I thought for sure this was a joke, but it appears to be real: A company called UD Replicas is selling a protective motorcycle suit modeled after a Star Wars Stormtrooper's armor. Made from leather molded in forms and some type of unspecified protective plating, "each rounded segment, every chiselled and bevelled edge perfectly replicates the look of the on-screen armor," the company claims.
Folks, I don't doubt that there's some overlap between the motorcycle-riding and Star-Wars-watching subcultures, but isn't this kind of asking for an ass-kicking? Maybe I've been watching too much Sons of Anarchy, but would you not be worried about a gang of thugs pushing each other out of the way in their haste to get to you, eager to win first boasting rights of "I beat the crap out of a Stormtrooper?"
The real rub is that the helmet isn't an actual motorcycle safety helmet. But I can't say what would be more dangerous—riding around with no helmet, or wearing this get-up to Sturgis.
If you've seen a performance at The Public Theater in the last year and been ushered across the torn up lobby floor, tiptoed over rocky wooden boards lining hallways lit by emergency lights and coated in layers of construction dust, then you'll be as pleased as we were to walk into the newly plastered lobby, the scent of fresh paint still hanging in the air. The gallery-white walls are decorated only with the iconic blocky black type Paula Scher designed for The Public in 1994. The entrance and indeed most of the theatre's revitalization was designed by Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partnership), but if you find yourself in need of a reprieve from the blindingly bright white lobby and lounge areas, head upstairs to The Library, a welcomingly dark restaurant and bar with signature Rockwell Group touches—sexy, industrial, refined—that's truly a sight for sore eyes.
If the ceiling seems a bit low it's because this second story space was carved out of the 25-foot open ceiling in the lobby to "create a cozy, almost hidden space within the void." The Public's cast iron columns and steel beams were painted black and worked into the dining area, where guests sit on distressed leather chairs and button tufted banquets under a nine foot circular cast iron chandelier that, along with the other blackened steel and brushed bronze lighting, was custom made by Conant Metal and Lighting in Vermont. Antique metal work, white-washed cerused oak walls lined with vintage books and black and white photos from The Public's storied past create the mood that principal Shawn Sullivan and the Rockwell Group envisioned "as a secret corner one might discover at the New York Public Library."
This week saw the emergence of the first International UN Day of the Girl Child, which is intended to promote the empowerment of young girls around the world. One obvious way to do this is to encourage their access to education. Because of this, we thought it was only fitting to celebrate the development of a toy that is meant to promote the education of girls and more specifically, their learning in science and math.
Debbie Sterling was discouraged by the stereotypes that suggested that boys should play with Bob the Builder while girls were left to dress up Barbie. With 89% of male engineers in her program at Stanford, it was obvious that there was a gender gap in the field. But more notably, Sterling was aware that there was a significant gap in the formative space of play. Because of this, she was motivated to spend a year of research with over 100 children in order to develop GoldieBlox: a construction toy for girls.
Here's a very different take on the folding chair: The OSSA, created by Vancouver-based design duo Johannessen & Clarke. The pair (Solveig and Krystin, respectively) met while they were third-year ID students at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and drew inspiration for the chair from skeletal structures of indigenous animals:
It is constructed to evoke surprise and delight with an expressive folding motion through its center spine. OSSA is the Latin name for bones which tributes the fifty bone elements required for the spinal hinge and equally points to our inspiration of anatomy and Canadian wildlife such as venison or wild goats.
Industrial Design students of the Northeast...UNITE! The students at Rochester Institute of Technology are holding their annual Thought At Work conference this October 26-28th.
What forces are shaping the future of the field? Engage with keynote speakers and practitioner-led workshops over three days at RIT. Professionals and academics representing a broad range disciplines will share their experiences with attendees. It's great to see Core77 contributor Don Lehman (MORE/REAL), Sam Aquillano (Design Museum Boston), Sarah Feingold (Etsy) and Jeff Smith (Reflex Design) on the speakers list. The conference aims to, "furnish students with diverse inter-collegiate perspectives of future paradigms for industrial design outside of the university bubble."
Coroflot, our sister site, is a proud sponsor of this year's Thought at Work. By providing designers a simple, direct and FREE way of connecting their exceptional work with employment opportunities, we hope to provide students and recent graduates a reliable resource from university and beyond!
THOUGHT AT WORK
October 26 - 28, 2012
Rochester Institute of Technology
We have four passes for Core77 Readers! Post your Coroflot Project in the Comments with a one-sentence explanation of the design brief! Our editors will pick four winners and contact you directly through Coroflot!
When it comes to casting bugs' nests, looks like Walter Tschinkel's not the only game in town; scientist and SUNY biology professor Scott Turner also produces "endocasts," though he does them of aboveground termite mounds rather than undergound ant colonies, and uses plaster rather than molten aluminum.
The results, which display a similarly alien architecture to Tschinkel's ant hives, give me the heebie-jeebies:
Turner's endocasts take months to complete, as you'll see below, and obviously he's not putting in the time just for fun; he's after specific answers. Writes Turner, who refers to the physiology of social insects as "my current obsession," on his website:
Social insects, specifically termites, cooperate to produce "emergent physiology" at a scale much larger than the individuals in the colony. How do they manage the trick? How is it that swarms of termites "know" to build a structure that functions as an organ of physiology at a scale much larger than themselves? Just how do termite mounds work in the first place? These are questions we have long thought we understood, but in fact understand little.
In this video of Scott's process, be sure to peep the bugged-out (sorry) sequence that runs from 3:34 to 4:26, where they animate the layer-by-layer slicing open of a mound:
When we first saw the Leap gesture control interface for the Mac, we were blown away. Earlier than that, gamers and hackers were taken by the Wii and the Kinect. Now a new group of creators is working on the latest in gesture-control interfaces, which ought to have an advantage over the current competition: It's software-based and requires no separate pieces of hardware, instead relying on the cameras now built into virtually every computer, tablet and smartphone.
PredictGaze is the brainchild of Aakash Jain, Abhilekh Agarwal, and Saurav Kumar, three computer scientists and friends based in California. Using a series of algorithms, their software analyzes images captured from your device's camera—even in low light and near darkness, conditions that have stymied their competition—to deliver useful results. Face recognition, gesture control and eye-tracking are all things we've heard of before, but PredictGaze is wrapping it all into a single package, and making it scaleable as per the device it's installed in.
Their system holds rich promise: Imagine being able to sit in front of your computer, or hold up your phone, and it knows its you through facial recognition, so unlocks itself with no need for a password. Or watching your television, and when you get up to go to the bathroom, it pauses; it resumes play when you've sat back down. Or being able to silence the audio by bringing your finger to your lips. And the eye-tracking-controlled browsing, while still a bit clunky looking in their demo, will be a godsend for paraplegics once it's perfected.
Here are a few videos to give you an idea of what PredictGaze is currently capable of. In this first one, "Gaze Enabled Browser Demo," you don't need to watch more than 10 seconds of it to "get it." (The remainder of the two-minute video has the test subject perform the same up-down scrolling while they gradually dim the lights.)
BioLite, a cutting edge clean technology company is seeking a seasoned mechanical engineer and design for manufacturing specialist to develop home-energy consumer products. This is a unique opportunity to join a fast-moving startup with both a technical and creative environment in the heart of Brooklyn. You will have the opportunity to work on a range of products, inventions, and research programs funded by both our product stream and by grants from global NGO's and sponsoring organizations.
Within the Passionswege ("pilgrimage ways") craft and design project of Vienna Design Week, Vienna-based designer Valentin Vodev was asked to collaborate with J. L. Lobmeyr, the renowned Viennese glassware manufacturer, now run by the sixth generation.
Vodev developed a series of pictograms to reveal "secret" information about the long-standing Lobmeyr product portfolio—information about the glassware that is never communicated to the buyer, yet passed on verbally from generation to generation to distributors and within the company.
These inside stories are based on technical as well as socio-cultural properties that have been discovered over the past 150 years of the Lobmeyr business. Vodev has brought these attributes to the surface to make them visible. Even though the unobtrusive symbol engravings are not clearly marked at first sight, the delight of discovering them at a second glance is part of the experience when looking through the Lobmeyr glasses.
You've got your Form Follows Function, but there's also the more interesting (if less alliterative) Designer Follows Tool. London-based furniture designer Max Lamb discovered a tool set for tapping and threading wood, then set about figuring out what he could use it to make. The result is his Round and Round Table:
Why User-Centered Design Is Not Enough
Regarding Kickstarter & Product Design Projects
London Design Festival 2012
Burning Man 2012
Eero Saarinen: A Reputation for Innovation
Draw Up a Chair: The Battery Conservancy Americas Design Competition
The Journey of Sebastian Errazuriz
Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design, by Chris Lefteri
To Design Is to Understand Uncertainty
The Crucial Role of Design Education in Europe's Recovery
iPhone 5 Industrial Design
Job Search Advice
Core77 Design Awards 
SHIFTBoston 2012 Glow Competition 
Images by Noah Fecks
Biomimicry 3.8: What Would You Ask Nature
Changing the Face of Motocross
20 Years of Kikkerland
Discovering Chinese Design
LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2012
BURNING MAN 2012
SUPERHUMAN
CORE77 DESIGN AWARDS 2012
Book Review> Going Public: Public Architecture, Urbanism and Interventions
The Journey of Sebastian Errazuriz: Book, Exhibition and Exclusive Q&A;
"Mars Attacks," A Retrospective
100 Interiors Around the World
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Global Design Forum Misses the Mark
DIY Digifab via Deadwood, SD: The Story Behind the B9Creator 3D Printer
Tuto eReader for Educational Change
Technology You Can Touch: You Don't Have to be an Internet Start-Up to Get Funding
Designing Delight: Behind the Scenes at Facebook
