Ultra Ever Dry Product

This superhydrophobic material repels almost any liquid. It has a superior coating adherence and abrasion resistance that allows is to be used in all kinds of applications.

Luminoso Light Emitting Wood Panels

Luminoso is a wood composite panel composed of high-grade fiber optics embedded between thin wood layers and then firmly glued together. The Luminoso light transmitting panels have been produced by Litwork GmbH since 2008. All of the common wood types can be utilized such as black cherry, oak, teak, Wenge, etc. The panel sizes are: 12” x 20”, 11” x 20” and 39” x 118”.

This is the company promotional footage:

Check this out as to how the panel looks with a galloping horse behind it.

Geckskin

We all know gecko's fingers stick to our walls. Since about 2000, scientists have cracked the secret of how geckos are able to perform extraordinary climbing antics. The researchers confirmed that tiny intermolecular forces - so called van der Waals forces - were produced by literally billions of tiny hair-like structures, or spatulae, on each gecko toe.

These forces, which arise when unbalanced electrical charges around molecules attract one another, allow the animal to scurry up walls and even hang upside down on polished glass.
Now, the researchers have managed to create an artificial version of the spatulae. A team from the University of Massachusetts to invent Geckskin, an extremely powerful reusable adhesive that leaves behind no sticky residue. The device is 16 inches square and can support up to 700 pounds on a smooth surface such as glass or a wall.

In the following video, the team would explain how it works and its amazing adhesive abilities. 

Well, thank you little gecko for inspiring the new technology! 

Neptune Balls

While sitting on the beach, trying to light a campfire covered with fibrous droplets, and not having any luck, Richard Meier, an American architect, wondered why the fire would not light? Upon further investigation, he realized it was extremely difficult to put fire to these strange fibrous globs that were lying around all over the beach, and this gave him the idea that would become NeptuTherm.

Instead of using materials like aluminium and polyester as roofs and walls insulator, NeptuTherm has developed a way of using a by-product of the sea, also known as Neptune balls, for insulation. Although written in Dutch, the photographs on this webpage clearly demonstrates how to lay this amazing material between the roof panels for insulation.

Further reading:

Seaweed fibers from Neptune balls
Building insulation for allergy sufferers
Production more resource efficient and climate-neutral quality technicalinsulation products - "Posidonia insulation"

NewspaperWood

Trees to wood to paper - paper to wood to useful objects! 

What can be more clever than recycling by reversing the line of production? Well, maybe not turning the paper into a tree, but at least to something useful! Yes, we all know it is bad to cut down trees, we know we can read the newspaper online nowadays, but personally I still prefer reading a good old newspaper in paper format. Designer Meike Meijer and DesignLabel ViJ5 take newspapers back to their origins by turning them into a wood-like building material called NewspaperWood. Furniture, decorative objects and even jewelry look spectacular when made with the artificial wood. Here is a short interview with the team on their inspiration. 

Auxetic materials

Auxetic materials have the property of getting thicker when stretching it. If you pull them in one direction, they will expand in the other one. Even though this material is pretty recent, it already has many patents from different brands such as Toyota or Mitsubishi. Some of the applications can be personal protection clothing, biomedical or high strength ropes or cords.