Tag: design

E. chromi – color-coded bacteria

E. chromi is a collaboration between designers and scientists in the new field of synthetic biology. In 2009, seven Cambridge University undergraduates spent the summer genetically engineering bacteria to secrete a variety of coloured pigments, visible to the naked eye. They designed standardised sequences of DNA, known as BioBricks, and inserted them into E. coli bacteria.

Each BioBrick part contains genes selected from existing organisms spanning the living kingdoms, enabling the bacteria to produce a colour: red, yellow, green, blue, brown or violet. By combining these with other BioBricks, bacteria could be programmed to do useful things, such as indicate whether drinking water is safe by turning red if they sense a toxin. E. chromi won the Grand Prize at the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM).

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Windsor Super Market – Studio H

The Windsor Super Market by Studio H a public high school “design/build” curriculum that sparks rural community development through real-world, built projects.

Last year, Studio H (high school) students designed and built (and started, as an enterprise) the Windsor Super Market: a local community farmers market for Bertie County. After a hugely successful season last spring/summer/fall, the market re-opened on April 21st for its second full season. With over 30 vendors in the association, there is an assortment of produce, homemade baked goods, crafts, jams, pickles, shrimp, and more.

Windsor Super Market was designed and fabricated by high school students as part of their design-build class:

While each of our five proposed designs had multiple exciting elements, the simple beauty, functionality, and straightforward construction process led us to choose the “Super Stable” concept originally developed by CJ and Stevie. The simple design has a clear direction, facing Water Street as a welcoming facade (which we may paint with signage), with the rear easily accessible for trucks to pull up and unload. The form is very much influenced by the local peanut trailer sheds (shown below), which use similarly proportioned bays. The design is “vernacular sublime,” taking something familiar and elevating it to a different purpose and feeling. The Town councilmen seemed to appreciate the design that was at the same time approachable and fresh.

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Noisy Jelly

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Make your own jelly instruments by Raphaël Pluvinage and Marianne Cauvard:

Noisy jelly is a game where the player has to cook and shape his own musical material, based on coloured jelly.

With this noisy chemistry lab, the gamer will create his own jelly with water and a few grams of agar agar powder. After added different color, the mix is then pour in the molds. 10 min later, the jelly shape can then be placed on the game board,and by touching the shape, the gamer will activate different sounds.
Technically, the game board is a capacitive sensor, and the variations of the shape and their salt concentration, the distance and the strength of the finger contact are detected and transform into an audio signal.

This object aims to demonstrate that electronic can have a new aesthetic, and be envisaged as a malleable material, which has to be manipulated and experimented.

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Technical explanation

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British Design Classics stamps by Royal Mail

How did I miss this? In 2009 the UK Royal Mail issued a set of eight British Design Classics stamps featuring excellent photography by Jason Tozer. I wouldn’t mind having these set of stampe, or really all ten of these items in my possession.