-
LSIWC’s Economic Impact and Industry Collaboration (2019–2025)
The activities of the Latvian State Institute of Wood Chemistry (LSIWC) between 2019 and 2025 demonstrate how scientific innovation is transformed into new materials, industrial products, and even technologies for space missions. This visual and analytical report highlights the institute’s role in advancing a sustainable bioeconomy by analysing research trends, funding structures, and industry collaboration.…
-
Beauty That Does Not Fly
Once, I read an interview in which an aircraft designer said of a particular airplane that it would not fly because it was ugly.At the time, this statement seemed almost anecdotal – an aesthetic whim disguised as professional conviction. Yet the longer I reflected on it, the clearer it became: the issue was not appearance.…
-
Innovation Is a Chain: The Role of the Middle Segment in Turning Ideas into Technology
In one television conversation with an experienced engineer, I once heard a strikingly accurate formulation: “You cannot sell a technology if you have nowhere to show the process.” He explained that new solutions used to be demonstrated in a factory, where a client could see how materials behaved, how the process unfolded, and where real…
-
Boundary Matter
Wood is a material that resists binary thinking. It is not merely an “element” of nature, nor is it a man-made artifact. Wood is a boundary matter, existing in an intermediate state – where nature turns into culture, and culture continues to preserve the memory of nature. In this sense, wood is an ontological transition.…
-
Packaging as an Existential Phenomenon: Form, Boundary, and Responsibility
In everyday life, we take packaging for granted – it protects the contents, facilitates transport, and then disappears from view, ending up in landfills. Yet, through the lens of existential phenomenology, packaging is more than a functional object – it is a structuring element in our relationship with the world, with things, and with ourselves.…
-
Biochar as a World-Shaping Substance: A New Materialist Perspective
In sustainability discourse, biochar is often interpreted as a symbol of green technologies – an alternative to fossil carbon and a promise of a cleaner future. However, this perspective risks reducing the material to its representational meaning, neglecting its active presence in the material world. New materialism offers an alternative understanding: it encourages us to…
Subscribe
Enter your email below to receive updates.
empiricux.com 