July 27, 2016

A wine glass for the great outdoors

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 9:42 am

Parqer

Designed by Dorine Vos, the Parqer glass is a proper wine glass with a sharp-ended aluminium stem instead of a glass stem and a foot you can plant into the ground, be it in a park, a beach or in the forest. This also means you can drink decent wine instead of some Château Migraine in a plastic cup.

A set of two glasses comes in a shockproof casing where the glasses don’t touch the sides, while the aluminium stems come in different colours like silver, gold, black and green. Vos came up with the design after her own experiences sitting in the parks of Amsterdam, which I can tell you means having to drink out of soft plastic cups.

Their instagram is fun, with people using their Parqers in all kinds of places.

(Link: www.designboom.com, Photo www.parqerglass.com)

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June 27, 2016

One step closer to cleaning up the oceans

Filed under: Design,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:42 pm

Boyan Slat, the young Dutch inventor who came up with an inventive way of cleaning up the oceans, has recently unveiled the prototype of his ‘ambitious sea-cleaning device’ in Scheveningen, South Holland.

“Why move through the ocean if the ocean can move through you?” Slat asked at a press conference during the unveiling. He plans to use a 100-kilometre long V-shaped barrier made up of large, rubber pillow-shaped buoys floating on the ocean surface that trail a three-metre long curtain from its arms into the water.

Slat hopes to fully roll out the system in 2020, which could capture up to 3,000 cubic metres of plastic soup. Find out more at The Ocean Clean Up.

(Link: phys.org, Photo: screenshot of Tedx presentation)

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May 30, 2016

Dutch dictionary wins top British design prize

Filed under: Design,Literature by Orangemaster @ 9:18 am

British advertising agency D&AD have recently announced this year’s winners of their D&AD Pencil Awards for creative excellence in design and advertising, and the Netherlands nabbed seven awards this year, three less than last year. Studio Joost Grootens picked up a coveted Pencil award for the design of the new Dikke Van Dale, the “oldest and most extensive dictionary of the Dutch language”.

The pearly white cover presents a major break with the familiar dark hues [dark blue, maroon, etc.] traditionally used by the publisher. This signals the current association between the pursuit of knowledge and our use of white and silver digital devices as the portals to information.

With Almost 5000 pages of knowledge and in its fifteenth edition, this year the Van Dale was also fitted with navigational elements such as colours, symbols and illustrations.

(Links: www.dandad.org-1, www.dandad.org-2)

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April 30, 2016

100 days of Dutch things

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 1:23 pm

jacqueline-storm-100-days-nl

Designer Jacqueline Storm has embarked on a project to make a drawing of a different iconic Dutch subject every day.

Some of her subjects such as wooden shoes and the king are perhaps a bit clichéd, but that makes it the more interesting to see if she can keep it up. How many things exist that simply scream ‘Dutch’? We’re about to find out.

Storm started her project on Facebook on 19 April and so far she has covered subjects ranging from Miffy to black liquorice to fries with mayonnaise to the national bird, the black-tailed godwit. At the time of writing she has created 12 drawings in the series.

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April 25, 2016

Charging up your phone while you fidget

Filed under: Design,Sustainability,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:31 am

Moov

For those of us who can’t still still, imagine sitting or moving around in your chair and charging your mobile phone at the same time. Thanks to Dutch designer Nathalie Teugels, you’ll be able to do just that: her chair called MOOV has 288 piezoelectric crystals under the seat cushion that produces electricity when it’s compressed.

Teugels was told way too often to ‘sit still’ and instead of catering to that, she decided to design something that would embrace the fidgeting, especially people with ADD. In fact, sitting upright in the chair can charge it up as well, so it’s a win-win for anyone sitting down. The chair is currently a working prototype, so we’ll have to sit tight for a while until we can get one.

If someone could do that with the utterly useless and annoying habit of pen clicking, I’d be a tad less misophonic. I actually carry pens around to switch them out to people who click them.

NTEUGELS PRESENTS MOOV from RAHVICE on Vimeo.

(Links: mentalfloss.com, photo: nteugels.tumblr.com)

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April 17, 2016

Make your own plastic reuse devices

Filed under: Design,Sustainability,Technology by Orangemaster @ 2:27 pm

plastic-bag-kate-ter-haar

Dutch designer Dave Hakkens has created devices described as ‘a solution to plastic pollution’ that people can download and build themselves. The series is called Precious Plastic machines, which uses everyday materials and basic tools Hakkens says are available around the world.

Precious Plastic machines include a shredder, extruder, injection moulder and a rotation moulder, which can all be used to turn waste plastic into new products. Hakkens first showed prototype versions at the Design Academy Eindhoven graduation show in 2013, and has spent the last two years refining the designs.

Hakkens wants to deal with the reported 311 million tonnes of plastic waste humans create every year, of which less than 10 per cent is actually recycled. “A lot of things we have are made from plastic. It’s used everywhere, but it also ends up everywhere, damaging our planet.”

In late 2013 Hakkens partnered up with Motorola in order to create mobile phones to combat electronic waste: not throwing out an entire phone and swapping out a broken component instead.

(Link: www.dezeen.com, Photo by Kate ter Haar, some rights reserved)

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March 30, 2016

3D printed chair created on a cellular level

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 8:10 pm

Gradient-chair_front-1500x889

Here’s another super scientific 3D chair by Joris Laarman who created some revolutionary chairs back in 2010 using algorithms.

This aluminum gradient chair on display in New York in 2014 was the second in a series of three chairs that researched microstructures for furniture. According to Laarman, it was designed and directly laser sintered in aluminum, basically creating a lightweight aluminum foam that is engineered on a cellular level to address specific functional needs for different areas in the object. The solid cells in the design create structural strength and rigidity while the more open cells create material reduction and lightness, all within one printing technique.

(Link: www.designboom.com, Photo: www.jorislaarman.com)

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March 26, 2016

Creating crunchy patterns on modern ceramics

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 9:07 am

erosion

For anyone like me who usually finds ceramics dull, Dutch designer Floris Wubben of Eindhoven has found a way of making ceramics cool. He created a rotating flame-throwing device that makes exciting textures on his ceramic pieces.

A wet ceramic piece is placed on a rotating central stand, where an adjustable semicircular arm holds a blowtorch. The blowtorch then applies a flame directly to object’s surface, creating all kinds of patterns.

Wubben is able to control the flame, the distance and the speed at which the blowtorch hits a ceramic piece, creating cooler patterns than you’d normally see on ceramics. Wubben has produced bowls, pots and cups with different glazes in collaboration with Cor Unum ceramics studio of Den Bosch, Noord-Brabant.

(Link and photo: www.dezeen.com)

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February 9, 2016

Demolition company scores Delft blue tiles

Filed under: Design,History by Orangemaster @ 12:54 pm

delftware-morgaine

Last year in Southbourne, England, a wall of valuable Delft blue tiles (not the ones shown here) worth up to £50,000 (roughly 64,350 euro) was uncovered during the demolition of a Victorian house. The wall had 256 tiles in all, bricked in behind a fireplace. It was uncovered by a demolition expert who had also found tons of valuable letters and such during the demolition of JRR Tolkien’s former Poole home in 2008, many of which were located around the fireplace, the place to check.

“The remarkably well-preserved collection of hand-painted tiles includes some decorated with patterns, biblical scenes, rural settings, animals and colourful birds.”

(Link: www.bournemouthecho.co.uk, Photo by Morgaine, some rights reserved)

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January 19, 2016

Prototype back pack filters the air using plants

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 3:17 pm

Aloe Vera

Five Dutch students of the Delft University of Technology are designing a back pack with a plant in it which would replace the use of gas masks in polluted cities. “The bag allows fine particles to be filtered out and cleans the air,” said team leader Marnix de Kroon. It provides instant fresh air to the wearer thanks to a filter that sifts it through the roots of a plant inside the back pack.

Plant-wise, “it seems that aloe vera may be a possibility,” De Kroon explained. An expert was quick to cut the plant bag idea down, claiming it wouldn’t be useful and the filter itself could ‘weed out’ 99.9 percent of the fine particles.

The team still believes that in cities like Beijing and Tehran, which have serious pollution problems, could be their main market. After all, the prototype did bag a Dutch design prize.

(Link: thepeninsulaqatar.com, Photo of Aloe vera by Tom Parnell, some rights reserved)

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