packaging as content

November 25, 2009

Be still, my close-packed heart

Loving this polyhedral bottle concept—(that I just saw yesterday on the dieline)—from the Lisbon-based design studio, Pedrita. Love at first sight, even.

Perhaps my love is that of a delusional stalker, but I somehow feel that it was meant to be. Did I not just last year lament the absence of any rhombic-dodecahedral or truncated-octahedral, close-packing packages? And now suddenly, here are truncated-octahedral bottles!

A package, shaped like this was preordained, I tell you. By me. (Still waiting for my lovely rhombic-dodecahedral packs, however.)

(More, after the fold…)

Also foretold last year: the connection between packaging and polyhedral models.

On the polyhedral nature of the project, Pedrita has this to say:

This bottle’s shape results from an application of space-filling
scientific models to packaging design. Found in rock formations, plants
and other cellular structures, these models can also be generated by
mathematical and geometrical calculations. Both natural elements and
theoretical models seek a rational and continuous subdivision of
three-dimensional space, applicable to the design of new forms and
structures. From the thirteen Archimedean solids to complex
architectural structures digitally generated by parametric formulas,
the possibilities for new space-filling forms, elements and systems are
as limitless as they are enthralling.

The elementary form of LH2O results from the intersection of two
geometric solids: a simple cube (bottle neck and cap) and a truncated
cube (package). The main volume’s 17 faces—five square and 12
hexagonal, identical faces—allow for an endless number of bottles to
be regularly grouped together in several configurations that suppress
empty space between them.

Each of these “three-dimensional space-filling modules” significantly
optimizes the processes of storage and transportation, reduces the
amount of material (Polyethylene Terephthalate, or PET) used in the
bottle and creates a greater impact in the final product’s display.

–from Pedrita’s website

Note: a “truncated cube” is exactly the same as a “truncated octahedron.” (Cube and octahedron are each other’s duals.) But again I’ll say: if you’re talking close-packing polyhedra with regular faces, the possibilities are not really “limitless.” There are only five and this is one of them.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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