Design Line: 22 – 28 July
There’s a distinct shininess to this week’s Design Line, as Mathieu Lahanneur unveils a rippling silver torch for the Paris 2024 Olympics, Worldcoin offers free cryptocurrency to those who let its silver orb scan their eyes, and GalaxySpace sends a satellite with ultra-thin solar wings into low orbit.
Mathieu Lehanneur (right) has made a rippling baton for the next Olympic and Paralympic Games (image: Paris 2024/International Olympic Committee).
Passing the torch
“Designing the Olympic torch is a designer's dream,” notes Mathieu Lehanneur, and it's easy to see what he means. The torch has to meet obvious functional requirements, as well as being lightweight and comfortable for those carrying it; conversely, it needs to be visually impactful and capture a sense of the romance of the games. The task has been handled with aplomb before now (Barber and Osgerby’s perforated 2012 torch remains, for Disegno’s money, the high water mark), and it has now fallen to Lehanneur, whose design for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games was revealed this week. The result is unmistakably Lehanneur, whose predilection for transforming solid materials into rippling, seemingly liquid forms is present in the torch’s recycled steel casing. It’s a beautiful effect, and there is something pleasingly cocoon-like about Lehanneur’s design as a whole – Disegno, for one, would like to get hold of it and see how the design sits in the hand. Kudos, also, for the decision to make the Olympic and Paralympic torch designs identical bar for the logos of each of the games. Although, in principle, there is nothing wrong with the two games receiving separate designs, the tendency in the past has been for the Paralympic Games to simply receive a variant design (typically a shift in colour or finish) that is perceived as being derivative of or secondary to that produced for the Olympics. In Lehanneur’s design, however, the two are presented as equal claimants to the torch. It’s an approach we would like to see repeated in future.
The Lingxi-03 has super-thin solar wings to power it through low orbit (image: SCMP).
Overcrowded in low orbit
This week, a private company in China successfully launched a test satellite featuring a folding solar wing into space. The Lingxi-03 has been developed by GalaxySpace, a startup based in Beijing, and features a flexible solar panel array that is just 1mm thick when deployed. The Chinese government is thought to be racing to catch up with America’s private satellite industry, which has seen the Earth’s low orbit filled with a constellation of 4,000 of Space X’s mass produced Starlink internet satellites. Space X, which was founded by Elon Musk, plans to eventually have 12,000 of these private satellites in space. China reportedly wants to counter with almost 13,000 of its own, and GalaxySpace has designed the Lingxi-03 for mass production. Launched on a Long March 2D rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre on Sunday morning, the Lingxi-03 is the first test of these ultra-thin solar arrays outside of those on the Tiangong space station. While design for anything new that is going into space is always cool, it’s beginning to get terribly crowded in low orbit. Aside from each country’s warring array of satellites, there's space debris from spent rocket stages, old defunct satellites, and debris from previous disasters. Many space experts fear the build-up of debris poses a risk of destructive impacts that could cascade as accidental targets fragment into more debris. The fantastically named Union of Concerned Scientists puts the total number of satellites currently in orbit at 6,718 – will it really be safe to triple that number in the satellite space race?
Trading your eyeballs for coins, a very normal idea (image: Worldcoin).
Gaze into my silver balls
Would you let an AI-orb scan your eyeballs in exchange for free cryptocurrency? On July 24, thousands of people did just that, marking the global rollout of Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency that has been in the making for three years. Launched by tech powerhouse Sam Altman – best known for founding OpenAI and ChatGTP – the cryptocurrency functions by letting a sleek silver orb with in-built cameras scan your irises for about ten seconds. It then converts the image into an (apparently) impenetrable string of numbers that is called an “IrisCode”, and, in return, sends some Worldcoins to the app on your phone. The purpose of all this palaver? To verify you as human - i.e. not a machine. As governments, AI experts and individuals frantically assess just how powerful or dangerous AI and robots could be for humanity, it seems somewhat ironic that the solution being touted by the techpreneurs, is more tech and more AI. The launch has raised concerns around potential breaches of privacy and dystopian levels of control over personal data by private companies (although the company insists it is completely secure and doesn’t store data). Critics have also raised questions about the ethically dubious commission model of how the orb scanners are being rolled out. So far, about 1,500 orbs have been manufactured and over 2 million people, predominantly in Europe, India and Southern Africa, have scanned their irises in exchange for a small amount of cryptocurrency. The sites where the orbs are situated function on a commission basis, and are therefore incentivised to encourage people to scan their eyes. Other critics have pointed out that the promise of free currency could prey on poorer and more vulnerable communities. The good news? Although the future use of Worldcoin and its orbs are fairly ambiguous, one possible use, its founders say, “is to enable global democratic processes, and eventually show a potential path the AI funded Universal Basic Income.” Big promises for a small orb. Disegno remains sceptical until proven wrong.
Is there a company that Musk can’t crowbar an X into (image: Twitter aka X)?
Flipping the bird
Twitter is soon to be no more, with Elon Musk’s microblogging platform having begun its inexorable self-destruct programme of rebranding itself as 𝕏 – a name and accompanying unicode logo whose sheer prattish juvenilia is matched only by its thudding blandness (although Disegno is, admittedly, not opposed to a unicode logo – just not that one). The move is part of Musk’s desire to transform Twitter into an “everything” app, in the fashion of WeChat in China, with the company’s managing director Linda Yaccarino announcing that “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities”. Everything apps (which bundle together messaging, payment, social media and other services within a single system) have thrived in Asia, where WeChat is joined by South Korea’s KakaoTalk and Japan’s Line, but attempts to replicate the model elsewhere have enjoyed little success. Whether this is an inexorable issue prompted by cultural differences is debatable, but there is little reason to believe that Musk will be the one to reverse the trend. The man seems to struggle running Twitter as microblogging site – why on Earth would he be better placed to run it as a far more complicated platform?
Radical tailor Edward Sexton has died aged 80 (image: He Spoke Style via Wikimedia Commons).
Edward Sexton (1942 – 2023)
Edward Sexton, the Savile Row tailor nicknamed “the wizard with the scissors”, has died this week aged 80. Along with fellow rebellious tailor Tommy Nutter, with whom he co-founded Nutters of Savile Row in London, Sexton snipped up the rulebook for tailoring in the late 60s and 70s. Fans of his suits included the Beatles’ Paul McCartney and John Lennon, who wore a white Sexton suit for the 1969 Abbey Road album cover. Sexton also dressed Bianca and Mick Jagger in their tailored wedding outfits in 1971. His rock ’n’ roll style – all cinched waists, oversized lapels and non-traditional colours – is still beloved by the current generation of boys in bands, such as Harry Styles. Radically for the time, Sexton also tailored for women, including Cilla Black and Twiggy. Despite eventually moving in celebrity circles, Sexton came from a working-class family in the East End of London. He helped out in his uncle’s tailoring shop in his early teens, followed by a series of apprenticeship’s on Savile Row to hone his skills. The Nutters of Savile Row shop bucked the trend on the traditional tailoring street, with window displays full of rubbish bins and penis-shaped candles, and a door chime made of empty champagne bottles. Sexton eventually bought out Nutter and made a solo career, although he moved out of Savile Row for decades – only to return to a new set of premises last year. “There is no deeper creativity or beauty in this whole fashion industry more layered in craftsmanship or legacy than Saville Row,” designer Harris Reed told GQ upon hearing of Sexton’s death. “Today Savile Row lost the king.”
3D-printed homes bring new meaning to cookie-cutter housing developments (image: ICON via Dezeen).
Printed floorplans
There’s been a lot of hoo-hah about BIG and ICON’s ambitious plans to build Wolf Ranch, a development of 100 3D-printed homes in Texas, since it was announced in November 2021. This week, the architecture practice and tech company duo announced the first of their 3D-printed houses is finally complete. Now the structure can serve as a show-home for potential buyers looking to move to an intentional community with fellow fans of houses built by robots. ICON uses its own material Lavacrete, which is pumped through Vulcan, the large-scale construction printer that moves along the floorplan on rails as it prints. The finished house is actually kind of groovy, with its striated grey walls painted white on the inside to make a feature of the ridges left behind by its manufacturing process. It looks a bit like The Flintstones house by way of The Jetsons. Elements of the interior design such as the kitchen island have also been 3D printed, to double down on the theme. It’s been nine months since the project broke ground in November 2022, although the developers are promising that this is the future of fast and efficient house building. Wolf Ranch is located near Austin, which has seen an influx of tech workers who BIG and ICON are clearly hoping will be tempted by the novelty factor of living in a tech-enabled house. Could these 3D-printed homes solve Texas’s affordable housing crisis, as frothy headlines love to claim? Unlikely, as its those same tech workers who have been pricing out locals, and prices for those Wolf Ranch homes currently available are around the $500,000 mark – well above the state’s median house price. It’s proof of the technology’s viability, but construction workers probably don’t have to worry about the Vulcan robot coming for their jobs just yet.