Congrats to Wai for his GOLD award at iF || Hoberman's transformable design

 iF - International Forum Design Hannover: Homepage > iF online exhibition > Entry Details: "Sonos". Wai's design is very clean and elegant, and its an exciting honor.

Today, I also got to see Chuck Hoberman talk about transformable design. It was terrific, to think about buildings having animism. I really enjoyed the design language around transformation and building display. The parts that resonated with me most are the emotive aspects of such transformations and the ability of the building to become alive. His aesthetic of simple and clean and manufacturability was another aspect I enjoyed. He showed that with simple units, you can build very compelling structures that were more complex. His favorite piece, which was very delightful, was a spiraling shell. Reminds me of a folding razor I worked on once. It was an inspiring talk and makes you think about the way buildings could have this personality, a relationship with the inhabitants based on it caring for itself. Wonderful talk!

Go Zoz!

Our labmate, Zoz, who graduated from my research group, is featured in last Friday's Tech! Zoz is one of the stars of "Prototype This"-- one of the few shows that actually displays real engineering. Its always exciting to me to see someone soldering or coding-- and to show the real life excitement and frustrations that come with the job. The cool thing about this show is that it does try to expose the pace of engineering, how long it takes to make things and also the way engineers really think. There are always problems, brainstorming and solutions-- which is often glossed over in other shows, such as "Burn Notice." Burn Notice is not so realistic when it comes to engineering-- note, you cannot use a cellphone as a tracker as easily as they say. ( Oh but, I do love Burn Notice -- it is set in Miami! on SoBe!)