Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Ribbon Glass from stone source

Description

Manufactured from approximately 30% recycled glass, Ribbon Glass fuses intermittent lengths of colored glass to create unique, undulating bands of color. The appearance of Ribbon Glass changes depending upon the angle from which it is viewed, and when backlighting is used, the light will pass through the bands of opaque pigment creating a dramatic effect.

Produced domestically in Vancouver, Ribbon Glass meets the requirements set by the LEED building rating system and may be used to earn LEED MR Credit 5.1.

Colors

Ribbon Glass is produced in 8 standard color blends (Gregory, Blush, Tempest, Tropicana, Garrett, Leather, Fresh Green and Horizon). Additional custom blends are also available upon request.

Sizes

Ribbon Glass slabs are manufactured at a thickness of 30mm(+/- 10%) in sheet sizes up to 48″x120″.

http://www.stonesource.com/glass-tile/ribbon-glass

SPRING BREAK MATERIALS LIBRARY WILL BE CLOSED

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

AFTERTASTE 2010 speaker CLAUDY JONSTRA at the UN

INSPIRATION from one of the most intelligent materials around? WOOL!!!

Claudy Jongstra at the U.N.

http://blog.cooperhewitt.org/2011/03/01/claudy-jongstra-at-the-un

By: Mei Mah
| Tuesday March 1, 2011

Dutch designer Claudy Jongstra recently showcased her tapestries of raw wool and silk here in New York at the United Nations.

A participant in Cooper-Hewitt’s 2009 Fashioning Felt exhibition, Claudy has a unique design process that is committed to sustainability, biodiverisity, and the preservation of natural and cultural heritage. Claudy keeps her own sheep, her own botanical garden and her own fields of dye-plants as part of her full-circle creative philosophy and skills.

Monday, March 7, 2011

UP COMING EVENTS!

AFTERTASTE: Immaterial Environments

Overview | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007
Kellen Auditorium, Sheila Johnson Design Center, 66 fifth ave NYC
April 1 & 2, 2011
Shaping man’s surroundings entails a lot more than spatial, structural, mechanical, and other technical considerations – certainly a lot more than pontificating about matters of style. Our organic well-being is dependent on a wholesome, salubrious environment. Therefore exacting attention has to be paid to our intricate sensory world. This is primary if our surroundings are to stimulate our abundant perceptual, intellectual, and spiritual capacities, while at the same time accommodating our physiological nature and functional needs in a durable fashion.
Richard Neutra (1892-1970), “Cross-section of a Credo” (1969)
AFTERTASTE: Immaterial Environment will investigate aspects of interior space that are seemingly intangible yet highly perceived. As architect Richard Neutra suggested many decades ago, technical and aesthetic considerations are not enough to cover the full effect interiors have upon our mental and physical health and well-being. What are some of these immaterial qualities? How can we work with physiological and psychological cues and a more sophisticated understanding of climatic factors in the interior?
For Aftertaste, designers, physicians, scientists, scholars, and artists will come together to explore these questions. The symposium will begin with an exhibition and panel discussion called Radical Shifts, documenting the transition from an ‘Interior Design’ to an ‘Environmental Design’ program at Parsons dating from the mid-60s, a predecessor to our current Program in Interiors. This will be followed by a series of talks and discussions that interrogate the concept of immaterial environments in relation to current design practice.
participants include:
Robert Irwin – Keynote
Lisa Heschong
Philipe Rahm
Natalija Subotincic
Alexander Wunsch

NEWS/ACTIVITY

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Natural Intelligent Materials

Secrets of spider silk unraveled

Theme:	Ecology, Technology Transfer
Date:	04.03.11
Author:	Gizmag

Scientists claim to have recently made progress towards understanding what's behind the incredible strength of spider silk fibers.

When you explore haunted houses or search for sacred artifacts in ancient temples, the cobwebs that you brush out of your way may seem fairly flimsy and inconsequential. For their size, however, spider silk fibers are incredibly strong – enough so that scientists have long been trying to figure out what their secret is, so it can be applied to man-made materials. In a recently-published paper, German scientists claim to have gotten closer to the answer.
"Silk fibers exhibit astonishing mechanical properties. They have an ultimate strength comparable to steel, toughness greater than Kevlar and a density less than cotton or nylon," said senior study author Dr. Frauke Gräter from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies. "Because silk fibers continue to outperform their artificial counterparts in terms of toughness, many studies have tried to understand the mechanical characteristics of these extraordinary natural fibers."

It has already been established that spider silk is made up of two types of building blocks, namely soft amorphous and strong crystalline subunit components. Utilizing what they described as "a multi-scale 'bottom-up' computational approach," Gräter's team analyzed the atomic make-up of these components, with an eye towards how they both ultimately contribute to the structure of the fiber. Via computer simulations, they studied the characteristics of individual and coupled subunits, and of complete fibers.

What they discovered was that the silk's elasticity and its ability to distribute mechanical stress comes courtesy of the soft amorphous subunits. Its maximal toughness is a product of the crystalline subunits, and is greatly affected by the way in which they are distributed throughout the fiber. Models incorporating different arrangements of the two types of subunits were then tried out, with Dr. Gräter determining that "a serial arrangement of the crystalline and amorphous subunits in discs outperformed a random or parallel arrangement, suggesting a new structural model for silk."

The research was published last month in Biophysical Journal.

Original article: Gizmag

Material Intelligence Technology