Be Open think tank

#BeOpenDESIGN The Oasis developed by Korean designer Hyeona Cho is a smart home farm enabling users to grow their own greens and store them before consuming them. Inspired by mountains and desert oasis, the design comprises a mini-greenhouse with a transparent cover. The device uses the principle of hydroponic farming, i.e. the art of growing plants without soil. What makes The Oasis different is a compartment called Fresh Keeper where one can store vegetables they harvested without needing to move them to the refrigerator. The smart farm comes with an app that monitors the plants growth and water levels. More smart urban farms in our blog

#BeOpenDESIGN As an alternative to glassmaking that involves a lot of highly processed materials, design student Lulu Harrison and a group of London-based architects Bureau de Change have come up with Thames Glass, a new biomaterial created by mixing the quagga mussel shell with local sands and waste wood ash. Quagga is a species of freshwater mussels, usually found clogging up the water pipes. Water suppliers in London area spend millions of pounds every year in attempts to remove these shells and sometimes ineffectively. So far, the team has used Thames Glass to produce 3D printed tiles with decorative patterns inspired by the terracotta chimney pots of ceramics manufacturer Royal Doulton; but they also want to use them to design carafes and tumblers in the future.

#BeOpenDESIGN London-based designer and Kingston School of Art graduate Oksana Bondar has created a dressing table stool jokingly called Wiggy by combining human hair with Polylactic Acid (PLA) – a biodegradable plastic made from corn starch or sugar cane. It took approximately three bin bags worth of hair collected by the designer from her local hair salon in London over a period of three weeks to make the stool. Bondar put the hair in soapy water and felted it together by rubbing the hair strands to form a matted cluster. This was then sealed in PLA bioplastic using a CNC-cut mould made from chipboard. According to the designer, the solid material she devised can easily replace plastic injected moulds or plywood. More alternative uses to human hair in our blog

#BeOpenDESIGN Aiming to revitalise abandoned infrastructure and improve mobility and connectivity between rural areas and cities in northern Germany, Lea Haats, Erik Mantz-Hansen and Konstantin Wolf have teamed up to develop a concept of a new electric tram system to run on repurposed railway routes. Called Abacus, the proposal is a hop-on, hop-off system. Passengers can hail the tram to a halt through the simple gesture of waving that is recognised by on-board cameras. The rails run asymmetrically on one side of the track to leave enough space for pedestrians and cyclists. This way, the path itself and the surrounding nature are given central importance.

#BeOpenDESIGN Imagine drinking your coffee out of a cup made of coffee. Kreis Cup is a reusable biodegradable cup made from used coffee grounds and plant-based materials, free of petroleum-based plastics. To create the cup, coffee grounds are dried, treated, and then suspended in a natural, plant-based polymer, which has a faint, unmistakable smell of coffee. The bio-based polymer binder, which holds the grounds together, is also food-safe, heat-resistant, dishwasher-safe, and incredibly resilient, unlike reusable ceramic mugs. Once it reaches the end of its lifespan, the Kreis Cup disintegrates easily into the soil, turning into a nutrient-rich fertilizer for the soil. The product comes as a set of three products – a travel mug with a detachable sipper lid, a cup, and a saucer to complement the cup.

#BeOpenDESIGN On discovering that bovine bones have electrical insulation properties, Souhaïb Ghanmi, graduate from ECAL (école cantonal d'art de Lausanne) in Switzerland, has conceived a range of light switches and electric outlets made from this by-product of the meat industry. The Elos range features sinuous silhouettes modelled on different parts of the skeleton. The inspiration for the shape of the socket is the structure of the head of a femur that is capable of rotating in its baseplate like a hip joint, while the switches are designed with the shaft bone in mind. All fittings are made from bone powder mixed with a bio-based binder, and the designer hopes that his project can help to break our reliance on fossil plastics while reducing the shocking amount of more than 130 billion kilograms of bone waste discarded by slaughterhouses annually.

#BeOpenDESIGN Coralie Haegeman, student of Design and Innovation course at L'École de design Nantes Atlantique, France, has developed a nomadic desk that allows elementary school students be mobile and choose where to do their homework. Dubbed Orbi, the item is the size of a large open schoolbook, it is lightweight and comes with a handle, which enables the child to move it around depending on where their parents are. The working position is also adjustable, allowing for standing or sitting on a chair or the floor.

#BeOpenARCH Tengbom architects have won an international competition for a new visitor center beside the Berg locks, a hotspot on Göta canal, a 200-year-old waterway, an engineering masterpiece and one of Sweden’s most popular tourist attractions. Their Belverdere proposal takes inspiration from the site’s natural landscape and vernacular architecture with traditional gabled roofs. The plan starts with the extension and transformation of an old barn by adding two new volumes, interconnecting all three. The resulting ensemble is a transition from the barn’s archetypal form to a more contemporary dynamic shape via addition of new architectonic features.

#BeOpenDESIGN Doze by Ashleigh Davies is a multifunctional piece of furniture that saves space by acting as a side table and a pet bed topped by a removable tray where you can put some of your stuff while working or eating. The piece features a safe semi-enclosed space for dogs to burrow in. Its soft bed is made from hypoallergenic memory foam, good for their joints and bones, and is raised off the ground, which is beneficial for temperature control for dogs as air circulates around and underneath. More side tables that double as pet beds in our blog

#BeOpenARCH Rotterdam-based Studio Ossidiana has conceived a pastel pink art pavilion that appears to be floating on Weewater Lake in the city of Almere, Netherlands. Named Three Floating Rooms, the project is comprised of a sequence of three tangent circles reflecting the needs of the museum’sprogram: the Port, the Stage, and the Observatory. Made from a pink-colored terrazzo, the largest ring, the Port, is a promenade on water that connects the elements of the program and serves as a public space in itself. Besides, the structure is used as a real port, with barges docking on the outer perimeter, allowing visitors to arrive by boat. The Observatory is a cylindrical volume that houses indoor exhibition spaces, while the Stage is a terrace and platform for performances, concerts, and outdoor exhibitions, which can be used as an autonomous island, lending itself to special programming.