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Domain: designboom.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to designboom.com.
Stories · 3
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3D-Printed House Constructed On-Site In One Day (treehugger.com)
Heffenfeffer writes: Russian company Apis Cor has manufactured a 3D printed concrete house on-site in 24 hours in Stupino Town, Russia. Using a tower crane-shaped concrete extruder that can rotate 360 degrees, the 38 square meter (408.88 square foot) rotor-shaped home walls were constructed in one day. Voids left in the manufacturing process were filled by hand, installing windows, doors, and adding polyurethane and fiber insulation to the hollow concrete walls. The roof was also constructed by hand using polymer membranes, welded together using hot air and special equipment. Total construction costs were $10,134 (USD), approximately $266.66 per square meter ($24.78 per square foot). They also constructed a temporary protective heated tent to surround the house as they constructed the house during winter. Though the printer can be used at temperatures down to -35C, concrete has to be at least +5C to cure. Further reading: Designboom Magazine -
Early Apple Designs Revealed, Courtesy of Hartmut Esslinger
SternisheFan writes with an excerpt as carried by CNET of former Apple design chief Hartmut Esslinger's upcoming book, titled Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change. Writing of Steve Job's integration of design as an essential element across the company as a whole, Esslinger says: "The company's [then] CEO, Michael Scott, had created different business divisions for each product line, including accessories such as monitors and memory drives. Each division had its own head of design and developed its products the way it wanted to. As a result, Apple's products shared little in the way of a common design language or overall synthesis In essence, bad design was both the symptom and a contributing cause of Apple's corporate disease. Steve's desire to end the disjoined approach gave birth to a strategic design project that would revolutionize Apple's brand and product lines, change the trajectory of the company's future, and eventually redefine the way the world thinks about and uses consumer electronics and communication technologies." CNET shows off a few of those old designs (many of them appearing unsurprisingly fresh), but for much more of them see these images at designboom. -
Company Wants You to Visit Near-Space In Their "Bloon"
cylonlover writes "While space tourism efforts by the likes of Space Adventures and Virgin Galactic are relying on the tried and true technology of rockets to launch paying customers into space, Barcelona-based company zero2infinity proposes a more leisurely and eco-friendly ride into near-space using a helium balloon called the bloon. Designed to carry passengers to an altitude of 36 km (22 miles), an unmanned scale prototype bloon was flown to an altitude of 33 km (20 miles) last year and the company is already taking bookings for passenger flights that are expected to lift off sometime between 2013 and 2015."