email: boffilaura@gmail.com telephone: +44 (0) 7727930715

skype contact: laura.boffi

things in my mind I eventually designed

by designer Laura Boffi

Tsunami WaveBag

An automatic inflatable safety vest for the mother and the baby.

It is meant to protect against crashes and drowning in case of tsunami .

It has six air chambers: 2 on the front, 2 on the back and 1 each side.

Tsunami wavebag

work period_2006_BA thesis

This Evolution of the Needs Statusis a tool I designed to research psychological and physical needs in case of emergency.

It shows time and needs status in a carthesian diagram to understandhow design needs to address different targets of peoplein particular time of the emergency.

It helped me to develop new concepts during my project on the tsunami emergency.

The Evolution of the Needs Status applied to the tsunami emergency

The Emergency Systemis a tool I designed to research the different layers of causes and meanings aroundan emergency.

It shows how natural, cultural, political context influence the way people could beexposed to emergencies.

It helped me to understand where we were lacking design interventions to psychologicallyand physically protect people.

The Emergency System applied to the tsunami emergency

TubboloA foldable lamp with acoustic switch for children.

The sound produced by unfolding/folding the tube makes the LED lights turn on and off.

work period_2003/2004

Tubbolo

One modular tile that combines in different patterns.

work period_2004

Modular tile

A project that looks forward at a possible use of nanotechnology in the future that would

help to bring the presence of our dead beloved ones back.

It is based on the use of the smart dust, a nano network of sensors, that would be

implanted in the body since we are born in order to record our physical and emotional

data. After dying, the smart dust would stand as virtual ashes that would help us to

bring the presence of the dead person back. We would collect the smart dust from the

body of the dead person and put it into smart objects that would interact with the

collected data stored in the smart dust sensors. Smart objects would consist of a

different range of objects we are familiar with in our daily life: from mobile phones, to

pockets in our clothes.

Some of the smart dust would remain in the decomposing body of our dead beloved

and it would communicate with a particular band-aid that we would wear during the

mourning period. It would be both a medical device to help recovering and a praying

tool. The band-aid would realease serotonin according to the level of decomposition

of the body and it would do this by the smart dust communicating to the processor in

the band-aid. We would pray near the grave or from the apposite online cementery

and the healing communication between the dead and the living would start.

www.havingyouinthehereafter.wordpress.com

work period_2007

Smart dust

Self energy supplying:- temp/movements;- light;- electro magnetic field

Sensors reconfigurate the networkthemselves either if a grain is addedor subtracted

nanoscale electronic ecosystemSensors informations aresent to the AmbientIntelligence to make itperform its funcionality

Actual uses:

- spread into the environment;- glued on people;- included to textile;- mixed in intelligent wall coating to monitorate, spy, fight.

Subtracting people tothe earth life could meanadding virtual souls to theafter death dimension andsouls could interactamong themselves

Virtual reincarnation ininterfaces

Setting up of a virtualinteracting Hereafter world

Creation of a new religion,god, icons

Another way of praying(tools for praying)

alternative cementary

newmateria

lcul

ture

ques

tioning our actual values memory ashes

after dying

Micro/nano computersforming a network ofembedded sensors

dust grain size< 1mm3

Sensors capabilities:- temperature;- sounds;- movements- ...

Invisible and ubiquitousnetwork

Sensors comunicate with thesorroundings via wirelss

We could be provided withsmart dust sensors duringour live on the earth

Storing our data thattell about our presence( creating a kind ofelectronic ashes)

After dying our electronicashes could be strewed inan Intelligent Ambient to giveus back a virtual presenceof the dead person

anot

her c

orporality

augm

ented soul

virtu

alreincarnation

Interacting Hereafteras an answer to the psychological need of dead people presence

When the smart dust would be into a NBIC environment (N nanotech, B biotech, I intormationtech, C cognitive science), the sensors embedded in our body could live in symbiosis withit, upgradind as the brain would evolve and sensing/processing/ storings data like neurons.

computation

TinyOS CPUmicrocomputers

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

propulsion

nano-scalemechanical system

power supply

nano-scale solardevice or electronicaldevice to transform

vibrations ormagnetism into

energy

Nanotechnology

sensors

for detection in theenvironment

(often inspired bybiomimecry)

Nanotechnolog

y+

Bio

tech

nology

communication

wireless subsystembased on radio orinfrared frequency

ITin

form

atio

ntec

hnology

lacking

thinking and brainprocess

plasticity of brain thatevolves with thinking:

hardware andsoftware upgrade

together

Cognitive Science

connectionism

processors likeneurons, able to

receive feedback andlearn from the outside

Cognitive Science+

Informationtechnology Intelligent

AdaptiveDust?

Living in symbiosis withthe body and storinginformations from the

brain?

NBIC and Smart Dust

Smart dust

Smart Dust and the Technologies Convergencefor a nanoscale hereafter network

Lifetime

Smart dustashes

data transmitter for incoming data(via RF or Laser)

data transmitter for outgoing datato the central processor in the AI(via RF or Laser)

sensors capting temperature, movementes,sounds, images, etc.

battery self charging by vibrations,light, magnetic field, etc.

solar panel for energy sufficiencymicro computer processing andsending data collected by the sensors

During life, sensor network capts data about yourselfand the context and transmits it to the central processorin the Ambient Intellingent

* where could we carry our smart dust duringthe life?body implanted smart dust?

* which kind of data should we store in orderto develop a virtual hereafter when peopledie?

*ask people which kind of sensations areconnected with the person they love?

After dying, our smart dust arestrewed in kind of interfacescomunicating with the AI.

* which kinds of interactions couldgive you the presence of a deadperson back?

how translating data stored in thepast into interactions for now?

smart dust nodeNBIC components

ambient intelligence

processes and store peopledata when they are in life;translate these data later,after their death, intointeractions/phenomena inyour daily life when similarcontext is around you.

questioning our actual values

questioning our actual values

questioning our actual values

virtual spirit

If smart dust capts similar context tothose ones stored when the person wasalive , it should generate an interactionwhich gives you the presence of thatperson back.

Having you in the hereafter

* ask this question to peoplethroughout a blog to get concepts ofpossible interfaces for the Hereafter.

After being born

you would get thesmart dust throughyour powerd milk

Being weaned

with smart dust cookies

Religious hereafter rituals

integrated with smart dust

During your life

you would collect memoriesas data by the smart dust sensors

Passing away

I wis

h to listen to

you

I wish youstillin

fluencemeIwish

toh

old

your hand

Hav

ing

you

in th

e he

reaf

ter

virt

ua

lre

incarnation

virtual interactivity

physica

linfluence

hereafter pocket

here

afte

r ca

lls

hereafter band-aid

Dying

how to keep your presence?

Having you in the hereafterconcepts

Hereafter pocketHereafter messageHereafter band-aid

Hereafter pocket

Smart pocket in your pyjamas containingthe smart dust from your dead beloved.

The pocket takes the shapeof the dead person asif he was holding your hand

Hereafter message

From the internet, you can post memories to yourbeloved ones during your life in the personalMemory Will webpage.

After dying, the ones who collected your smartdust into their hereafter mobile phone will bereminded to check the website by a SMS text andread the related post from you when experiencinga situation similar to a particular one shared withyou (like drinking a coffee in the cafè you used togo together).

Hereafter band-aidThe smart rosary band-aid communicates with the smartdust in the dead body. it is both a medical device and apraying tool.

It releases serotonin according to the level of decompositionof the body each time we pray at the cementary (analogicalpray) or from the internet (digital pray).

According to Edgar Morin, anthropologyst, the mourning

period depends on the decomposition of the body.

Cultural probesTo test the reactions of people on the band-aid, I made cultural probes as

chocolate cookies in the shape of the band-aid itself, releasing serotonin as well

because of the chocolate!

Only after eating, the people were told about the band-aid project and I asked

them to write back their thoughts on the it.

Icould continue the project, adapting it to the reactions I received.

I gave the cultural probes to my colleagues, from different culturesand nationalities during a school trip on the bus.Everybody enjoyed the cookie and reacted backduring the time of the bus journey!

Tested

Eindhoven ZooA project about bringing to my own country, Italy, an aspect that interested me

in the city of Eindhoven.

I did it as soon as I moved to Eindhoven, The Netherlands, for my master.

After going around and taking pictures, I realized that the strangest thing was

the change of scale, from architecture to food.

I decided to reproduce in Italy this experience of feeling like a dwarf or a giant

thanks to a spheric mirroring architecture and a flying big balloon with the pictures

of Eindhoven overturned.

Eindhoven Zoo

Personal reportage of Eindhoven as I experienced it

work period_2006

Dutch urban camouflageA project about how to how to deal with the Dutch xenophobia and survive to the

naturalization process.

From the analysis of my personal suitcase towards the development of an urban

camouflage to be recognized as a Dutch while preserving your own identity as foreigner.

The urban camouflage is a two sided jacket. One side is the illegal, with the Dutch flag

camouflage as hiding metaphor and one side is the legal, with the reflecting textile as

passive mimicry in the non-native country.

Dutch Urban Camouflage

work period_2006

Kulfirator potA pot to make ice cream and preserve it cold.

It is a project about the use of appropriate technologies and it is inspired by the way

Indian street vendors use to make Kulfi, their local ice cream, by salt mixed with ice

which causes a drop in temperature.

To improve the cooling capacity, Kulfirator pot is made from terracotta.

Kulfirator pot

work period_2007

Body rice protectionsA family of objects to protect our body from eventual sport crashes.

Each protection has an impact absorbing honeycomb made from popped rice. The

honeycomb can fill any volume as it can be folded into any tri-dimensional shape from

a flat sheet.

After a crash, you just have to replace the damaged honeycomb by cutting the flat

sheet as you need.Body Rice Protections

work period_2006

Particular of the honeycomb flat sheet and how it is put into the protections cover

Plume spoongives you the chance to taste your yogurt or ice cream up to the last mouthfuls.

It is made from porcelain and its colour is white as a plume. Its asymmetric shape is

meant to make you enjoy your food up to the end. Its lightness

is thought to make you concentrate only on the taste you carry in your mouth. Plume

spoon is the tool that can make you experience dulcis in fundo each day in your life. Plume spoon

workshop with Ole Palsby_work period_2007

It is a collaborative project me and my collegues of Man and Humanity master developed

during an intensive workshop, hosted in the Izmir Ekonomi Universitesi, Turkey.

The project is about the vaccination compaigns and the preservation of the cold chain

for the vaccines in remote areas. We tried to develop new concepts around the way

the vaccination is comunicated to people and a new cold box that could be carried

more easily and store the cold for a longer period.

Over a week of model makings and testing, we came out with a graphic identity that

could be flexible and used with different mediums, from printing on textiles to skin

removable tatoos that could help doctors in identifying who still need to be vaccined

or not.

On the other side, we worked on different levels of innovation in the box, such as the

ice pack stored inside the external insulating shell ( “the box”), the opening of the box

providing working space for the administration of the vaccine, the shape of the box

itself in order to be stockable and easy to carry with strings.

Cold Chain project

collaborative project during Man and Humanity master, DAE, may 2008

Scheme of the network involved in the Cold Chain project that helped us in understanding the differentstakeholders we wanted to communicate to and the mediums to approach them.

Me and my team took care about the development of an inflatable cold box and a foldable ice pack to put inside of it. Our concern was to keep the cold box distant fromthe body when carried by a person and to provide an extra insulation through the air in the inflatable cushions. The blue pipes in the models simulate the inflatable ones,which would both help the insulation and give structure to the box.

Final logo and its possible applications on textiles, on the streets and as a tatoo during the vaccination compaign.

Final prototype with details of the opening, the foldable ice pack, the working space on the opening and the ways of carrying it.

Knitting your passageA project that looks at the unsuccessful aspects of the medicine on terminal patients.

When medicine cannot fix their bodies, they experience death as an expiration date.The

amount of life that they still have to live is codified into vital parameters, numbers and

graphics. The devices they are connected to seem to deny them any chance to build

a new life through the illness. The project addresses the medical machines that record

the vital data. They knit a canvas according to this data and the feelings of the patients

and their familiars by selecting different yarns.

Schematic model of the hospital machine workingCanvas details: stitches and yarn

work period_2007 up to now

Knitting your passage

Knitted stitcheswith electrocardiogram

Tachycardy_high yarn tension

Arrhythmias_variable yarn tension

Extra systolis_lazy stitch

Ischemia_hole

Infarction_dropped stitch

Fibrillation_reverse stitch

Asystole_reverse stitch, floating, variabletension

Sinus atrial block_lazy stitch,low yarn tension

Atrioventricular block_tuck stitch

Skipping a bit_pointelle

Patient feeling_shape memory yarn, elasticyarn, water soluble yarn

Familiars feeling_various colour yearn

Regular heart working_regular stitch

Brachicardy_low yarn tension

Canvas from electrocardiogram and illustration with knitted heart and IV fluid cables transporting the yarns

To favour the expression of the bioingeneered genes and to protect her from the danger of gas leak in the house, Amy is put into her incubator when she is brought home fromthe hospital.

Amy got her embryo bioengineered with the instinct of gas leak. Her genoma was implanted with extra genesthat make her eyelashes as chemoreceptors for gas and give her extra eyelids that glow in case of gasdetected by the eyelashes. When she would be completely developed, in case of gas leak she would havethe possibility to be woken up at night by the light from her eyes and survive the danger.

work period_2007/2008_MA thesis

Bio_instincts

Bio_instinctsA project that looks at the biotechnology and regenerative medicine and how they are

changing the way we may perceive life and death. Thanks to them, man is experiencing

the possibility to live longer and longer, reaching almost an a-mortality. But anyway

man is still susceptible of accidental death, from a gas leak to a terroristic attack. If on

the one hand, he is losing the consciousness of his mortality, on the other hand he is

completely unprotected from accidents.

What if man could get the instincts of accidental death, of danger, like animals, thanks

to biotech?

Would parents allow the bioengineering of their baby genoma? And how would these

genes be expressed in the body?

The project focuses on the case of domestic gas leak presenting the design of eyes

with chemo recepting eyelashes and glowing eyelids in case of gas leak during each

stage of evolution.

An incubator is required at home to let the new genes express in the body of the baby.

The mother provides the baby with the right toxic environment breathing out her CO2

into the incubator from time to time in order to let his/her gas leak instinct develop.

The mother provides the baby with the right toxic environment breathing out her CO2 into the incubator from time to time in order to let her gas leak instinct develop.

The development of the bioengineered eyesthrough the life ages

It is a collaborative project I developed together with the author Carolina Caluori and

other volunteer professionals at MediaLab Prado, Spain, during the intensive workshop

Visualizar ‘8: Database City. The aim of the project was to create an interactive map

of a turistic route in Madrid using a GPS device.

Due to the group lack of computing skills, we developed an analogic printable map for

wheelchair users.

I developed the system to collect the information to be shown in the map that could

be interesting for a wheelchair user: from the musems to the zebra crossing lines taking

notes every 10 metres, the distance that qualitatively we took as equivalent to 100

metres for a not disable walking user. I also developed the graphics of the maps

showing both the pictograms and the variation of the altitude of the route (previously

taken by a GPS device) and a concept of physical installation of the map in the touristic

office.

We invited to work with us Carlos, a wheelchair user, who made the route with us

before and after designing the map, giving very important insights and feedbacks.

The map is downloadable from the website of the project:

http://lazarillo.medialab-prado.es

Lazarillo GPS

collaborative project in MediaLab Prado, november 2008

Carolina with a 10metre rope along the touristic route from Plaza Mayor to Cibeles, Madrid, taking notesof the interesting information/places for a wheelchair user.

A printable page of the prototype of the map as it can be downloaded from the Lazarillo GPS website. For every 10metres in the real scale, a row of pictograms is reportedin the map, showing what you can get in that distance. In grey, you can qualitatively understand the variation of the altitude. The maps is detailled for both sides of thestreets.

Carlos is showing us his way of communicating through a transparent panel with pictograms.Amanda, understanding the direction of Carlos’ eyes watching at the panel, like an analogical-human eyetracking, can retrace the pictogram and know what he wants to say.

Learning from Carlos’ eye tracking way of communicating, I thought of

the possibility of having a big map printed on acrilic in touristic offices

or along the touristic streets.

The acrilic surface would be round shaped and will embrace the whole

view angle of the wheelchair user in order to make it easier to track

his/her eyes on the big map.

Me and Carolina developed the concept in some basic simulations.

work period_2009

(breath)3

(breath)3

An inflatable dress interacting with the breath of people: if you blow strongly in the

mask, the dress starts to inflate. I designed and made the dress in order to perform

with it at the scenography festival Crash! Boom! Bau! in Jena, Germany, 5th-6th May

2009. The concept is about me representing the inflatable temporary theater of the

Theaterhaus Jena having an empathic relationship with the theater audience. Both the

theater and the audience breath...and from the relationship of mutual air exchange,

little inflatable cushions give life to plants inside.

It is a project I developed at the Interprofessional Studio AAIS at the Architectural

Association, London.

To see the video of the performance: www.vimeo.com/4766069

This is the card I prepared to give

to people in the street of jena.

There is a little explanation of the

performance and a hole, so that

they could blow in my mask

putting the card between their

faces and the mask, avoiding any

physical contact.

work period_2009

AAIS Salon curtains

Salon curtains

A project of three curtains for the Front Members’ Rooms at the Architectural Association,

London, in occasion of the AAIS Salon exhibition.

The curtains were shaped in order to be also used as screen for projections during the

exhibitions. The textile, quite unsual for making curtains, was selected and tested for

its particular properties to diffuse light and to stretch under the weight of the metal

tubes.

The curtains is made only by two sewn lines and a cut through.

work period_2009

Collective Memories Book

Collective memories book

A project of a book binding for a photo collection of memories among the different

partecipants who took part to the Interprofessional Studio at the Architectural Association,

London.

The binding of the book begins connecting the paper pages with textiles and then the

different layers are sewn together. The pages join and overlap each other like the story

of the people shown in it. They are people creating a collective project, but still individual

professionals. This is the reason why the binding is of course joining all the sheets

together, but it is also openable by velcro. By the desing of the book binding, I would

like to remind the reader that a collective memory is always made by individual stories

and by the personal ways people remember those stories themselves.