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petitpli.com

Kids grow really fast. According to this chart, a baby can grow up to 50% over their first year. This poses a challenge for clothing a child over this period of rapid growth. Clothes designed for adults are optimized to fit an unchanging body. Approaching children’s clothing in this manner is expensive and wasteful since new sets are needed before they wear out. Using hand-me-downs or loosely fitting garments is one way to combat waste. However, Petit Pli has a different approach. By using folds in the fabric of their clothes, these dynamically grow as needed. Since the garment grows with the child, new sets are need less often. The folds give structure but allow for the movement without being overly baggy. If you're interested in learning more check out this video from Insider.

Another company, GroFive, as a similar approach to shoes. Their “expandals” have variable front, that allows for the shoe to expand to a larger size. This design came out of the need for children in poor communities to have footwear even as their feet change.

Growing up, animals fascinated me. They are beautifully optimized to perform specific functions—elephants have large ears filled with blood vessels for cooling and woodpeckers’s skulls are designed to take repeated impacts.

I love hearing how designer take their problem, research a naturally-occurring solution, and implement it as a solution.

Here is a short video where engineers used biomimetics (mimicking nature) to better design a high-speed train.

Wikimedia Commons

In 2016, I visited the Baltimore Visionary Art Museum and was introduced to Kinematic Sculptures. A mix of art and mechanical design, these sculptures recreate small scenes using only mechanical means. As an engineer, I’m amazed by how this motion is created from purely rotational motion—usually a simple crank. In a world of cheap micro-controllers and actuators, it’s refreshing to see clever mechanism design. The cams, gears, and other internal mechanisms are just as interesting as the external design.

Add Legos and they’re even better: