Stoffel on Design: August 2012

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Layers Furniture at Designing Arizona Event

The Scottsdale Arizona Design Within Reach Studio is hosting an event showcasing Arizona furniture designers. They have accepted my Layers Furniture Tall Bookcase to be in the exhibition and a panel of judges will vote for their favorite piece at the opening reception. Exciting!

Layers Furniture is a line of furniture I designed and fabricated between 2004 and 2007. Layers Furniture utilizes low VOC multi-ply birch plywood, pre-finished on both sides with a durable phenolic resin film. The parts are cut using a CNC router, and held together with integral slots and notches.

The opening reception is at the Scottsdale Design Within Reach Studio on Thursday, August 30, 2012 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. The pieces will be on display at the Studio through September 1, 2012.

The Studio is located at 4821 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale AZ 85251.

www.dwr.com

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Curiosity Lands On Mars!

Curiosity - Robot Geoligist and Chemist in One!

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory "Curiosity" successfully landed on the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012 at 05:14:39 UTC.

The landing was the culmination of an 8 1/2 month journey from Earth that started with the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory from Cape Canaveral, Florida on November 26, 2011. The following images (mostly artists renditions) illustrate what an incredible engineering feat this was.

When I first saw descriptions of the proposed Sky Crane maneuver, I couldn't believe they would propose something so inherently risky. But after reading accounts of the design process, I began to understand how the engineers arrived at this solution. Because of the large size of the rover (and other factors), this was the best option. An amazing fact about the Sky Crane maneuver is that they never physically tested it on Earth. When Curiosity was lowered to the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012, that was the first time it had ever been done!