Tokyo Fiber 2009 SENSEWARE PART 4

Part 4 of this fantastic exhibition. Panasonic Design Company, Ross Lovegrove, Shigeru Ban, and Yasuhiro Suzuki

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Exhibition: Tokyo Fiber

Fabric made with nanofibers, invisible to the naked eye and with diameters only 1/7500 of the thickness of human hair, has more than 10 times the surface area and pores of ordinary fabrics, enabling it to pick up sub-micron oil films and dust. This superb wiping performance of nanofibers the size of single cells is here combined with high-tech from electric appliances to create a wiping robot. Part of the robot’s behavior is simulated, but a final product would use sensors to detect dirt and roam around freely as if it were a living creature.

Ross Lovegrove, the UK designer whose earnest approach to organic designs constantly produces surprises, has utilized the properties of triaxial woven fabric to create an ultra light-weight backpack with an organic shape. Unlike conventional textiles with warp and weft intersecting at 90 degrees, triaxial woven fabric employs three threads intersecting each other at 60 degrees in a reticulate arrangement. From this fabric emerge structures that are ideal for tracing dynamic surface changes in three dimensions.

Architect Shigeru Band is an architect with a reputation for having a clear motivation for choice of materials. Here, he conceived a super light-weight chair that uses carbon fiber for lightness and tensile strength. Rather than using carbon fiber on its own, he created a tough structure by sandwiching aluminum between thin layers of carbon fiber. The use of aluminum in the combination enables successful pinpointing of the characteristics of carbon fiber.

Artist Yasuhiro Suzuki uses the human body as one of his motifs, and created a mannequin with a 3D spring structure built up from monofilament fibers extruded from nozzles. The mannequin is a hollow structure molded in a cast taken from life-size human model. Internally carefully placed polyester fibers can be operated by an air compressor to make the mannequin move as if it were breathing.