Things fall together : a guide to the new materials revolution / Skylar Tibbits.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tibbits, Skylar, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Programmable materials.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (225 pages)

Place of Publication:

Princeton ; Oxford : Princeton University Press, [2021]

Summary:

From the visionary founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, a manifesto for the dawning age of active materialsThings in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Personal items deteriorate. Yet today's researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that physically sense, adapt, and fall together instead of apart. These materials open new directions for industrial innovation and challenge us to rethink the way we build and collaborate with our environment. Things Fall Together is a provocative guide to this emerging, often mind-bending reality, presenting a bold vision for harnessing the intelligence embedded in the material world.Drawing on his pioneering work on self-assembly and programmable material technologies, Skylar Tibbits lays out the core, frequently counterintuitive ideas and strategies that animate this new approach to design and innovation. From furniture that builds itself to shoes printed flat that jump into shape to islands that grow themselves, he describes how matter can compute and exhibit behaviors that we typically associate with biological organisms, and challenges our fundamental assumptions about what physical materials can do and how we can interact with them. Intelligent products today often rely on electronics, batteries, and complicated mechanisms. Tibbits offers a different approach, showing how we can design simple and elegant material intelligence that may one day animate and improve itself—and along the way help us build a more sustainable future.Compelling and beautifully designed, Things Fall Together provides an insider's perspective on the materials revolution that lies ahead, revealing the spectacular possibilities for designing active materials that can self-assemble, collaborate, and one day even evolve and design on their own.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Programming Matter

Computing Is Physical

Order from Chaos

Less Is Smart

Robots without Robots

Build from the Bottom Up

Design from the Bottom Up

Reverse, Reuse, Recycle

The Future of Matter Is Evolving

Notes

References

Index

Image Credits

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691189710

0691189714

OCLC:

1240711530