China in the B class
Sally Dominguez

Five years ago I cowered in terror as my driver speared down the wrong side of a Chinese motorway and slalomed through oncoming traffic. I swore then that I would never – NEVER – drive in China again. But here I am, this time armed with my own Chinese drivers license, lured by the opportunity to pit Mercedes safety and technology against the twelve million Chinese drivers who average less than 5 years experience behind a wheel. The deal breaker: my chariot is the Mercedes B-Class F-cell hydrogen electric car, and I am keen to know whether this technology could be the answer for the intensely polluted cities of the world.

I first drove the B-Class F-Cell around the basement of the 2011 Detroit Auto Show. What struck me then was the normality of the vehicle, compared to the beetle shapes of Leaf, Clarity et al and the look-at-me interior energy displays of the Prius.  Although the F-Cell is a hydrogen-fueled car replete with a host of patented innovations, only a snappy paint job differentiates the exterior from a standard B Class. Lack of engine noise aside, the only way you would know this car was different would be to bury your nose in the exhaust pipe and suck up the warm, pure water vapour. Similarly, there is not much to differentiate the drivability of the car from its petrol-fueled sibling. That is a very deliberate move by Mercedes Benz to placate the public and ensure that the transition from petrol to electric technologies is as painless as possible for the traditional Benz customer. The exterior and interior design of the F-cell may not have particular Spark Design appeal, but what’s hidden inside the guts of this car is some impressive and innovative technology. Have we ever awarded a design for a fuel tank? (Editor’s note: You’re the judge!)

The F-cell houses its drive train in the sandwich floor of B-Class so, unlike some electric vehicles, there is no compromise in interior volume. Dynamics are marginally improved by a lower centre of gravity, as four kilograms of liquid hydrogen fuel is stored under the rear seats, in three heavy pods of carbon fibre-wrapped rubber that are literally bulletproof. Having shrugged off misguided jokes about hydrogen bombs before I left I was secretly relieved to hear that the rigorous Benz testing involved successfully dropping the tanks off buildings and shooting them. Forward is the fuel cell stack where hydrogen reacts with air to produce electrical power, and behind the fuel tanks is a lithium-ion battery drawing power from the fuel cell, supplemented by regenerative braking. An electric motor housed under the bonnet runs off the fuel cell stack and the battery, supplying the F-cell with a range of more than 400 kilometres – double the range of the all-electric 2-seater Tesla Roadster or the 5-seater Nissan Leaf.

Turn the key – no Start buttons here – and that strange silence we are learning to get used to with electric vehicles means the F-cell is ready to roll. The whole hydrogen/electric ensemble adds around 700kg to the overall weight of the car but there is no lag in the 290Nm torque generated and you don’t feel the extra load.

Ducking and weaving through kamikaze Beijing traffic, the F-cell is in its element and the neat consumption bar graph, which measures the amount of hydrogen in kg/100km consumed in the last 15 minutes, makes it easy to establish the hydrogen-friendly way to drive and sets up a consumption competition between me and my German co-driver Marcus. I quickly establish that easing off the throttle is better than braking per se and that the energy use is a simple equation: the faster you drive the more hydrogen you consume – there is no “sweet spot” to play with. With air-conditioning on full-blast to filter that heinous Beijing air the car proves as nimble as its B 180 CDI equivalent.

On the open road we are flying along at 120km with a hydrogen consumption rate of 1.13kg/100km, except when we need to swerve into the emergency lane to avoid meandering lorries and the occasional 3-wheeler driving against the stream. Comfort again is classic B Class – on a 3-day road trip I would prefer more support as a driver and more plush as a passenger. There’s nothing to offend except the lack of auxiliary audio input. As we howl along to some local radio and curse the Benzgineer who skimped, I wonder about the efficiency of the cruise control and curiously find it less efficient – the bars climb to 1.15, then 1.18 before I am acutely aware that my range is dropping fast. With no plans to visit for any length of time at a Chinese rest stop, I ditch cruise control as Marcus (who has driven more than 65 days so far in the F-Cell and knows it inside out) explains how the range readout recalibrates to a worse case scenario. He ran 360km in Arizona with the low fuel light on and the car didn’t stop.

The best indication of range is the total weight left in the tanks cross-referenced with the bar readout. Interestingly the range also depends on the temperature at fueling, with warmer climates causing the hydrogen to expand during filling, losing the car around 140 grams of hydrogen. Filling, which takes place at the dreaded rest stop, comprises a local semi laden with hydrogen cylinders and the Mercedes trailer van combo containing pump and compressor. An entourage of engineers, technicians and a Benz camera crew oversee the pump connections and check the seals – hydrogen is such a small light molecule that it will float away through the tiniest gap.

Our refuel takes twenty minutes because we are using 80-degree liquid hydrogen pressurized at 700 bars. If the gas could be cooled to -16 degrees Celsius, as it would be at a permanent refueling station, refueling would take 3 minutes and the cylinders would be entirely filled. Marcus tells me that the team refueled twice at permanent hydrogen stations in California and demonstrated the admirable 3-minute refill. That’s more than 3 hours faster than the Tesla recharge and more than 6 ½ hours faster than the Nissan Leaf.
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The success of the F-cell technology hinges on an adequate infrastructure and decent production numbers. Right now the cost of hand-producing the composite fuel cylinders is huge but Mercedes is ready to roll if governments come to the party. Consumer success also hinges on an uncompromised, user-friendly vehicle and the F-cell nails that criteria. Whether its hurling to a stop when the highway suddenly drops down a 20cm ledge or accelerating out of a potential truck sandwich with seconds to spare, driving in China demonstrated a rugged and straightforward car that that excels at city driving and thankfully spits nothing but water wherever it goes. With a range worthy of an Australian suburban car I was disappointed that the Australian government did not show more interest in the F-Cell when it made its Aussie debut. Lets hope Chinese authorities have more foresight and see the European hydrogen highway as the perfect model to utilise their significant wind power projects and produce clean fuel for the polluted cities of Shanxi Province.

Best!
–Sally

PLASTIKI PET Project

The Plastiki PET-hulled boat might be old news now but the innovations that made the journey are more relevant than ever as PET continues to be exploited for its upcycling potential.

It took almost five months for the catamaran with the PET-bottle hulls to make its way from San Francisco to Sydney – that’s almost two months slower than planned. Most boats are built for speed and stability but Plastiki, like its namesake the Kon Tiki, was a proof of concept vessel described by David de Rothschild as a “symbol of solutions” and designed to grab headlines while testing various PET-based materials and alternative energy concepts.

The striking 12,500 bottle-strong design honed by Australian naval architect Andy Dovell is likened by de Rothschild to a pomegranate, the dry ice-filled bottle “seeds” providing 62% of the ballast grouped together to form the hulls but also separate enough that one or two failures would not mean disintegration.

Although hydro dynamically inefficient the unskinned bottles visually conveyed the PET-content of the vessel to audiences around the world. Less visually captivating but far more transformational is the material invented in Europe and trialed on the Plastiki voyage, a PET-based material named srPET. Self-reinforcing plastics gain advanced strength and stiffness from their highly oriented polymer fibres with typically five times the stiffness and strength values of unreinforced plastic.  srPET is used as a structural skin on all the non-bottle surfaces of the boat including the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic cabin. srPET is expected to compare in strength and usefulness to fiberglass, but with none of the health issues associated with glass fibres, and all the recycling benefits of being a homogenous plastic material. This thin skin of srPET along with the srPET board material used in the hull structure currently require virgin polyethylene terephthalate but the srPET textile used for the sail utilizes recycled PET and is bonded with a specially developed organic glue made from sugar cane and cashew nuts and currently being commercialized by Adventure Ecology.

A postmortem on the voyage of the Plastiki revealed a crew reluctant to set sail on a bottle raft again any time soon but enthusiastic at the success of the srPET iterations trialed over the months at sea. Composites Evolution, the UK company behind the Aptiform PET-based products, suggest that the light weight, low cost and recyclability of srPET is particularly applicable to large, low volume parts, making it an ideal material for sustainable transportation applications. (Sally’s Plastiki story was first published in Curve Magazine.)

We calculated that the HOG represents 400x 16oz water bottles for emergency use – which means over the next 10 years Edna Maguire does NOT have to replace and dispose of the 8,000 single use plastic bottles they would otherwise be using. 

This is a really exciting use of HOG and one that we will be promoting throughout the Bay Area now that California has been told to expect a Mother of all Storms in addition to the Mother of all Quakes.  Turns out the other comparable emergency water sources are either pallets of single-use water bottles that need replacing every 6 months or – wait for it – barrels that ROLL!

GREEN AUTO PAPER PLAY

By Sally Dominguez

Cardboard as a construction basic is serious paper play for adults. From Frank Gehry’s Wiggle Chair to the Finnish designed acoustic cardboard listening space Mafoombey, cardboard is an oft-ignored heavyweight contender for green building.

What about a finer-gauge of paper, though?  Brazilian Claudio Dias brings a technical eye for minute detail to the art of paper models to create serious paper play for kids and adults. Worried that China-made toys are invested with lead? With a bit of imagination, and some help from Claudio, you can follow his FREE fold ‘em and keep ‘em models to create intricate origami toys such as the Delorean in Back to the Future and the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. No nasty side effects included.

Stuck on the freeway in pouring rain?  With a little forethought and some glue you could be whipping up the Interceptor on your dashboard.  Feeling finicky?  Try the crazy detail on the Ghostbusters Ecto 1.

Best of all – these cool designs are free!!  With detailed instructions you just print, cut, and fold like a loon.

I felt the need to connect – as they say in the USA – with this master autorigamist:

Claudio, the detail on your models is incredible.  Do you have a basic outline you tweak for each paper car design, or is every new model painstakingly conceived from scratch?

When I want to design a new model, I search the internet to find any reference material that could be used. Ortho views, schematics, pictures, and even 3D mesh. If you have something ‘technical’ like views or 3D, it makes easier to design the model. If not, you must be creative to say the least.

1966 Batmobile, Mad Max Interceptor, Delorean were the only ones I found technical information. All the others cars were from scratch.

What paper should your designs be printed on for the ideal result?  Is there a particular weight and texture you design for?

The weight depends on the level of details. As a general rule, I recommend 90-120gsm paper for small parts (folks that means all your used office paper can be turned into star vehicles so save it and print Claudio’s patterns on the back) and 15-180gsm for bigger ones.

The final look of the car determines the texture. I use glossy paper for shiny cars. The Tumbler, for example requires matte paper.

What is your favourite paper model to date?

Well, it’s not a car… It’s a robot that transforms into a car : Bumblebee. Speaking of cars, the 1966 Batmobile. It’s my first model and it reminds me my childhood.

Has there been a car that you have tried but not been able to model in paper?

No. I’ve finished all models I’ve started. Perhaps, I keep distance from the impossible ones… A friend of mine once asked me to join him in a project – The Nemo’s car from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  It’s a simple car, however those silver ornate details made me say NO to him. I know how to design them, but they’ll be very hard to assemble.

Which is saying a lot because the models we can download are pretty complex.  For instance, there are 72 steps for the 1966 Batmobile.

And for the selfless, and health-conscious tot-toting readers, Claudio’s site www.paperinside.com also has models of PowderPuff Girls and Bruce the Shark which you can whip up for the young ‘uns, safe in the knowledge that they are relatively chew friendly.

MORE SERIOUS PAPER PLAY

by Sally Dominguez

Paper bags and cardboard boxes, butchers’ paper and newsprint hats.  Paper plates, papier mache and the versatile matchbox, boxes for packing and moving and play– visionaries like Gehry and Shigeru Ban use it for structure but, whether the blame rests with neat stacking Lego and Lincoln Logs or span-worthy Meccano, most of us don’t consider cardboard as a construction basic.

With around 85% recycled content typically found in corrugated card, the material offers sustainable credentials that many other product and building materials cannot match.  Frank Gehry’s seminal 1969 Wiggle chair, featuring 60 layers of corrugated card “Edge Board” screwed into compression, is a plain sexy investigation of how to achieve strength and sculpture through the opposite layering of corrugations.  Shigeru Ban’s equally groundbreaking use of cardboard structure in halls, office buildings and houses epitomizes economy in use and lifecycle, marries the strength of the helically wound paper tube with simple, repeatable, affordable connection details.  As the architect says, “I don’t like waste”.

Wiggle Chair

Shigeru Ban’s temporary studio, Pompidou Center

Online a smattering of origami-based modules demonstrates all manner of flat packing structure, like Bloxes, flat packed card blocks that interlock for DIY internal walls and structures.  Swiss architect Nicola Enrico Staubli and his free, downloadable Foldschool designs. Eschewing the asymmetrical fold for the uniform concertina, the patented Liquid Cardboard creations of US-based Cardboard Designs are poetic and “freely transforming” vessels.

Bloxes

More pedestrian in form but super useful, compressed paper panel materials like Paperstone and EcoTop provide a paper-based replacement for pulp boards like MDF, utilizing the density and strength of papers en mass.

The ultimate in DIY cardboard emersion and superior acoustics has to be Mafoombey, a corrugated space both poetic and functional, designed for listening to music as part of the Finnish Habitare Fair 2005 by students Martti Kalliala and Esa Ruskeepää.  In awarding Mafoombey first prize Jasper Morrison commended the design for simply “turning the humble material of cardboard into something so wonderful”.

Mafoombey

AS SIMPLE AS A,B,C… OR NOT

June 12, 2009 by Sally Dominguez

Paid up unexpectedly for an article published yonks ago I decided to shout myself a design treat.  For years I have yearned for an Ray Eames walnut stool.

Originally designed for the lobby of NYC’s Time-Life Building where they were coupled with leather armchairs, A, B and C in solid walnut have always captured my imagination.  In an exhibition long ago I even tabled my own version in threaded, spun stainless steel sections as an all-weather, industrialized and slightly rustic interpretation.  When Athol, my crusty but loveable old metal spinner died from inhaling decades of metal dust, Australia lost an irreplaceable craftsperson and I lost the only person who could spin stainless back on itself in a close take on Ray Eames’ curvaceous walnut B.  Before then, and more so since, I have wanted an Eames stool.  I always thought I loved B.

I love that this stool works either way up.  I love that its gentle concave is a forgiving cup for any-sized bottom.  I love the abstract references to chess, dumbbells, cogs, knuckles and axles.  So with all that love in my soul I paced into the Mill Valley Design Within Reach to finally take my baby home.

I have never been a fan of the “apple-core-ness” of C so it was a tossup between A and B and when it came down to that – I was stuck.  I tried visually separating the two into a neutral setting.  I tried context, rearranging most of the DWR floor in growing desperation. With about 10 minutes before closing and no plans to exit sans stool I was in a decision-making quandary.   Was it B, my favorite til that point, with its central squashed ball and positive outward curve?  Or the tribal squat of A…….  The ghost of Ray echoed in my head  “You know what looks good can change, but what works works”.   Well, they ALL work Ray…..

Suddenly, what luck!  Random product designer to the rescue.  Male.  Apparently working on a new and tiny portable sound mixer.  Rode a rockstar vintage bike.  And made the observation that B is feminine, A is masculine, and he didn’t care much for C.  My concentration thus broken I looked again at the punchy angles of A… and the deal was done.

What do you think?

Sally Dominguez, Rainwater Hog LLC

Architect and product designer Sally aims her sharp Australian wit at the design scenes on both sides of the Pacific. Check Shapesters and ASIANLINE for Sally

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LETTERS FROM THE RING OF FIRE

Harrowing and heroic stories are reaching us from our Spark friends in Asia. We’ve posted several below. The first two are from Leimei Julia Chiu. Julia is the Executive Director of Japan’s Good Design Awards, and President-Elect of the ICOGRADA organization.

Julia—
I hope you and your loved ones are well.  Please—when it is convenient—send Spark an update on the Japanese design community and the latest efforts regarding the calamities.
—Peter

4/15/11
Hello Peter and the Spark Community—

At times like this, one can not help feel very different perspectives about how we can reposition design so that the profession can really be of service to the weak, the poor and those in need.

It will be a long-term commitment and we will need to learn how to combine and share our expertise.

We really need to bring people from different disciplines to start thinking about how we could work together- to help communities rebuild their lives at transitional shelters and afterward.

We will need everyone to help with this huge task.

At JIDPO, we have shifted all our projects towards how design can help with community-rebuilding in the northeastern areas.

Please see: “How can designers support relief efforts in Japan?”
http://www.jidpo.or.jp/en/news/2011/0401.html
http://www.jidpo.or.jp/en/news/2011/0401_2.html

I am contacting major design awards from around the world to collect good case studies/products/services/systems that could be of use to the reconstruction efforts.

INDEX (Copenhagen), Design Forum Finland (Helsinki) will be working with us for this project as part of the collaboration and AIGA (U.S.A.) has been helping with this effort. Both are promoting design/architecture in all disciplines.

Israel Community of Designers has created a facebook page which permits designers to express solidarity:
http://www.facebook.com/designers4japan

Another idea is as follows:
I will be working with Niigata Prefecture which has also experienced an earthquake several years back. The government has a project to integrate craft industries, manufacturers and designers to develop new products each year.
Here’s the website:
http://www.nico.or.jp/hyaku/english/

This year, I will be the design manager to direct this initiative and I am thinking of setting the theme as follows: How can we design products and systems for a better living environment, where people have been displaced, and are trying to reorient themselves to build a new life from scratch?

We need ideas. The companies in Niigata will realize these ideas into real products/systems after one year.

with warmest regards
—Julia

3/17/2011
Subject: deepest gratitude from julia/ tokyo, japan

Dear everyone–
Thank you so much for all the encouragement and offer to help the design communities in Japan.

I am deeply, deeply touched and will try to answer all your messages individually.

I will stay put in Tokyo for now and try to work out some plans for how design associations in Japan can help with the long term reconstruction efforts in the areas heavily hit by the earthquake/Tsunami.

We will probably need support from the international design community. I will keep you updated as we progress with the planning.

We are having rolling blackouts in Tokyo area to cope with the energy shortage so it might take me some time to respond.

with warmest thoughts and a big, big hug from Tokyo
–julia

And we have this reflective note from teacher, reporter, Reverend and friend Jaime, currently across the Sea of Japan in Northern China

3/16/11
Jaime R. Vergara
Special to the Saipan Tribune

Channel NewsAsia out of Singapore, along with CCTV 9 of Beijing, is following the unfolding crisis in Japan after the 9. Richter scale tremor, the strongest quake ever to shake the nation, and the subsequent tsunami that sent 10-meter-high waves 10 kilometers inland in Honshu, leaving the tarmac of the Sendai International Airport underwater, a local hospital still standing as the only refuge for some 300 persons in an area of collapsed structures, and 10,000 people from one village still remaining unaccounted for. The predictable aftershocks add damage and discomfort, but it is the threat of the nuclear meltdown of six reactors that is sending chills down everyone’s spine.

Not unlike humankind’s previous relationship to “flat earth,” which we now know to be spherical, and calling the experience of sundown as “sunset” when the earth actually turns, we never really consider land mass as floating tectonic plates on magma, but to appreciate how strong the earthquake in Japan was, the whole archipelago moved by a couple of meters and the axis of the planet itself shifted by a few centimeters!

Zen Japan is showing a remarkable face of solid calmness. News reports portray a nation intentionally going through the motions of a rehearsed drill in the midst of the surprising destruction that trails the wake of this disaster. The vaunted train system, one of the most sophisticated rails in the world that connects Kagoshima in south Kyushu to Wakkanai of north Hokkaido, shut down momentarily, along with its metro systems, at least in the urban centers of Honshu. Undaunted, people bought bicycles and pedaled home, while some just trudged and walked in the cold.

In 2002, we took a week-long retreat in late January before the cherry blossoms, taking the train from Narita to Sapporo in Hokkaido on the eastern corridor through Sendai, and returning on the western route through Akita and Niigata to West Tokyo. The cultivated and manicured countryside was a scene to behold, the tidiness of the trains and orderliness of its people a welcome respite from the hustle of crowd and mass humanity.

Although signs of juvenile vandalism-mainly graffiti-were evident in metro structures, the orderly Japan of our previous acquaintance, of nature both physical and societal disciplined into the level of art on terrain and population, was still very much and unmistakably alive! Majestic Mt. Fuji reigned as Hokusai’s rowers navigate the towering waves off Kanagawa in my sea of tranquility!

It is with deep appreciation that I recall that solitary week almost a decade ago, but as I watch today the deluge of painful unraveling that characterizes the Land of the Rising Sun, only the sound of silence is appropriate to express our profound sorrow of the innocent suffering unleashed.

A people’s tragedy, however, has awakened humanity’s empathy. Though its economy is one where its GNP far exceeds its GDP, showing barely any economic growth though ascending into international eminence, it has shown an economic arrangement where the concern for humanness matters. Japan projected a country with a human face.

Its virtues of simple elegance in cuisine and decor, lifestyle and landscape, custom and technology, its thrust toward moderation on all things in its post-WWII demeanor, has endeared it in many parts of the world; though it was saddled with the cruel memories of militarism, it also lived through the mushroom cloud brunt of Little Boy and Fat Man over the skies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The nation took this nuclear kamikaze and domesticated it for peaceful use. Now, the ice and the fire, the heat and the water, Mother Nature’s yin-yang elemental force comes calling on Nippon’s door again.

Presbyter and poet Ellie Stock wrote the following not too long ago:

What do I call what calls from the deeps,
that pulses through stars and quickens heart’s beat,
that surges through waves and cleanses with fire,
emerges from dust and breathes soul’s desire?
What do I name what mocks human pride,
that bends the tree of life, sustaining being’s tide?

It is with Zen calmness that we join Japan and the rest of the world in daring to give a name to that which emerges from the deeps, whether from the bowels of the earth, or from the deep abyss of the battered human soul.

The world joins that call of the deep as its K9s head for Tokyo to locate survivors. There is solidarity afoot in a world already grieved by the Gaddafis and the Tehrar Squares. But the ebb and flow of global reconciliation fills the air, and I, in my archaic season of Lent, smell the scent of transformation, in faith, hope and love. With T.S. Elliot and Zen calmness, I sing:

Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well…
———————————————————–

Then, wham, we were slammed with all the pre-Spark deadline publicity–well, you probably experienced a bit of it. The Spark Jury finally convened in late October, and we all had a swell time. The Jury was Monday. The Awards Celebration and exhibition of winners was the following Friday. In between, all of the staff came down with a vicious bout of food poisoning. So things were a little out of sorts! Anyway we made it happen, the Spark party was fun and 2010 was a wrap.

Well, almost. For our final act, Spark Director Clark Kellogg and I went on a whirlwind tour of Korea, Taipei and Guangzhou. The Guangdong Industrial Design Association graciously invited Spark to mount an exhibition of the 2010 winners. The occasion was the GD Industrial Design Week. So this was both an honor and a pleasure.

The GDDW Themes were Talent, Fusion, Industry and Cooperation. We were part of the Fusion Pavilion.

And the finished Pavilion glowed with your winning Sparks.

A pioneer of Chinese design, Prof. Tong Huimin, Director of the Guangzhou Academy of Art, came by to welcome us to GZ. Prof. Tong is a great friend of Spark and we always enjoy seeing him again.

Next stop, Seoul, Korea– at a hot spot in a cold town. DesignKorea 2010 Expo was a lovely show, honoring design from the G20 Summit nations. We were delighted to meet with Nara Suh and Song Hyo-sik from the KIDP, the producers of the event.

A very interesting final stop on this tour brought us to the Taiwan Design Expo in Taipei. This was a show with lots of great student work, some incredible fabric and fashion design and some nifty electronics. Taiwan Design Center’s Vivian Wu and team filled us in on next October’s International Design Alliance Congress, and Spark’s contribution–hoping for something fresh and… Sparkly, please! (This show will be a doozy of a networking event. Don’t miss it.)

So ended a momentous year–and we lived through it! Back home we gave thanks, shoveled snow and rested up for the next round. All Best!