HAND MADE- HIGH TECH

Combining industrial materials with tried as well as tested hand-craft or design techniques, could achieved very interesting and unexpected results which lead towards to innovations.

Aerogels. They are the world’s lightest solid material, composed of up to 99.98% air by volume. They are derived by gels, in which the liquid component has been replaced with gas. Several nicknames of them are frozen smoke, solid air or blue smoke owing to its translucent nature and the way light scatters in the material.

Created by Samuel S. Kistler in 1931, aerogels are a diverse class of amazing materials with properties unlike anything else. The first aerogels were produced

from silica gels. Transparent superinsulating silica aerogels exhibit the lowest thermal conductivity of any solid known. It is the most common type of aerogel and the most extensively studied and used. Silica aerogel strongly absorbs infrared radiation.

Kistler’s later work involved aerogels based on alumina, chromia and tin dioxine. Carbon aerogels were developed in the late 1980s. Ultrahigh surface area carbon aerogels power today’s fast-charging supercapacitors.

Their applications:

- Commercially, aerogels have been used in granular form to add insulation to skylights.- Transparent silica aerogel would be very suitable as a thermal insulation material for windows, significantly limiting thermal losses of buildings.- Their high surface area lead to many applications, such as a chemical adsorber for cleaning up spills.- NASA used aerogel to trap space dust particles aboard the Stardust spacecraft. The particles vaporize on impact with solids, pass through gases, but can be trapped in aerogels. NASA also used aerogel for thermal insulation of the Mars Rover and space suits.

Sea balls or Neptune Balls. These balls are made of matted seaweed fibers, leaves and roots of Posidonia oceanica, a flowering plant which lives in dense meadows or along channels in the sands of Mediterranean.

The organic brown material can be found washed up on beaches. It can be used without any additives as an insulating material with natural fire prevention properties. As it contains hardly any salts and no proteins it does not rot and the fibers are not harmful to the human organism. Posidonia grows best in clean waters, and its presence is a marker for lack of pollution. With thermal conductivity of just 0.037W/(mK), sea balls are highly suitable for building insulation.

These natural sea balls are sold as a commodity under the brand name NeptuTherm.

“This material has the best ecological balance and the best storage capacity of all insulation materials. NeptuTherm ® is ideal due to its fantastic properties for insulation of roofs, facades, walls, floors and ceilings in renovations and new construction of residential buildings.” -NeptuTherm ®

Its applications:

- The thermal insulation of the attic floor / ground storage.- Insulation.- Roof insulation.- Internal wall insulation.- Sound insulation in wood-beamed ceilings.- Insulation of framed structures / timber frame / prefabricated houses from wood.

Musical Putting or Noisy Jelly. Raphaël Pluvinage and Marianne Cauvard have created a jelly that makes several sounds. A mini chemistry lab allows each player to make jellies, using water, a few grams of agar agar powder and a series of moulds. Different colours can be added to the mix. By touching the jellies, the players can make electronic sounds.

The board is a capacitive sensor. It detects the distance and the strength of the finger contact and transforms this into audio signals.With Arduino and Max/Msp.

Concrete Cloth/Canvas. Cement impregnated flexible fabric that hardens upon addition of water to form a thin, durable, waterproof and fireproof concrete layer.

A formula of dry concrete is contained in the cloth, that allows the fabric to keep its flexibility for two hours before setting quickly. When the material is still flexible, it can be easily cut to shape, fixed into complex curvatures using basic fixings. The cloth is claimed to be heat resistant up to high temperatures.It is used in furniture design, complex curved roofing, public sculpture, and digital printing design.

Luminoso. Between thin wooden panels there are fiberglass mats layered and bonded using PU glue. The surface is completely sealed.

The choice of wood, space between layers, and strength of the luminous fabric can influence the degree of light permeability. The wood used for backlit paneling and dividers in interior spaces and trade fair stands must be absolutely flawless, so as not to disturb the overall impression. A picture that is placed behind the composite panel will be transferred to the other side once it is lit from the rear. Even films can be projected on to the material.

Evaluation. Combining industrial materials with tried and tested hand-craft or design techniques, could achieved very interesting and unexpected results which lead towards to innovations and new experiences.

Nature is there, offering all its products and materials to people in order to create staff, to achieve many graphic works and structures and make life easier, safer and joyful. Wood, grass, metal, light, glass, liquids, concrete, gas could be combined differently to produce a new fact, a new science.

Researching those materials, felt like I was practising experiments that I have never been involved with. I can imagine how difficult was that for designers and scientists but also how much they enjoy it when the final successful results came out.

-Kleanthis Michail kleanthis3rdy.gdnm.org2/4