Material: SMASH™, – highly thermoplastic nonwoven fabric
Provided by Asahi Kasei Fibers Corporation
Material description
SMASH™, a special polyester filament nonwoven fabric, has the advantage of its thermo-plasticity and its shape can be easily changed when heated. It is a nonwoven highly functional fabric, which can be moulded using a hot press process. The material does not tear easily and has superior permeability as well as excellent print quality thanks to its smooth surface.
BLOWN-FABRIC by nendo for TOKYOFIBER09
Point of design (words by nendo)
Ordinary lanterns are made by winding this strips of bamboo onto a wooden frame, linking them with thread to provide vertical reinforcement and then gluing Japanese washi paper onto the outside. With SMASH®, however, we attempted to form the shape by a glassblowing-style process, heating up the material and then blowing air into it to inflate it. This enabled us to produce a seamless one piece lantern. The blowing process cannot be fully controlled, so differences in air pressure produce distortions in the product, which results in each lantern looking slightly different. Another feature of the blowing process is that the shape is formed little by little, making it possible to create a large variety of different shapes, almost like viruses or bacteria. This sort of diversity is almost impossible to achieve with moulds and dies. The structure of the lantern is very simple, and involves only attaching a light source to the neck. However, since the material is likely to deform if the internal temperature reaches 80C, we used low-heat LED lamps, with machined aluminium sockets that also acted as heat sinks and radiators.
BLOWN-FABRIC by nendo for TOKYOFIBER09
BLOWN-FABRIC by nendo for TOKYOFIBER09
BLOWN-FABRIC by nendo for TOKYOFIBER09
BLOWN-FABRIC by nendo for TOKYOFIBER09
BLOWN-FABRIC by nendo for TOKYOFIBER09
BLOWN-FABRIC by nendo for TOKYOFIBER09
No comments:
Post a Comment