A mid-century modern prosthetic leg

This post ran on 22 September 2008 originally.
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I came across this on Apartment Therapy this week and I couldn't pass it up.

I love the work of Charles and Ray Eames as I've said before on many occasions. In 1956, the Eames' released their Eames Lounge and Ottoman through Herman Miller. Herman Miller still produces them now, but in 1956, the Eames/ Herman Miller combination hit pay dirt and released an instant classic. This chair is a design icon for obvious reasons. Designers go ape over it still and it remains as popular now as it was at the time of its unveiling.


An industrial designer named Joanna Hawley took her inspiration from the Eames Lounge and Ottoman and used that inspiration to design a prosthetic leg while she was a design student at Carnegie Mellon University. Hawley partnered up with Kayhan Haj-Ali-Ahmadi, a pre-med student. Kayhan's knowledge of anatomy and Joanna's design skills combined to terrific effect and the fruit of their partnership speaks for itself.
When I think of prosthetic limbs, If I think of prosthetic limbs, the idea that they should be beautiful never occurs to me. When it comes to medical devices, I always assume that function trumps form every time. Who says they can't work together? Clearly, not Joanna Hawley.


In her own words and from her website:

Prosthetics generally lack humanity, style and grace. Often, they look much like landing gear and make the wearer uncomfortable, self aware, and sometimes depressed. By channeling the Eames' use materials and iconic style, we designed a leg with Steve McQueen in mind. We sought to convey a creative use of positive and negative space, a balance of materials and a reflection of the wearer.

I corresponded with Joanna Hawley a bit the other day and I asked her why a prosthesis? Here's what she had to say:

Today's generation is faced with the Iraqi war, particularly the reality of soldiers coming back without limbs. Diabetes is also the leading cause of amputees in America, which is a little known fact. Finally, as an Industrial Designer, its my job (and passion!) to think of ways to improve people's lives. All these reasons simply rolled into one very intense and exciting project. I've always been a huge fan of Ray and Charles Eames (as you can probably tell by the rest of my work) and I wanted to give this prosthetic a very eye-catching aesthetic. I know veneering can be polarizing, but so far people seem really excited by the possibilities. And really, that's what the point of the project was, to identify the possibilities in the future of prosthetics.

Get this woman an award.

An even thousand

Charlestown Primary School

This is my one thousandth post. Thank you one and all. After a thousand posts, I think I deserve a short break. So for the next couple of days I'm going to re-run some of my archived posts while I take the weekend off. I'll be back with new content bright and early Monday morning.

Thanks again to one and all. It's your feedback, your comments, your e-mail and your good humor that keeps me plugging away. See you Monday.

Color perception Thursday

I lifted this image from the brilliant Richard Wiseman. It illustrates another cool quirk about human eyes and their ability to perceive color.

Click on the image below and it will start its animation. Stare at the black dot in the center of the photograph.

Did you see it?

When the image changes, it's a black and white photograph, but your eyes should see it as a normal color image for a couple of seconds until your eyes adjust. Go back and try it again if you missed it.

What's happening there is what's called a negative afterimage. When you stare at something long enough, the cone cells in your retina adapt to the image and stop processing new information. They go into a feedback loop that continues to send information to your brain that's a copy of the information they've already sent.

Once the image they're perceiving changes, it takes them a couple of seconds to adapt to the new information. In the lag time, your brain can't make any sense out of the signals that it's getting so it more or less makes up what it expects to be there.

Afterimages are why you can't see colors accurately if you stare at them for too long.

Afterimages don't just work on still photos either. This one moves and it's cool beyond description.



Human eyes and human brains are amazing machines but they are fallible. It's important to know where the chinks in the armor are.

It's April Food Day again

In June, 2009 the number of Food Stamp participants in the US numbered just over 35 million, the largest number on record. It's also the latest figure available, and it represents a 22% increase over the previous June's count. That's an enormous number of people.

Food stamps don't come close to feeding someone with anything resembling a balanced diet and food stamp recipients have to make some odd food choices. Check out this video from CNN. A reporter, Sean Callebs, lived on a food stamp budget for a month and in this video he talks about his experience.

Food stamp recipients, and needy people who can't get food stamps, depend on the nation's food banks in ways no one could have imagined a year ago. But the good news is that a dollar in the hands of Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest) can turn into 10 pounds of food for the needy. The need's not unique to the US either. My Canadian readers can participate in April Food Day with a donation to Food Banks Canada. If you'd like to participate in April Food Day, all we're asking is that you donate a buck. That's it. A dollar in the hands of a food bank can turn into seven meals. If you're motivated to give more, know this: $25 will make 75 meals for your needy countrymen. It's not magic but it feels good to make a tangible difference.

You'll see this logo scattered around the Internet as a bunch of us are posting on the same topic today. Whether it's here or somewhere else or on your own in your own time, think about making a donation to the nation's hungry.

Many thanks to Meg Fairfax Fielding from Pigtown Design and Chris Cox from Easy and Elegant Life for putting all this together.

Now remember those links. It's Feeding America in the US, and Food Banks Canada for Canada, obviously. If you'd like to make a donation from or for somewhere else in the world, here's the link to Feed the Children.

Lacey fences

The design site Doornob Design clued me into a cool re-imagining of the chain link fence yesterday.

The Dutch design agency Demakersvan rethought the omnipresent and always dreary chain link and applied a little old world charm to it. What a great idea and yet another terrific example of thoughtful industrial design. I swear, this has been a week for it.

It has me thinking what other patterns would work in this medium. Can I get it in argyle?

I love this Sharks and Jets homage. Street toughs look less tough when they're climbing over a Lace Fence.