Swedish design agency, Tomorrow Machine has developed a biodegradable bottle made from a potato starch-based material that can be peeled away like fruit skin and then eaten or dissolved in water.
The concept is being developed with global company Eckes Granini for its juice brand Brämhults.
Little signals
Little signals is a series of interaction experiments and thought starters on how we can foster new behaviours and relationships with our technology.
As digital technology matures, humans will require subtle background signals rather than the constant pings and alerts from our devices.
Natsai Audrey Chieza works at the intersection of biology and design, and wants to show how living organisms can make sustainable materials
Silk dyed as part of Project Coelicolor
Toby Coulson
Designer Natsai Audrey Chieza has an unusual creative partner: the soil-dwelling bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor. Under the right conditions, S. coelicolor produces a pigmented compound, which Chieza uses to dye fabric and garments in patterned hues of pink, purple and blue. “It dyes textiles in a colourfast manner with barely any water and no chemicals,” Chieza says. “In many ways, that's the definition of a natural dye.”
Chieza has been working with her “companion species” since 2011 and this year launched Faber Futures, a London-based biodesign lab that aims to help other researchers and companies harness the power of living organisms to develop their own sustainable materials. “Project Coelicolor is a great way to say, ‘This is what we did with this micro-organism; let us help you figure out what to do with yours,’” she says
Regardless the industry, Chieza hopes that biodesign can lead the way to more sustainable means of production, helping manufacturers to shift away from petroleum-based materials, divest from fossil fuels and reduce waste. With Faber Futures, she is also keen to develop an ethical framework for working with living organisms. “If we can engineer life, that means science has become a design space," she says.
University of Brighton
BA (Hons) 3D Design + Craft
Pearce's project 'Boundaries of Control' uses a simple piece of equipment to hand blow waste plastic, celebrating the untamed and animated properties which we rarely see in everyday mass produced products. From this process, he has created a range of lighting sculptures that encourages to think about our use of plastic and the potential of what we throw away.
Crayola Beauty has teamed up with Asos to create is a new vegan, a cruelty-free make up line aimed at 20-somethings.
The collection uses Crayolas playful heritage. The majority of the products come in a stick formula similar to brands like Nudestix, Milk Makeup, and Nars, who all stock easy-to-use chubby pencil-inspired cosmetics.
Among the products are:
95 total shades.
24 shades of stick foundation.
five palettes (three eye, one face, and one color changing lipstick).
cheek crayons.
mascaras.
makeup brushes.
Sony's latest research project was exhibited at Milan 2018. Sony suggests a move away from our current phone dependency to a more poetic interaction which engage our senses.
Smart sensors gathered information from visitors’ actions to deliver a variety of awe-inspiring surprises. These included a virtual butterfly flying away as a vase was moved across the table, and a wall projection of a flower opening upon a person’s approach.
Moving lights, changing surfaces, colourful wall projections and haptic feedback provided a glimpse of future interiors in which humans and furniture seamlessly and intuitively interact.
Growroom by Ikea
Ikea has released free instructions to allow anyone to build The Glowroom, a spherical garden which allows an entire community to grow their own food and encourage socializing and community bonds to form.
SPACE10 envision a future, where we grow our own food much more locally. To spark conversations about how we can bring nature back into our cities, grow our own food and tackle the rapidly increasing demand for significantly more food in the future, we teamed up with architects Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum to create The Growroom. Standing tall as a spherical garden, it empowers people to grow their own food much more locally in a beautiful and sustainable way.
From Taipei to Helsinki and from Rio de Janeiro to San Francisco, the original version of The Growroom sparked interest and people requested to either buy or exhibit The Growroom. But it doesn’t make sense to promote local food production and then start shipping it across oceans and continents. That is why we now release The Growroom as open source design and encourage people to build their own locally as a way to bring new opportunities to life.
https://medium.com/space10-the-farm/space10-open-sources-the-growroom-aa7ca6621715#.d3k67ajwh
Recent graduate from the Royal College of Art Johanna Schmeer considers the future of food based on her knowledge of the possibilities afforded by nanotechnology. Creating a series of synthetic foods for a future whereby the worlds growing population needs to tap into new resources she conceives how products made from enzyme enhanced bio plastics would in theory harvest essential nutrients as alternatives to traditional food sources.
Built on fact, her project is based on a recent scientific breakthrough by scientist Russell Johnson, who has identified a way to synthesise functioning biological cells made from plastics.
Adding a smattering of fantasy based on this fact, Johanna has created 7 food products that fulfil the essential food groups. For instance they produce water, sugar, fat, minerals and proteins. These speculative objects secrete powders and liquids that could be ingested in our distant future.
http://vimeo.com/98281097
Envisioning a future whereby digital technology has superseded analogue cooking, Marjorie Artieres visualises the domestic kitchen in 2024 where 3D printers are commonplace. 3D printing food has provided perfect nutrition, no waste and issues surrounding food shortages, but with it has come uniformly shaped, processed & diagnostically perfect pods of food that has removed the pleasure and rituals of cooking.
Her Note by Note project offers a laboratory style tool kit for creating and recapturing the heritage of analogue cooking that has been lost with the rise of the digital kitchen.
Unlike cooking today, her future kitchen proposal has no recipes, instead Note by Note uses experimental and innovative cooking to create a new repertoire of flavours, textures and colours.
Artieres's project is as a provocation to technologists to re think the future of cooking with passion and taste rather than just necessity.
http://vimeo.com/98531837
The brilliant Daan Rooesgarde who has already brought us light up highways, glowing trees as replacement for street lamps and anti smog parks in Beijing has unveiled his latest project - a luxury ring that is a bi product of his fight against urban pollution. Still in its design phase, the ring will be a metal band housing a clear central stone that will house smog particles that have been extracted from Beijing city air in the smog parks themselves. The black dust, which is made up mostly of carbon soot from coal will symbolise a cubic kilometer of smog that each ring has cleared from the skies.
In addition he wants to develop a higher end version whereby he presses the dirty air particles and turns them into a valuable stone that resembles a diamond.
Playing with notions of luxury and tackling an issue head on this project is both poetic and practical.
Designers have invented an edible water bottle that uses algae and a process borrowed from the molecular gastronomy industry. The holy grail of the bottled water industry - this prototype titled The Ooho has been created by Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, Pierre Paslier and Guillaume Couche. It works by holding water inside a transparent membrane that can be made in different sizes.
The technique itself is not new and was infact first developed by scientists in 1946 but was popularised again when El Bulli chef Ferran Adria used it for his unique recipes. Called spherification its a method of shaping liquids into spheres.
The flexible skin around the water is edible and made up of a combination of calcium chloride and brown algae and according to the designers is resistant, hygienic and biodegradable.
DNA testing and genetic modification are not new, but what is interesting is that a series of designers are looking to explore the ethics of this in a rash of projects coupled with advancements in DNA sequencing. Researchers have recently developed a technique that uses genetic analysis to create a computer composite of what the person looks like. In an article in the New Scientist, the team captured images of 600 volunteers across ethnic backgrounds to build up a link between genes affects on facial structure based on sex and race. New Scientist had one of their writers volunteer their DNA with very accurate results. Commenting on issues surrounding privacy and ownership of DNA Artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo has created a DNA vending machine that dispenses human genetic material. The DNA Vending Machine replaces snacks with samples of peoples genetic code which can then be bought.
http://vimeo.com/72085813#at=0
Also driven by a social comment on a patent granted in 2013 that would allow a gene perfecting system for future parents to control the characteristics of their children, Ben Landau showed his First Gift Blanket during Dutch Design week last year.
A modern take on the heirloom blanket to be passed from generation to generation the blanket has interwoven into it familial DNA sequencing putting into question the value of our personal data. Alongside the blanket he also asked visitors to donate their DNA for sequence testing.
Pushing the boundaries of experience with smell and taste shows no sign of abating. The latest project to explore this subject is Molecule-R, who specialise in molecular gastronomy. Their product Aromafork is designed to elevate and enhance the eating experience via smell and taste combined. Based on the fact that most of what we taste is actually triggered by our sense of smell, the fork uses blotting paper that the user can infuse with a chosen scent to include bubble gum and wasabi. The fork adds the experience of taste through the added scent.
Citing it as a 'culinary revolution' the fork is ready to pre order now.
Speculative designer Amy Congdon considers a future where biotechnology will give designers a new set of materials and tools to work with. Believing that future materials will be grown from cells she suggests a range of jewellery that is grown from our bones, skin and cartilage. Envisioning a future 2082 her ‘Bio Nouveau’ collection replaces cosmetic surgery with tissue engineered disposable biological atelier pieces. In order to care for these semi living body adornments she has created a fictional range of body care products that include Graft Moisturiser & tone, SynSkin treatment and Graft Aftercare and Bioskin glue.
Personalised service subscription box experiences have been making waves for a while with consumers looking for unique and personal with the likes 'not another bill' and Bluum, but the latest in the bespoke offerings comes out of a necessity rather than a desire which will make it a huge success. pillpack is a full service pharmacy that ships prescribed medications to customers doors in personalised individual packs that are organised by date and time. Keeping everything simple and personal the box pack uses simple infographics indicating medication type and helps the users navigate their way through what can be a complicated cocktail of drugs.
There have been a few projects exploring the rituals of beauty and exploring the narratives of alchemy and process and here is the latest from materials alchemist Sarah Linda Forrer. A recent graduate from Design Academy Eindhoven, Sarah explores materials, experience and 'atmospheres'. As part of her graduation project she has designed a series of mystical skin care tools that are inspired by the ancient Egyptians belief that beauty was a sign of holiness.
Fascinated by the idea that cosmetics could be used beyond aesthetic purposes, but to include magical and ritualistic experiences, Sarah has explored exciting materiality and design outcomes.
Her collection of skin care tools are almost future soft fossils exploring texture and tactility. She has for example mixed patterned hard wood from the Alpine river with bubbles of rubber as a cleansing tool and Alabaster stone as a spoon to mix oils and powders.
