Skip to Content
Uncategorized

The Blade Keeper

A simple sustainable design captures the unsustainable practice of storing used blades for disposal.
June 7, 2008

I visited the Boston architectural firm Shepley Bulfinch about a month ago to give a lecture with professor Kyna Leski, of RISD. When I first began to design, I recall being fascinated by the importance of having a sharp blade in addition to a fine-tip pen. The pen, of course, was absolutely un-dangerous. The blade, however, was always a source of fear because when it became dull, you would want to either replace it or snap off the tip to get a new sharp blade. This created the built-in problem of having to figure out what one does with the leftover blade bits.

Novice or generally irresponsible creatives are known to simply leave the bits lying around on tables. Although un-sharp, they’re sufficiently sharp enough to puncture the skin. Ouch. This simple juice-bottle design is a classic solution to a significant problem, and it successfully adopts the sustainable theme of reuse. On the other hand, the un-sustainable aspect is embodied by the act of disposable blades. We live in an un-thinking yet thoughtful world.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.

How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language

For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.

Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?

An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.

Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death

Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.