Bolt Projects designed and fabricated these Le Corbusier inspired glasses out of a novel new biomaterial. They are first of a kind, made from Bolt Threads lab grown spider silk. We developed this all in house. From industrial design of the frames to tuning the underlying process for creating the raw material to CNC machining each individual component.
To make the glasses, an aluminum mold is filled with silk powder and compressed under heat until the silk sinters into a solid. The piece is removed from the mold and cooled before finishing via CNC mill.
A skeletal brass support was incorporated to lend structure and sandwich the glass lenses into the silk body. Hinges were soldered to this skeleton, connecting the temples to the frames.
An accompanying case was created from Mylo™, a leather-like material made from mycelium. It is closed with a braided line made from Microsilk™ the same protein in fiber form as the glasses are made from in solid form.
I wrote this article for Gizmodo discussing the future of knit technology and smart textile. I spoke with luminaries in the field and learned about some very forward thinking applications of knitting technologies.
A Speculative Sketch on the Fate of Our Digital Doubles
Graduate Thesis / Speculative Design - 2017
Speculative Design
Spring 2016, Royal College of Art, London, UK
DNA is an incredible data-storage medium. If the entire internet of 2015 were to be coded in DNA, it would weigh 4 grams and last reliably for 10,000 years. Humanity’s collective knowledge (our big data, our papers, books, music, and cat videos) is kept cold in some of the largest buildings in the world and in the U.S. each year consume enough energy to power all of N.Y.C. for two years. Also, the conventional server’s hardrive is short-lived and inherently susceptible to natural disaster. Hence, we propose the creation of an off-grid archival back up on a grand scale - storing humanity’s knowledge in the code that creates us. In this future, we envision the need for distributed and biologically managed DNA storage. We propose the human body, implanted with an archival organ that would protect and manage the valuable information within. The carriers would become the keepers of all human knowledge.
This speculative piece was conveyed through performative presentation. Audience members were introduced to the “New Life Institute” and reminded of the NDAs they had signed. A video “news cast” detailed a solar flare disaster that had knocked out server farms around the world in the recent past of 2026. Video of this presentation is now used as an educational example of speculative design for incoming RCA design students. The Archival Organs were fabricated from clay molds, cast in silicone and displayed floating in water in glass and wood jars.
An in-lab workshop led by Oron Catts kicked off a three-week sprint with a team from the Innovation Design Engineering programme at the Royal College of Art in London: Huang ShuTing, Kate McCambridge, Adam Bernstein, and Julian Goldman.
Service Design
Sabae City, Fukui Province, Japan, 2015
A group from Pratt Institute's Global Innovation Design Program studying at Keio Media Design in Tokyo were brought to Sabae City to work on a complex question:
How may we boost tourism in the goal of retaining the traditional craft work of the region?
Our team offered the concept of the "Unique Thing" that many successfully jump-started tourist destinations have - a singular, attractive object that names a place, places a person, and serves as a focus to tie a locale together in the mind of a foreigner.
There are plenty of reasons to visit Sabae: the incredible craft goods, the unique food, the beautiful green mountains, the onsen, and the quiet spiritual places and temples steeped in history. However there is still a need for something to tie it all together. A sight that will draw new people and give them something to photograph to share with other travelers. The following (appended) slides were presented to the Mayor and Sabae City Council. The presentation was broadcast on local television throughout Fukui Province.
Product Design
London, UK / Amsterdam, NL, 2016
In spring 2016, the satellite logistics giant SES hosted a design competition to challenge the negative perceptions of the aesthetics of the residential satellite dish. They asked:
Why are we satisfied with the ugly and banal dishes that we put on our houses when we take so much care in choosing our other home goods? And how can we change this?
The design was entered into the competition while studying at the Royal College of Art in London. It was chosen as one of the final three and a full-scale model was fabricated and displayed at the SES booth at the 2016 International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam.
Product Design
Brooklyn, NY, 2014
These glass-plastic water bottles were created from the mold of a Poland Spring plastic water bottle, recently thrown in the trash. This beverage, Poland Spring water, at the time, was the best selling beverage in New York City. The mold was created from plaster, and molten glass was blown into it to replicate the form. The logo of an oil derrick was later sand blasted where the water company's logo would normally belong.
Haptic Feedback Game
Keio Media Design, Tokyo, Japan, 2015
Aether is a game that falls somewhere between Air Hockey and Dragon Ball Z. It is played on a table with projected images, and gestures are employed to charge up, launch, and block energy balls. Impacts are also felt through actuators on the sternum and scoring is based on hits versus blocks and on charge levels of the virtual projectiles. I designed and fabricated prototype parts for body interfacing, working with a team of engineers and developers from Keio Media Design in Tokyo.
Sketch Provocation
London, UK, 2016
On arrival in London, our cohort was sent out to study the rituals of a neighborhood. My team chose the Isle of Dogs or Canary Wharf, the fast growing financial hub of London (and much of the world). Canary Wharf was the place where the Romans first landed on the island to create a settlement called Londinium. The city has grown from there and Canary Wharf has had a rich history of commerce and shipping ever since. Now, skyscrapers are midst-construction everywhere you turn and the neighborhood is characterized by "suits" hurrying through sterile surroundings. This is not a place for fun or culture, but we tried to change that just a little bit. We were lucky to find a gentleman named Jatinda who worked for an organization called Change Please. He had recently been homeless, and the previous evening the BBC had aired his episode of the reality TV show Famous, Rich and Homeless. He turned out to be an astute observer of the neighborhood and we interviewed him as he served coffee to customers. His voice provides the narration for this video.
Sketch Provocation
Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2016
Those who wear their hearts on their sleeves are transparent, honest. Perhaps, if one's actual heart-rate could be visible in real time, he or she would be guided into an existence of more perfect honesty. Imagine if we could see the heart rate of our politicians broadcast live during debates, or the heart rate of our significant others while having a conversation. On the flip side, perhaps this type of object would enable people to gain more immediate control over their biologies (something users noticed was easier while wearing the sleeve) and strengthen a poker face.
Clear silicone, pneumatic pump, solenoid valve, pulse sensor, Arduino micro-controller.
Industrial Design / Medical Design
The xSPANd stretcher provides an “every-trip-carry” solution for emergency rescue of a patient with an immobilizing injury. These scenarios require helicopter rescue or team members must fashion a stretcher from materials on hand. Current wilderness medicine education teaches various improvisation techniques. However, these solutions make it difficult to fully immobilize the body (which is of vital importance with spine and neck injuries) and are often impossible in areas with no trees or equivalent plant life. In addition, current rigid stretchers (commonly utilized for less remote rescues) are beginning to fall out of use due to pressure points that can reduce blood flow and lack of thermal insulation increasing the risk of hypothermia.
The xSPANd stretcher utilizes a simple-to-manufacture expanding insulation foam technique to make a small and packable package expand to become a body-length rigid stretcher. It also molds to the patient’s body with no pressure points and is extremely thermally insulating eliminating the risk of hypothermia.
When it is decided that a patient must be carried to medical care, a rescuer will first unpack and unroll the empty textile stretcher and its embedded liquid-filled bags. The patient is placed on the empty stretcher and secured with built in straps. The bags are stepped on, pushing the two-part foam through a static mixer at the outflow and into the interior of the stretcher. The now activated foam begins to expand through the stretcher cavity, molding around the patient’s body and entering specially formed channels designed to enhance overall rigidity. After approximately 20 minutes, the foam will fully expand and cure to a rigid state. The patient can now be lifted from the attached carry handles (in a variety of orientations flexible to changing needs) and carried for many miles to medical care.
Product Design
Tokyo, Japan, 2015
In Japan, the birthrate is declining and the ballooned baby booming generation is beginning to reach an age where they need to be taken care of. Since there will be fewer people to do this, each must carry a greater burden. In Japan, there is a strong fear of being a burden and the concept of Obasute is very telling of this. Obasute is the (most likely mythical) practice of leaving the elderly in the wilderness to die to alleviate the burden on the rest of the family. There is a famous poem about a son carrying his mother into the wilderness to be left to die. The mother, riding on the son's back, picks colorful leaves and flowers to drop behind them so that he is sure to find his way home after it is dark.
One of the most important creators of empowerment is simply the ability to stand and walk.
Once we learned the frightening elderly falling statistics, we decided to focus there, namely in the realm of fall prevention rather than mitigation. We were inspired in this by work being done at the Wyss Institute on balance through stochastic resonance. When attempting to pick out a difficult to discern signal, the addition of a control / white-noise can be added to aid in discernment. This is called stochastic resonance and it is used quite often in complex modeling in the sciences (in weather prediction and astronomy for example). It turns out that the human mind can benefit from this strategy in the same way computer programs do in the sciences. The addition of an unfelt and constant vibration to the bottom of the foot results in better overall balance.
We started from a simple standpoint: to create a well designed slipper for the elderly which would at once improve stability simply through its design as well as become a platform for technological experimentation into the problem of falling in elderly populations.
Product Design
Brooklyn, NY, 2015
A desktop clock. Touch the brass rivet at 12:00, and an internal light turns on, casting shadows of clock hands up into the frosted glass geodesic dome. Where the dome was once opaque, it is now revealed as a time keeping device.
The capacitive touch and lighting were managed my small microprocessor, and a USB port allows the onboard battery to be charged every few days.
Prototype was shown for New York Design week 2015 at the Wanted Design Industry City.
GPS Haptic Bicycle Navigation
Sketch/Exploration
Brooklyn, NY, 2014
Exploring capabilities of Bluetooth and Arduino, this bicycle navigation system was designed with the needs of the urban commuter in mind. The connected Rfduino unit will keep your eye-sight and hearing available and alert as you ride by sending vibrations to the handlebars using small custom-made vibratory motors. Through extended use, a simple “vibration code” would quickly become a very direct and nearly subconscious form of instruction - a haptic language. This unit, combined with a phone app, will utilize the Google Maps API for complete turn-by-turn haptic navigation. In final form, battery and chipset unit will be easily removable for safety and charging while the vibratory motors will be seamlessly hidden within the handlebar.
Industrial Design
Brooklyn, 2014
These planters were designed around the production method of metal spinning. They are hand-made from sheet aluminum at the Greenpoint Design Center which has long housed Irca, the metal-spinning business run by a Columbian named Juan Francisco Urseche.
The tooling was cut from six two-inch layers using a CNC router and two types of high-density foam. They are lightweight and functional, nest neatly, and bring a new aesthetic touch to a garden, deck, or stoop.
21"x14"
