Living Glass

Came across this nice little project that uses muscle wire while searching for some resources regarding Arduino and muscle wire. Here it is... from the Make Blog.

Ever since I bought the Muscle Wire Project Book in the mid '90s and experimented with the "Flexinol" shape memory alloy I bought with it, I've been fascinated by this material. I've also been amazed at how few applications SMA has enjoyed in the real world since then. There appears to be a recent growth in real-world applications, in fields like medicine and aviation. New York-based architecture firm, The Living, have been demoing their concept for using SMA to create "living glass," breathable surfaces that open up like fish gills using MCU-controlled SMA. Their presentation documents, in decent detail, how they went about the process. While this may or may not be a workable idea for walls and windows, hopefully it'll get people thinking. SMA continues to seem like a really cool, futuristic technology in search of worthy apps. I mean, look at Flexon...

Living Glass presentation - [via] Link