Gutted.

I'm going to miss the Droog Event 2:Urban Play
A wee bit about it...

http://www.urbanplay.org/?page_id=2

Heading over to Holland on the 17th of december for a few days. Got some other things in mind for when I'm over there, would've been good to see that though. If anyone knows of any must see (design related) places please let me know about them.
Thanks!

New Project

Open_source: Democratic design.

Not posted in a while but we've just been given an interesting new project that seems like it would be worth documenting.

The new project looks into restrictions on space, multifunction/collapsible products, and flexible living/work environments. Whilst solutions exist within the homogeneity of the mass-produced product, the dawning of new online communities are developing around the appropriation and sharing of user generated content and knowledge, allowing the mass audience to manufacture from their desktop. Consequently this has created new opportunities for designers to both ‘short cut’ conventional large-scale industrial modes of production as well as developing increasingly individual styles and markets.

So in collaboration with Ponoko, a New Zealand based manufacturing community the new project is asking o design, visualise, prototype and produce an ‘open-source design’ for one of the following markets: office, garden or design studio. My final design should serve some purpose, solve a problem or contribute to the well being of that environment. The design should be manufactured from 3 flat sheets which will be laser cut.
For more info visit my open source blog.

Wind spire

This is a video of a new design of windmill I found on YouTube. Its pretty sweet, interesting noone has tried to alter the traditional windmill until now. It would be really interesting to see a working model or even just a concept of this design being used in tidal power.


I'm really interested in renewable energy just now, no doubt there will be many more posts on this subject.

Lanstrom Tidal Turbine - experimental tidal power scheme in Scotland

Seen this on the news tonight and thought it was pretty cool. It's an underwater turbine incase you hadn't already guessed.

Scottish Power are drawing up plans to send to the Scottish Government and Northern Irish Assembly, with hope that there will be underwater turbine farms active by 2011. Pentland Firth, the Sound of Islay and the North Antrim Coast have been identified as the most suitable locations for the turbines.
ScottishPower are hoping Underwater Turbineswill contribute to 50% of the UK's Power by 2020.

Digital Natives

3rd Year has began!!

A link to our new uni blog, I will be posting alot of my work on that blog as well as this one.
www.stagethreegrays.blogspot.com

Quick round up of goings on - we have now began our first project of 3rd Year called 'Digital Natives'. It is a research based project and will basically be looking into how my generation (aged 25 and under) have grown up with technology and how this has changed the way we communicate, behave and live. It will include looking at mobile phones, MP3 players, computers, digital cameras etc. Things that haven't been around for all that long.
Its a group project, I'm working with Craig and we have to use focus groups, observations, interviews and questionnaires as our main research tools. I'm finding it a really interesting project so far, hopefully we'll find out some interesting stuff.