Let’s kick off this coverage with the Cube Exhibition, which is a brand new addition to the 100% Tokyo. This nook actually showcased works of young designers who brought to life the Love Green Concept.

TOHO-Leo Corp and plant designer Harumi Suwa of Atelier Yukiyanagi worked with forty-five talented designers to recreate the green-magic! The dominant installation was this 2.2 m-squared cube that with a planted green façade. This Vertical Garden included beauties like Calathea and Peperomia.

Many Exhibitors brought out their innovations and sparked debates on the real fundamentalism of Eco or Green Concepts.

In the next coverage expect the 100% Café by Subway!

Pine Beetle Wood Gate by Judson Beaumont

Dumbbell Flower Vase by Satoru Okazawa & Takako Chinoda

“Grass” Chair by Kaori Yamamoto

Trigona-swing by Mie Matsubara

TRC (Transparent Reflective Chair) by Tomoaki Yoneta

“Plane” Bedside Table by Oyadica Studio

Ryoku-Kagu by Hiroya Kajiura

“Frame” by Shinichiro Nakai

Drip-drop by Keisuke Hirata & Tomomi Seki

Bolt Stool by Takumi Ichihara

Sanagi by Taichi Fujita

First we’ve got some on-site footage of the event where the glasses are judged, London Design Festival 2009, complete with the judges, prize-bestower Yves Behar of the Fuse Project Studio, and oh you get to see who won! BONUS you get to see the Bombay Bahar drink mix. Ohhh baybay!

Then we’ve got more London Design Festival action with Bombay at the Tent Digital with some fantastic digital commissions made by Seeper Interactive including an infrared-detecting spheroid and a three-person touch-screen music machine. BONUS another drink mix by the same guy! Hooray!

And finally, the creation of a gigantoric chess set designed by none other than everyone’s favorite artist and designer outta Madrid, Jamie Hayon! His is a story you must read.

Then, yet again! A drink concoction in celebration!

This could be the beginning of an awesome short movie series: Title, Event, Drink Mix in Celebration! Totally amazing. Completely totally amazing series in my mind.

Remember to always to be safe while drinking and judging!

You probably recollect seeing the Kahuna, Eintopf, KAPUTT.R, Tri-Surviving and Rescue Stick on YD, so check the awesome prototype that Braun did for the designers. It’s always a joy to see your fruits of labor take shape, so savor your victory you awesome designers! All 22 of you!

Special Thanks to Florian Wille

 

For those of you wondering about the 90 year time span: this year marks the first 90 year lifespan of Electrolux itself. Here’s to 90 more, is what they’re basically up on.

1. Cocoon by Rickard Hederstierna, Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden Genetically engineered, prepackaged meat and fish dishes at your fingertips. This heating device prepares each packaged item according to the RFID tag attached. Like going to the McFly’s household in 2015!

2. Naturewash by Zhenpeng Li, Zhejiang University, China A waching machine with no water. All of your nano-coated fabrics will now be washed with negative ions aka the grasstastic Naturewash. OH and it has three settings, happy day! They are: clean clothes (I should hope so,) grass scent, and flower scent.

I’m hoping for lilacs.

3. Renew by Louis Filosa, Purdue University, USA It is a steamer. For the home. Home steamer. Again with the RFID tags placed in the clothing, the steamer uses two steam blades to blast the shirts and the pants and the underclothings so super clean.

4. Teleport Fridge by Dulyawat Wongnawa, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand You guessed it. Star Trek. As simple as it gets, Wongnawa has rendered out a fridge with the capability to accept transported foods to any of its several compartments.

5. Water Catcher by Penghao Shan, Zhejiang Sci-tech University, China Batteries Not Included! These little guys are sent out into the world to catch the raindrops. Literally. When it rains, these little flying robots go outside, catch their capacity in rain water, come back, and deposit. They then, based on the person they are serving, bring pure water, or water with healthy additives), and fill you up a glass. Fun!

NOW what you’ve gotta do, if you’re cool, is to go to the Electrolux Design Lab 2009 website and vote for these or others so they can win hecka money and design a better world!

Designer: Various Electrotastic Designers

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Exhibition: Tokyo Fiber

Fabric made with nanofibers, invisible to the naked eye and with diameters only 1/7500 of the thickness of human hair, has more than 10 times the surface area and pores of ordinary fabrics, enabling it to pick up sub-micron oil films and dust. This superb wiping performance of nanofibers the size of single cells is here combined with high-tech from electric appliances to create a wiping robot. Part of the robot’s behavior is simulated, but a final product would use sensors to detect dirt and roam around freely as if it were a living creature.

 

Ross Lovegrove, the UK designer whose earnest approach to organic designs constantly produces surprises, has utilized the properties of triaxial woven fabric to create an ultra light-weight backpack with an organic shape. Unlike conventional textiles with warp and weft intersecting at 90 degrees, triaxial woven fabric employs three threads intersecting each other at 60 degrees in a reticulate arrangement. From this fabric emerge structures that are ideal for tracing dynamic surface changes in three dimensions.

 

Architect Shigeru Band is an architect with a reputation for having a clear motivation for choice of materials. Here, he conceived a super light-weight chair that uses carbon fiber for lightness and tensile strength. Rather than using carbon fiber on its own, he created a tough structure by sandwiching aluminum between thin layers of carbon fiber. The use of aluminum in the combination enables successful pinpointing of the characteristics of carbon fiber.

 

Artist Yasuhiro Suzuki uses the human body as one of his motifs, and created a mannequin with a 3D spring structure built up from monofilament fibers extruded from nozzles. The mannequin is a hollow structure molded in a cast taken from life-size human model. Internally carefully placed polyester fibers can be operated by an air compressor to make the mannequin move as if it were breathing.

 

G1 Car by Karthik Narayan

G1 or Jeevan in Hindi means life; this car is a hydrogen version that regenerates its own fuel. Mutant algae that produces hydrogen in the presence of light (with oxygen as a by-product), powers this car. A canopy on top of the car is where the algae reside, they do their bit when the car is stationary.

Eco-friendly mobility solution for the future by Amey Dhuri

Urban spaces demand for cars that are compact, have minimal turning requirements and parking space. This eco-friendly car is meant for two people and has some amazing features that address these two issues. The car controls are incorporated within the front wheels allowing either the driver or the passenger to drive the car. The car also boasts of a near-zero turning radius. For parking the car almost shrinks up to half its usual size, thus making it easy to park.

Re-designed Shopping Mall Cart by Dipesh Parmar

Till quite recently malls were a western cultural phenomenon in India. Now that we see dime a dozen mushrooming up at every nook and corner of the city, but there has been a dearth of the perfect Supermarket trolley that addresses Indian sensibilities. This trolley here is quite essentially two baskets and a child-carrier. The top and lower basket both detach to become individual trolleys, however the true beauty is when you use the whole setup together. Since the bottom space of a typical trolley is seldom used, the bottom basket in this one utilizes the space effectively. It slides out on the rails so that you can easily place your purchases in it, without any fuss.

Personal Mobility Solution For the Future by Prajwal Ullal

A biker’s bike! Ah the speed-monster gets a chic look and some sensibilities, coz it offers two modes, the highway mode where you can trail-blaze to glory and the city mode where you can’t do much speed. Fancy the way the wheels come together in the parking stance, giving it a minimum horizontal footprint.

It was an enriching experience to interact with the students and professors of IDC. The main strength that shone through all the flaws of the show (nobody is perfect) was the communication of ideas and the phenomenal thought process of the teams. The Animation Design, Visual Communication and Interaction Design faculties put up a swell show as well, and I was impressed by the dedication and creative energy.

If I must crib about one thing, then it has to be the lack of better renders by the ID students, their scale models reflected their efforts, but good supporting renders are a MUST!

Part 1, Part 2

Exhibition: Tokyo Fiber

Flower artist Makoto Azuma’s characteristic, scrupulous style unhesitatingly draws out the beauty of plants and flowers, revealing their dignity and majesty. here, he uses TERRAMAC because it is manufactured from plant derived polylactic acid to make the material biodegradable. In other words, it is a fiber that will eventually return to nature. The material is woven so as to give depth to the resulting fabric. Azuma uses it as a very broad planter, turning the exhibition site into a mossy wetland. Gorgeous!

 

The thinking behind Mint Designs’ clothing design process is similar to that behind product design. This youthful fashion sense was tapped to find uses for a nonwoven fabric made from long polyester fibers. SMASH is an ideal molding fiber, highly thermoplastic, which enables it to be molded into dynamic, three-dimensional forms. The resulting product were masks press-formed into the shape of a face.

 

Product design group Nendo conceived a completely new 3D product. Non-woven fabric shaped by a balloon swelling up in hot water as it boils becomes a lampshade, retaining the shape of the balloon. In addition to being extremely pliant and having thermoplastic properties, the material is air-permeable to liquids, but at the same time it is light weight and does not tear easily. These are all properties that make it suitable for lampshades. The shape is a natural result of the simple manufacturing process, but it has a delightful resemblance to a mushroom. So cute!

 

The 2007 SENSEWARE exhibition presented cars with soft skins like animals. That concept is further developed here with a ‘laughing vehicle.’ one of the ideas that emerged when examining why it is useful for a vehicle to have a soft membrane. The car can become even more an extension of the driver’s personality, creating the potential for emotionally-engaged and emotionally-satisfying interaction.

 

Part 1, Part 3

Exhibition: Tokyo Fiber

With a pure and simple innovative approach, architect Jun Aoki took a close look at carbon fiber and conceived a product that straightforwardly brings out the characteristics of this fiber. Carbon fiber provides strength under tension and is very light, as can be clearly seen from the structure of the long cantilever bean that Aoki produced. Stretching across the room, the lighting fixture illuminates more than enough space for five chars side by side, even when the chairs are spread out.

 

Art Director Kashiwa Sato is active in a wide range of areas from kindergarten design to design of mobile phone handsets. Sato had the idea of making blocks for kindergarten age children. These are soft building blocks of air. The highly elastic monofilament is extruded into random cells to make a cushion material that is 95% air, thereby effectively capturing air in three dimensions. The material is washable, safe, and clean. Ideal for building dens!

 

By embedding optical fibers continuously, then cutting across fibers, it is possible to make concrete that light will penetrate. Kengo Kuma, known for architecture, understands building design can be influenced by the potential of its materials. These piled light blocks create a new architectural vocabulary. The space he produced is translucent, so people inside sense the shadows of people walking outside. This represents a radical change for the character of a solid material that would normally shut out light.

 

Kosuke Tsumura, a fashion design who is constantly searching for new, meaningful perspectives for clothing and people, created clothing for a mother and her baby. The rockable cradle that gently accepts the new-born baby is made from a material that is soft like a blanket. The impression in the center is firm like a silk cocoon. Individual laser cut units are combined like puzzle pieces to form the mother’s clothes.

 

Part 2, Part 3

Exhibition: Tokyo Fiber

Top Italian product designer Antonio Citterio used a multi-layered stretch fabric that is both pliant and strong, taking on the challenge of designing a sofa that can change its shape. The sofa starts out flat like a bed, but on pressing a button on a remote, changes shape to produce a backrest. The stretchability of the fabric enables the creation of this beautiful, soft, and minimal shape.

 

Designer Gwenaël Nicolas has an interest in sculpting light, and created a bench that uses coarse knits of optical fibers to respond to human movement with light. The optical fiber textile was produced through a collaboration with Reiko Studio. The strength of the light attenuates along the length of the fiber, and this property is cleverly used to supplement the rhythmic patterns of the textile.

 

The water droplets seeping out are kept under control on the water-repellant fabric as they form letter that spell out the exhibition theme. In a sense, this is a sign made of water. Fibers given a special coating at the nano level completely repel the drops of water, much like a lotus leaf. When the droplets of water exceed a certain size, they roll away down the sloping surface.

 

The robot tiles created by media artist Hiroo Iwata incorporate sensors using electrically-conductive textiles. The emergence of fabric that conduct electricity with nano-level conductivity has the potential to bring revolutionary change to environmental-use materials. Imagine keyboards made from fabric.