The personal site of Manolis Kelaidis, Designer / Engineer
I am a designer, engineer and researcher based in London.
My interest lies in working on innovation-driven, conceptually challenging and interdisciplinary projects; large or small scale; product or experience; physical or digital.
My last and mostly discussed work is Blink, an awarded technology for connecting paper books to the digital world and founding a start-up to develop paper products based on conductive ink technologies.
Past experience spans across industrial, book and exhibition design, aeronautical enginnering, scientific and design research, business planning and postgraduate lecturing for clients and employers like SONY, Roche, O2, ETH Zurich and Royal College of Art.
If you have an interesting project, do get in touch.
Books have inherent qualities that make make them an ireplacable medium even today. They have survived unchanged for centuries making them one of the most familiar and best-selling products. For a particular type of user experience they simply have not been bettered.
However, digital media (portable devices, touch-screens etc.) has been offering seductive new possibilities to the user, especially in terms of their level of interactivity.
Can these two worlds, the digital and the physical, co-exist in a product that would offer the benefits of both?
Walls swinging, floors trembling, rain falling and ants walking; every object in our environment has a whisper that is often undetectable to the human ear.
What if these sounds were audible?
How would that change our aural awareness, perception of space and attitude towards objects?
Would it make it possible to 'compose' our own soundtrack using our walls and objects as new forms of instruments?
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe assigned six designers from the RCA to develop an advanced design project that would form part of the launch of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in 2005.
"Devices such as the PSP are simultaneously public and private objects; they encourage shared experience but demand a degree of isolation and immersion; and proximity is much a factor as mobility.
How do designers address the immateriality and relatively new language of use of these devices, and what impact will they have on patterns of living in the future?
An initiative for global design collaboration supported by the Arts Council of England, The Intelligent Alternative Beijing and the UK Interdisciplinary Arts Department.
In summer 2005 RCA designers relocated to Beijing to take part in a collaboration with Chinese designers and artists within an environment of large-scale Olympic preparations and increasing contradictions between the old and the new.
A sample of engineering research work.
Smart structures, composite materials, aircraft design, stress analysis, CAD/CAM.