New Visions

Rather than rush back into hard, post-holiday reality, I'd like to start the new year at KBCULTURE by looking at some conceptual products and installations for the kitchen and bath. After all, creativity must precede commerce, right?

From Michael Harboun comes this video of a kitchen—I guess it's OK to use that term—which utilizes the technology of claytronics. A nutshell definition of this, as gleaned from the collaborative research project of Carnegie Mellon University and Intel, is the transformation of 2-D planes into operational, 3-D mechanical structures; the scientists refer to the substance as 'programmable matter'. With the recent findings on the Higgs boson furthering our understanding of the molecular-material frontier, who's to say that M. Harboun's vision [which just won a Red Dot award] won't someday be realized?