Tag Archives: kinetic

Michael Jantzen Just Turned Solar into a 16-Arm Moving Sculpture

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Most renewable energy systems hide in plain sight. Rooftop solar panels blend into shingles, batteries sit in containers behind fences, and wind turbines spin in distant fields. They quietly do their jobs without helping anyone understand what happens inside them, which feels like a missed opportunity when you are trying to build support for systems that might keep the planet livable for another generation or two.

Michael Jantzen’s Solar and Gravity Powered Art and Science Pavilion treats that visibility problem as a design challenge. The conceptual structure combines a public exhibition space under an umbrella-shaped roof with a tall central tower supporting 16 long, weighted steel arms. Those arms lift and lower throughout the day, creating shifting silhouettes while demonstrating how solar power and gravity work together as a functional energy system rather than just theoretical concepts.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

The cycle works simply enough. A solar cell array at the top powers 16 winches that pull the weighted arms upward, storing potential energy. When the pavilion needs electricity, or when someone wants to change its shape, the arms fall back down under gravity. Their descent drives 16 generators that feed power to the building or local grid, turning stored height into usable electricity without batteries or other complex systems getting in the way.

Arriving on a sunny afternoon, you would see the arms at different angles around the tower, sometimes clustered vertically, sometimes fanned out like a mechanical flower. The shifting positions are not just decorative but are the visible result of energy being stored and released. You can read the building’s energy state in its skyline without needing a diagram, which turns out to be a surprisingly rare thing for infrastructure to offer at any scale.

Inside, the umbrella roof shelters a large floor for exhibitions, lectures, or performances. At the center, 16 cables drop through holes in the floor, each marked with an orange spot matching the orange-tipped arms outside. Those cables connect to winches and generators below, making the mechanical core part of the exhibition rather than something hidden. Visitors can track which arms are up or down by watching cables move, turning passive observation into something closer to active participation.

Of course, the setup means the building becomes a working model while hosting events about climate or technology. People walk through exhibitions while the structure demonstrates solar capture and gravity storage without needing to explain every detail. The pavilion functions as a tourist attraction, classroom, and public art that teaches through motion instead of asking you to absorb paragraphs about conversion rates nobody remembers afterward.

Jantzen’s proposal might never be built as drawn, but treating energy flows as choreography feels worth exploring. It hints at a future where infrastructure does not just work efficiently behind walls, it performs visibly in ways that invite people to understand systems that usually stay hidden until something breaks. Making those processes watchable might matter more than squeezing out another efficiency percentage point, which is something worth considering the next time we design places meant to teach.

The post Michael Jantzen Just Turned Solar into a 16-Arm Moving Sculpture first appeared on Yanko Design.

DIY Coffee Sand Table Turns a Living Room Surface Into Moving Art

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Most coffee tables are static slabs of wood, glass, or stone, maybe with a stack of books on top that never gets read. There’s a growing fascination with kinetic sand tables that draw patterns under glass, turning a surface into something alive. Arrakis 3.0 is a DIY coffee table that brings that idea into a more compact, furniture-friendly form you can actually live with in a normal apartment instead of a gallery.

Arrakis 3.0 is the latest iteration of Mark Rehorst’s sand table experiments, this time designed from the start as a practical coffee table. Under a standard 24-by-48-inch glass top, a steel ball slowly traces patterns in a bed of white sand, guided by a hidden mechanism. From above, all you see is a glowing sandbox under glass, constantly redrawing itself while your coffee sits on top.

Designer: Mark Rehorst

A blue anodized aluminum frame forms the table’s skeleton, supporting a black anodized sandbox that sits neatly inside it. The sand rests on a white base, so the patterns read clearly through the glass. A beveled glass top with a black border floats above, hiding the LEDs from direct view and making the whole thing read as a finished piece of furniture rather than a lab rig you’re still tweaking.

RGB LED strips tucked into the sandbox edges wash the sandbed in color, while additional strips under the frame cast a soft glow onto the floor. In a darkened room, the table becomes a low, luminous object, with the ball’s path slowly emerging and fading. The combination of blue frame, black sandbox, white sand, and colored light gives it a clear visual identity without feeling loud or desperate for attention.

Light blue mirrored acrylic panels fill the gaps in the frame, reflecting the LEDs and sandbed while hiding the mechanical guts. They’re centered in the slots with clear silicone edging, so they sit cleanly and don’t rattle. From the side, you see a band of soft reflection rather than belts and pulleys, which helps the table feel more like intentional furniture and less like an exposed machine.

The ball moves slowly enough that you don’t watch it like a screen, but you notice that the pattern is always changing when you glance down. Over the course of an evening, lines accumulate, overlap, and get erased as new designs start. It’s closer to having a mechanical fireplace or aquarium than a gadget, something that quietly animates the room without demanding attention every five seconds.

Arrakis 3.0 shows how DIY can cross into design territory. By tightening the footprint, standardizing the glass, and wrapping the mechanism in a coherent color and light story, this version feels less like a project and more like a piece you’d actually want to put your coffee on. The moving patterns and soft glow give it a presence that changes the room without overwhelming it.

The post DIY Coffee Sand Table Turns a Living Room Surface Into Moving Art first appeared on Yanko Design.

Clock Makes Hours Appear and Disappear Through Moiré Patterns

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Most clocks are content to quietly tick away in the background, marking the hours with little more than a glance from you throughout the day and night. But what if telling time could be mesmerizing instead, an experience that draws you in, sparks curiosity, and turns your wall into a living gallery worth watching? What if checking the time felt less like a chore and more like appreciating kinetic sculpture?

The Moiré Clock is a kinetic timepiece that turns the passage of time into a visual illusion worth watching throughout your day. Using overlapping patterns and continuous motion behind a striped filter, it animates each hour through optical phenomena, making time feel less like a number on a dial and more like a moment to savor. The design explores how perception and movement can create meaning beyond simple functionality.

Designers: Felix Cooper, Amber Li (STATION Design)

At the heart of the Moiré Clock is a rotating paper disc, printed with custom numerals and set behind a striped steel window that creates the optical magic through interference patterns. As the disc turns throughout the day, the moiré effect causes the hour numerals to morph, dance, and reveal themselves in a hypnotic display that changes with every passing minute behind the filter screen.

The minute and second hands ground the illusion in familiar movement while the hour appears and disappears in a mesmerizing rhythm behind the stationary filter window. The bold red second hand adds a pop of color and visual anchor, making the clock easy to read despite its unconventional hour display created by optical interference. The interplay between traditional clock elements and the animated moiré numerals creates a unique timekeeping experience.

The clock is a study in material contrasts between industrial and artisanal manufacturing traditions. Crisp white paper milled by French Paper Company in Michigan, American-made steel sourced from Pennsylvania, and a quartz movement from Takane, the last US manufacturer of clock mechanisms still producing domestically. The tactile paper face and brushed steel housing give the piece a sense of warmth and industrial substance that goes beyond typical wall clocks.

At 8.5 inches wide and just 2.5 inches deep, it’s compact enough for a home office, studio, or hallway without dominating the wall space, but bold enough to stand out as functional art that deserves attention. Setting up the clock is straightforward: add a single AA battery, set the time using the rear dial, and hang it with a nail or push pin. The paper components invite gentle handling.

The kinetic numerals and bold red second hand make each glance at the clock a small event worth experiencing, turning routine time checks into moments of visual delight throughout your day at home or in creative spaces. For anyone who wants their home to feel creative and alive with kinetic energy, the Moiré Clock brings a sense of play and wonder that traditional clocks simply cannot match or replicate with static designs.

The post Clock Makes Hours Appear and Disappear Through Moiré Patterns first appeared on Yanko Design.

Modern take on disco balls brings kinetic panel with 25 lights

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Disco balls were a staple of the clubbing scene from the 70s until 90s or until discos were not popular anymore. If you ask kids these days, they probably cannot tell you what an actual mirror ball looks like, unless they’re into all of these “nostalgic” things. Since we’re in a different era, the disco ball is also probably due for a comeback or even a rebirth.

Designer: Studio Élémentaires

For a design studio that has “Light + Movement” as its motto, you can expect a different kind of disco ball. Studio Élémentaires designed Flasher which looks like a modernist take on the disco ball, taking inspiration from the stage spotlights we see in concerts and plays. The movement of the light source adds to the kinetic and hypnotic beauty of this light fixture meant to light up stages and spaces.

Basically you get a large panel-like 25-light grid with 25 perforated discs. These discs move around in continuous motion but in different directions and timing. The lights flash continuously, appearing and disappearing “in vivid chiaroscuro contrast”. The panel itself has a monochromatic look and the high shine aluminum plates give it a shining appearance. There are also pulleys, belt paths, and bearings involved in the structure.

What the renders fail to show is the actual effect of this kinetic lighting on the space that it’s lighting. But I can just imagine that it is not for those that are affected with flashing strobe lights or even those that have vertigo.

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