Design & Engineering

26^th June 1906, the date of the first Grand Prix, Le Mans. The race was won by Ferenc Szisz in a 12.9 litre Renault (18.3 litre engines were also in the race). The car had its engine up front with its radiator fitted behind the engine, it was prop driven via the rear wheels but without the use of a differential. It had a three-speed gearbox with a leather cone clutch. The car covered 769.9 miles at an average speed of 63 mph but reached 92 mph on the straights. The Renault team used wire wheels during practice, with these the car had no wheel brakes and only engine braking to the rear wheels through the transmission. The life of a rear tyre was short. The cars had to carry both a driver and a mechanic and any repairs on the cars away from the pits were carried out by the driver and mechanic. Spare tyres were carried on the car along with the tools to fit. To fix a puncture on the track, the old tyre would be cut off by knife and a new tyre, with tube pre-inflated at low pressure was forced over the wire rim and then fully inflated, enabling the team to re-join the race. A good driver and mechanic could change a tyre in about 16 minutes. Tyre technology was in its infancy and punctures were often, meaning that a race could be won or lost on tyre changes. The Renault team had a trump card yet to be played.

The Renault Type K race car had a strong technological provenance. Of the eleven car makes taking place in the 1906 Le Mans, it was one of seven to use a shaft drive with U joints, which Renault had pioneered and had used in on all his cars from the 1898 prototype through to the Type K. It was one of six to have a three-speed gearbox, one of five to use a high-tension magneto ignition and one of two to use thermo-syphon cooling. More importantly, at the start of the race the Renault team had changed its wheels. Renault was one of the three teams running “la jante amovible”. In place of the 34x3 inch wire wheels were wooden artillery wheels. The rear wheels only incorporated a 290mm rod driven drum brake, Michelin tyres, and an eight-bolt detachable rim. With these split rim wheels it was possible to replace a tyre in under two minutes. Renault’s last-minute wheel change paid off, on the fourth lap Szisz and his mechanic changed all four wheels in 3 minutes 47 seconds, quick enough to gain a lead advantage that no other car was able to close. At the end of the first day’s racing, circa 6hrs of continuous racing, Szisz car number 3A, had a 26 minute lead. 

All the cars that finished the first day’s racing were then locked in a paddock overnight in the condition that they had finished the race and they were not able to be touched. The race would recommence at staggered times the following day. This meant that Szisz would leave first and set off at 5.45am. His car, car 3A had a flat tire, Szisz drove straight to the pits, where he replaced two wheels, refilled all fluids and lubricated all joints in 11.5 minutes, still setting off 14.5 minutes before the next starter. Szisz maintained his lead throughout the day winning the first Grand Prix. His 105 h.p. side valved Renault had beaten into second place a 135 h.p. o.h.v. Fiat by a margin of 34 minutes. A race won where reliability and sensible driving, conserving tyre wear whenever possible had bettered pure power and performance. The victory bade well with Renault factory orders, the Le Mans Grand Prix race cars were adapted road cars of the day. However, why in this race was a state-of-the-art Grand prix car running on wooden spoke wheels? 

The wheel was invented around 4000 BC, exact dates are unknown. This would have first been a circular wooden disc place upon an axle. The wooden disc most probably a crosscut from a tree. The spoked wooden wheel was invented around 2200 BC, it was lighter and could be used on faster moving vehicles such as chariots. The wooden spoked wheel remained in continuous use through to the 1870’s, a continuous run of over 3600 years, when it was slowly replaced by the tensioned wired spoke wheel. 

The wire wheel was invented by George Cayley in 1808 but further developed and applied to bicycles by William Stanley in 1849. By the late 1800’s the wire wheel was used mainly on bicycles, tricycles and early quadricycles and yet for the 1906 Grand Prix, the Renault Type K ran on 4000-year-old wooden wheel technology. Wire wheels in 1906 were still tied radially, the shortest route from hub to rim, these wheels were not strong enough for heavy race cars driven on poor roads. Radially spoked wheels although strong in compression (they could physically hold the weight of the car) were unable to cope with momentum forces, those of acceleration and braking. When accelerating using the colossal torque of a 12.9 litre engine, the rotation forces from wheel hub to rim would collapse a radially spoked wheel. Transmission braking would have the same affect in reverse. It was not until the invention of the tangential wire wheel, designed in 1907, that a resistance to the acceleration and braking forces could be accommodated. 

In 1907 John Pugh designed a tangential steel spoked wheel for Rudge-Whitworth that could safely be used on cars. These wheels owed their resistance to braking and accelerative stresses due to their two inner rows of tangential spokes. An outer row of radial spokes gave lateral strength against cornering stresses. These wheels were deeply dished so that steering pivot pins might lie as near as possible to the centreline of the tires. Their second feature was that they were easily detachable, being mounted on splined false hubs with knock-off fixings. This made changing a wheel quicker and easier. The pressed steel wheel was later invented by Joseph Sankey in 1908 and was quickly adopted by cost conscious car manufacturers. The Type K Grand Prix car had to use the technology that was available, and this meant reverting to the wooden spoke wheel.

So how far could a wooden spoke G.P. race car wheel be upgraded from a wooden spoke wheel that had graced Persian chariots 4000 years prior? The Renault wooden artillery wheel had a large hub circa 240mm in diameter from which the twelve wooden spokes would radiate. The hub had a steel reinforcing plate bolted to both sides, through the wooden hub, making a steel plated sandwich and spreading torque forces over a wider circumference. Each spoke was then widened at a knuckle through which was bolted a 290 mm drum brake. The wheel and the drum brake were then one unit. The wheel then had a timber outer rim, as a conventional wooden wheel. The word tire comes from attire, as in a dressed wheel. The first tyres were a steel rim surrounding the circumference of the wheel. The steel rim would be preheated and then shrunk fit to the wheel by cooling. This provided a compression around the wheel holding it tightly together. The Renault cars had steel rims but the inner edge of the rim was turned up to support a pneumatic tyre. Around the rim were eight bolt on flanges that held the tyre in place. By undoing and removing these flanges it was possible to change a tyre without removing the wheel (see cross section detail). The technology is extremely crude, but every car related technology was still in its infancy. With early race cars design development focussed firstly on developing power from the engine, suspension, braking, roadholding would all have to wait.

Further to qualify for entry into the 1906 Grand Prix the cars had to have a maximum unladen weight of 1000kg (one metric tonne) but this is extremely misleading as to the actual weight of the car. To this weight all fluids, driver and mechanic, tools and spares would be added. These are the early days of the motorcar and there are design inefficiencies everywhere. A by-product of inefficiency is heat and with an engine as inefficient as a 1906 12.9 litre Renault the by-product is a lot of heat. To cool this heat the radiators were huge. On the earlier Renault Type K of 1903, (the car on which Marcel Renault died during the infamous 1903 Paris-Madrid race) the radiators were fixed along the full length of both outsides of the bonnet. This design inefficiency wrapped the engine in a hot water jacket making engine maintenance near impossible. The radiator was consolidated into a single unit on the 1906 Renault Type K, its sheer volume made its location a difficult problem to resolve. The radiator had an approximate volume of 1200x900x400mm and when full would have a weight of approximately 432 kgs. A radiator of that size has two pragmatic options for its location on a car, transversally mounted in front of, or behind the drivers. If mounted behind the drivers, while cooling a front engine car, its heat tubes would need to run past the driver’s, back to front of the car. Putting this much mass behind the rear axle would drastically affect handling. It was decided to put the radiator behind the engine and in front of the drivers, along the scuttle. This placed the weight central to the car but had its own issues. With the radiator behind the engine, it had almost no through ventilation and the steering column had to pass through the radiator to reach the front wheels, an insane configuration by contemporary engineering standards.

With water in this huge radiator and circulating a 12.9 litre engine, it is easy to see how quickly the car could gain additional weight on top of its unladen entry level weight of 1000kg. A 12.9 litre engine also requires a lot of oil and a car that at best returns 9 mpg requires a lot of fuel for a 700-mile race. Added to this additional weight is that of the driver, the mechanic, tools, jack and three spare wooden wheels (the rims and tyres alone weighed 18kg each). With the tank and the radiator full and the driver and mechanic on board, a 1000 kg entry car would be approaching a two tonne (2000 kg) race car. This would have been a two-tonne car capable of 100 mph, running on a dirt road with no shock absorbers, on wooden spoke wheels, with rod driven drum brakes only fitted to the rear wheels. A driver needed considerably more courage than skill to push these cars to their limits. A car without a differential would also mean that the rear wheels would need to skid round corners, as this is the only way to compensate for the difference in distance between the inner and outer radius of a bend. The huge torque of a 12.9 litre engine, with the car running on a dirt surface, the 3-inch-wide wheels would slip when accelerating or braking. This was to the benefit of the wooden wheel. A wooden wheel racing on a contemporary tarmac surface would better grip on the bends and the sheer force across the timber wheel when cornering would probably break the spokes. The slip on the 1906 Le Mans poor road surfaces made the tyres suffer but saved the wheel.

Car design was still in its early days, but competition was fierce and design development rapid. Design progress was greatly helped at first, by racing and then by mass production. Race car design in 1906 was still very crude but by the mid 1920’s cars such as the Bugatti Type 35 and the Delage 15S8 were racing with refinements recognisable today and still used on many modern cars. Racing forced designers to look at all aspects of car design, brakes, suspension, aerodynamics and to bring these design developments together into a refined whole. Ideas past swiftly from team to team and at each rejuvenation re-invented and improved. The early car designers paved the way for the millions of incremental improvements that have happened since.

Gaston Vinet was a French inventor, automobile and aviation pioneer who ran Maison G. Vinet in Courbevoie, a coachbuilding company founded in 1896. In 1900 he founded Automobiles Vinet in Neuilly-sur-Seine, which manufactured cars until 1904. He introduced the gummed wheel in France in 1893, and patented axles and brakes. His detachable rim was patented in 1905, the patent was bought by Michelin and the wheel was used on the Renault Type K that won of the 1906 GP de l'ACF. A significant win for Ferencz Szisz and Renault, but a win no less on a wooden spoked wheel.

Images

7. Movie clips from the 1906 Grand Prix.

1. 1906 Renault Type-K.

2. The Gatson Vinet / Michelin Split-Rim wheel.

3. Gaston Vinet Split Rim patent.

4. Vinet / Michelin detachable rim.

5. A Persian Chariot wheel 2800 B.C.

6. Marcel Renault in the 1903 race in which he died.

Disruptor is an on-trend word that we hear on a daily basis, it is used as if it has just been conceived. But a disruptor is intrinsic to our evolutionary, political and technological progress. Disruptors can be technological, the square-rigged sail, the invention of gunpowder, the production of electricity, or the understanding of flight. Disruptors can also be social political, famines, disease, wars, education, affluence. Disruptors are causal, they open some doors and close others, sometimes their consequences are predictable often they are not. They improve efficiencies in some industries while simultaneously destroying others. The current computer revolution is a present-day disruptor. Climate change may well be our next.

Disruption is by definition uncomfortable, it initiates displacement, displacement of norms and of ideals. There are several taboos that will soon need to be addressed as our present disruptors force their presence. Three of these will be nuclear power, population and CRISPR eugenics. The easiest of these to address, is that of nuclear power.

What Is Nuclear? Before the 1900’s the world was understood through the laws of classical mechanics, that of Newtonian physics. Laws relating to motion, gravity and energy of the everyday and practical. These laws were adequate for the building of engines, bridges, railways etc. These are the laws that most of us understand, the basics of physics that we were taught at school. Laws relating to velocity, time and distance, mass, momentum and conservation are extremely powerful in physics since they allow one to derive a predictable stable future from the present conditions. Likewise, complete knowledge of the future allows precise computation of the past. 

At the turn of the century mathematicians noted that reality deviated from Newtonian physics at all scales and that this was most notable as speeds approached the speed of light and at the microscopic scale of atoms. The macroscopic world, the one we live in, deals with concepts such as temperature and pressure. The microscopic world of atomic theory understands macroscopic quantities through the kinetic motion of atoms. In atomic physics all matter consists of atoms held together by electromagnetic forces. How tight these bonds are, determines the state in which matter exists: solid, liquid, gas or plasma. Solids have strong bonds, liquids have weak bonds, gases have no bonds and plasma is a conducive ionized gas. 

Note: Plasmas are only found naturally in the coronae and cores of stars but can be artificially generated and are an essential for the creation of nuclear power. A nuclear generator creates plasma by heating and/or subjecting a neutral gas to a strong electromagnetic field. This removes from within the gas an atom’s orbital electrons, leaving the plasma either positively or negatively charged. This ionized gaseous substance becomes increasingly electrically conductive.

Einstein’s famous 1905 equation E=mc2 sets up a relationship between energy and mass, anything that has mass has the equivalent amount of energy. Energy and mass are the same thing and are interchangeable. Energy cannot be created or destroyed it can only be transferred from place to place.

Uranium is a high-density heavy metal. It was fused, along with all heavy elements, in a supernova 6.6 billion years ago. A supernova is the collapse of a star triggered into runaway nuclear fusion. Uranium contains its own fused energy, occurs in most rocks at 3 to 4 parts per million and it is in the earth’s seas. It is one of the heaviest of all the naturally-occurring elements (hydrogen is the lightest), and like all radio-active isotopes, is in a natural state of slow radioactive decay (cooling). This decay is very slow, millions of years, so it is barely radioactive, however it generates 0.1 watt / tonne as decay heat and this is enough to warm the earth’s core, causing convection and continental drift in the earth’s oceans.

Energy and mass are the same thing. The energy contained within heavy metals was transferred there from the collapse of a star, a supernova. Energy is obtained from uranium by splitting its atoms, reversing the process of a collapsing star. The nucleus of the Uranium-235 atom comprises 92 protons and 143 neutrons (92+143=235). When the nucleus of a Uranium-235 atom is hit by a moving neutron it splits in two and releases some energy in the form of heat but it also releases two or three additional neutrons. If the additional neutrons released cause other uranium-235 atoms to split these in turn produce more heat and more neutrons. This creates the chain reaction caused fission. When this process happens multiple millions of times, a very large amount of heat is produced from a relatively small amount of uranium. Radioactive isotopes release heat naturally through the process of radioactive decay over millions of years. When forced to release this energy all at once, this creates an explosion. Controlling the speed of the release of this energy creates a useable resource in the form of heat.

A nuclear power station is similar to a coal, gas or oil fuelled power station, it uses a fuel to generate heat. The heat is used to create steam that turns a turbine, that is then converted into mechanical or electrical energy. The great environmental advantage of nuclear is in its energy density. A golf ball sized piece of uranium weighing 780 grams is enough to provide all the energy one would require for a whole lifetime, including electricity, flights, car transport, the manufacture of one’s food and goods, a total of 6.4 million kWh. In contrast, 3,200 tonnes of coal producing 11,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide would be required to produce the equivalent amount of energy. Other, more abundant heavy metals such as Thorium can be used to generate nuclear power. India has Thorium powered nuclear power stations. The UK has had on running nuclear power stations since 1956.

There are three principle ways of generating nuclear power, each is at a different phase of technical development and they all have differing levels of efficiency. Two are types of fission reactor, a fission once-through reactor and a fission fast breeder (fast neutron) reactor. Both of these split the atoms of heavy metals to release the energy trapped within from a collapsed star. The third type is a fusion reactor. Unlike nuclear fission that splits heavy atomic nuclei, fusion bonds (fuses together) lighter ones such as Hydrogen to give off energy. The sun and the stars are powered by nuclear fusion. These three methods of generating nuclear power are described in more detail in the text below.

Nuclear power is not a new technology and its development needs an historical context. In the 1920’s, using F.W. Astons measurements of the masses of low mass elements and Einstein’s 1905 theory of relativity E=mc2, Arthur Eddington proposed that large amounts of energy could be released by fusing small nuclei together and that this was the energy that powered the stars. The following years through the 1930’s, scientists made astonishing scientific achievements in the field of atomic physics. In 1932 Ernest Rutherford discovered that when Lithium atoms were split by bombarding them with protons, they released immense amounts of energy in accordance with Einstein’s mass energy equivalence theory. In the same year, 1932, James Chadwick discovered the neutron. The neutron has no electronic charge and was immediately seen as a tool for nuclear experimentation. In 1934 Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie discovered induced radioactivity by bombarding materials with neutrons. During the 1930’s Enrico Femi improved the effectiveness of induced radioactivity by bombarding uranium with neutrons. In 1938 German chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, discovered that when a tiny neutron split a relatively massive uranium atom an immense amount of energy was given off along with additional neutrons, this process they called fission. Numerous scientists at that time realised that if fission reactions released additional neutrons a self-sustaining chain reaction could result. This was a eureka decade and a move nearer to unlocking the ideal of perpetual motion for energy. Once self-sustaining fission reactions were confirmed in the lab, scientists petitioned their governments for funding for nuclear research. 

Nearly all of the nuclear research throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s was related to weaponry, but in 1955 commercial applications for nuclear fusion began in Japan, France and Sweden. By the mid 1960’s fusion development had stalled in the West but Russia made claims of progress with continued development of the Tokamak reactor, of this the west was sceptical. In 1969, by Russian invitation, a UK team of scientists confirmed the achievements of the Russians and this led to a wave of Tokamak toroid reactor construction throughout the 1970’s financed by multi-million-dollar research funds. R&D continues through the 1980’s to 2010’s with incremental improvements and breakthroughs in sustaining a fusion reaction. In 2014 US scientists at the National Ignitions Facility - NIF, for the first time, generate more energy from fusion reactions than from the energy put in to achieve controlled fusion.

Three Variants of Nuclear Reactor

Fission – Once-Through

In a Fission Once-Through nuclear reactor the energy is harnessed by a controlled chain reaction. When a uranium-235 nucleus in a reactor splits, it produces two or more neutrons that can then be absorbed by other nuclei, this in turn causes them to undergo fission as well. More neutrons are then released and continuous fission is achieved. The reaction is controlled by controlling the quantity of free neutrons that are able to induce further fission. Control rods made of neutron poisons absorb free neutrons. When the control rods are pushed deeper into the reactor, its greater exposure absorbs more neutrons and this slows the fission reaction. Neutrons produced by fission have high energies and move extremely quickly. These so-called fast neutrons do not cause fission as efficiently as slower-moving ones so they are slowed down in most reactors by the process of moderation. A liquid or gas moderator, commonly water or helium, cools the neutrons to optimum energies for causing fission. 

Uranium-235 has an operating cycle of 4 to 6 years. During the fission process some of the uranium is turned into plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 does not give off as much heat so with time the fuel degrades and efficiency declines. A nuclear fission reactor is very inefficient and it uses only 1% of the fuel available. Economics determines the length of time a fuel is used before it is considered spent. Spent fuel however, still contains large amounts of energy but short-term financial concerns determine that fuel rods are replaced so that they can run at 100% efficiency. The spent fuel is highly radioactive and contains weapon grade plutonium. This waste requires long-term protective storage to cool and decay. However, it should be noted that a kilogram of uranium-235 releases three million times more nuclear energy than the energy produced by burning a kilogram of coal and unfortunately this encourages inefficiency.

Fission reactors are categorised by generation. Generation 1 reactors are the experimental reactors of the 1950’s. Generation 2 reactors, are the most common of the current reactors, developed between 1965-1996. Generation 3 reactors have evolutionary improvements from 1996 to present. Very few Generation 3 reactors have been built and development has been very slow as political opposition to and related funding for nuclear has been withdrawn and projects terminated. Generation 4 reactors include technologies still under development. Nuclear fission is already a very old technology, it is incredibly inefficient and wasteful of its fuel source with its waste still containing huge quantities of unspent fuel. Fission reactors have been able to run this inefficiently due the relative cheapness and availability of the uranium fuel.

FBR’s

The plutonium-239 within the waste of the nuclear fissions once-through process has been the biggest setback to its development. If stolen, plutonium-239 can be used to fabricate nuclear weapons, it still requires dedicated safe secure storage where it is allowed to cool and decay to be used in non-weaponry. The technology already exists to safely burn plutonium-239 in Fast Breeder Reactors - FBR’s. This technology could dispose of the existing waste problem, reducing the threat of radiation and nuclear proliferation, and at the same time generate vast amounts of low-carbon energy.

The majority of fission reactors use a once-through method taking the energy from uranium-235 which makes up 0.7% of the uranium and discards the remaining uranium-238. Our present commonly used technology burns under 1% of the fuel’s potential. FBR’s - Fast Breeder (fission) Reactors, also called fast neutron reactors, allow the continued chain reaction to completely use the uranium fuel but control of these is both difficult and dangerous. FBR’s are very efficient, they convert uranium-238 to fissionable plutonium-239 and obtain sixty times more energy from the uranium. They are expensive to build and difficult to control but they can also produce, when required, more plutonium than they consume and therefore can produce more fuel than they burn. However, development programmes have faltered with material and technical problems that still need to be resolved. 

The high costs of FBR’s and the relatively low cost of uranium fuel has helped the less efficient once-through fission burners to dominate. Although about 20 FBRs have already been operating, some since the 1950’s, they have covered some ground work for further design development. Russia and Kazakhstan have run reliable FBR’s since the 1980’s. FBR’s have the additional advantage that they can further burn the spent fuel from the once-through reactors and ex-military weapon plutonium because all plutonium isotopes in an FBR can fission. This would turn these waste and problematic resources into a useful energy supply. Fusion reactors should be the long-term goal but fast breeder fission reactors should be the focus of the short to medium term. 

FBR’s use a coolant, such as liquid sodium, that is not normally used in the once-through fission reactors. This coolant is not an efficient moderator so its neutrons remain fast moving high energy. Although these fast neutrons are less efficient at causing fission they are easily captured by uranium-238 which then becomes plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 can be reprocessed and used as more reactor fuel. FBR’s can be designed to maximise plutonium-239 production and in some cases can generate up to 30% more fuel than they consume. This is why they are called Breeder reactors. 

The process of producing more fuel than consumed is achieved because natural uranium consists primarily of uranium-238, which does not fission easily, and only 0.72% of uranium-235, which does. Natural uranium is therefore unsuitable for commercial reactors and its uranium-235 content has to be enhanced to 3 to 8% for it to be able to sustain a chain reaction. The uranium-235 is encouraged to fission but more than 90 percent of the atoms in the fuel are uranium-238. The fission process releases neutrons from the uranium-235 which are then absorbed by the uranium-238. When uranium-238 captures a free neutron, it becomes uranium-239, this rapidly changes by beta radiation (decay) into neptunium-239. Neptunium-239 continues to decay for a further 3 days to become plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 is more fissile than uranium-235 so additional nuclear fuel is produced.

125,000 nuclear weapons have known to have been built since 1945, the majority were constructed by the US and the Russians during The Cold War. As of 2019 17,000 of these weapons are known to still exist. In 1992 when The Cold War officially came to an end, nuclear weapons stockpiles were decommissioned and these flooded the market with cheap plutonium and uranium. This proved to be a setback to FBR development and the less efficient but easier to achieve fission once-through reactors benefitted from this surplus. Further, market lead capitalism unfortunately will always opt for the short-term gain over a wiser long-term objective. This is due to the fact that if one company decides to take the sensible long-term view they will be undercut by their competitors and this perpetuates short-termism. A further setback for FBR’s and nuclear in general, has been that companies sitting on fossil fuel assets, coal, petrol and now shale, will understandably encourage their consumption whilst promoting negative news on alternative competitor fuels. Governments are equally aware that disruption to the fossil fuel industries will displace a considerable workforce that would need to be re-employed elsewhere. Although a market lead economy is good for competition it is not necessarily good for setting sensible and sustainable long-term objectives. These need to be set as agreed global government policies with market competition encouraged and controlled to develop efficiencies within these directives. 

Fusion

Considering the potential benefits of nuclear fusion relatively little research and development work has been done since the oil crisis in the 1970’s. The Anti-nuclear movements, often naively linked to environmental campaigns, have forced nuclear R&D to stall and the considerable budgets required for fusion research have been withdrawn.

Nuclear fusion would be the alchemist’s elixir. It is the energy source that would power the future, on earth and in space. Its energy density is way beyond any comparative and as an energy source it is highly efficient, both in terms of minimum waste and energy production. Unlike nuclear fission, that splits heavy atomic nuclei, fusion bonds lighter ones such as Hydrogen to give off energy. The sun and the stars are powered by nuclear fusion. The concept of putting the power of the sun inside a box is enticing, the issue is that we don’t as yet know how to make the box. 

Fusion has more potential power than fission. With fission large unstable nucleons such as uranium and plutonium are split to produce energy. With fusion lighter elements are fused together to form heavier elements, such as deuterium and tritium yielding helium + neutron + energy. Fusion can yield eight times more energy than fission but fusion uses considerably more energy to initiate than fission. 

The Tokomak reactor has been one of the most successful fusion reactors to date. It uses extreme magnetic fields to confine a hot plasma into the shape of a torus. This forces the atoms together as they travel at high speed, 4 million meters per second, around the torus, whilst heated to 150 million degrees Celsius (ten times the heat of the centre of the sun). When deuterium and tritium fuse, they become an unstable isotope of helium that quickly becomes stable by releasing one neutron and 17.6 million electron volts of energy. This process has kept the sun and stars burning and releasing energy for billions of years. Every second the sun transforms 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium at a temperature of 15 million degrees centigrade. The problems with fusion, is not the principles of fusion but with the amount of energy required to jump start and sustain a fusion reaction. The basic science is solved and the problems that remain are technical ones to do with materials. The Tokomak reactor has to withstand extremes of force, speed and heat and this pushes the limits of our current technologies.

Nuclear fusion is still considered to be speculative and experimental as the energy required to cause fusion has, to date, been more than the energy commercially produced. The International Thermal Experimental Reactor - ITER is an international R&D project that is looking at the long-term reliable potential of nuclear fusion and as mentioned above the US NIF lab claimed energy positive fusion in 2014. When a fusion reactor is achieved that is energy positive it would also be easier to miniaturize. Recent billionaire backed funding (Bloomberg, Gates, Bezos) programmes have been looking to create fusion reactors small enough to be built in factories and shipped for assembly on site. With the new HTS magnet technology (High Temperature Semi-Conductors), a net-energy fusion device can be considerably smaller at about 2% of the volume and mass of ITER. A smaller size means lower costs, opening fusion design to the smaller, more agile organisation. Several start-ups that are pursuing nuclear fusion believe that this will be achieved by 2025 to 2030. Hydrogen fuels are widely available, when fusion reactors fail, they tend to burn out as opposed to meltdown, making them safer. Fusion reactors give off fast neutrons but these can be shielded by lightweight high-tech poly plastics such as Borated HDPE and this could be moulded making a seamless enclosure for smaller units. 

Miniature SMR’s

Small Modular Reactor’s SMR’s. The image of a nuclear power station is that of an enormous factory, ring fenced from the rest of the world, a preternatural industrial island. Why aren’t nuclear reactors small and if so, how small is small?

The smallest designed and prototyped, nuclear reactor known was built in 2012 for NASA deep space missions. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory LLNF-DUFF space reactor is just 24 watts. The energy was used to turn a Stirling engine electrical generator. A Stirling engine is a closed-cycle regenerative heat engine with a permanently gaseous working fluid. The first portable nuclear reactor "Alco PM-2A" was used to generate electrical power (2 MW) for Camp Century from 1960. Optimism towards nuclear in the 1950’s was such that Ford produced the Nucleon concept car. A car powered by its own nuclear reactor, with its toroidal reactor visually located behind the passengers.

More recently, in 2017, Kilopower a NASA initiative designed a nuclear reactor to provide one to ten kilowatts of electrical power continuously for twelve to fifteen years. The reactor is intended for space travel and exploration including future Mars missions. Designed, prototyped and tested in 2018, it measured approximately 2m high by 1.2m diameter and weighs 134kg, it produced 1kW of power. An Israeli research team designed a thermal heterogeneous reactor that weighed 4.95 kg and measured less than 19cm across, it would produce a few kilowatts of power. These are prototyped future projects but small nuclear reactors have been in use for many decades.

Nuclear powered ships were in use in the 1940’s. The first nuclear submarine was built in 1955. The majority of nuclear marine propulsion use nuclear power to heat water in a sealed primary system, that in turn heats water to turn a steam turbine. This can then provide direct propulsion or can generate electricity that provides both utility power and propulsion. Compared to earlier diesel fuelled submarines, nuclear fuel offers advantages of very long intervals before refuelling. All fuel is contained within the nuclear reactor saving the space that would usually be required for fuel and no air intakes or exhaust stacks are required. The relative fuel costs are low but are offset by high operating and infrastructure costs, so nuclear marine transport is mainly used by the military. 

Most nuclear submarines have one but can have two reactors, whilst aircraft carriers have two but the USS Enterprise has eight reactors. Marine nuclear reactors are much smaller than conventional land power generators, in both dimension and output. To compensate for this, they use a uranium of higher energy density that is safer than the uranium used on land but it comes at a cost. Marine reactors also use more innovative cooling and shielding systems. Nuclear ships operate for years (10 to 25) without refuelling. In the US the latest Virginia Class SSN-774 submarines designed by General Dynamics Electric Boats will be in service until 2060. The SSN-774 use a S9G nuclear reactor that delivers 40,000 shaft horse power (c. 30kW) and has a nuclear core life estimated at 33 years. These submarines use a quiet pump-jet propulsion instead of conventional propeller. Much of SMR future development will borrow heavily from the transfer of existing military applications. A fleet of nuclear-powered cargo ships would be wise replacement for those that burn heavy fuel oil with its high sulphur and nitrogen content.

At present nuclear fission and fission FBR’s are multi-billion-dollar developments. This financial commitment means that its asset value encourages longevity of use, to refurbish instead or renewing. This means that many nuclear power stations have been on running since their inception in the 1950’s and 60’s, long past their initial design lifespans. The smaller SMR’s would have a much shorter life and be decommissioned and replaced more often encouraging design development in line with other products such as aircraft and cars.

The majority of the cost overruns in building large nuclear power stations are not due to construction cost overruns, but instead are due to legislative costs related to delays called upon during the development and construction process. With billions involved in the financing of these mega projects any delay begins to rack up fees and adds to the project’s procurement inefficiency. With Small Modular Reactors the oversized expensive one-off nuclear power station becomes instead a factory product with all the benefits of factory design and development. Using recognised standards and technologies creates certainty with regard to both quality control and licensing procedures. Factory controlled product design provides control not only of the build but also of the design development process. Design feedback from product use can be quickly assimilated to improve and further develop the generic designs. 

SMR’s would provide a low cost, low carbon, safe and reliable energy source. In the developed world energy infrastructure has aged with many power stations, coal, nuclear or otherwise all running beyond their scheduled termination dates. With costs of one-off mega projects being multiple billions (£15b-£25b) there will always be the temptation to revamp and relicense existing power plants. This means the continued use of technologies developed in the 1970’s and this in turn hinders design development. Design development of SMR’s would increase efficiency, improve safety while simultaneously reducing product scale. Design development would continue to fit improved efficiency into a smaller package at a lower cost. A network of smaller SMR’s also mitigates risk of total loss of energy supply. A designed product is a globally exportable commodity and as such would develop with the benefit of global technological inputs. Several firms, established and start-ups are pursuing the development of SMR’s. Their designs range from 6 to 440MWe. A SMR creating 440MWe of electricity would be enough to power a city the size of Leeds. But SMR’s need to be smaller than this, around 100MWe, and spread into a grid that would also include solar inputs and battery storage.

Once a product is accepted by a market its development becomes exponential. Consider flight, from the Wright Brother first 1903 flight, a 37m, 12 second hop at 6.82 mph, to the SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3 (3x the speed of sound) flights in 1976, or to the moon landing of 1969. This development period is only 60 to 70 years. Computers are equally an obvious comparative, consider the whole buildings required to house NASA’s computers in the 1960’s. The Apollo 11 / iPhone 11 comparison is one, not only of computing power, but one that takes mankind’s most astonishing achievement and compares it with a mass produced, everyday pocket utility. The Apollo 11 computer had 32768 bits of RAM and a processor that ran at 0.043 MHz compared to the Apple iPhone 11 (basic model) 64 GB RAM that is 549,755,813,888 bits (16.78 million times more than Apollo 11) and 2x 2.65GHz of processing speed. This increase in efficiency and reduction in scale has been achieved in 50 years. Nuclear power needs to enter this phase of design development and it needs to do so quickly and SMR’s are a way to achieve this.

Waste

Nuclear waste, like all waste products from industry, remains unresolved. Nuclear fission reactors use only 1% of the fuel available. When fission reactors split heavy uranium nuclei into medium sized nuclei creating energy it gives off waste. The nuclear energy available per atom is approximately one million times larger than the chemical energy per atom of fossil fuels. This means that the amount of fuel and waste used and produced, would be one million times smaller than that for the equivalent energy produced by fossil fuels. For example, the ash waste from ten typical coal fired power stations would be four million tons per year, the equivalent nuclear waste would be four tons. The materials flowing into and out of nuclear reactors are small relative to fossil-fuel streams. Most nuclear waste is low-level waste. 7% is intermediate-level waste and 3% is high-level waste. From the above example of ten typical coal fired power stations with 4m tons of ash per year a once-through nuclear power station would produce 109kg of high-level waste. Nuclear high-level waste is highly radioactive and it is generally stored with the reactor for forty years in cooling pools. After 40 years the radio activity has fallen 1000-fold but it will remain a high-level contaminant for at least 1000 years. Nuclear waste is a problem but it is a physically small problem and with the use of the right reactors a resolvable problem. It should be remembered that this high-level waste is a very potent future fuel that at present cannot be commercially accessed but at some future date will have value. 

Radioactive isotopes eventually decay, or disintegrate into harmless materials. Some isotopes decay in hours or even minutes, but others decay very slowly. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of about 30 years (half the radioactivity will decay in 30 years). Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. By reprocessing separates residual uranium and plutonium from the fission products both can be used again as fuel. Most of the high-level waste (other than spent fuel) generated over the last 35 years has come from reprocessing fuel from government-owned plutonium production reactors and from naval research and test reactors. Most of this waste has a use as a future fuel source.

Industry, has as yet, never provided a circular economy where all waste is reused. The last two hundred years has burnt through fuels and materials at criminal levels of inefficiency. Metals are sent to ground fill or down-graded when reused and plastics are the current curse of the Anthropocene. With the coming of the global adoption of the electric car and with the addition of grid storage, disposing of spent batteries will be our next mountain of a problem to which no feasible solution, pre-adoption, has been tabled. Every aspect of industry should ideally be circular but society is taking a long time to get there. Nuclear waste obviously adds to this problem but volumetrically is almost insignificant to the mountains of existing and coming industrial waste. All waste at some point will need to feed back into a circular system.

Bad Timing

If nuclear power offers such opportunity why has development stagnated over the last fifty years. The Cold War was the political disruptor that pushed man to the moon before he was technically ready to go there, with plentiful reserves of oil and coal, energy has not had such a disruptor. Nuclear energy was an amazing scientific breakthrough but unfortunately a discovery made with very bad timing. Bad timing can often have the same conclusion as a bad decision. Nuclear power was first discovered in the 1930’s. This great decade for science and technology unfortunately fell in the midst of mankind’s cultural and political regression. The 1930’s sits inconveniently between the two World Wars. Governments, each believing that its neighbours were in the process of constructing atomic weapons poured funds into their making. In the US the Manhattan Project, ironically lead by European scientists that had fled fascist Germany, created the first nuclear chain reaction in December 1942. The United States tested its first nuclear weapon in July 1945 and within a month Hiroshima and Nagasaki were annihilated. The Enola Gay and Bockscar B-29 bombers may have ended World War 2 but the Cold War that endured post-war built up arsenals of nuclear weapons. 125,000 nuclear warheads have been built since 1945, 97% of them were American or Russian. There are a known 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. The words nuclear and bomb can no longer be separated, they have become culturally infused, joined by a hyphen that cannot be eradicated. 

In the 1950’s countries still had optimism for nuclear power. The UK built its first nuclear powered reactor in 1956 at Calder Hall (Sellafield) but government policies, along with world policies, changed during the 1970’s and 80’s and development stagnated. At the beginning of the 21^stcentury interest in nuclear power has again picked up but has so far focused on multi-billion mega projects. Globally there are many different approaches to SMR nuclear design, some using innovative fuels or cooling systems, some explore new materials. Conventional, proven and understood systems will be developed first, however as soon as markets are established, new technologies will find funding and speed up design development. 

It is interesting that the majority of providers of SMR’s prioritise economic reasons for their development, as compared to the larger plants and mega projects that have struggled to be delivered on budget or at all. SMR’s would offer reduced overall capital cost that would enable conventional project financing. They would offer improved certainty of construction, manufacture, project delivery and a competitive cost for the production of electricity. These are all very pragmatic concerns, but the conversion of nuclear power station design, each as a one-off, to a product-based design approach of an SMR, will speed up design development. Design development will feed into new design fields, especially when the product inevitably tends towards miniaturisation and improved efficiency. At the same time knowledge from existing product runs, the car, aircraft, ship building industries, will feed into reactor procurement and production. Further, SMR’s should not be considered as single stand-alone power plants, they are designed to operate as a fleet in series. An SMR would require one tenth of the space needed by a conventional power station to produce the equivalent amount of electricity. Nuclear power, due to bad political timing, is a technology that has been left on the shelf for nearly fifty years.

The Way Forward

The energy hungry world has long been fossil fuel dependent. At the same time as the world begins to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, additional demands will soon put considerable pressure on electric energy generation and electric energy grid infrastructure. Renewables such as solar, wind and hydro, however efficient, will never deliver enough power, there simply isn’t the space for the required number of solar panels or lengths of coasts for suitable offshore wind. The energy hungry computer servers that support the cloud and the world of instantaneous communication. the coming global roll out of electric cars, electric transport, electric heating and the further development of solely electric factories, will put additional demands on an already creaking system. 

Immediate short-term transitional fixes should be applied to existing energy systems. This would need to be a coordinated global initiative. Carbon Capture - CCS should be fitted to all existing coal fuelled power stations and no further coal fuelled power stations should be built. Where possible coal fuelled power stations should be converted to gas. Heavy fuels should be removed from all trans-oceanic shipping, converting existing stocks to run on either lighter fuels, gas or by fitting heavy fuel scrubbers.

Nuclear power is an essential ingredient to a future sustainable energy mix and is possibly the only realistic alternative power source at this present time that can support present population levels and maintain existing quality of life expectations. In the near-term R&D should focus on Small Modular Fast Breeder Reactors – SMFBR’s (100-150MWe) and set up production lines where these are factory built. When nuclear power becomes a product, the natural efficiencies of product design, continued product refinement, product logistics and international IP, will increase efficiencies, shrink size, standardise components and systems and lower costs.

The lessons learnt by developing SMFBR’s as products would feed directly into R&D for nuclear fusion. SMR - Nuclear Fusion would not only provide the energy that the planet requires to maintain its existing level of population but it will also provide the power that is required for man’s next great exploration, that of space.

“We may be the only source of high intelligence in the cosmos, but our act of avoiding nuclear power generation is one of auto-genocide. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the limits of our intelligence.” James Lovelock

“We made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear are evil.” Patrick Moore

“Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.” Bill Gates

“The sensible thing to do for a country like the UK, I think, is to focus on CCS, which the world needs anyway, and nuclear.” David MacKay.

Images. Shelled Nuclear Fictive SMR’s

The 1960’s were a time when the two super powers, the USA and the USSR, went globally head to head, with the Cold War battle grounds of the Middle East, Cuba, China and Vietnam. The Cold War had already begun post World Wars and as early as 1951-53 Iran became the pawn in a battle of power. Iran sat on huge reserves of oil and was unable to realise these without outside help. It was also strategically located in the heart of the Middle East, a gateway to Asia. Following the lessons learnt from the two World Wars, oil was the new black gold and no country could do without it. Britain, America and the Soviet Union all at first tried for control of this region, once known as Persia, but this soon became a two horse race as the Soviet and the US each saw Iran as a crucial stepping-stone on the road to world domination. The Soviets were wanting to expand south and move into the Middle East spreading the Communist word and the US wanted to contain Soviet power. A head to head developed, fought over a small and poor country, in the land of that country.

The Middle East had become the new frontier, a bulwark to stop Soviet expansion. This was both a battle of ideologies, Communist versus Democratic Capitalism, as well as a control of economic and energy infrastructure. The Baghdad Pact of 1955 was indirectly a means of US control over an area of strategic and economic importance. On a global stage the US had stepped in to adjudicate where historically the British Empire had once set the law. Military bases, spy stations and communications networks, both Soviet and American, sprung up across the Middle East and North Asia. The Cold War between the new two world Super Powers was well underway. But Superpower conflict was not only centred on the Middle East and Oil, global strategic positions also came to a head, with further Soviet and US conflicts erupting in Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. Every Super Power conflict quickly became a propaganda exercise of opposed world ideologies. When the Cold War reached a stale mate The Space Race became the arena for one-upmanship. By the early 1960’s, the two Super Power’s were each taking pot shots at the moon just to prove that they could hit it, sending their latest missiles at the ball in the sky to keep score of their so-called impact landings. Several of the rockets missed their lunar target and flew forever onwards into space; they are probably still travelling.

In 1900 the US was still a wild frontier and the British Empire still had considerable standing on the world stage but by the 1950’s, Europe, the Old World leaders, had been crippled by The Wars and the ensuing dept. The UK went from governing the world’s largest empire to begging the IMF for a loan in one generation, a mere fifty years. Britain had lost its global political seat and the US would now take its place as a new world superpower with its role in international politics. Oil was the new gold and control of energy was the basis of infrastructure for any new world power. As the US flexes it’s political muscles, it’s car industry introduces the muscle car. Sheer brute force, the fastest in a straight line across the shortest route, expedient, efficient, conclusive, a total political beast. Here the industrial lion that once represented The British Empire is devoured in one great petrol guzzling bite. In the US there is a new confidence, a new wealth and a growing middle class. For this market the US motor industry builds the Pontiac GTO, the first muscle car, a symbol of the US’s new place in the world, representative of it’s control and abuse over oil, a symbol of it’s newfound wealth. Size is everything, big houses, big fridges and big cars, a world of excess, what better way to express the dominance of the new world over the old.

The 1967 Pontiac GTO has always been a favourite car. Not just because it’s a beautiful flat slab of 60’s American culture, but also as an icon of an era, symbolic of a rapidly changing world, the expression of the countries growing confidence. It’s a sports car that wants to be a saloon, that wants to grow up, at the same time it’s a saloon that wants to be a sports car. The Pontiac Motor Division made the first generation Pontiac GTO’s from 1964 to 1967. Personal preference may dictate the best first generation car but it is hard to beat the 1967 360 bhp 400 cubic inch V8. The car was optioned with a 3 speed Turbo Hydramatic TH-400 automatic transmission equipped with a Hurst performance dual gate shifter, called the ‘his and her’ shifter allowing either automatic or manual selection through the gears. Although it could be argued that the ’66 car was slightly better looking due to the front grill and rear lights, the ’67 was the car to have. There were three models, the Sport Coupe, the Hardtop and the Convertible. The Hardtop car without ‘b pillars’ was preferred. Rally 2 wheels allowed for the fitting of the recently introduced all round disc brakes and the ’67 cars had a whole load of other safety equipment fitted as standard, padded dash, energy absorbing steering wheel, shoulder seat belts and dual reservoir brakes as examples.

During 1963 a ban on auto racing advertising had shifted Pontiac Motors marketing focus onto the youth orientated street performance market. The name GTO was used in reference only to the 1960’s ‘Gran Tourismo Omologato’ cars that were officially certified for racing, but the Pontiac GTO was never built to race and it soon picked up the nickname as the ‘Goat’. The car was straight line fast with a 0-60 time of around 6 seconds and a standing quarter time just under 15 seconds with the car passing through the gates at 98mph.

Bigger and Better was not only to be seen throughout the propaganda of The Cold Wars between the US and the USSR it was also to be seen on the US highway between the rival US motor companies. Other US Muscle Car icons of this time should include:

1970 Dodge Charger RT 440 Magnum Six Pack.

1970 Dodge Challenger RT 440 Magnum Six Pack.

1970 Plymouth Barracuda 440 Six Pack

1968 Ford Mustang 428 ci, GT500 Shelby Cobra, Twin four Choke Holleys.

Muscle cars dominated youth culture from the mid 1960’s through to the early 1970’s. With the event of the 1973 oil crisis came speed restrictions and pollution controls, the reign of the US Muscle Car was over.

There were 65,176 1967 hardtop cars made so they are not rare but as an iconic reference of American motor memorabilia its hard to beat a 1967 Pontiac Goat Triple Black, 400 ci, Four Pack, Hurst Shifter, Mean.

The Surrogate Twin

It was fear of the spread of fire that 13^th Century Venice moved its glassmakers and glass foundries to the island of Murano. Venice at that time consisted of mainly wooden buildings and Murano, that had been a commercial port since the 8^th century, was well suited to what would be its future industry. By the 14^th century glassmakers were the most populous people on the island. As the reputation and commercial importance of Venetian glass grew the glassmakers of Murano were the recipients of favourable circumstance. The glassmakers of Murano were allowed a leniency of Venetian law with regards to carrying arms and their new found status found them mixing and marrying into the nobility and aristocracy.

17^th and 18^th century Murano glass is unique in its compositional eccentricity. It is neither classical, Baroque or Rococo, its craft history and the skills established after centuries of working with secretive techniques allowed each artisan license to explore these techniques. The Rococo supplied the market place but the work was very idiosyncratic with established artisans composing using the techniques of their studio. Milk glass (lattimo), multicoloured glass (millefiori), enameled glass (smalto), gold threaded (aventurine) crystalline glass, large bead and small bead glass, were all used along with the skills of the ciocca (flowers) and glass figurine makers. The final compositions were part vessel, part sculpture, part bricolage. The pieces were heavily decorative, rich in ornamentation and colour, each an excessive exuberance of skills, technique and confidence. 

In 1988 Dale Chuhily made a trip to Venice to view the artisan glassmakers studios and this trip was to become the inspiration for a collection of pieces produced as a homage to Venice. Dale Chihuly’s The Venetians consist of 70 pieces some with Putti (cherubs) others inferred with the characteristics and techniques of the old Venetian masters but all of the pieces are new in both composition and aesthetic. Historical referencing recomposed for the 21^st century, simultaneously beautiful and haunting.

Images - 1-7 Dale Chihuly The Venetians. 8-14 17^th & 18^th Century Murano glass.

The Surrogate Twin

Collage, from the French coller ‘to glue’, the art of assemblage of different forms combined to create a new whole. Known examples of collage date back to 200BC but this use is mainly as assemblage or Bricolage. Collage as an art form is a twentieth century invention and a by-product of mass production and industrialisation, especially with regard to the printed or photographic image. Juxtaposition is a key element in modernist collage, references and signifiers often used to add conceptual depth to the composition of cubist and surrealist works. By the 1960’s photomontage had replaced many modernist ideas of collage and the photomontage space often occupied compositions with real perspective. In art collaged products are assembled to create something new. In car design this sometimes also happens.

The 1960’s was a strange time for car manufacturing. The US the automotive industry had grown on the back of the US oil industry and general Post War US dominance. Asian car makers were still in their early development stage. European car makers lacked the financial backing post war to re-tool their factories or spend lavish sums on R&D. As the US built muscle cars, the Asians built imitations and the Europeans were on make do and mend. Out of this unusual mix came a new type of inventive entrepreneur, that of the component car builder, building cars using off the shelf parts supplied by other manufacturers. TVR, Lotus, De Tomaso and ISO are four makes that immediately come to mind. De Tomaso (Mangusta and Pantera) and ISO (Grifo and Rivolta) had Italian bodies over US mechanics; these cars were aesthetically enticing but crude. Early TVR’s (Grantura, Griffith and Vixen) still had a hand made kit car feel. The master of component car production, despite continued poor build quality, was Lotus.

Colin Chapman (1928-1982) began modifying cars to use in competitions as early as 1948. This began with the Lotus 1, a modified Austin 7, and concluded with the Lotus 6. The early experiments gained public interest and with the production of the Lotus 6, (1952-57) Chapman was able to fabricate and supply kits for sale out of which Lotus Engineering was born. These early cars had a tubular space frame chassis and an aluminium body. The kits used parts from the Ford Prefect and were mainly used by privateers and enthusiasts for hill climbs and competitions. In 1958 Lotus cars produced the Elite for public sale as a factory built complete car (although this was also available as a kit). The car was innovative with the use of its load bearing glass fibre monocoque, had independent suspension all round and was low drag coefficient. The monocoque was advanced, but beyond the material technology available at that time it incorporated a bonded steel structure at the front to support the engine and bonded steel reinforcement in the body to support the doors. All bonding to, and junctions with the monocoque were never fully resolved. The car was expensive to produce, fragile and sold in low numbers (approximately 1000). 

The Lotus Elan and Elan +2 (1962-75) was the design of Ron Hickman (of Workmate fame). The Elan was the beginning of commercial success for the company and a master class in component design. Putting a purpose built body over inherited mechanical components is fairly straightforward. Creating a pure seamless aesthetic whole whilst incorporating windscreens, bumpers, lights, door handles etc. from the parts bins of others is far more difficult. The Elan design was beautiful, the engineering ideas revolutionary and as an example of applied design collage one of the most successful to date. The Elan was a collage of economic necessity. 

Key to the Elan concept was the 18SWG steel backbone deep box section chassis with Chapman suspension struts. It was strong, economical to produce and light at 75kg. This chassis would be used on the Elan, Elan+2, Elite and reversed to be use on the Europa. Further downstream the chassis would evolve for use in the Esprit. The chassis of the MG R-Type of 1935 may have inspired the Elan chassis but this was an all new revolutionary platform. The chassis has a V at either end where the opening of the V at the front houses the engine and at the rear the trans axle (Vice versa in the Europa). The car is light and nimble with a very good power to weight ratio (685kg /128bhp), the handling phenomenal with excellent cornering and braking ability and steady directional stability at speed.

Onto this backbone chassis would sit the Lotus GRP monocoque and a whole menagerie of components from Triumph, Ford, Alfa Romeo, MG, Wolseley, Hillman and others. The monocoque was fabricated in seven pieces and bonded together as one whole. The design of the monocoque is the outcome of various inputs including ergonomics, aesthetics, aerodynamics, structure, brand identity and styling. GRP is little more than a stiff glue, held solid in space, holding a three dimensional form that supports this collage of assorted parts. In the 1960’s art world high collage was the photomontage works of Richard Hamilton. In the design world of three-dimensional applied collage the Lotus Elan is hard to beat.

So was the Elan a good design? The answer has to be yes and no. It’s innovation, power to weight ratio and interior and exterior styling were all ahead of their time. Lotus’ work in Formula One influenced the design of the road cars. The biggest design fault was that the Elan chassis offered no side impact protection. The Elan build quality faults were in part a condition of the economically challenged 1970’s. It was a difficult time to start a company that sold motorcars. 

Lotus Elan and Elan +2 

Some of the parts that make up the Elan Collage

Alfa Romeo rear lights

Austin 1100 door handles

Ford Anglia front bumper +2

Ford Capri Front windscreen 

Ford Capri door window glass

Ford Capri brightwork

Ford Consul Corsair or & Austin Maxi transmission

Ford Consul Classic rear differential with a Lotus designed aluminium housing

Ford Kent 116-E four cylinder cast iron engine block with a five bearing crank

Hillman Imp drive shafts 

Lotus Harry Murray designed aluminium twin cam, two valves per cylinder, head

MGB interior door handles

Sunbeam Alpine filler cap

Triumph Heralds steering rack

Triumph Vitesse front suspension

Triumph Spitfire modified radiator

Triumph discs

Vauxhall Victor rear lamps (early models)

Wolseley Hornet modified, cut in half, rear bumper for the +2

Images left to right - 1 Picasso Bull, 2 Elan collage, 3-7 Lotus Elan.

The Surrogate Twin

BMW i3 i8

A recent article in the FT praised the uptake of composites, especially carbon fibre, as a material to be used for mass-produced cars. Both the author and reader’s comments were enthusiastic for the wide spread application of composites for mass production. The planet supports 8 billion people and is already carrying at least 3 billion, possibly 6 billion, too many. Each of these would like a car. Many in the west own more than one. It is estimated that the Chinese alone will buy 40 million cars by 2020. Cars are multiple reoccurring buys, car manufacturers benefit from maximising this reoccurring purchase. Vehicle obsolescence increases the number of reoccurring purchases. Obsolescence in the car industry can be as fickle as colour, style or the addition of some unnecessary new electronic gadget. Style generated obsolescence is key to mass-market consumerism. The landfill sites are full, the oceans adrift with acres of discarded plastic. When the carbon fibre car body replaces the plastic drink bottle where will we throw the waste? The FT article, the author and all of the readers comments were oblivious to the fact that man pollutes by the decisions he makes at the point of manufacture.

To cut car emissions manufacturers are keen to reduce a cars weight. Electric cars are heavy due to the batteries carried. Hybrid cars are heavier still as they carry two power sources, battery packs and fuel storage. This additional weight is partially offset by reduction in body shell weight and carbon fibre is a proposed alternative. The BMW i3 and i8 are beautiful and sophisticated pieces of engineering design. They have the wow factor that will provide a short-term lift in sales but they are simultaneously examples of irresponsible industrial design at a corporate level.

Carbon Fibre

Carbon fibre is a unique material. Its strength to weight ratio is many multiples higher than steel or aluminium. It can be moulded into many complex forms essential for efficiently distributing loads through highly stressed junctions and intersections. Carbon fibre’s place in Formula One or the aircraft industry is well earned but as a medium of mass production it is an inappropriate material.

Carbon fibre consumes 14 times the amount of energy required to make steel. More than 90% of the energy needed to manufacture carbon fibre composites is consumed in making the carbon fibre itself. 90% of carbon fibre manufacture is derived from polyacrylonitrile made from acrylonitrile, which is derived from the commodity chemicals propylene and ammonia. The process of making carbon fibre requires multiple ovens used in sequence. The first two ovens are at temperatures of 200-300 degrees C but carbonization is achieved by putting the fibres through another series of ovens ranging in temperatures from 700-800 degrees C, then 1200-1500 degrees C and finally 3450-4500 degrees C. Alongside the energy intensive heat sequence is the chemical washing, doping, catalyst forming, cleaning this with acids and ammonia. Some of the chemicals used throughout the process include dimethyl sulfoxide, dimethyl acetamide or dimethyl formamide, zinc chloride and rhodan salt, itaconic acid, sulfur dioxide acid, sulfuric acid or methylacrylic acid. These are all highly toxic pollutants that the FT article is promoting if carbon fibre is mass-produced.

At end of use carbon fibre is even more problematic as it does not biodegrade or photodegrade. – EVER – it will sit in landfill for millenniums. Carbon fibre cannot in anyway be usefully recycled. There are two ways to re-use carbon fibre one of which involves burning without oxygen (pyrolysis), but this is an intensive use of energy and produces a brittle material. The second is shredding and reusing the by-product as fill or aggregate. In both scenarios it is more expensive to recycle carbon fibre than produce it from virgin material and the recycled material is severely downgraded and has very little use, quality or properties of the original composite material.

Molluscs

Abalone is the name of a group of large sea snails or molluscs. The shell is made of nacre a composite. Nacre is composed of hexagon platelets of aragonite, calcium carbonate (chalk) glued together with proteins and polysaccharides (sugars) to form elastic biopolymers. Abalone is twice as strong as any known ceramic. Its layered composite structure prevents shearing and provides compressive and tensile strength. This shell material deforms under stress and behaves like a metal. Abalone is an accumulative secreted medium a process similar to 3D printing and this technique is perfect for fabricating complex forms. 

Nacre like all of nature’s products is manufactured at ambient temperature using readily available non life threatening materials, here sugar and chalk. 

Nature has an ordered hierarchical structure, weaving from the atomic level to the macroscopic. This repetition is applied to all scales and provides the materials unique strength.

Structures built from a molecular level up have an inherent logic that dictates what bonds to what and how. This forms a pre-coded system of self-assembly.

This coding allows nature to work with templates that are site and condition specific. It builds exactly what it needs to the specification needed. There is no waste of either time or material.

At the end of its life the Abalone returns all it has used back to the sea. Its production cycle is fully cradle to cradle.

Material scientists are still unable to replicate the process of growing perfect crystalline structures and even further away from them being applied to mass production but the direction of future production is clear. The complex forms that can be constructed from secreted natural mediums will be far superior to processed sheet materials or toxic chemical moulds.

Aluminium

Aluminium is approximately 5 times more energy intensive than steel to produce although this only adds 15% to the cost of production over steel. Car manufacturing in aluminium requires additional tooling with increased complexity throughout the production process and this adds a total of 60%, including raw material production, over the cost of producing steel cars. However aluminium is 100% recyclable, it does not downgrade through the recycling process and uses 95% less energy to recycle than to produce from bauxite. Aluminium also weighs a third of steel. Complex shell moulding and bonding techniques can provide all of the protection and crumple zones required in a modern car. Aluminium can also be 3D printed to create complex crumple zones. There are many advantages in using aluminium for mass production including, availability, lightweight, corrosion resistance and the ability to recycle without downgrading. The additional cost of aluminium over steel is offset by efficient life cycle use and as aluminium an inherent high raw commodity value at the point of recycling.

Until we are able to understand how to build cars in a similar way that nature constructs the mollusc, from the molecular level up all at ambient temperature, aluminium is the transition medium of choice to be used for lighter mass produced cars just as gas is the transition medium as we move from coal to solar.

The Surrogate Twin. 

On 220916 a rumour was leaked to the investment press that Apple had approached McLaren as a possible takeover target. The rumour was denied by all involved but the possibility has raised some interesting issues.

1. It never ceases to amaze the shear scale of Apple Inc. Company valuations when they move beyond the stratospheric multi billion become difficult to contextualise. At the time of writing Apples valuation is just below $1tn (trillion) with a cash pile of $216b. McLaren is valued at $1.5b and Apple has recently paid $3b for Beats so as an acquisition McLaren is small fry. With Sterling down 17% post Brexit and down 29% since 2014 McLaren is in bargain territory.

2. The design link to McLaren via Foster and Partners is easy to comprehend with Foster working on the Apple store roll out as well as the new Apple HQ. Foster has also completed the McLaren HQ and the McLaren Production Centre. The three design approaches of Foster, Apple, McLaren all sit firmly in the same camp. In these firms design is evolutionary, symbiotic and painfully labour intensive with constant reworking and refining. This design approach benefits from large offices with multi-disciplinary teams that have an inherent rich R&D cross pollination.

3. Strategically what is Apple doing and has Apple lost its way? This is a question asked by many since the death of Steve Jobs.

I have neither reason nor qualification to question the strategy of a proven company such as Apple yet intellectual curiosity continues to think these things through and in writing my thoughts perhaps some clarity will prevail. I have always been an Apple customer and have bought Apple products since the mid 1980’s. Apple in that time have done a few upgrades that have annoyed but most of their products I have used extensively until they are either obsolete or eventually fall apart. I have no complaints with Apple products and will buy Apple again and again but I see little clarity in Apple’s strategic direction.

Apple is one of the most secret companies with much of its R&D located in separate buildings scattered across LA. This will soon change as Apple relocates to the new HQ in Cupertino bringing all of the Apple design departments under one roof and no-one really knows what Apple has planned. Apple has large financial reserves and could use this to push the company in any or many directions. It has recently moved towards luxury items and cars neither of which sit comfortably within the established Apple ecosystem. Apple has also consistently argued that it is primarily a hardware company, something that I have always questioned, although Apple has recently changed tack on this.

Cars and Luxury offer design glamour and it is understandable that the design team would push in this direction but is this where Apple should be moving? It is said in product design that ‘eventually everything becomes a toaster’, a standardised product sold by many competing manufacturers. With any new product as the competition catch up and any progressive product development plateaus the only way to maintain market share is on cost and margins become squeezed. There is of course brand loyalty but a toaster is a toaster and the customer will only pay so much premium for brand loyalty when every other toaster does exactly the same job. Margins can be maintained through quality and the move toward luxury goods can add the further premium of status but is this of relevance when using an everyday utility that due to technological advancements has a relatively short lifespan.

Apple has never wanted to be an IBM or a Hewlett Packard. Under Steve Jobs, throughout 1976-1985 Apple avoided developing the related products to computers i.e. printers, scanners, hard drives etc. Only when Steve Jobs lost control of Apple in 1985 did Apple wrongly diversify into a whole range of computer related products. When Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997 the first thing he did was to reduce the itinerary and concentrate on doing a few products very well, a wise move. Apple since the death of Steve Jobs under the leadership of Tim Cook have capitalised on the marketing, logistics and production of existing products or the existing product pipeline. Apple needs new products.

As an Apple user I equally value hardware and software, the two are inseparable. Apple software is intuitive, aesthetic, rarely crashes and has a high level of security. The software is integrated seamlessly across all of Apples products and it is this eco system that I am buying. If hardware design follows logical parameters, hardware will shrink moving slowly towards the point of invisibility. Commercially hardware is replaced every 6-8 years whereas software is constantly updated and can be regular income stream.

Apple has shown little interest in developing further computer related products and has stayed away from AI, VR, AR and also have avoided IOT products (Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Internet Of Things). All of this is in error and undervalues, the software and IOS established eco system, it undervalues customer loyalty and it misses out on the potential of VR, AR and IOT. As an Apple customer, if these products existed, I would buy a flat bed A3 Apple printer / scanner. I would expect it to be a cleaner design, smaller and more efficient than existing products on the market. For the home I would buy Apple thermostats and security cameras. I would buy Apple HDs and Apple home energy storage all of which would be integrated via the cloud. I would gladly pay Apple for the support and seamless integration of all of these devices into a controllable whole and therefor IOT would be my focus for Apple R&D.

The majority of home appliances are DC below 9V. Every appliance comes with its own transformer reducing the grid fed AC input current. All of the above IOT could wirelessly charge from a DC storage pack and be controlled via WiFi from the cloud. This would maximise the reach of Apples ecosystem and create revenue streams through upgrades, supports and running fees. At a later stage the car could be integrated with IOT as components from home to car could be swapped or have dual use. The products would all use the same power and run the same software. VR opens up huge entertainment, business and social networking potentials and this with time would integrate into the IOT described above.

Apple is renown for not always being first but for being best. Apple did not make the first smart phone or the first music playing flash drive but it took these products and set the standard for other manufacturers to follow. Perhaps in the Apple research labs sit all of the above just waiting on the market to be ready to accept them but there has been little news of this. Competition in the IOT market place will be fierce so perhaps letting the other majors slug out the initial rounds is the wise approach. Product interconnectivity, establishing cross product protocols etc. will leave many early entrants with obsolete equipment. Apple’s slow take up on IOT may be a deliberate strategy and the rumours of developing a car merely a diverting smoke screen. However if Apple grew first through IOT and then later added the car, the car would become an extension of the IOT environment. This reinterprets the car as a utility through which to access software and moves away from the historically established car interpretation of speed and status. The car would no longer be purely a mobility product but instead an extension of the home or rather an extension of the cloud and the resources of the cloud. It becomes a container of experience rather than the experience of movement. All hardware within the IOT facilitates the existential through access to the virtual and the cerebral.

IOT has been moving toward a point of convergence where embedded technologies in products are constantly pro-active monitoring and managing data. The net collects this data and uses it to be better tuned to the users needs. IOT builds the infrastructure for the information age with the smart home sitting in a smart grid together within a smart city. When technology is embedded the interface between the user and the product moves to the first person, third person remotes vanish. Control is more intuitive. Technology as a prosthetic extension, a tool, a car, a plane, becomes an atmospheric or environmental extension and this is totally new territory. Impose onto this AR and VR and the possible permutations are unfathomable.

The smart phone became the user interface for a range of traditional services and as such replaced those services. The smart phone took on the role of the camera, the book, the radio, the postman, the bank, the office, the games consul, the TV, the meeting room, the drawing board, the atlas, the sketch pad, the recording studio, the photo album, the library, the remote control, the newspaper, the medical monitor, the personal trainer, the language coach, the yoga instructor, the list keeps growing.

As the smart phone takes on these new roles the original appliance slowly disappears typically, the radio, the fax machine, the book, the TV and the camera. Group activities such as fitness or language become individual activities interacting with a virtual group. The virtual group may be thousands of miles away or disbursed across the globe or be augmented. This shrinks space time and condenses the experience whilst blurring cognition between virtual and real. Out dated objects become obsolete and yet the smart phone does not morph its form or increase in size to accommodate the acquisition of these obsolete products or activities and the rituals previously associated to products or activities are not carried over to the new medium of the smart phone. The generic language of interaction with the smart phone, swipe, expand, cut, paste, repeat etc. transcends all media. I play the violin on the smart phone using the same language as I would construct a painting or compose a document. This allows infinite access to cross disciplinary developments an expansion of the accessible territory of expression, a unique development in the history of man.

These are early days, presentations on IOT often consist of little more content than sales reps flogging thermostats and yet IOT as a self regulating, responsive and possibly augmented environment will have a impact beyond any technological development to date and Apple would want to be part of that ethnological experiment.

Images seven iconic Apple products:- The Macintosh Classic 1993, The iMac G3 1998, The iBook G3 1999, The G4 Cube 2000, The iPod 2 2002, The iMac G4 2002, The iPhone 7 2016,

The Surrogate Twin

In the 1890’s the automobile industry was in its infancy, three fuel sources contested to dominate this new technological marketplace that of steam, electric and petrol and all were on equal footing. Today in a world dominated by and with a long history of petrol fuelled cars one forgets that steam and electric at the turn of the century took an early lead. Steam already had 100 years of railway R&D and the steam engine had been about for nearly 200 years. Adapting a steam locomotive to the roads should not have posed too many problems. Electricity had a 200 year history with electric trams having 100 years of R&D. A full three years before Bertha Benz borrowed her husbands latest invention, the three wheeled Benz Patent Motorwagen and in 1888 performed one of the best marketing drives of all time, English and French companies were already producing batteries, dynamos, motors and controllers ready to supply the infrastructure needed for the dominant vehicle of choice, the electric car. Electric cars were easy to drive with a few hours tuition required. The motors required no preparation, there were less moving parts, they were relatively silent and made no pollution. In the late 1890’s electric cars had already set land speed records travelling at over 65mph (100kph). So why by the early 1910’s had they all but been forgotten in a world of petrol fuelled dominance?

We have to also remember that the automobile at the end of the 1890’s was never considered to be a possession but instead a hired utility. Very few people owned a horse and carriage especially in cities where space was at a premium. Carriages were hired, they were the cab companies, being an owner driver was never a desired Edwardian consideration. As such the driver was the invisible servant, he sat atop the carriage exposed to the elements and the carriages themselves were social spaces, warm and protected, people sat Vis å Vis. The cities were polluted, coal fires for housing, poor sewers and the streets were covered in horse manure and urine. When the potential for an electric car became an affordable reality the cab companies were the first to adopt them to replace horse and carriage. The cab companies already had city infrastructure for its horse carriages. This infrastructure could quickly be converted in whole or in part as charging and battery replacement stations for the new electric vehicles.

From 1900 to 1910 40% of all cars sold in the US were electric with only 22% being driven by the internal combustion engine. Most cars were only used in cities where range was not an issue and outside of cities roads were too poor to be used by any vehicles. Only later when smooth roads were built linking cities were longer journeys desirable. Early on electric vehicles were a superior technology. The 1899 Lohner-Porsche amongst others had numerous innovations including wheel hub motors, regenerative braking, an electronic / petrol hybrid variant, a slide out battery compartment for quick change instead of charging and although normally driven in full electric mode by two motors one on each front wheel a four wheel drive version was made. Unfortunately for electric vehicles the battery was always the weak link, it was heavy and had a low energy density and was further disadvantaged by extreme cold and poor charging infrastructure. The invention of an electronic start for the internal combustion engine and the production of Henry Ford’s first Model T, a car that sold at half the price of any electric vehicle, only hastened the demise of the electric car. As production increased on the Model T the purchase costs kept getting lower, speeding the downfall of the electric vehicles.

Commercial delivery electric vehicles ran on for a little longer. In Europe during the war years petrol was unobtainable so industries relied on electric power to shift heavy loads. In the UK electric delivery vehicles ran on through the 1960’s and 70’s, electric milk floats were a common site within the English townscape. By the 1960’s the problems caused by pollution produced by the internal combustion engine was a known entity especially in high-density countries like the UK. Town planning acts began to propose the expulsion of petrol vehicles from city centres and offered the idea of inner city traffic being all electric. Numerous electric micro cars were produced to support the planner’s ideas but many of these were poorly made and often looked more like large toys than real cars and they were never able to capture a commercial market. In the US in the early 1990’s General Motors produced the EV1, partly in response to the Middle Eastern oil crisis and partly as a solution to the LA smog. The EV1 was the first serious contender for a mass produced electric car but the oil and motor industries quickly realized that a car such as this would cut into their profit stream so they used their political might to terminate the project.

Historically there is a transitional period whenever a new technology is introduced. The transitional period is one of the most interesting as precedents are carried over from tangential industries and designers search for form through established typographies. For materials examples would be stone imitating timber in classical architecture, steel imitating timber and stone in Victorian architecture, plastics imitating numerous other materials. In design examples would be the computer or the radio, in architecture the Chicago skyscrapers desperate search for an aesthetic language to deal with the new multi-storey buildings, in transport the transition from horse and carriage to horseless carriage. All of these transition periods search for a visual aesthetic whilst further related material innovations push the medium. Eventually a winning combination materializes and with the acceptance of a new material or technology its individual merits can be exploited. Similarly as the aesthetic language for a new product becomes established and focused continued refinements ensure rapid innovative development; the radio, the TV, the computer, the train, the car, the plane, all being typical examples. In the free for all of the early days designers and inventors test their ideas with eclectic crude prototypes. Usually these prototypes have a strong bias towards one aspect of the design, often they can be very wide of the target e.g flapping machines for flight, but sometimes they are only off target as technology or society were not ready, sometimes good ideas get lost as bad ideas receive better marketing or funding. People are always looking for the shortest and easiest route to profit or problem solve and the shortest route is not always the best e.g. DDT, chlorofluorocarbons, pre-fabricated tower blocks. With regards to transport as the internal combustion engine gained dominance its embedded finance and technology make it ever harder to displace by alternatives.

With the recent resurgence of electric vehicles again, design moves through another transitional phase where precedent dictates form……electric vehicles look like cars, they have a bonnet and boot, they have a grill and radiator vent, they have a central transmission tunnel, they have dials, switches and knobs, they are obsessed with speed and the image of speed, none of which have anything to do with the future role of the electric vehicle. If autonomous driving becomes an everyday reality by the 2020 ETA expected the driver will once again sit metaphorically outside the carriage. If the electric vehicle becomes further integrated with the home and the Internet Of Things as would be logical, sharing components, battery packs, charging systems, information, interchangeable motors, servos and other parts, it may be worth considering the electric car of the very near future as a detachable room.

Assuming that we achieve autonomous electric vehicles the majority would probably be available to lease cab services, bus services and delivery services. One would imagine that the majority of inner city over ground transport to be first implemented would be small utility vehicles. Even large loads could be delivered via electric vehicles from distribution centres outside the inner city, again these would be shared and leased. The vehicles may be little more than electronic platforms onto which containers, cranes etc. could be loaded. If the electric vehicle is no longer a possession, the car designer’s obsession with speed and status become obsolete. Aerodynamic forms at sub 30mph inner city speeds become questionable. Shared cabs become social spaces, single person and double person transport would be little more than an enclosed chair, any distance travel may have a sleep pod.

Future design solutions to yet unknown requirements will invent new forms that will sit above a platform of batteries and sensors. The platform has no front or back as it will travel equally in either direction, with four wheel steering probably also sideways. We are again in an interesting transitional period not dissimilar to the beginning of the twentieth century and perhaps there are lessons to be learnt from the many ideas that were shelved during that exciting period of pioneering development however eccentric they may look now.

Images chronological order left to right

1835 Sibrandus Stratingh, c1898 Jeantaud electric cab, 1899 Lohner Porsche, 1899 Hippolyte Romanov,  1902 Studebaker,  c1914 Waverly Electric, 1912 Baker Electric,

The Surrogate Twin

In the last decade computers working with 3D printers have become the front line of design and innovation in which fashion has been no exception. Computers create and visualise the previously unimaginable completing three-dimensional compositions of such complexity that they would have formally been impossible to either draw or craft. This new 3D medium is forcing exciting cross discipline collaborations as designers, architects and computer artists work together to explore the new spatial possibilities. The shoe and the bag are strange fashion accessories but the way they hold volume and space may be the architects attraction. As all architects must design a chair the shoe is becoming the fashion equivalent of the must do project or collaboration project. As can be seen by the work above the results have all been positive pushing limits in new aesthetic directions and forms. 

Images from left to right – Ben Van Berkel, Ross Lovegrove, Michael Young, Fernando Romero, Zaha Hadid x2, Iris Van Herpen.

The Surrogate Twin

The Aram showroom at 110 Drury Lane has a small gallery on its upper level. On display through to 02.07.16 is some of the industrial design work of the Foster + Partners studio. In typical understatement the products on display were everything expected – extremely professional and as always, despite their aesthetic simplicity extremely complex. I have always admired Foster + Partners as they are the architectural equivalent of Apple, McLaren or Volkswagen. All these companies have an evolutionary approach to design where models are constantly developed and tested. Good ideas from previous designs roll over into future designs, being upgraded, made more efficient, elegant or production friendly on route. The Nomos table being a typical example where the 1981 table originally built for the Fosters own studio was a fairly crude adaptation of an existing drawing board, this is refined when used in the Renault building and refined again when mass produced by Tecno.

The show has a combination of early sketch models, working models, production stage models and finished pieces. The crudity of some of the early concept pieces and models lends us mere mortals hope when we next look at the first sketch of our latest project. Knowing that all ideas are first conceived on the back of an envelope as a sketch or a quickly made cardboard model and only with considerable work, skill and time do they develop into useable pieces of merit. The Foster industrial products on display are very much the resolve of teams of designers, each with a specialised input and the sophisticated concluding piece is an agglomeration of these inputs.

Some of the lighting pieces therefore are particularly complex. The Lumina Dot light a simple disc LED pendant lamp being one. LED’s give off a considerable amount of heat which is usually absorbed by a large heat sink. In Dot the LED’s are cooled by a fluid that runs through a tube connecting the lower LED disc to the heat sink in the larger reflector. The cooling fluid turns to vapour and transfers the heat to the heat sink. The vapour would then cool return to liquid and the cycle would continue. This in itself would be a beautiful diagram to see. Unfortunately there is little information at the exhibition and it takes the trained eye quite some time to work out what is going on. Why a product takes a certain form or how components were fabricated is what makes these exhibitions interesting and educational so please more information. Sadly students of design still naively believe that design is about inventing endless shapes and forms and increased design and production information at exhibitions such as this would help knowledge transfer.

It is an exhibition I will revisit as I still have too many unanswered whys? Why cast the heat sink? Why does any light product require so many parts? Why use Ductal concrete? Why cant we touch, feel the weight or texture of a material? The biggest why for me would be this - why does Foster + Partners find it so difficult to deliver organic forms and are happier with pure geometries. There are numerous talented students leaving the Bartlett each year that have an eye for soft complex computer derived geometries and many head straight to Fosters. Perhaps those at the top of the Foster hierarchy should loosen the reigns a little so that those in the office that are not yet associates may show what they can do?