Things Fall Together

A Guide to the New Materials Revolution

Skylar Tibbits

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780691170336
• eBook ISBN: 9780691189710
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Product Design
• Index: Technology & Engineering

From the visionary founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, a manifesto for the dawning age of active materials

Things in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Personal items deteriorate. Yet today's researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that physically sense, adapt, and fall together instead of apart. These materials open new directions for industrial innovation and challenge us to rethink the way we build and collaborate with our environment. Things Fall Together is a provocative guide to this emerging, often mind-bending reality, presenting a bold vision for harnessing the intelligence embedded in the material world.

Drawing on his pioneering work on self-assembly and programmable material technologies, Skylar Tibbits lays out the core, frequently counterintuitive ideas and strategies that animate this new approach to design and innovation. From furniture that builds itself to shoes printed flat that jump into shape to islands that grow themselves, he describes how matter can compute and exhibit behaviors that we typically associate with biological organisms, and challenges our fundamental assumptions about what physical materials can do and how we can interact with them. Intelligent products today often rely on electronics, batteries, and complicated mechanisms. Tibbits offers a different approach, showing how we can design simple and elegant material intelligence that may one day animate and improve itself—and along the way help us build a more sustainable future.

Compelling and beautifully designed, Things Fall Together provides an insider's perspective on the materials revolution that lies ahead, revealing the spectacular possibilities for designing active materials that can self-assemble, collaborate, and one day even evolve and design on their own.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures.

3D printing, 10; active products and, 69, 72–73; computing and, 15, 18; customization and, 138–40; error correction and, 140; gravity and, 138–39; limitations of, 138; liquid metal, 141, 142; multimaterial, 73, 80; rapid liquid printing (RLP) and, 138–41; robots and, 80, 82; textiles and, 69; wood and, 123

4D printing, 79–85, 143

activation energy: disassembly and, 149; Goldilocks principle and, 48; order and, 46, 48; pressure and, 46, 145, 161; vibration and, 46

active matter: advances in, 162; education for designers of, 158; order and, 42; periodic table for, 161; programming matter and, 7, 12–13, 42, 57, 158, 161–62

Active Matter Summit, 175n3

active products: 3D printing and, 69, 72–73; adaptability and, 66, 70–75; biomaterial and, 74–75; bottom-up assembly and, 130; common platform and, 160–65; complexity and, 67–69, 73; contraction and, 71, 73; control and, 70; efficiency and, 72; error correction and, 58–61; fabrication and, 66, 69, 74; flexibility and, 67, 68; functionality and, 70; geometry and, 67–69; manufacturing and, 67–73, 75; material properties and, 57, 70, 73, 75; moisture and, 71, 72–73; nature and, 69, 73; Self-Assembly Lab and, 66, 68, 71, 74; sensors and, 74; static products and, 66–67, 69, 75; synthetics and, 75; textiles and, 66–75; wood and, 66

actuators, 11, 32, 74, 77, 85–87, 92, 117

adaptability: 3D printing and, 82; 4D printing and, 84–85; ac...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Programming Matter
• Computing Is Physical
• Order from Chaos
• Less Is Smart
• Robots without Robots
• Build from the Bottom Up
• Design from the Bottom Up
• Reverse, Reuse, Recycle
• The Future of Matter Is Evolving
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Image Credits