Design WOO

DESIGNWOO brings to you exclusive pictures from one of the most coveted ID Design Competition for 2009: The BraunPrize. This year’s EUR 12,000 prize money has been claimed by Johanna Schoemaker for the brilliant Clam I OLED Lamp, and she even gets the opportunity to intern for six-months at The Braun design department. Other Top 3 from the 22 finalists include Karsten Willmann for Skylino, Stephan Zimmermann for Anemone and Tobias Stuntebeck for White Cane.

You probably recollect seeing the Kahuna, Eintopf, KAPUTT.R, Tri-Surviving and Rescue Stick on DW, so check the awesome prototype that Braun did for the designers. It’s always a joy to see your fruits of labor take shape, so savor your victory you awesome designers! All 22 of you!

Did you watch the Seattle Kingdome demolition in 2000? That stadium was brought down by implosion techniques; however it’s not necessary to resort to kabooms every time you want to bring down walls or buildings. To knock them off safely something like the Kaputt.R Demolition Robot should suffice.

UPDATE: Check out the video of the robot in action
Features:

· Kaputt.R has a folded two-armed architecture that allows a wide range of motion.
A counter-weight effectively balances the extended arms.

· It is propelled by 4 electric caterpillar tracks, allowing a wide and stable stance without exceeding the maximum load-bearing capacity of the floor.

· A selection of tools can be attached, such as a buzz-saw, plow, or high precision tools like the power gun.

· The Powergun was inspired by conventional explosive demolition.

· To curb pollution and additional waste (wiring, casings, etc.) the Powergun uses propane gas as its shockwave source.

· It directs pressure waves of propane gas explosions in a linear direction, effectively weakening walls by shooting holes through them. The wall can then easily be knocked down.

Designer: Tony Weichselbraun, Erol Kursani, Bernhard Ranner & Florian Wille

Humor aside, it’s quite tough to aim a heavy Lifesaver tube, accurately to a drowning person. It would be much easier to throw him the Rescue Stick, which is a baton shaped contraption. Contraption it is, coz it’s strings undergo a chemical reaction when they hit the water; they dissolve to release a horse-shoe shaped float. So basically the baton reacts to the water and becomes a life-saving device. As a back-up plan, in case the reaction fails, the tube can be inflated manually.
Details:

The reason why Rescue Stick can provide rapid and accurate assistance in the emergency situation can be divided into two facts; the high effectiveness of the type of form factor and chemical reaction. It has a dimension of 270×65×70(mm) and weight of 0.9(lb). Chemical reaction-wise, Rescue Stick can be inflated by the dissolvable strings. The rate of inflation is fast, reaching about 10L in 3~4 seconds. There are other materials like sodium azide, that can achieve faster inflation rate of 0.05 seconds, but the cost of external casing that can reach up to $200, which is a trade off which is almost unacceptable. In contrast, an alternative that involves other chemical compound and water costs a mere $5, but takes 20 seconds to inflate, which makes this option also unacceptable. The material we use, compressed CO2 gas in aluminum can, can pull the cost down to $15 and takes only 3~4 seconds to inflate. This is why we think that our option is an optimal choice. The materials used can all be recycled and no waste is left in the water after use. Just by refilling the relatively low cost compressed CO2 gas can and dissolvable string and refolding the tube after deflation, Rescue Stick can be recycled without much hassle.

Designers: Sungjoon Kim, Jangwoon Kim, Sook-kyung Lee & Keunhwan Pack

During the earthquake(s) this year in china, more than a few students and other civilians were seriously injured or killed by the tables they were hiding under. Haishan Deng has a definite swipe of a solution for instances such as these. Using the physics of the “Triangle of Life” Deng presents: the “Life Desk.”

The Life Desk is open for learning during regular times, and closed for danger during times of trouble. The main structure is high strength steel and nylon board, while the side structure is molten steel molded round to disperse stress.

Deng has already interviewed with the Bureau of Education in China and they will be producing a limited amount of these desks to try them out in schools. The cost of one desk is 80 Euro – anyone know how much a regular, non-earthquake table costs?

And, of course, how much is one life worth?

Designer: Haishan Deng

EINTOPF is a growing pot. It starts off as a shallow sauce pan but extension rings and a flexible outer shell can increase the pot’s volume by almost 3x. The rationale is simple. Sometimes you start with a smaller pot just to sear. You want heat convection to be fast so there’s no need to start with a larger pot. However, stage 2 of the recipe calls for other ingredients. This is where EINTOPE shines because you just add an extension ring and continue cooking all in one pot.
Designer: Barbara Ott