This will be a reflective post about the insights we generated whilst playing and experimenting with lightweight materials. I will try to share some thoughts that we will also present in our Workshop about flying objects.

As we were working on building a glider out of styrofoam material we noticed, that what is so special about this material is it’s lightness and rigidity. Depending on what kind of styrofoam you are using you will get up to ten times the lightness that the same amount of paper would have. That makes it the perfect material to construct flying objects with it. Of course, one needs the ability to produce thin sheets of styrofoam, because a whole block wouldn’t fly – or wouldn’t fly that good. Therefore we developed a technique to use a hot wire to cut styropor-sheets that are approximately 1mm thick. We were using styro-blocks as well as semi-manufactured forms to be able to quickly produce airplane-like forms for a workshop.

When looking at the material on a macroscopic level, it is solid and flexible. When putting it under a microscope we can recognize the microscopic structure which makes the characteristics: air-bubbles. The material is nothing more than synthetic with air in it. Some shots that we took visualize this fact.