materiO’

Each day of the calendar now has its cause, its theme, its spotlight. Well today is World Bamboo Day, the opportunity to honor this herbaceous plant (yes, it's not wood), with its ultra-fast growth, its legendary hardness and with multiple applications. Conferences organized throughout the day and all over the world, also an opportunity to discover very ambitious bamboo architectural projects. And of course, dozens of ID Cards in our database related to bamboo, panels, parquet, veneers, fiber, bamboo charcoal, structural principles etc. The WBD program is here

It looks like diatoms or other microorganisms suspended in the seabed, phenomena of cell divisions, the genesis of an embryo. A subtle play of colors, translucency, transparency on magnificently worked glass blocks. These glass sculptures are part of a "Segmentation" series by American artist Jiyong Lee Evoke, on view now in St. Louis and in 2021 in Paris.
"The segmented, geometrical forms of my work represent cells, embryos, biological and molecular structures—each symbolizing the building blocks of life as well as the starting point of life."
Jiyong Lee Evoke website here

Scientists at Indiana and Copenhagen Universities have succeeded in creating the most fluorescent material on earth. Researchers have transferred the gloss and luminescence properties of highly fluorescent dyes to solid polymers. The problem they had been facing for years is that these dyes, during their solidification phase, tend to associate with each other electronically, the pairs formed attenuating their fluorescent glow. The researchers found a solution to this problem, through the use of a star-shaped macrocycle molecule that prevents fluorescent molecules from interacting with each other. Since the macrocycles which serve as separators are transparent, fluorescent dyes can retain their optical properties and therefore express their full power of light emission. Many applications are envisioned for these new high-gloss materials, including solar energy harvesting, bioimaging, 3D display technologies, laser industry, signaling, etc.

links here

A beautiful project by Pauline Esparon, young designer graduated of Design Academy Eindoven, and incidentally former prominent intern at matériO'. A parchment is delicately stretched over a veiled circular frame, for an elegant luminaire that sublimates the raw material, its texture and its possible roughness and accidents. Back to basics, it's a bit like the life of the animal can be read through this parchment. We find in this object all the attention paid to the raw material used, a de facto authenticity, where the nobility of the material and the work are imposed ...... materiO hopes not to be totally foreign to these aspirations.

Pellis to see here

The Viennese designer Philipp Aduatz, who had already presented his 3D concrete printed lounge chair at the Salone del Mobile in Milan 2018, is doing it again today with an elegant range of outdoor furniture (bench, armchair, sofa) using the same technology in concrete printing and the same partners (incremental3d). A real delicacy of the line, a bit confusing when you know the low tensile strength of concrete. The design calculations actually provide for the discreet reinforcement with fiberglass rods and carbon fibers.

To see here

It was in the last century, on October 5, 1985 precisely. I had decided to spend the night in Paris, on the Pont Neuf, so that I could discreetly, once the city was asleep, cut a very small piece of the fabric that wrapped the bridge. Naively, I had only taken a simple pair of scissors to accomplish this petty theft… I was thinking of cutting a simple piece of cotton fabric, but it was a thick canvas of polyester and aramid, the most resistant fiber it is! It took me no less than a quarter of an hour of stress to succeed in a discreet filling of 10 cm2 of the canvas that Christo had chosen for his work. I still have this beautiful cream beige sample with me today. Christo Vladimirov Javacheff died on May 31, and I must say that it does something to me…

Christo website here

It is always more judicious and effective to solve a problem at the root than by devious and superficial ways. On this principle, the London agency PriestmanGoode has completely rethought the packaging for takeaway, with this Bento-type container which is at the same time beautiful, well designed, practical, versatile, efficient, persistent. This is to encourage consumers not to throw away these packaging but to wish to keep and re-use it. This answer seems to us much more relevant than the easy way which consists in remaining in a logic of disposable, but with its quota of bio-machin materials (degradable, sourced, compatible, logical etc.). Admittedly, a little easy conscience with "cruelty free" pineapple imitation leather, but it is nevertheless a festival of singular materials (mycelium for insulation, a composite resin / cocoa pods, a plastic film of algae base, latex foam) which you will find in materiO' database (see associated files).

You can see the project here