Über-human folds in industrial and home design.

Foraying into the foldy discipline of origami design once more, let’s take a look at a few bends that have captured the design world – in both market and imagination.

The first comes care of bendables expert Pleat Farm, a perennial favorite of ours, for whom folds hold more than cornered materials. They just might hold the answer to everything, according to some. But in the case of design student Christophe Guberan of Ecole Cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL), it’s not entirely clear why the crinkle conjoins. In other words, it folds therefore it is…what? Cool seems the most sensible adjective for it.

He created the Hydro-Fold inkjet printer, which prints paper that pleats into 3D foms. It works by printing a mixture of water and ink that causes the paper to bend along the wet lines and humid areas.

The forms are created via a computer program that generates patterns for different configurations.

Issey Miyake, meanwhile has been avidly folding and creasing technology-driven art and fashion since the 1980s (he did Jobs’ turtlenecks, too – entirely pleatless yet visionary). The designer’s latest collection is not that of clothing or even cloth, but an LED lighting series made from recycled PET plastic bottles.

He’s working in collaboration with Italian lighting brand Artemide on the project, a forward-thinking solution for our plastic water bottle problem.

Finally, from German designer Elisa Strozyk a wooden blanket made usable from giving chips of wood the multi-faceted geometric treatment.

The blankets are among a larger Accordion Collection, which also include wood pleated into lighting fixtures and origami cabinets.

The designer states, “[the wooden textiles are] between hard and soft, challenging what can be expected from a material or category. It looks and smells familiar but feels strange, as it is able to move and form in unexpected ways.”

Images: Elisa Strozyk; Pleat Farm; Fast Company; Elisa Strozyk

The post The Bendables: Origami Design Tackles 3D and Waste appeared first on EcoSalon.

Wherein we ask our favorite design bloggers, curators and forecasters what inspires them.  

Pleat Farm is about more than origami. It bills itself a design pasture for all things apparel, textiles, architecture, furniture, paper art and product design related. But with a twist and a fold.

The site is focused entirely on innovations in material applications involving some kind of bending, knotting. Origami, basically – elevated to high brow and high art standards.

Architect and curator Elizabeth Surya helms the blog from the San Francisco Bay Area and attributes folding to creating the foundation of her design education and influencing her work.

Elizabeth chose to answer question number two.

What object are you currently lusting after and what would you do with it?

Elizabeth’s current lustable object. 

Elizabeth: Eero Saarinen’s Womb Chair and Ottoman is my most coveted set of furniture.

One reason is my appreciation for the architect’s methodology in scale and structure using bold yet simple, sweeping, curvilinear forms. The Womb Chair takes on those elements yet on a much more human level – a simple, curving shell that cradles the user. My wish is to own this baby some day.

This Saarinen masterpiece not only looks handsome in space, but would also be well-utilized as my spot for rest on a bad day.

What she would do with it. 

I’d curl up, catch forty winks, or sprawl with a good book. As cliché as this may sound, the chair really lives up to its name: the Womb.

The 5 Questions Series is an ongoing project wherein we peek inside the workspaces and living spaces of our favorite design bloggers, curators and trendsetters.

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