messy artistic process--Plummer-Fernandez embraces that process and whatever fingerprints it leaves along the way. Our digital lives are messier than we might think, he points out. "When changing file format, or file-sharing, information sometimes gets corrupted," he told me. "I liken this to a postcard arriving to its destination marked with stamps and creases. I find it adds aesthetic value, so I embrace the glitches and provoke them to occur."

"The physicality of digital glitches is part of digital fabrication," he continued. "Fabbers need to spend less time struggling with its limitations and more time appreciating it." Although that’s probably a little bit easier to say when you’ve got a bunch of sliders for controlling the glitches in the first place.

Check out more of Plummer-Fernandez’s work on his personal site.

[Hat tip: Creative Applications]

This summer, the Southern California Institute of Architecture handed out its first Gehry Prize, a thesis award named in honor of the legendary 83-year-old architect (and his recent $100k donation) to husband and wife duo Liz and Kyle von Hasseln.

Their project, Phantom Geometry, is not a single design but an entirely new production methodology that uses light from an off-the-shelf projector to cure a special resin into complex, adaptable models. It was developed in SCI-Arc’s Robot House, where students can experiment with six state-of-the-art Staübli robotic arms under the guidance of Peter Testa and Devyn Weiser.

Think of their system as you would a 3-D printer. One robotic arm supports a souped-up digital projector at a stable height. A second arm holds a vat of honey-like resin similar to what the dentist uses to make molds of your teeth. The second arm maneuvers the vat into the projector’s beam of light, and the designer tells the computer where and when to expose the vat to the projector’s UV rays, instantly hardening a specific portion of the resin. The rest of the liquid resin drops away as the arm moves it lower--making it look as though the clear model is being “pulled” out of the vat of liquid.

The thing that fascinated the von Hasselns about the system was that it allowed them to interrupt the process and change the model as it was being printed. “This system of fabrication relies upon native real-time feed-back and feed-forward mechanisms, and is therefore interruptible and corruptible at any time,” they explain.

Typically in digital fabrication, you submit a fully resolved model which emerges, perfectly replicated, a few hours later. Using the advanced robotic arms, the von Hasselns could manipulate the model as it was being printed. “The streaming data input may be transformed or modified at any time, and such interventions impact emerging downstream geometry,” they add. The result is an architecture of performance, full of drips, collapses, and yawning tears--sculpting, by proxy.

Chief Designer
Volvo
Goteborg, Sweden

Volvo GTT Product Design in Gothenburg is looking for two Chief Designers for Volvo Construction Equipment. The Construction Product Design department is based in the design studio in Gothenburg, together with Volvo Trucks, Volvo Bus and Volvo Penta. Product Design operates in a multi-disciplinary and global environment, collaborating closely with other functions to create attractive, functional and cost effective solutions for our customers.