Firefighters To Find Their Way Out Of Burning Buildings With… Glowing Neon Balls?

1:15AM October 23, 2008 | John Mahoney

Life Pebbles won the grand prize award at the Seoul Design Competition, promising to help firefighters combat the disorientation of a burning by dropping a trail of neon-glowing capsules like Hansel-and-Gretel-style breadcrumbs on the way in. Interesting, perhaps, but at a time when location-aware augmented reality via all kinds of heads-up displays (and even mobile phones) is becoming more reality than dream, is a canister of periodically dropped glowing neon balls inspired by a fucking creepy 16th-century fairy tale really the answer to this problem? [Aving]



Comments

  • LUIS LLAMAS

    February 13, 2009 at 7:13 AM

    The image in my mind: Me trying to find a loose nut that just went rolling down the floor!

    I’ve seen this winning project from the Seoul Olympiads but somehow i fail to understand why everyone else can’t understand the fact that spherical pebbles tend to ROLL.. who knows, maybe out of sight? in a possible caotic environment as say in a building going up in flames. Maybe a small change in the FORM of the luminescent pebbles would perhaps keep it from rolling away fro the path. Wouldn’t it?

    This said, i think there is a beauty in this design as an analogy for Hanzel and Grettel’s story.

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