Kickstarting: IDEO’s Ultra-Elegant, Retro-Cool Electric Bike
by: Co.Design, 2012-07-24 13:43:41 UTC

This is part of a series highlighting notable entries from our Innovation By Design Awards.--Ed.

In the past, electric bikes were heavy, chunky things that resembled scooters more than svelte road bikes. But that’s changing with a wave of stylish rides that merge Schwinn’s classic good looks with advanced battery technology. The latest example is a charmingly retro utility from Faraday that offers pedal assist powered by a state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery, automatic front and tail LED lights, a removable rack, and stitched leather details.

The Faraday Porteur was originally a joint project of IDEO designers and the frame-builder Rock Lobster for the Oregon Manifest Challenge, where it won the People’s Choice award. Spurred by the enthusiasm for the bike, a member of the IDEO team, Adam Vollner, left his day job to launch Faraday Bicycles, which is now offering its first run on Kickstarter. (The company has already raised close to 90% of its $100,000 target with 17 days to go.) “Until now,” Faraday writes, “no electric bike has come close to delivering the timeless style and delightful ride that makes each and every one of us love riding a bicycle.”

And it eliminates everything you don’t like about riding a bicycle: the struggle up steep hills and the resulting sweat that turns your well-pressed work clothes into a soggy mess. Simply hop on and flick the handlebar thumb switch to “on”; built-in sensors measure how hard you’re pedaling, and the electric motor kicks in to supplement your own output. To get the full workout or conserve battery life, change the switch to “off,” and you’ve got an ordinary, manual bike. Conversely, for an effortless ride, the “boost” mode provides 15 miles of turbocharged cruising. (An e-ink display on the controller indicates battery strength.)

The Porteur also sports a practical front-mounted rack for transporting hauls up to 30 pounds; it can also be removed easily to lighten your load. The integrated LED headlights and taillights are controlled by an ambient light sensor, so they automatically turn on at dusk, just like car lights. And recharging the battery is as simple as plugging it into a standard socket for 45 minutes. The Faraday Porteur is available three sizes, “to fit riders of all shapes and sizes.” But all those seamlessly integrated bells and whistles will cost you--$3,500, to be exact, putting it at the very top of a steep price hill.

Pre-order yours here.

An Artisanal Way Of Recycling Plastic, Inspired By Cotton Candy
by: Co.Design, 2012-07-24 14:36:19 UTC

Recycling plastic is a tricky, expensive business. Different types of plastic have varying melting points and therefore can’t be mixed together. And the recycled material requires a great deal of pressure to be molded into other products. But a quartet of RCA grads have turned a complicated manufacturing process into something of a homespun, small-scale operation. Resembling a cotton-candy machine, their Polyfloss Factory transforms polypropylene into fibers that can then be used to make an array of household objects.

The machine works much like an ordinary cotton-candy maker: A heater melts plastic chips while the drum spins and extrudes the substance through tiny holes by centrifugal force. Using their customized machine, the team--made up of Emile De Visscher, Chritophe Machet, Audrey Gaulard, and Nick Paget--has recycled plastic cups, baskets, children’s toys, and even the casing of a vacuum, which yielded “nearly a cubic meter of bright red Polyfloss.” Once in its fluffy state, the designers tell Co.Design, “We can easily remelt the plastic with inexpensive molds to produce objects that can be both hard and shiny and smooth and textured. Because we can create ‘structurally diverse’ objects, we can have very different outputs.” They’ve been able to create everything from simple forms such as flowerpots and lampshades to textiles and consumer products like headphones.

They’ve also taken the factory on the road, offering the service to businesses and communities that want to use their waste to create playful designs. They were recently commissioned by an international company to produce a large lobby installation made from more than 1,000 discarded keyboards, which will be unveiled during London Design Week in September. They also have plans to sell machines directly to other makers, putting the power of recycling plastics into the hands of individual consumers.

Prefabricated Almost Instant Hotels from Citizen M
by: TreeHugger Design, 2012-07-23 15:44:00 UTC
They do everything themselves, and are "bosses of their own boxes"

Transformer Apartment By Night Turns Into A Parking Space By Day
by: TreeHugger Design, 2012-07-23 16:51:00 UTC
Designer Aaron Cheng Is onto something big with his entry in the James Dyson Design Awards.

Core77 Design Awards 2012: Eliodomestico, Winner for Social Impact
by: Core77, 2012-07-24 15:45:00 UTC

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Eco-distillery, salt water to fresh drinking water in a day.

This year's Professional Winner for Social Impact by Gabriele Diamanti, "Eliodomestico" is an improvement over current water filtration system. As we wrote on Core77 when we first learned about the project, the simple, straight forward construction keeps production costs down and is made from readily available materials. In addition Diamanti himself promotes innovation and modification of "Eliodomestico" to further its beneficial attributes.

Eliodomestico is an open-source eco-distiller, running on solar power, to provide safe drinking water for people in developing countries. It's a very simple way to produce freshwater, starting from sea or brackish water. The device produces 5 liters daily, through a direct solar-powered distillation process. Eliodomestico works without filters nor electricity, and requires minimal maintenance.

How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

It was 1pm here in Italy so I was having my lunch break looking at the live jury announcements on the award website. I was so excited that I decided to switch the audio off and follow the results on twitter!

What's the latest news or development with your project?

During the summer I'll have the opportunity to test it further thanks to the many sunny days and with the help of some people who have fallen in love with this project. I have a huge list of people and organizations to say thanks to, many whom will help me in the up and coming stages. I'm always looking for collaborators, because this project needs a big effort to become widely known and produced by the local craftsmen. I hope I'll also have the opportunity to start some production personally in the field. I need to take a closer look at the production issues, to refine the process.

Materials like terracotta and clay allow for local production.

What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?

When I made the very first prototype, I created an experiment to test if the steam could be forced down through the pipe or not. So I put a bottle of water under the evaporator with the end of the pipe, 5cm under the water level. When I saw the pipe end bubbling in the water, I was very happy. In that moment I understood that my insights were correct, and I kept following the path...

Diagram of distillation process, no mechanical or moving parts.

(more...)

Briefcase Meets Shopping Basket in the "Oaxaca Case" by Joseph Guerra
by: Core77, 2012-07-23 15:00:00 UTC

Designer Joseph Guerra, who recently completed his degree in Furniture Design at RISD, is pleased to present the "Oaxaca Case," part of his senior thesis.

The briefcase is an archetype with connotations of luxury and gentrification. This polypropylene case references the material and formal language of generic shopping baskets from grocery stores, which is where the pattern on this case is derived from. I redefined the typology of the briefcase through material and production technique. I glorified plastic and the archetype of the generic plastic shopping basket so that this object would communicate the notion of unexpected value. The shopping basket exists as exactly what it needs to be and it does so in an efficient way and then I elevated this efficiency through the language of the briefcase. Choosing to reference this generic object allowed me to thoughtfully engineer new substance and significance into the briefcase, making the object appeal to the user in a more sophisticated way. This mix of the generic and the sophisticated results in a multiplex of uses. This bag could be brought to an interview or you could bring it to the beach.

Guerra notes that the case takes its name from the Mexican state—"a place with beautiful beaches"—a nod to his heritage. "All in all it seemed like a fun name tied to some of things that are important to me as an individual and as a designer."

The polypropylene sheet is laser-cut—presumably to punch out the grid of holes—and scored by CNC at the perforations; the folded form is secured with a dozen snaps at the vertices. (It should go without saying that it's intended to ship as a flatpack, either to retailers or end users.)

The photos are strikingly architectural, resembling a scale model of some kind of a ultramodern housing complex. Not to read into it to much, but perhaps it's also a comment on the sense in which one might 'live out of a briefcase'?

Conversely, it's remarkable how the flattened schema implies its three-dimensional form.

Be sure to check out the rest of Guerra's portfolio—it's a solid showing of his Dutch-inflected work.

(more...)

Dave Hakkens' Oil-Pressing Machine is Nuts About Wind Power
by: Core77, 2012-07-24 08:00:00 UTC

As we mentioned in the post on Holland's Sand Motor, the Dutch have been harnessing wind for useful purposes for nearly a thousand years. So Dave Hakkens, a modern-day designer based in Eindhoven, didn't have to look far to find motive power for his oil-pressing machine. "We have quite some wind here, just for free!" he writes.

I like good food! Food which is made in the right way with good ingredients. Usually this is home made food. But his often takes a lot of time and energy... So we start making food industrial to reduce this... which is smart but it also makes poor quality food. I wanted to make a machine which would get the best of both production methods and produce good products on a easy way.

I made an oil pressing machine which works only on wind energy. The machine is made to press nuts and seeds such as walnuts, peanuts, sesame seeds, linseeds, hazelnuts. The wind power is transformed with a worm drive to make the movement slow but very powerful.

First I gather some nuts and put them in the machine. When the machine starts pressing I just sit back and relax. The leftover pulp is full of protein, great for cooking or feed your animals and plants with.. The machine doesn't use heat which means good pure cold pressed oil is produced.

Further keeping his footprint small, Hakkens reuses old soy sauce and salad dressing bottles hold his new creations. "The only thing I need to pay for [is] the cork and the label," he explains. "The rest is just for free."

(more...)

New coating technology promises self-cleaning cars
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2012-07-23 06:25:19 UTC

Nissan’s "Scratch Guard Coat” has been healing fine scratches on the company’s cars for a few years now, and the technology has also made its way into an iPhone case. More recent developments have produced coatings to heal more substantial scratches and scrapes using nano-capsules. Now researchers at The Netherlands’ Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) have developed a coating that is not only self-healing, but also promises to free car owners of the tiresome chore of washing the car... Continue Reading New coating technology promises self-cleaning cars

Section: Automotive

Tags: Coating, Eindhoven University, Self-cleaning, Self-healing

Related Articles:

• Self-healing paint is just the beginning
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• Tests on reducing glare and fingerprints from touch screen devices
• New polymers self-heal scratches in UV light

Kenguru, the first drive-from wheelchair EV, enters production
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2012-07-23 11:26:17 UTC

Though its undoubtedly true to say that mobility vehicles designed for wheelchair access exist, like AM General's MV-1, these generally relegate the wheelchair user to backseat passenger. Vehicles that do allow a wheelchair behind the controls are expensive made-to-order conversions of people carriers and mini-buses. The Kenguru is about as far from a people carrier as it's possible to get, being a small nimble electric vehicle, but one designed specifically for quick, easy access by, and driving from, a wheelchair. Its makers claim it is the first drive-from-wheelchair electric car... Continue Reading Kenguru, the first drive-from wheelchair EV, enters production

Section: Automotive

Tags: Electric Vehicles, Mobility, Wheelchair

Related Articles:

• The WHILL turns any wheelchair into an electric vehicle
• MV-1 van is designed specifically for wheelchair users
• Panasonic's robotic-bed-cum-wheelchair helps maintain independent lifestyle
• NTU builds a better wheelchair
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• Chunc an innovative design in wheelchair technology

16-Year-Old Egyptian Scientist Finds Way to Turn Plastic Waste Into $78 Million of Biofuel!
by: Inhabitat , 2012-07-21 17:36:41 UTC

Plastic waste photo from Shutterstock

Egyptian teenagers are on a roll lately – if they’re not proposing the next-generation of space propulsion systems, then they’re figuring out how to use the country’s plastic waste for fuel! Sixteen-year-old Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad has found that an inexpensive catalyst could be used to create $78 million worth of biofuel each year. Egypt’s plastic consumption is estimated to total one million tons per year, so Azza’s proposal could transform the country’s economy, allowing it to make money from recycled plastic.

What Azza proposes is to break down the plastic polymers found in drinks bottles and general waste and turn them into biofuel feedstock. (This is the bulk raw material that generally used for producing biofuel.) It should be noted that this is not a particularly new idea, but what makes Azza stand out from the crowd is the catalyst that she is proposing. She says that she has found a high-yield catalyst called aluminosilicate, that will break down plastic waste and also produce gaseous products like methane, propane and ethane, which can then be converted into ethanol.

Speaking about the breakthrough, Azza said that the technology could “provide an economically efficient method for production of hydrocarbon fuel” including 40,000 tons per year of cracked naptha and 138,000 tons of hydrocarbon gasses – the equivalent of $78 million in biofuel.

Azza has already been making waves in the scientific community and has been presented with the European Fusion Development Agreement award at the 23rd European Union Contest for Young Scientists. She is now looking to get her findings patented through the Egyptian Patent Office.

Unsurprisingly, Azza’s proposal has generated a lot of interest from the Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute, which is seeking to reduce its waste. With the amount of plastic waste in the Middle East, not to mention the world’s oceans, any breakthrough such as this is happily received.

We can’t wait to see what Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad does next and we’re sure she has a bright future ahead of her.

Via Grist/Green Prophet

Images: European Commission and  Dan Lundberg