Above & Below exhibition

Chris Lefteri Design recently curated Above & Below, an exhibition about sustainable materials and processes, at the 2009 Kaohsiung Design Festival in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The exhibition was part of Utter Rubbish, an initiative by Jackson Tan of Singapore’s Black Design that looks at how design can create value and its role in creating a sustainable future.



Above & Below featured some 50 materials, ranging from textiles and paper to plastics and leather, tied together in that they unveil various approaches that designers can take to ensure that products stay in use for as long as possible and that they inflict a minimum of damage when they are ultimately discarded or recycled.

Sustainable mobile phones

In the world of plastics recycling, plastics in packaging are without a doubt the most widely recycled of all plastic materials. Compared to a complex product like a mobile phone, which may consist of a wide range of materials, fasteners and adhesives, it's a lot less complicated to recycle a plastic bag, tray or wrapping made entirely from a common material like polyethylene.

Additionally, the kind of high-performance plastics that are often favoured in consumer electronics typically contain all kinds of additives, from fire-retardants and UV-resistance to colourants and finishes. Removing these additives makes the recycling process harder still, which goes some way to explain why recycling doesn't happen on a bigger scale with these materials. But that may be about to change.

MBA Polymers, a plastics recycling company based in Austria and USA, has developed a process for extracting high-impact polystyrene (or HIPS), polypropylene and ABS from mixed plastic waste, including plastics that have been 'contaminated' with various additives. MBA Polymer's materials and others' like them are finding their way into more and more applications where recycled materials are currently not widely used.



One of the graduates from this year's crop of BA (Hons) Product Design students at Central St Martins College of Art & Design, James Barber proposes a mobile phone concept for Nokia that looks into using recycled ABS for the casing and button set. In his own words -

'Normally, ABS flakes can't be made into new cellphones because different coloured plastics are mixed together during re-melting, and the plastic loses it's smooth, glossy finish. This product isn't reliant on a polished surface, which would no doubt scratch easily during use. Instead, a spark finish lends the design a hardened, durable style which is more immune to scratches. All of the plastic components of the phone are green-coloured, so the colour remains the same after re-melting.'

Further making the case for recycled ABS, James points out that AT&T are experimenting with using recycled ABS flakes from old phone casings in cable spools and wall mounting brackets for new phones.



Looking at the sustainable future of mobile phones from a different angle, Sara Chung, another student at the Central St Martins BA Product Design course, proposes an alternative technology for mobile phone batteries. Completely free from heavy metals like cadmium, lead and mercury, the technology goes by the name of NoPoPo, or 'no-pollution power', which relies on a chemical reaction between water and an alloy of magnesium and carbon to generate electricity.



NoPoPo batteries are already on the market and according to the manufacturer, a single AAA battery can power a handheld torch for up to 20 hours. The batteries can be recharged after use and a range of liquids can be used besides pure water - beer, fruit juice and (in emergencies?) even saliva and urine have been tested.

BA (Hons) Product Design 2009 degree show, Central St Martins College of Art & Design, 19 - 25 June, Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP.

Form May 2009 issue

Chris Lefteri was interviewed for the May 2009 issue of the German design magazine Form. The interview is available online at Ciba's website.

The Design Resource Centre at PDM 2009

Plastics Design & Moulding, PDM, is a trade show for the UK plastic industry, as well as the design and engineering community. For the fourth year running, we designed and curated the Design Resource Centre at the show, which took place 19 – 21 May. Split into two separate installations, the Design Resource Centre featured innovative products, technologies and materials from the consumer products and packaging area, and medical design.



The medical installation featured an ingenious device for minimally intrusive surgery using materials from Ticona, hydrogel-based bandages from Archimed and an insulin pen and asthma inhaler designed by UK-based design consultancy IDC for the Indian market using streamlined manufacturing processes and clever material selection.

The consumer products and packaging exhibition featured the Electrolux Ultra Silencer Green, roughly 40% quieter than comparable vacuum cleaners and made with recycled car parts, Tom Dixon’s ‘Fresh Fat’ bowl extruded by hand using Eastman’s Provista copolyester resin, and Sidel’s ‘NoBottle’ that uses a shape-memory polymer to reduce the amount of material used in plastic bottles by 25 to 40%.

Philips Design Probes

The Philips Design Probes is a research programme that aims to envision future lifestyles based on insights gathered from five areas – politics, economics, culture, environmental issues and technology. Part of a wider strategy to improve the ‘innovation hit rate’ within the huge Philips conglomerate of businesses, the Design Probes have evolved into a range of beautifully executed and thought-provoking projects. Using cutting-edge materials and technologies, the Probes all have in common that they connect back to the human body in terms of our food, our clothes and how we interact with each other.




SKIN: Tattoo
Video courtesy of Philips Design

A lot of Philips’ work in this area focus on the skin as a medium for communication and interaction. Tattoos, scarification and piercings are some of the oldest and strongest forms of self-expression and identity, starting with cavemen right through to rock bands. Inspired by the current revival of tattoo culture, which has taken it into the mainstream, the Philips design team proposes an experimental coating technology that is activated by the wearer’s emotional response to touch and interaction. Applied directly to the body, the coating works as an augmentation of the flurry of emotions between two lovers.




SKIN: Dresses
Video courtesy of Philips Design

Further exploring the skin’s capacity to express emotions, the designers at Philips have developed an area they call ‘Soft Technology’. Using various electronic textiles and ‘intelligent’ technologies that sense the wearer’s emotional state, the SKIN: Dresses project shows how these materials can add new layers and nuances to human interaction.




FRACTAL: Living Jewelry
Image courtesy of Philips Design

Jewellery is another important form of personal expression, not least as an indicator of cultural belonging. Fractal: Living Jewelry uses artificial precious stones and pulsating LEDs, allowing designers to move away from traditional perceptions and taking jewellery into a much more layered territory where it can react to various cues. Depending on the sensors used, the jewellery can be an indicator of the wearer’s health, movement, excitement and proximity, as well as providing thermal protection, water-resistance and structural support.




FOOD: Home Farming
Image courtesy of Philips Design

Shifting the focus from the exterior to what we put inside the body, Philips’ FOOD probe is an extensive look at food preparation and ingredients. Not just a question of rich and poor, the geography and politics of food is becoming incredibly complex – to a point where food shortages and rising costs have become truly global issues. Against this background, efficient small-scale home cultivation of food seems like a sensible alternative. The Home Farming module in the image above contains a series of ‘mini-ecosystems’, stacked on top of each other and sharing water filtration, recycling of nutrients and sunlight.




FOOD: Food Creation
Image courtesy of Philips Design

In a nod towards Homaru Cantu, head chef at Moto, and Suwan Jayasinghe’s amazing work on electro-hydrodynamic jetting at University College London, Food Creation looks at the idea of a food printer. Loading the ink cartridges with nutrients, the printer would combine these to the desired shape and consistency much like the rapid prototyping machines that are available to product designers today.




SMELL: ‘Smell Blind Date’ by James Auger
Image courtesy of James Auger

Moving on to the olfactory sense, Philips supports the work of James Auger, a tutor at the Design Interactions course at London’s Royal College of Art. In a possible overstatement, the Philips website claims that ‘women can identify the most genetically suitable partner for reproduction purely on the basis of smelling a T-shirt’, but smell and taste is nevertheless a very strong emotional and physiological cue. The ‘Smell Blind Date’ project pictured above deals with what Auger refers to as a general deep-seated reluctance to engage with smells and the ‘potentially visceral, uncensored information’ they may deliver straight to the brain.

Please visit Philips Design for more information about the Design Probes.