A photo of a partially buried keyboard in a computer dump in Ghana. It is taken from a slideshow on the New York Times website.
“In Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, the capital of Ghana, adults and children tear away at computers from abroad to get at the precious metals inside. Copper is perhaps the most desirable, then brass, then aluminum, then zinc. At the dump, the machines are dismantled and often burned to extract metals for resale. The equipment in this digital cemetery come mainly from Europe and the United States, sometimes as secondhand donations meant to reduce the “digital divide” — the disparity in computer access between poor nations and rich.
This animated image shows a structure called a hyperboloid of one sheet. It is a curved form made up of only straight lines and is one of several strucutre discussed in this blog post by “Miss Cellania” (via boingboing).
Mafoombey is a cardboard space for listening to music designed by Martti Kalliala & Esa Ruskeepää.
“The structure consists of 720 hand-cut pieces of cardboard sliced horizontally, then stacked on top of each other with no adhesive. It was designed using 3D modelling and scale models with the help of architect friend Martin Lukasczyk. The space includes a sitting area for two to three people and a DVD player to play music. Energy-saving lights and surround-sound speakers are built into the 360-layered structure, with one central wire leading out to plug in for electricity.
The cardboard was donated to the students from Finnish paper manufacturer Stora Enso, in whose factory the students cut the pieces with a controlled knife cutter one-by-one. The design won the competition and was built, becoming the first built project for the 26-year old architects.”
There is an Irish company called Mcor Technologies who have developed a machine for 3d printing using layers of ordinary paper and PVA glue. The Models shown here were created entirely by the machine. Below is a video from the late late show.
