A material and manufacturing based project
The Use of Kirigami/Origami and flexible stone. An Explorative study.
Origami?
This project is based on the concept of Kirigami/Origami and how this old form of paper folding can actually be implemented into design. Later within this document existing products will be shown, products that are advertised as 'origami bags' but are not actually showing the real traits of folding techniques etc. There seems to be a lot of bags on the market that essentially display traces of origami through geometric lines and creases to almost give them the impression that it is using origami techniques.
What is Kirigami?
Kirigami is a variation of origami that includes cutting of the paper, rather than solely folding the paper as is the case with origami, but typically does not use glue.
Why Stone?
Origami stems from paper folding techniques, and outcomes are mainly made almost entirely out of one material. This is why I made a decision to produce a bag that is made from one material which will start as a sheet and can then be folded to inevitably be turned into an entirely origami bag.
The second part of the innovation for this project is the exploration of how a bag can be more sustainable by looking into how i can produce an ethical bag with bi-products. The material I explored is stone. A lot of stone is wasted and rendered useless due to the mining industry as well as just general construction so to be able to utilise that and implement a new material into the process would be better and more beneficial for the environment, it will also make the product entirely unique.
The Outcome and User
To apply the principle of kirigami to create a stronger product attachment between the product and the user.
It stems from the idea that you can become more attached to your own things through the concept of 'Ritual'. Having a bag that tells a story through its material and also how the user will use the bag, aka folding and bending its shape to create the form of a bag to suit their needs.
An initial idea and example for this was looking at high street retailers such as build a bear workshop. The act of entering a store and building your own bear from scratch will gain a larger product attachment than a pre made product. To be able to go within a store and create your own bag seemed like a pleasing idea.
Refined Brief
- To design and create an entirely new design for a bag.
- implement origami techniques into the process of building the bag once bought.
- Design the bag to be made from a new ethical material. (Exploration of flexible stone).
- Research the process of making new materials.
- Discover how to produce a flexible stone material.
The mining industry have many types of byproducts/wasted material that do have some degree of repurposeful value. But many of the wasted materials are rendered useless and are a bit of a burden to companies that produce them as a result of this, the by-products created are sold to people that want them for an extremely cheap price.
Many quarries in the UK have large stockpiles of fines (waste) they cannot sell. Also, large demand for high-specification fine aggregate, and aggregate with specific shape characteristics, has resulted in an increase in fines production.
But waste rock doesn't only come from quarries. General demolition and building waste is a big factor when it comes to waste rock being a by-product.
This is constructional concrete waste which comes from demolition, essentially concrete hardcore. This material is free and there is a massive abundance of it at the university for use but there are so many buildings that get demolished every year and not all of it gets repurposed.
The first stage of the material processing was using the Los Angeles machine which is used to break down and pulverise hard materials. The machine is effectively a giant industrial washing machine. The way it works is the material is placed inside the drum alongside a handful of heavy high carbon balls which smash into the material breaking it down.
As a demonstration and introduction to the Los Angeles i was initially given the task to break down a cured wasted red brick with a steel plate and a metal mallet. This is essentially to avoid keeping the Los Angeles machine on too long as it is very loud. The machine uses force by rotation and gravity to break down the material within which can be very loud.
Once the Los Angeles had run its course for 600 revolutions the end result is a big pile of rubble at the bottom of the drum that ranges from large pieces to very very fine material. A sieve stack can consist of anywhere between 1 and 18 sieves. The number and mesh sizes of the sieves in a sieve stack are dictated by industry/application standards or the stated production standards of specific products.
The purpose of sieve shaker is clear: to expose the sample to all the openings in a sieve in a manner that will expedite the passing of particles smaller then the openings. However, as in most of the instrument world where I work, the selection of the appropriate sieve shaker depends on the size and characteristics of the sample to be separated.
I wanted to see what there was on the market in terms of already fairly flexible materials. There is a company called Smooth-on that create high end resin and rubbers, these products are predominantly made for mould making . A lot of the resins samples that were shown to me by smooth-on had very flexible properties, they were stretchy which is not an attribute i want for my bag. There were a selection of samples that did in fact seem like a good sub material for the bag by being fairly flexible, not stretchy and have a reasonable amount of bounce back. This sample was called ECON-60.
Sustainable Biodegradable Additive
For certain types of urethene's it can take upwards of 4 years to degrade. This is when i discovered Biosphere. Biosphere Plastic has designed a unique environmental solution. Their unique plastic additive when placed into the base polymer such as PP, PE, PS, PET and other major resin types enhances the biodegradability of these polymers. BioSphere continues to R&D their technology making it enhance the biodegradation of plastic faster, more affordable and in different forms.
I had spoken via email to Rob Huegli to know a little bit more about the additive and to ask wether it would work with urethene rubbers. The answer was yes. Simply by putting 1% of the additive to the resin mixture it will dramatically enhance and speed up the biodegrading process without changing the physical properties of the resin itself.
They originally started making their 201 additive in pellet form which was great for plastic but i was advised to use liquid form 301 which is a water based liquid additive that does the same thing.
With 20g of resin that gave me enough room to add 10g, 20g, and 25 grams of aggregate within each mould without it over flowing. This amounted to 30% Aggregate (LESS) then resin 50% Aggregate (EQUAL) to resin 60% Aggregate (MORE) than resin.
I had collected a lot of different materials to be testing with some of them being the same material just different grades and sizes. The materials i had chosen to look into and go forth with using were the ones i thought would be most unique but also give off the impression that it is made from stone and a mixture of resin. I wanted to choose a material which allowed the user to actually be able to distinguish what materials their bag is made from just by looking at it.
For this experiement what i had done was use a baking tray and cast a larger version of what i had been doing previously, this was mainly to see how the resin would act as a flexible stone in a larger sheet but also a chance for me to amend the aggregate settling at the bottom of the tray. For this experiment i had used 1-2mm Crushed Constructional concrete waste, and being larger i decided to use the less than half aggregate to resin mixture to be sure that its as flexible as it could have been.
The first step to avoiding the sediment settling at the bottom of the tray initially was to create a barrier at the bottom by using resin I started with using 80g resin both PART A and B and let it cure for half an hour which is just over the handling time of the ECON 60, i then made a mixture of 160g Resin and 80g crushed concrete to then pour over the top levelling out to be roughly 3-4mm thick and this process worked just fine.
This was the first bit of development i had done for the kirigami aspect of the backpack, being able to fold the backpack in a certain way to allow the user to create their own bag by folding. This idea had came about from quite simply folding the foam sheet in a certain way by eye being symmetrical to create a bowl shape. This could be an interesting approach .
The idea of pieces overlapping and tucking in through slots on the surface of the material is an idea i decided to run with because its effectively very easy and effective but also quite unique and something that hasn't really been seen before in terms of bags that are currently on the market right now. Aside from things such as buckles the main material being a flexible stone .
When it came to the different approach for manufacturing the product could have been cast from a positive which could be CNC’d out but the real process is of the actual mould making process, casting a positive from a negative. I had mocked up an outline into the rough terrain of the mold to avoid using too much resin.
The next step in the manufacturing of the mold was poring it into the mold itsself. The advice that is given to mold making is that you want to pour enough material to cover the subject entirely by at least an inch over it. I could not do this as it would mean using too much material for something that is only 3mm thick it was aldo down to budgeting and costs as the Moldstar was expensive but reusable and strong.
Demolding was very simple the release agent worked very well making it really easy to peel away from the mold. And the first coat of resin did help with not allowing stones to come to the surface. The main concerns were the fact that it had puffed could have been due to sands and the fine powders airating the mixture and entrapping the air bubbles which had made the material very weak in some areas.
Credits:
Created with images by Judith Browne - "untitled image" • Hal Gatewood - "Demolished bricks." • Luis Quintero - "untitled image" • Bruna Fiscuk - "untitled image" • Dominik Vanyi - "photographed while on an assignment for Indonesia’s largest coal mining company" • Ivan Bandura - "Lime quarry" • Utsman Media - "Climb Up" • Vincent goulet - "untitled image" • Markus Spiske - "House demolition wrecking ball"