Project Ara

Inspired by haute couture sneakers, Lapka developed environment sensors for Google’s modular smartphone, tailored to user’s functional and aesthetic preferences.

Project Ara is a development effort to create a modular hardware ecosystem – rivaling mobile apps in the pace and level of innovation – around smartphones, with the goal of delivering the mobile internet to the next 5 billion people.

It all starts with an endoskeleton, or “endo,” the structural frame and data backbone of the device. The user can populate the endo with “modules,” the building blocks that make up the vast majority of the phone’s functionality and features.

The modules can be easily and safely inserted and removed at any time, even while the device is powered on. The modules also have user-replaceable covers or “shells,” which provide a creative canvas for users to make their phone look exactly as they wish. Ultimately, customers will be able to buy a complete Ara phone, configure one from scratch, or buy additional modules through the Ara Module Marketplace.

Lapka created a separate line of accessories in order to support Ara’s eco-system, developing a concept of Project Ara modules. Design language inspiration for this collection is based on hi-end, designer sneakers with the most unique combinations of materials and textures.

Lapka have imagined seven modules based on their current and possible product line following the Environment (four devices that measure radiation, electromagnetic fields and humidity) and Body (a breathalyzer that measures the amount of alcohol in your blood through your breath and connects with your phone to give you a reading) grid.

The accessories developed by Lapka explore body network and personal environment, from blood and urine to radiation and carbon monoxide.