HyperEthereal eyewear wins Rado Star Prize 2016

Matteo Agati is the winner of the competition launched by Rado for students of the Istituto Marangoni School of Design and School of Fashion, who are motivated to focus their research on the use of materials in ways that are both innovative and avant-garde. Agati won with his HyperEthereal project, a collection of eyeglasses, parts of which become invisible on contact with the human body thanks to the combination of innovative materials. The base is in polycarbonate, a thermoplastic polymer that can be coloured or transparent and has good thermal conductivity; the plastic is fused with thermochromic pigments that change colour depending on the temperature: the eyeglasses are completely black when not in use and coloured when worn; lastly, the frame is coated with a sol-gel film that gives the polymer the characteristic of “hyper-transparency”.