Design

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Amazing Design Science

System 001: An Innovative Design to Remove Plastic From the Ocean has Been Deployed off the Coast of California

Founded in 2013 by 18-year-old (at the time) inventor Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit organization that’s working to clean up our oceans by removing plastic. After five years of rigorous design and testing, the Cleanup’s cleaning apparatus, called System 001, has been deployed off the coast of California.

System 001 is a passive collection apparatus that works by moving in tandem with the ocean’s currents, taking advantage of the water’s circular movement patterns, called gyres, that cause the trash to accumulate in the first place. The Ocean Cleanup points out that 92% of the debris in the Patch is still large enough to be collected using the System’s large suspended net, and it’s critical to remove this plastic now before it degrades into microplastics that enter the food chain. Because of the net’s passive, slow-moving design, the group has reported that it has not caused animals to get caught, presumably because they have sufficient time and space to navigate away from the debris-funneling nets.

While the organization has global aspirations and an international team (the founder is Dutch), their first focus is on the massive Pacific Garbage Patch, which floats in the ocean between California and Hawaii. The Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest aquatic aggregation of trash in the world, first recognized thirty years ago. It is estimated to contain about 80,000 metric tons of garbage spanning 5.2 billion square feet (nearly a million square miles). Ocean Cleanup’s boat, the Maersk Launcher, towed the System 1,200 miles from Alameda to begin its work.

You can see a live update of the System’s location and learn more about The Ocean Cleanup on the organization’s website, as well as on Twitter and Instagram.

  

Art Design

Hand-Tufted Rugs Celebrate the Natural Beauty of Lichen and Mold

Dutch artist Lizan Freijsen explores our relationship to fungi, stains, mold, and moisture through modes of interior design. Freijsen creates rugs (as well as wallpapers and blankets) that mimic the unique patterns of natural formations in states of growth and decay. Each carpet has its own shape and color palette, and is comprised of concentric rings—some with eccentrically squiggling edges and others with more simple circles.

To produce these often large-scale textiles, Freijsen partners with Hester Onijs and Karen Zeedijk at the Textile Museum in Tilburg, NL. In addition to her own art practice, Freijsen has been teaching at the Willem De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam since 2000. You can see more of her work and peruse rugs that are available for purchase on her website.

Design

This Goal-Driven Calendar Rewards Your Daily Achievements With Illuminated Gold Stars

Inventor Simone Giertz is known for her hilariously disobedient robots like this breakfast machine designed to pour a bowl of cereal but which actually just sloshes milk across the counter, or her wake-up robot that jolts users awake by repeatedly slapping them in the face. Her latest invention started as a personal project, and has nothing to do with being harassed by a piece of metal machinery. The Every Day Calendar is an illuminated board with responsive buttons that correspond with each day of the year, and is intended to help users set and stick with their goals.

Giertz built the piece to encourage meditating, a habit she had been trying off and on for nearly 10 years. After each session she touched the light-up button, which allowed her to get a visual index of her daily accomplishment. The inventor recently completed her year-long goal, only missing the one day she underwent brain surgery. Every Day Calendar is not only an encouraging model for the easy days, but it is also meant to be a guiding light for the days that are not so easy. You can check out the project and learn a little bit more about Giertz on her Kickstarter page. (via Swissmiss)

    

Art Design

Spaghetti-like Benches by Pablo Reinoso Twist into Interlocking Circles and Climb up Nearby Walls

French-Argentine artist and designer Pablo Reinoso has been designing and fabricating sculptural benches since he was just 15. Throughout his nearly five decades as an artist he has explored several iterations of both seating and sculptural forms, including his two most recent series Spaghetti and Garabatos. Each work is a bench at its very core, but its structure has been elongated and twisted into an object that expresses a little bit of anarchy and a lot of play.

“Reinoso stages benches that, having fulfilled their role as furniture, become once again branches that can grow and climb,” explains the artist’s statement on his website. “…they can at least express themselves freely by embracing architecture, roaming through places, exploring gaps, and giving free rein to their whims.”

Although Reinoso has always explored the structure of the bench, he has often diverged into other disciplines as a part of his wide-sweeping practice. He has explored sculpture, photography, architecture, and design, each with a bit of humor and a desire to test limits in understanding and form. His installation “The Circle,” from his series Garabatos, is currently installed in Paris’s Tuileries Garden through November 7, 2018. You can few a larger selection from this series on his website and Instagram.

Craft Design

Floral Wreaths Blossom Into Bold Type

In designer Olga Prinku’s floral wreaths, hundreds of dried plants and flowers are sewn into the shape of large capital letters. Flower heads spring out of the tulle as if magically sprouting from planted seeds Prinku had scattered weeks before. Although a graphic designer by trade, her project has sparked a love affair with weaving and craft, and encouraged her to experiment with several different mediums. 

“This particular technique of weaving flowers on tulle actually came to me in a dream,” Prinku tells Colossal. At first she began placing dried flowers on a sieve, which resembled the net structure of tulle. Once she began using the new medium, she looked to her garden for fresh flowers. She initially used fresh flowers for her works, but the natural objects began to shrink as they dried, which left gaps in her designs. 

“Now I use dry flowers,” she explains. “Some I buy readily dried, and some I pick from fresh and dry myself using silica gel. I also collect seed pods at the end of the season, which I use as they are.”  Prinku alters what flowers and plants she uses depending on the season. “I’m still learning a lot through experimenting about what flowers are the best – I’m basically looking for ones that are good at holding their color when dry and that have thin stems that I can use on the tulle.”

Prinku’s artistic process has fostered her appreciation of beauty and intricate details that exist in nature. “I’ve become much more observant about the plants that are growing all around where I live, and that fuels my creativity too,” she says. To learn more about Prinku’s work visit her website and her Instagram.

Animation Design

Video Game Designers Show the Carefully Orchestrated Movements That Bring Their Stop Motion Characters to Life

Vokabulantis is an episodic video game by author Morten Søndergaard, animator Johan Oettinger, and puppet animation studio Wired Fly. The team used stop motion to animate the two main characters—Kurt and Karla—which the player leads through a series of language-based puzzles. The intention of the interactive universe it to bring a tangibility to language, creating a space where users can interact with its form rather than merely read through static text on a screen.

The single player game is a mix between a point and click adventure and a puzzle-based platform, which allows the user to explore worlds while they complete brain teasers or tasks with the two main characters. The game was initially developed for PC, but may be adapted for console-based platforms or handheld devices down the line when it is released in 2019. You can follow updates regarding the release of the Kong Orange-produced game on Vokabulantis’s website, and take a look behind the making of the stop-motion game in the video below.

Design

An Undulating Brick Facade Imitates the Free-Flowing Movement of Draped Fabric

German architecture firm Behet Bondzio Lin Architekten recently constructed a new headquarters for the Association of the Northwest German Textile and Garment Industry in Münster, Germany. The firm wanted the building to allude to the association’s work with fabric, and designed a facade that would imitate its folds through a gradient of bricks oriented at different angles.

The decision to recreate the appearance of a soft textile from a firm material was inspired by the alabaster folds of Max Klinger's statue of Beethoven located at the Leipzig Art Museum. The carved composer sits shirtless on an armchair with what appears to be a piece of fabric draped over his knee. The fluid nature of the sculpture’s scarf is believable, despite its composition of solid stone. A similar experience is shared by the new headquarters, however created from bricks rather than rock. You can see more of the Behet Bondzio Lin’s designs on their website. (via Jeroen Apers)