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Articles tagged with: WOOD

WOOD »

[4 Dec 2011 | No Comment | 17,712 views]
Q&A Special: How to Bend Bamboo

 
Every once in a while someone sends me a materials-related question and I get to sit at a local wing joint on a rainy day, my non-typing hand covered in piquant buffalo sauce and stringy, ranch-coated celery fragments, watching multiple football games simultaneously while happily dispensing advice on subjects about which I may or may not have any expertise … and it is glorious. In the interest of sharing knowledge and offering a forum for people with actual experience and/or information concerning the question to contribute what they know (which …

WATER, WOOD »

[13 Jul 2011 | One Comment | 4,268 views]
I Heart MIT’s New Flexible, Printable Solar Cells

My desk at work sits across from an ancient beige laser printer the size of a Volkswagen, which pretty much unceasingly spews toner particles, artfully arranged on tabloid- and letter-sized sheets of paper, out of its graceless plastic maw. I bring this up because the adjacency has driven me to resent general workday printing even more than the occasional trip to the plotter (which, if you have never tangled with a large-format printer, makes a fourteen hour trip on Aeroflot sound appealing by comparison).
I resent the noise of the printer, …

EARTH, FEATURED, WOOD »

[1 Apr 2011 | 2 Comments | 34,898 views]
Stronger than Steel! Amazing New Super Plastic Made from Tulip Leaves

In the early 1600’s, the Dutch found themselves completely overcome by Tulip mania. Demand for these perennial flowers skyrocketed to the point where you could have fed six modest families for thirty seven years on what some people paid for a bulb.  People were making fortunes trading rare species.  Had the flower joined Twitter, it would have made Justin Bieber look profoundly unpopular.  But within a short period of time the “tulip bubble” burst, leaving fields of flowers to rot and leaving many merchants as ruined as victims of a …

WOOD »

[29 Mar 2011 | 2 Comments | 3,886 views]
TimberSIL GlassWood: Long-lasting Non-Toxic Wood Infused with Glass

In ninth grade English class I was forced to read a book called Frankenstein, which I found horrifying not only because it chronicled the slow march to destruction of a hideous, emotionally overwrought monster created out of various bits and pieces of the recently deceased, but also because the denouement takes place up at the north pole. In my imagination the north pole is bitterly cold and dark, full of craggy icebergs, ancient snow, and super predators including walruses with pointy tusks, hungry polar bears, and ferocious cold-adapted velociraptors.

Image courtesy mirror.uncyc.org
In the case of Frankenstein’s monster, manufacturing a …

EARTH, WOOD »

[22 Mar 2011 | One Comment | 14,232 views]
Form Us With Love: Hexagonal Wood Wool Cement Board Tiles

When you’re a designer, having problems can be a good thing. Well, I suppose I ought to be clear that I am talking about certain kinds of problems (for example, not even one of Jay-Z’s 99 problems would qualify). FORM US WITH LOVE, a design collective based in Sweden, turned a problem they were having with an echoing studio space into a partnership with a woodwool cement manufacturer. Träullit is a 20-man factory located in Österbymo, “little more than a fleck on the map between Stockholm and Malmö” and it’s the only manufacturer of woodwool cement …

EARTH, FIRE »

[9 Feb 2011 | One Comment | 7,023 views]
FibreC: Thin Slab Concrete Siding that May Settle the Wood vs. Brick Debate

I grew up in Northern California, and I suppose I like the look of structures clad in wood because they’re comfortable and familiar. Wood works wonderfully in that earthquake-riddled part of the country because it’s flexible and can handle the forces imparted by the occasional seismic event better than a brick facade.  Brick is great, but it can’t be denied that it will undergo a complete nervous breakdown when placed under unusual stress. More often than not, wood faced with lateral forces takes a deep breath, squares its shoulders, and carries on with the vital business of protecting building interiors …

FEATURED, Uncategorized »

[10 Jan 2011 | 5 Comments | 29,254 views]
10 Awesome Materials from 2010 and Reasons They are Awesome

ARCHITERIALS is a year old now, and like most healthy, well-adjusted one-year-olds it needs to be changed constantly, crawls all over my apartment, and makes strange burbling noises.  No, really – it does.  It’s terrifying.
Over the past year I’ve profiled approximately 65 materials and learned about blogging, bacteria, and biscuits, although I must confess that the biscuts were a side project.  A delicious, buttery side project.  Anyhow, to celebrate the birthday of ARCHITERIALS and the fact that the tagline “Investigating architectural materials since 2010” has finally attained temporal legitimacy, I’ve compiled for this, …

METAL, WOOD »

[26 Oct 2010 | 4 Comments | 6,974 views]
Cellulose Aerogel: Strong, Flexible & Magnetic

Does anyone else remember the Muppet Show skit called “PIGS IN SPACE“?  Actually, it was called “PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGSSSS IIIIINNNNNNN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE,” mainly because in outer space distances are vast and despite the fact that sound doesn’t travel through a vacuum, all announcements about astronaut pigs really should be made with excessive reverb.  I don’t really have any more time to go on about the pigs but I bring them up because they are hilarious and because they were the first thing I thought of when I heard about Cellulose Aerogel, which is the material I’m about to describe in excruciating detail over the course …

WATER, WOOD »

[28 Jul 2010 | 2 Comments | 9,242 views]
Renewable Liquid Wood: Arboform

Imagine it’s the late 1990’s.  The Backstreet Boys are playing without a trace of irony on the radio and Bill Clinton is President of the United States.  People are using dial-up modems and AOL for their Internet and email needs.  In Germany, in Pfinztal near Karlsruhe, a group of scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology are inventing a renewable plastic that has wood-like qualities but can be cast by a machine.
Scientists Juergen Pfitzer and Helmut Naegele, working with Norbert Eisenreich, Wilhelm Eckl and Emilia Inone-Kauffmann found that lignin, …

WOOD »

[13 Jul 2010 | One Comment | 5,795 views]
Eco-Friendly Reclaimed & Sustainable Millwork Panels: Kirei USA

Even if building owners aren’t always eager to spend the considerable amount of capital it takes to certify their projects with green building programs like the US Green Building Council’s LEED and the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes, municipalities are increasingly adopting green standards into law.  Green building programs and codes don’t expressly certify materials, but material choices can go a long way towards meeting recycled content, low VOC, and reclaimed materials requirements for certification.
Kirei USA (kirei is the Japanese character signifying “beautiful”or “clean,” and it’s pronounced “Key’-ray,” in case …

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