Every man knows that a cardboard box ain’t just a cardboard box. With enough imagination, a cardboard box can be mother-loving rocketship.
Especially if the man in possession of that box is an engineer.
That’s the takeaway of Lexus’s new collaboration with UK-based design firm LaserCut Works, a fully functional replica of the new IS 300h made out of cardboard. Yes, fully functional. Yes, cardboard.
Says one of the Peter Pans who worked on the project: “There’s the art of making something, and then there’s the art within the beauty of design seen in the finished product.”
Using a digital 3D model, they fabricated 1,700 sheets of precision cut cardboard, each plank 10mm thick, and glued them together by hand.
They set it on a steel and aluminum frame and added an electric motor. Other than that, it’s straight origami.
They had to wait 10 minutes between laying planks for the glue to dry. Meaning: it took about 283 hours to assemble
Not bad for a month’s work.
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