::RESEARCH
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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

IN DE WULF BELGIAN MG MICHELIN STAR RESTAURANT



Had again a very nice diner at 'in de wulf'. The chef (Kobe Desramault) is the youngest Michelin star chef in Belgium. Each time we go over for dining we're always supprised. The chef will also do demonstrations at the 1° seminar MG in Belgium. Sadly for the ones who still want to join the seminars; it is full booked. But there will follow other opportunities.

[+ photos]
[+ restaurant]

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HOT POTATO - COLD POTATO RECIPE AN ALINEA CLASSIC

Sunday, October 29, 2006

SKETCH FURNITURE




Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space? The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialise free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined.Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialised through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.See the movie of the process of making a sketch into a piece of furniture in just one pen stroke.

[+ more]
via core77

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Wednesday, October 25, 2006

BETHAN LAURA WOOD -- STAIN


Bethan Laura Wood recently graduated from the graduate 3-D design program at Brighton University and continues to pursue her own designs in London. Wood's Stain tea cups were quite the gem at 100% East, during this year's London Design Festival. Most teacups accumulate undesirable tea stains over time, devaluing their integrity and worth. The Stain cups, however, improve through use thanks to an innovative graphic surface treatment. Patterns applied on the inside surface are nearly invisible when brand new. As more and more tea is consumed from the cups, the pattern darkens and becomes a prominent design element.

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via core77

Monday, October 23, 2006

TRUTH IN PACKAGING


Naoto fukasawa banana juice packaging.

[+ more]
via designboom

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Sunday, October 22, 2006

MG SEMINAR BELGIUM



This seminar is organised by the innovation and knowledge centre of food for every one who is interested in food science, technology and cooking processes. This can be chefs, scientists, recipe developers, foodies,...
The guest speakers tell and demonstrate how food science and technology can inspire gastronomy.

[+ programme ]

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Friday, October 20, 2006

NUTRITIONAL COOKIES


These Andrew Andrew cookies featured recently on the "From A to B and Back Again" exhibition. Curated by Tobias Wong & Carlos Salgado; showing work by designers from Brooklyn. [Ph : Joost Van Brug ]

[+ more]
via reluct

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

OXYGEN GENERATOR


Designer Mathieu Lehanneur has created a collection of objects/devices inspired by the human body and its interactions with the environment. Called Elements, the devices are “reactive and capable of sensitivity to and receptivity of our states” in our personal environment. They “generate domestic micro- environments dedicated to each inhabitant” and modify air quality, light, heat, noise and can even boost your immune system depending on the need. One of the devices, O., above, is a “veritable domestic breathing machine, [that] generates pure oxygen in the home. Using an oximeter sensor, O constantly monitors the oxygen level in the air, and when it detects that this level is insufficient, it instantly activates the micro-organisms it contains, Spirulina Platensis - a living organism with the highest yield in terms of oxygen production - and a light that favours spirulin photosynthesis. This emits native oxygen, which is diffused into the surroundings. As soon as the air oxygen level has returned to optimum, the light and agitation are interrupted and the spirulin falls back to the bottom of the container.”. In addition to O., the other Elements are K., a light to help with SAD, dB., a white noise generator, C., an infra-red heater and Q., an immune system booster/mister.


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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

SPAIN'S 10 AT NEW YORK CITY


"All the big names of the avant-garde/high-modern/weird-food movement (whatever you want to call it) from the US were there: Wylie Dufresne, Johnny Iuzzini, Will Goldfarb, Alex Urena, and Katsuya Fukushima just to name a few... and they weren't even headlining, they were in the audience watching. This is how big of an event Spain's 10 was, a summit of 10 of Spain's most prominent, influential, and up-and-coming Chefs for the first time outside of Madrid Fusion hosted by the French Culinary Institute at Gustavino's in New York City." Gerald San Jose

[+ more]
[+ pictures]
via foodite

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Sunday, October 15, 2006

JOE COLOMBO : : MINI KITCHEN


"In the 1960s and early 1970s Italian architect and product designer Joe Colombo designed a series of objects he called Total Furnishing Units. These designs blurred the boundaries between architecture, interior design, and furniture design, representing the type of open-ended and experimental design typical of the era. Many of his earliest designs were mobile, opening the possibility of a new kind of domestic interior, where objects were free to move around a room, without constraints. From there, Colombo turned to concentrating all the domestic services into single units, or “mono-blocks” as Italian industry would label them. These units—devoted to different domestic activities, like sleeping, bathing, dining—contained everything a person needed in one compact volume.



These Total Living Units included a small modular mini-kitchen called Carrellone that Colombo designed for his friend Paolo Boffi, owner of the eponymous kitchen manufacturer. The unit was unveiled at the 13th Milan Triennale in 1964, earning the event’s Gold Medal, and the company produced and sold several of the units even though it maintains that the design remained a prototype. Now, several decades after its debut—and having achieved iconic status after its appearance in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1972 exhibition, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, curated by Emilio Ambasz—the Carrellone has been put into full-scale production. While the 1963 original was built of wood and metal, the new Carrellone has been created primarily out of a luscious white Corian. The design remains as fresh and original as it did when Colombo designed it. Press materials for the contemporary version boast that the unit contains “all the indispensable functions of a kitchen environment: a stove, a refrigerator, a can opener, drawers for tableware, working surfaces and storage for cookbooks,” all operating off a single electrical plug.

Colombo died prematurely, of heart failure at the age of 41 in 1971. He did not live to see The New Domestic Landscape, which included his last great design, a large-scale Total Furnishing Unit specially fabricated for the show. This experiment was his attempt to create a complete functioning residence in a box, featuring roll-out beds, a fold-down dining table, built-in storage, and an airplane-scaled bathroom. Little did Colombo know that some of his ideas would survive and serve future generations." WM


[+ more ]
via the architect's newspaper

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Friday, October 13, 2006

FARADAY'S WAVE GARDEN



We observe stable holes in a vertically oscillated 0.5 cm deep aqueous suspension of cornstarch. Holes appear only if a finite perturbation is applied to the layer for accelerations a above 10g. Holes are circular and approximately 0.5 cm wide, and can persist for more than 106 cycles. Above a ~ 17g the rim of the hole becomes unstable, producing fingerlike protrusions or hole division. At higher acceleration, the hole delocalizes, growing to cover the entire surface with erratic undulations. We find similar behavior in an aqueous suspension of glass microspheres.

[+ paper]
via pruned

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

WAGASHI


Wagashi (Japanese: 和菓子) is a general term applied to different types of Japanese snacks, especially sweet ones made of sticky rice, fruits, etc. served in Japanese tea ceremonies. Wagashi is a type of snack made from all natural, plant based ingredients that influences all five senses. They are commonly named from natural beauties and a word from ancient literatures. Typical ingredients include glutinous rice, chestnuts, sweet potato paste and sesame seeds. Sophisticated sweets made from beans and agar-agar are often in the shape of seasonal objects. Inspiration for some new MG recipes?

[+ egullet]

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CANDLE FLAMES IN MICROGRAVITY


The goal of this NASA project is to consider the process of combustion—as epitomized by candles—in environments with very little gravity (microgravity). Above are two images of "a candle flame in Earth's gravity (left) and microgravity (right) showing that difference in the processes of combustion in microgravity". The knowledge acquired from studying the physical and chemical properties of burning candles in space can help us use and control combustion more efficiently, and solve combustion-related problems in space and on earth.


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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

VICE/VIRTUE GLASSES


Vice/Virtue Glasses by Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller. Fountain, 1997. Blown glass with hypodermic needle, 4 x 2 7/8 x 2 7/8 in. (10.2 x 7.3 x 7.3 cm). Henry Urbach Architecture, New York.


[+ more]
via pruned

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Monday, October 09, 2006

CHIKUNO CUBE


Chikuno Cube air purifier, "made from compressed bamboo charcoal, and is meant to be used as an air purifier. Keep in the fridge as a conversation piece, as much as for its odor absorbing powers."


[+ more]
via mocoloco

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Sunday, October 08, 2006

TWISTING LIGHT



Reciprocity’s beautiful stream of twisted light Refractographs.These experimental shots explore the patterns formed by light passing through shaped and formed plastics. These are analog images taken direct onto 35mm film.


[+more]

via dataisnature

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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

LIFE STRAW™


LifeStraw™ is a simple device, still in a prototype phase, designed for those unfortunate people in the third world who do not have access to clean drinking water. The pipe is composed of two textile filters, followed by a chamber with beads impregnated with iodine:

Functionallity and use of design:

What first meets the water when sucked up is a pre-filter of PE filter textile with a mesh opening of 100 micron, shortly followed by a second textile filter in polyester with a mesh opening of 15 micron. In this way all big articles are filtered out, even clusters of bacteria are removed. Then the water is led into a chamber of iodine impregnated beads, where bacteria, viruses and parasites are killed. The second chamber is a void space, where the iodine being washed off the beads can maintain their killing effect. The last chamber consists of granulated active carbon, which role is to take the main part of the bad smell of iodine, and to take the parasites that have not been taken by the pre-filter or killed by the iodine. The biggest parasites will be taken by the pre-filter, the weakest will be killed by the iodine, and the medium range parasites will be picked up by the active carbon. The main interest to everyone is the killing of bacteria, and here our laboratory reading tells us that we have a log. 7 to log 8 kill of most bacteria. This is better than tap water in many developed countries.


[+ more]
via index 2005

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