Mad scientist David Edwards imagines consumers buying self-contained, washable balls of soda, yogurt, and cheese at the grocery store.
Remember David Edwards, the Harvard professor behind smokable chocolate and inhalable coffee? When we last wrote about Edwards, in March, he was introducing Wahh, a Philippe Starck-designed canister that delivers puffs of vaporized alcohol. Since then, Edwards’s team has been back in the kitchen, working with designer François Azambourg to develop the WikiCell, a product that has implications for the food industry that move well beyond novelty.
A great PRI report from earlier this week introduces us to the WikiCell, an edible packaging that attempts to reduce the massive amount of packaging used to sell food. "Think about the skin of a grape and how it protects the grape itself," explains Edwards on WikiCell’s website. "This is how a WikiCell works. This soft skin may be comprised primarily of small particles of chocolate, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, or many other natural substances with delicious taste and often useful nutrients. Inside the skin may be liquid fruit juice, or thick pudding."
A WikiCell (alternate name: Occupy Food?) is made from a few basic ingredients. First, Edwards and Azambourg start with a crushed food like chocolate, seeds, or nuts, depending on what’s inside the cell. That’s mixed with healthy ions like calcium and chitosan, a common polysaccharide derived from the shells of shrimp. Together, they form a gel-like material that can hold everything from cocktails to yogurt.
"I get home, and I hand [the food] to my son, and he hands it to his friend," Edwards tells PRI. "And then the friend says, 'But did you wash your hands?' At that point, I clean it as I do fruit and vegetables today. I can run water over it, and it doesn’t dissolve, actually. And it can be cleaned, and then I can eat it."
This definitely isn’t the first or even tenth attempt at edible food packaging. For example, Diane Leclair Besson is developing an edible plate that won a Core77 Design Award last month. But beyond the technical advantages of WikiCells (the whole washing thing is impressive), Edwards might have a leg up on his competition with his experience launching challenging products into the consumer market. In September, he secured $10 million in venture capital from Flagship Ventures and Polaris Venture Partners.
The money has helped the team carry out its first consumer tests (perhaps surprisingly, few seem to have a problem with the concept) and found WikiCell Designs as an independent company. In 2013, Edwards plans to open a "WikiBar" in Paris, where visitors will be able to try the company’s first commercial product: WikiCell Ice Cream.
Taga has made it infinitely easier to take your tots for a joyride around town.
Well, this is smart. If you’re a new parent who loves the freedom of cycling around town but hesitate to take your tot for a joyride, Taga has got you covered (and then some). Based on Dutch cargo-style bakfiets, which are essentially like ridable wheelbarrows with a fixed box in front, the company has created a convertible chassis that can be transformed from adult trike to stroller and back again. The whole process takes a lightning quick 20 seconds, as shown in the video below.
Of course, not pictured in that seamless white studio are squirming (and/or screaming) children, unwieldy groceries, inclement weather, or the hustle and bustle of a busy urban sidewalk with pushy people passing by, but it still seems like a remarkably convenient transition. I don’t have kids, so perhaps those who do can weigh in with their thoughts on whether this looks like it would be feasible on-the-go.
Regardless of its relative real-world ease, the folks at Taga took their time perfecting their product’s design and engineering, with four years of development facilitating a whole host of thoughtful features: three wheels that make it more sturdy than your standard bike and eliminate the need to balance (which can, understandably, be intimidating with your tot in tow); easy folding for stowing away in the trunk of a car or closet at home; the ability to add an additional child’s seat or a car seat adapter. Buying one will set you back about $1,500, but just imagine all the fun you’ll have out there on the open road.
Recently I noticed a new solid-surface called Ecotec on a list of the Best New Home Products 2012 from This Old House. It’s priced from $15 per square foot, and the manufacturer says Ecotec is “the next generation in solid surface material.“ The product is made with powdered glass content and a urethane derived from soy oil. Ecotec contributes toward LEED credits and contains 40% recycled and renewable content.
The composition makes Ecotec stronger, lighter, and greener, according to product brochures.
Specifically, it’s 20-25% lighter than acrylic or polyester-based solid surfaces and more scratch resistant. In addition, Ecotec is made in the USA from a Missouri-based company, highly antimicrobial, fire resistant, and available in an unlimited color palette.
The folks at multidisciplinary office AND-RÉ and the city of Vilamoura worked to create the project you’re seeing here – a lovely public bicycle project! This project is just the newest of a set of collaborations the city has done with the design group known as AND-RÉ and aims to continue their forward-thinking philosophy of “humanization of urban space” – this “returning the city to [the] people.”
The aim of this project was to develop a bike system that encapsulated “truly democratic equipment … requiring a great accuracy in ergonomic study and in the visual/formal language in order to achieve a unisex non-discriminatory product.” The bike itself represents a “debugged” design, as they call it, bringing light and purity to the overall system. Vintage at the same time as it is modern, made to serve the function alone – transportation for the city.
by: Environmental Leader, 2012-11-02 13:31:23 UTC Hilton has begun a mattress recycling program, across all its US hotel chains, that it says will recycle about 85 percent of its mattresses and box springs. The hotel chain has purchased more than 50,000 mattresses in the past two years in the US alone. DH Hospitality, a provider of recycling, installation, liquidation, transportation and warehousing [...]
the project slows down and celebrates manufacture, where an
elaborate contraption orchestrates the ingredients in a grandiose
fashion to reach the final tasty result.
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2012-11-02 10:30:32 UTC
Embattled photovoltaic solar power manufacturer Amonix announced on Tuesday that it has broken the solar module efficiency record, becoming the first manufacturer to convert more than a third of incoming light energy into electricity – a goal once branded "one third of a sun" in a Department of Energy initiative. The Amonix module clocked an efficiency rating of 33.5 percent... Continue Reading Solar panel breaks "third of a sun" efficiency barrier
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