Project-one : Mock-Ups

In week-three, students are to present mock-ups of their design. Our mock-ups should be in physical form using any materials, that is preferably of low-cost. The mock-ups are made just to help communicate the student ideas with the tutors, and to show student progress with the project.

My first mock-up is made with cardboard and foam-core and the second is just blu-foam.
Some of my class-mates would recognise that my developments are cells and some did not know what they are. Though I must say that my made-cell are quite ugly. It would be described as crudely made rectangular form with very irregular shapes cut-ins.

I find that my idea wasn't going so well. Because my design did not indicate any kind of biomimic, and though it looks like cell, and to me, it also looked like any other ordinary cabinet. Thinking that my design would not go so well, I got worried.

Only after I've spoke to the tutors and told them about the concept, and they made me realise the current form is too restrictive, and I agreed to that. Because I thought the design concept should be made obvious, to resemble the plant-cell, and to let the tutors and other students to know where I took my inspiration from.

The look-a-like-cell proved to be disadvantage for my design, the idea became limited and did not prove to be storage-efficient. I was also ambitious wanting to also create storage spaces for stationary, books, CDs, collectible items and electronics in this cell.

So the tutor had me refocused to design for a specific product category, which I originally chose electronics and their accessories. And the tutor had me re-think about my cell-concept.
"What is the principle(s) that I am taking from the cell, the advantage they (must) have?"

Reconsidering the should-be-real-reason why I chose cells, is because of their [permeable] surface area.

Individual cells are small in volume, and they are packed with microscopic organelles and other components. These organelles have increase-surface-area of thin-and-inner folds that make up the membraneous layers of the organelles, such as the mitochondria (something that manufactures ATP energy for the cell).

So cells found in plant and animals are good with what they do is because of their large-surface-area to maximise their gain in receiving nutrients and maximise their efficiency in exporting nutrients from their surface area.

Project-one : Initial concepts

Week-one was the lecture introduction to Bio-designs and group research on current storage problems, potential sustainable materials for our designs, market research on existing storage-products ; this is my group's blog : http://industrialgroup4.blogspot.com.au/

For week-two we have to come up with our ''best'' design concepts in drawings/sketches and to present them to the class.

One of my concept took inspiration from plant-cells and I want to create solution to electronic and battery-charger storage.

The reason I chose plant-cell as an inspiration is because cells naturally storesand also transport nutrients within the body of the organism. And cells are efficient, as they should be, to maintain the life of an organism, and so I believe I can use the cell system for my design.

And my group's survey had found that a home-resident is always unhappy with messy-cables and another resident would wish for storage solution battery chargers/adapters.

So my plant-cell inspired storage will create solution for holding electronics (e.g. Cameras, phone, tablets) and their cables and battery adapters. My design should be space-efficient with the focus that it will be placed in high-density area in homes.

Project-one : BioInspiration

Uni-semester-one of 2012 began on the 27th February. And the first project for Studio is to design solution to storage problems in existing [medium-to-high density] homes. The type of homes like appartments, flats, dormitories, condos.

A requirement for this project is that our design must mimic bio-nature-ecosystem, by form and function of a natural system. So, the idea of focus is to, find out "what would nature do here?" By refering to how the natural-organism would solve diffulties in storage system in a home.

Sustainibility is also the focus in our design. To employ sustainable usage of materials and manufacturing processes.

In the first lecture we were presented with terminologies of Biomorphic and Biomimicry. And examples of existing designs were shown to students and to provide us ideas how current designs took inspiration from the natural-living-beings. Such as, the composition and dimensional form of a sunflower and it's bio-behavioural response to the Sun.,was inspired to develop this solar-energy-system.

Because mankind depend on man-made things for survival and while we create things to benefit ourselves, but at a cost of the degrading the natural environment when it comes down to forestry, mining, oil pumping, carbon emission from our transport system and manufacuring.

So it has become increasingly important to the point designers need to come up with solutions with designs that incorporate sustainable efficiency, e.g. solar, wind-energy harvesting system; to create a better relationship between man and nature.

Video Reflection #1- The 11th Hour(2007)

I've watched this documentary film "The 11th Hour" which is presented by Leonardo DiCaprio.
This 95-minutes running film introduce and/or remind the viewers of the current issues between developing human society and the natural ecosystem.
One of the expert thinker interviewed in the film tells me that it's our [instictual] mind and act of human for the need to survive is creating a devastating gash on our planet.

Because human are capable of making tools and tools are made from non-renewable sources of the earth, and with the exponential growth of human population, we are using our finite resources at a very, very, very fast rate.
The combination of: obtaining natural resources, turning them into useable products, and then the disposal of them as wastes, and with the ways in how we handle the mechanical processes and the uses of the earth's materials is unsustainable and is causing negative effect on the earth's environment.

It's interesting to hear a notion from another expert, that the general public fear the loss of our ecosystem and the chances of survival of many species. But the idea is that human are actually running the end of their lively-journey and our natural environment may actually survive the harmful ways like deforestation, exploding cliffs and rocks to reach rich metal ores, and pumping oil from the ocean and the continent.

Because in our recorded history the naturals on earth had survived many hardships of natural disasters, and severe climate change, e.g. the Ice Age. While species have the natural ability to survive the environment, such as spider's body can producde webs; geckos regenerate their loss tail; plants' ribozomes allow them to re-sprout after fires; bacteria are immune to other invading bacterial cells.

Human don't have these kind of adaptative responses. Human are able to create a ''comfortable'' environment for themselves, but with unsustainable practices the offsets also became destructive and harmful to own environment.
Moving back to the film, experts also describes that we can create design-solutions imitating nature bio-forms and -functions, incorporating natural-principles in our sustainable designs, such as plants and flowres use of photosynthesis to capture water and sun-light energy.
There is current incentives and researches well spent into creating harvesting-renewable sources efficiently and using them in sustainable manner.
The hope of this documentary is to expand the awareness to the human community. That our world is in crisis and needs attention to. The presenter of this film, DiCaprio, indicated that it requires the global effort to turn things around to help us live harmoniously with natural system.

And experts, says we cannot just blame the national government for their lack of attention and unreliable environmental policies and market organisations (e.g. petroleum companies) that performs unsustainable practices, it's we human are actually to blame for our acts, because we demanded to have commercial products; we wanted more food, homes, cars, electronics, luxuries, etc.

I reckon this film is important to be noted by designers. This generation human society is very advance and well educated, it is therefore, very worthwile and essential that design organisations come up with solutions for our today's and future problems.

Project 2: peer comments

Cherrie Fillisia: http://cf-indesign.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-2-upcycled-utility.html#comments

Ryan Go: http://ryan-go.blogspot.com/2011/10/upcycling-unwanteds-jellyfish-light.html#comments

Dongwook Kim: http://dongkim926.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-2-upcycled-utility.html#comments

Phunthita Vimolpatranon: http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6561537982608082039&postID=2399630397891450658&isPopup=true

Chuming Li: http://laichorming.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-2-poster.html#comments

Project 2: [Upcycle] Lamp Design

Project 2: Rationale

In my pendant lamp I want to celebrate the special gifts bestowed by the Polypropylene material in the JCDecaux poster-ad.

The distinct gifts of rigid strength and generous flexibility the Polypropylene presents in the material itself with given opportunity to emit distinguishable lights in any room or home.

The lamp appearance gave sight to viewers with a show of reliability in its stability to hold, or stand the lamp. The appearance model also demonstrates the humble and yieldingness to manipulation in shaping forms. This power of manipulation gave opportunity to explore the use of torsion in the folding sheets on the side-faces of the lamp.

These bending forms express the playfulness of light and it is interesting to see how light can be seen differently on other forms and objects. The effect of torsion can create shadows, low-reflective lights and because of the printed colours on the sheet the user is able to see the changing strength of light at different angles of viewing.

Because of the nature of shape in the design the unused amount of the poster is moderately wasteful, therefore, sizes and dimension of certain parts of the lamp can be (easily) altered to minimise the waste, as sustainability is also an essential focus in this design. Previously with my initial models the waste amount displays 55%, while I have reduced the portion down to 47%, I believe further waste reduction is possible without costing the brightness of the light.

The lamp design very easy to assemble and dissemble; only require users to place the form adjacent to each other and connect the faces with clips on the inside of the lamp, and then hooking the wired light globe and wiring to respective openings at the top of the lamp.

There are no other materials used besides (very minimal of) metal wire, (several) plastic clips and the polypropylene paper. So recycling this lamp is safe and sustainable.

The lamp is also easy for flat packing into its box with dimension of 78 x 21 x 4 cm. The dimension of the assembled lamp is 35cm tall and 20cm wide. My CAD drawings have given me an idea manufacturing this pendant lamp can produce 5-lamps from 2-PP-sheets, and 4-PP-sheets can allow the manufacturing of 11-lamps.