Glyptodons are the extinct ancestors of modern day armadillos.  These giant mammals roamed the Americas from 2.5 million years ago until just as recently as 10,000 years ago before dying out during the megafaunal extinction.  They were about the size of a Volkswagon Beetle and weighed as much too, due to their massive domed shell.  The shell was constructed of hundreds of hexagonal plates formed of keratin called scutes.  Each scute is about an inch thick and they interlock at their edges to made a huge rigid shell.  Grooves in the scutes served as channels for blood vessels that nourished the Glyptodon’s skin.  And holes in the scutes formed attachment points for hair follicles that served as sensors (important since they couldn’t see around their shell).

The type of tiling pattern seen in this shell remind me strongly of a tangent plane approach to paneling a surface of positive curvature.

This fossil of a smaller glytodon called Propalaehoplophorus minor better shows the rosette pattern characteristic of glyptodon armor.  Propalaehoplophorus lived during the Miocene era.

I photographed these tremendous fossils in the Wing of Mammals and Their Extinct Relatives at the American Museum of Natural History.

A close up view of the fossil scutes.

Every time we do a show, it is an opportunity to make something crazy and big. For this year’s New York International Gift Fair, we made the Barnacle display wall, an array of cellular extrusions each housing a selection of designs lit by LED strips.

We wanted to address some of the problems we’ve encountered in past trade show displays. As with all trade show projects, we were working with very limited time and budget. Last year, we made crystalline, geode pedestals, which were awesome, but had a few issues. First, they were very difficult to assemble. They also lacked a certain amount of coherence. The pieces they were displaying did not have a place, and were placed on top arbitrarily. We spent a lot of time on the design of booth (most of which was not used) and had not done much thinking about construction and the pieces we would display.

This year we wanted to minimize design time, and make sure we had a simple construction method that would display the pieces well. We quickly decided to use a modified version of our Written Images Barnacle sketch, which is in turn an extension of our Radiolaria project. This allowed us to start designing fast.

our first physical sketch…a bit lacking in finesse but serviceable

We went with the architecture student’s tried and true construction materials: laser cutter + chip board. We wanted to it to be fast, inexpensive, and easy to transport. Each barnacle is unrolled to a flat, scored sheet that can be folded into its 3D form. It is attached to a flat back plate, which fixes the barnacle’s shape and allows it to be mounted on the wall. Our first prototype used binder clips to attach the pieces. These were too large and difficult to attach to the intricate design. Instead, we switched to brass, round head fasteners, which are like the folded prongs you see on manila envelopes. They were easy to use, cheap, and had a great aesthetic.

a view of our processing sketch

The sketch was modified to generate laser cut files that would fit into our 18″x24″ laser cutter. The barnacles were also sliced at angles to create a more dramatic 3D presence and allow light into the barnacles. In the Written Images project, barnacle height was determined by barnacle area. Here, we added a tool to control the heights interactively, with a simple click and drop off radius sort of system.

test chunk of the final design

The pieces were displayed on clear acrylic inserts that press-fit into the barnacles. This made it seem as if each piece was floating inside the barnacle. It also made sure each piece had a set place, so that if someone took one down to look at it, it went back to the right place.

At the last minute, we decided to light each barnacle with an LED strip. We got 16.5′ of flexible, cuttable LEDs from Amazon for around $12, and soldered wires onto 40, 2″-4″ pieces. The strips were connected together in series on site with crimp connectors. This looked awesome in our dark studio, where the jewelry cast dramatic shadows, and the barnacles let off a mysterious glow. In the harsh light of the Javitz center, the effect was somewhat lost.

The barnacles are mounted on homasote sheets, which allows us to hide all the wiring and assemble the entire wall with only thumbtacks and brass fasteners.

mounting the barnacles at the Javits center using our jig

We shipped everything flat and assembled it on site. We used a jig to make sure everything was level and properly positioned. It took one day from around 12pm-10pm with 4 people. This included unpacking, painting, wiring, assembling, and mounting. I was amazed and relieved when the LED all worked on the first try. It was definitely our most effective and satisfying display to date.

The total project time was roughly 2 days for design and prototyping, 1 day for fabrication, and 1 day for assembly.

Don’t worry! There’s still time to pick up one of our Small Seed Lamps, a Sterling Silver Bamboo Cuff, or anything else from our shop for your favorite friends and relatives.

To ensure delivery by Christmas, please get your orders in on or before the dates below and select the mentioned shipment speed on checkout.

Dec 14th – International orders shipping by Express Mail
Dec 15th – Canadian orders shipping by Express Mail
Dec 19th – USA orders shipping by Priority Mail
Dec 20th – USA orders shipping Express Mail

They even videotaped our lecture….so without further ado, here it is!

Cell Cycle, our first line of 3d-printed jewelry, was introduced in 2009 and originally only consisted of bangle bracelets and rings. Earlier this year, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Store asked us to create a companion earring design to add to our bestselling rings and bracelets. You can see the earrings we created for them below. They are available for purchase exclusively at the SFMoMA store in San Francisco and online.

We also created a matching necklace design which is for sale on our own website. The Cellular Pendant, the first necklace in the Cell Cycle collection, is available in black and white polished nylon and also in sterling silver. The black and white nylon pieces are 3d-printed using Selective Laser Sintering while the sterling silver version is cast from a 3d-printed wax. The sterling silver version of the Cellular Pendant comes on a 20″ sterling silver snake chain and is packaged in wood box laser engraved with cellular pattern. It’s for sale here on our website and also at the WIRED holiday store in NYC. The black and white versions come with 18″ sterling silver cable chains.

The photograph is by Natalia Borecka and features a model holding one of our small Seed Lamps.  We have a couple of lamps in stock for immediate shipment for your holiday needs!

The sale runs from 11/28/2011 until 12/15/2011.  Don’t know what to give someone for the holidays? Here are a few of our favorites!

Clockwise from the left.  Silver Vessel Pendant ($275), Cross-venulate Earrings ($40), Cellular Pendant ($50), Reaction Cup ($20 each or 4 for $60), Spiral Cuff – stainless steel ($178), 1-layer twist ring ($15)

Why I like Lichen

Cladonia rangiferina, photographed in the Adirondacks, NY 07/11/2011

Lichen are strange conglommerations of two or more species from completely different biological domains of life. A lichen usually consists of a fungus and one or more photosynthesizing partners, usually it’s partnered with a single type of algae but sometime it can be paired with multiple types of algae or even cyanobacteria (photosynthesizing bacteria). Most fungi are decomposers, they feed on the detritus of other living things like leaves, soil and the dead. They live their lives in the soil hidden from observation except occasionally when their reproductive organs emerge for brief gaudy fits of spore dispersal. Fungi live inside their food. Their body is a huge absorptive mass of long linear branching cells called hyphae which provide them with a really big surface area to absorb nutrients from the soil. They typically do not build any complex structures, tissues or organs except when they need to reproduce; then they may build odd fruiting bodies like mushrooms to spread their spores. The shapes of these structures are adapted to their environment and it’s inhabitants who they must depend on to carry their offspring to new sites.

Ramalina menziesii, photographed at Drakes Estero in Point Reyes, CA 09/04/2010

But, lichen are different. When fungus partners with a photo synthesizer, it undergoes a dramatic transformation in physiology, chemistry, and life-style. While fungus is comprised of one large, simple structure of filamentous hyphae, lichen develop a myriad of complex structures to perform a variety of function. While fungus live as decomposers, the last step in a richly developed ecosystem, lichen are colonizers: some of the first organisms to enter desolate and dangerous environments such as toxic slag heaps. They have developed unique chemical pathways that can breakdown rock or oil.

Rhizocarpon geographicum, photographed at Glacier National Park, MT 07/15/2009

Some people describe a lichen as a fungus that has taken up farming, growing sugars in little algae patches throughout it’s body, in contrast to the decomposing habits of normal fungi. If fungi can be described as living inside their food, then lichen are essentially fungi turned inside out. Their food lives inside of them.

But I find it more intriguing to think of lichen as a fungus trying to be a plant. Like a plant it has photosynthesizing portions which produce food (the algae or cyanobacteria) but also structural components (the fungi) which protect and arrange the photosynthetic elements. As a photosynthesizing organism, lichen are under a lot of the same constraints as plants. They have to effectively collect sunlight and water. They have to be rooted to something, they have to resist gravity… Correspondingly, lichen have independently evolved very similar body plans to plants…..despite have an entirely different chemical and biological makeup.

crusty: photographed at Yellowstone National Park, WY 07/20/2009
leafy: photographed at Woodstock Land Conservancy, NY 12/24/2006
branchy: photographed at Yosemite National Park, CA 01/31/2008

Lichens tend towards three general body plans: crusty, leafy and branchy or crustose, foliose, and fruticose as they are usually called. But often a single lichen specimen may exhibit several of these morphologies as well as other less commonly seen ones. There are scaly lichens, powdery lichens and even gelatinous ones! But in all these body plans, the fungus must build transparent greenhouses of fungal tissue which protect the algae from UV light while displaying them in a way that allows light to be collected. They have to prevent the algae from dehydrating while allowing for carbon dioxide to diffuse into the algae during photosynthesis. These tasks are much more diverse from the normal role of fungal hyphae, which must simply spread out through the soil, exploring and absorbing food and this leads to much more morphological differentiation.

Cladonia Cristatella at the Woodstock Land Conservancy, NY

What about reproduction though? How can a lichen, which is actually a symbiosis of multiple types of creatures produce more of itself? Reproduction is complicated for lichen. Only the fungus can reproduce sexually, sexual reproduction for the algae is suppressed. The fungus produces spore dispersing structures. One of the most common seen among lichen are apothecia, these are the cup and disc-like growths you see in many of my photos. They can vary in size from under a millimeter to over 2cm. Sometimes they are the same color as the rest of the lichen other times they are dramatically color. Sometimes they are spread throughout the body of the lichen other time they protrude outwards on long stalks up to 1cm long.

left: lichen at Indian Lake in the Adirondacks, NY 7/21/2010
right: lichen at Fjordland National Park, New Zealand 08/28/2008

So the fungus produces these structures for the dispersal of spores but without an algal partner these spores can’t produce a new lichen. This means that if the spore lands somewhere where there happens to be some free living algae of the right species it might be able to lichenize and survive but most algae that form lichen can’t live in their environments outside of the lichen thallus (body). To get around this constraint lichen have developed several types of propagating units they can disperse that contain both fungus and algae. Also many can produce simply through dispersal of the lichen thallus; it a bit rips off and lands somewhere else, it may take establish a new lichen.

lichen photographed at Fjordland National Park, New Zealand 08/29/2008

Becoming lichenized

towards a new architecture

Fungi have incorporated algae and other photosynthesizers into the structures they build to provide themselves with a dependable sun-powered energy source. They’ve become lichenized. We should too.

What would happen if our buildings became “lichenized”? As our knowledge of biotechnology and our environmental concerns continue to expand, we should take inspiration from the adventurous fungi and consider how we can better partner with photosynthesizers. How can algae or cyanobacteria be used in architecture to provide energy for our building systems? The self similar body plans of lichen and plants already inform us of many solutions to problem of how to compactly array photosynthetic cells to the sun. Research into biophotovoltaics or “Microbial solar cells” suggests we may be able to harvest electricity from photosynthesizing cells directly in addition to producing a range of useful chemicals and fuels.

Photosynthesizing surfaces offer many benefits over photovoltaic cells. The a biofilm of algae is a self-organizing, continuously growing system; hence it can self-repair leading to less maintenance and greater performance over a longer period of time. Photosynthetic systems have intermediate energy carriers which means energy can still be generated in the dark. Photosynthetic systems have a vibrant aesthetic appeal, by adding them to our buildings and cities we’d be “greening” them.

So what happens when our built environment becomes lichenized? As with the fungus whose structure and lifestyle change so dramatically, how can our buildings, urban planning, and society change when we are freed from the grid of infrastructure that currently supports, but also limits us.

Interested in this? Here are some articles I found interesting. Please send more my way if this is your area of interest because I would love to learn more.

Microbial solar cells: applying photosynthetic and electrochemically active organisms
Direct Extraction of Photosynthetic Electrons from Single Algal Cells by Nanoprobing System
Development of Bio-Photovoltaic Devices

Products

Two porcelain tableware designs. These are dishwasher and microwave safe.

The Reaction Cup – $20 each or $60 for a set of 4. 3” x3.5” high (7.6×8.9cm), holds approximately 10 oz of fluid. It works for both cold and hot beverages, as the ridges provide an extra layer of insulation.

The Reaction Plate – $25 each or $80 for a set of 4. 8” (20.3cm) diameter. Features a spiraling embossed reaction pattern. The ridges are more highly raise at the edges of the plate and get flatter towards the center.

One of our Reaction plates imaginatively plated by Andrew and Michael of A Razor, A Shiny Knife

Lamps

Lamps come in a variety of styles and sizes and are made of rigid nylon plastic. The forms are reminiscent of corals, sand dunes, and seed pods. The pattern modulates the surface thickness to reveal a cellular texture when lit. Each is lit by a 3-watt Cree LED fixture with switch and wall US wall plug. More information is available on the individual product pages.

The Reaction Lamp – 7” diameter (~18cm), $900

The large Seed Lamp – 10.5” diameter (~27cm) $1400

The small Seed Lamp – 7” diameter (~18cm) $900

The cup and plates sets come in the packaging (shown below) which describes the ideas behind the designs.

Inspiration

photographs of animal patternings by Jessica Rosenkrantz of Nervous System

Reaction-diffusion (RD) is a canonical example of complex behavior that emerges from a simple set of rules. RD models a set of substances that are diffusing, or spreading; these substances also react with one another to create new substances. This simple idea has been suggested as a model for a diverse set of biological phenomena. All kinds of animals from fish to zebras display interesting color patterns on their skin and shells which play important roles in their behavior. However, the underlying cause of these patterns is still not understood. In 1952, Alan Turing suggested the RD system as an answer to not only this question but also the more general one of why cells differentiate. How do individual cells locate themselves in the larger scale structure and pattern of an organism? The patterns seen on the animals occur over a scale much larger than a cell, yet they display remarkable self-similarity on every part of the animal’s body.

Turing studied the behavior of a complex system in which two substances interact with each other and diffuse at different rates. He proved mathematically that such a system can form stable periodic patterns even from uniform starting conditions. One of the most interesting things about RD is that you can have a homogeneous system where every cell is doing exactly the same action (for instance just producing a certain amount of some chemicals); but from this one process a large scale structure emerges.

You can read more about reaction diffusion in our previous blog posts on our work with it.

System

We wrote a computer program to generate 3D forms using a mathematical simulation of RD, and used this software to grow the designs of the reaction collection. Parameters of the simulation can be varied for differing effects, creating different types or directions of pattern. These parameters are controlled and change through space to express design intent. The process begins on an imported underlying surface, and a 3 dimensional object is formed by embossing or removing material from that surface based on the chemical concentration present at each point in space. Multiple scales of pattern and simulation are used to create more detailed forms.

Fabrication

After being computationally grown, the digital objects are made physical through 3D printing.

The lamps are produced directly using selective laser sintering, a type of 3d-printing where nylon powder is fused by a laser. However, the cups are plates are produced by slipcasting, a process where clay slurry is poured into plaster molds. A master cup and plate model is printed using SLA to create molds.

(SLA positives of the cup and plate designs for slipcasting)

These models are produced 15% larger than the final pieces to account for shrinkage that occurs when porcelain is fired. A rubber positive master mold is made of these 3D prints, which is used for the creation of plaster production molds. Slip is poured into each mold and dries. The plaster mold absorbs moisture, hardening the exterior of the slip, the rest is poured out, leaving a shell. This shell is the cup; but, it’s in a “green” state and must be fired in a kiln and glazed to realize the final product.

Sketches

Here are some images of sketches we produced while working on the designs for the cups, plates and lamps.

We’ve been really excited about the enthusiastic response to our Hyphae Lamps! On August 16th, we sold the last Hyphae Lamp from the first series that was available on our website.  Each lamp in the series is a one of a kind design but the series itself is unlimited.  So in the following days, we’ve grown the next group of lamps.  These lamps number 14 through 28 and are currently available for purchase in our online shop.

One of the great things about having sold the first batch of lamps is that they were all printed and we were able to do a family portrait of a number of them together.  We also had a chance to design packaging for the lamps which we are making in house on our laser cutter.  Each lamp comes in a two part box with a detailed laser engraved venation pattern and edition number.

Junior Veloso has made what is probably the most sophisticated homemade 3D printer ever. It is an SLA-type printer, meaning it prints with UV-cured resin. It has an amazing resolution at 50 micron per layer. This means it prints super smooth and with ridiculous details. It also doesn’t have the geometry limitation and messiness of other homemade 3D printers (RepRap, MakerBot).  The materials tend to be a bit more expensive, but you can print wax to do lost wax casting.

He’s been using some of our open source models as test pieces. Makes me want to release some more of our designs, just to see how they print on this machine.

He will be releasing the printer as a kit in the next few months. The price is still unknown, but this may be first DIY printer I would consider for serious production.