Be Open think tank

#BeOpenDESIGN The 6 Pound Phone Case by Matter Neuroscience is a tongue-in-cheek design experiment that takes aim at our smartphone obsession by making it physically exhausting to stay glued to the screen. Made from solid stainless steel and weighing six pounds (approx. 2.72 kg), the case must be screwed together around the phone using an Allen wrench, discouraging impulsive removal and extended use. Its brutalist, brick-like form recalls the bulky mobile phones of the 1980s, turning the act of texting or scrolling into a literal workout. Equal parts social commentary and performance art, the 6 Pound Phone Case transforms digital restraint into a design statement, asking a simple question: if using your phone became this heavy, would you finally put it down? More statement phone cases on our blog.

#BeOpenNEWS Reminder: Enter the DESIGN EQUALITY with Innovation Competition! Don’t miss your chance to take part in BE OPEN’s 7th international competition, dedicated to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The DESIGN EQUALITY with Innovation challenge invites students, graduates, and young professionals to submit creative ideas that build a more prosperous and sustainable future. This year’s focus: advancing gender equality through innovation — by: - Integrating gender perspectives into design and technology - Promoting women as innovators and entrepreneurs - Developing tech-driven solutions that meet the needs of women and girls - Removing barriers for women and girls in innovation and entrepreneurship Submit your entry now at designequality2025.com Let’s design for equality and innovation — together.

#BeOpenDESIGN The Jollying Dots Collection by Andrea Ponti of Ponti Design Studio redefines what travel luggage can be, blending smart functionality with sustainable design. Made from recycled plastics and thermoplastic elastomer, each piece is lightweight yet durable, featuring a patented magnetic clasp system that lets travelers connect multiple suitcases for effortless one-handed movement through busy airports. Quiet casters, an adjustable aluminum handle, and Apple Find My compatibility add layers of convenience, while a multi-functional leather belt secures accessories like hats or bags for stylish, hands-free travel. The result is a sleek, eco-conscious collection designed to move as seamlessly as the modern traveler. Next generation of luggage on our blog.

#BeOpenNEWS The World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) presented its Visionary Award to Elena Baturina, founder of the BE OPEN think-tank, during its World Conference in Cape Town on October 29. Announcing the recognition, WFSF President Dr. Erik F. Øverland praised Baturina’s commitment to empowering young creatives and accelerating the global shift toward sustainable practices. The award highlighted BE OPEN’s 2025 Designing Futures competition, which engaged emerging professionals in rethinking and updating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for today’s realities and encouraging them to participate in shaping realistic sustainability strategies. Baturina emphasized the influence of the WFSF network on BE OPEN’s work, noting its scientific insights as an important source of knowledge and inspiration. Founded in 1973 and now a UNESCO and UN consultative partner, the WFSF unites researchers and institutions across more than 60 countries to explore transformative visions for alternative futures.

#BeOpenDESIGN Pentagram’s second-generation KARRI is a screenless smartphone for kids aged 5–13, designed as a safe, display-free alternative to traditional phones. Acting like a smart walkie-talkie, it lets children record, send, and listen to voice messages via a simple “slide to talk” interface. The pocket-sized device connects to parents’ phones through an app, featuring GPS tracking and geo-fencing for safety. Equipped with a data SIM, LED matrix display, and a built-in torch, KARRI encourages communication without exposing kids to screens or social media.

#BeOpenDESIGN LAYER’s Personal Intelligent Assistant (PiA) concept introduces a system of interconnected AI-powered devices—a smartphone, biometric earbud, and modular wearable camera—designed to act as the user’s “eyes and ears.” Powered by an AI operating system, these devices sense, analyze, and communicate information from the user’s surroundings and body. The earbud tracks biometric data like heart rate and temperature to provide personalized health insights, while the detachable camera, which can be worn as a pin or brooch, identifies objects and offers contextual information about the environment. The smartphone, crafted from recycled glass, serves as the central hub, syncing data from the other devices and featuring AI-driven apps for wellness, navigation, and personalized recommendations.

#BeOpenDESIGN Every traveler knows the struggle of standing in long lines with no place to sit — and that’s exactly the problem Xit aims to solve. Designed by France-based designer Chang Ching-Wen, the award-winning Xit is an ingenious portable bag-and-chair hybrid that transforms everyday convenience into smart functionality. With just a simple motion, the bag unfolds into a comfortable temporary seat — perfect for airports, festivals, or city adventures. Crafted from breathable fabric and supported by a lightweight yet durable frame, Xit combines strength, flexibility, and style. Zippers on both sides ensure easy access to your belongings, proving that great design can be both practical and elegant.

#BeOpenDESIGN Two MIT design students, Biru Cao and Yiqing Wang, have created FOODres.AI, an experimental 3D printer that uses artificial intelligence to transform everyday food waste into practical household items like cup holders and small containers. Unlike conventional 3D printers that rely on plastics or concrete, FOODres.AI works with ingredients such as coffee grounds, fruit peels, and leftover rice. Using computer vision, the machine analyzes the composition of food scraps and guides users to adjust the mix for optimal printability suggesting, for instance, more starch when needed. The prototype consists of a grinder and a 3D printer equipped with a heated nozzle, and while it currently produces only a few predefined objects, the creators envision future versions that allow customizable designs.

#BeOpenNEWS #BeOpenART Congratulations to Mia Delorés! BE OPEN Art is thrilled to announce her as the Artist of the Month for October 2025, chosen through a public vote from a shortlist of outstanding emerging artists featured on our online gallery. A contemporary visual artist working across abstract painting and portraiture, Delorés explores themes of self-expression, emotion, and human connection through a tactile, intuitive painting process that balances the spontaneity of abstraction with the structure of portraiture. Her work perfectly embodies BE OPEN Art’s mission to celebrate creativity without boundaries and support diverse artistic voices around the world. Each monthly winner becomes eligible for the Artist of the Year 2025 title, which includes a €1,000 prize and a dedicated promotional campaign to further their artistic journey.

#BeOpenDESIGN Redmagic 11 Pro redefines smartphone cooling by turning a functional necessity into a visual spectacle. It features the Aqua Core system, where real water flows visibly through micro channels at the back of the device, keeping temperatures low during intense gaming. Building on Redmagic’s ICE-X thermal management framework and previous innovations like solid-state liquid metal, this smartphone blends cutting-edge engineering with mesmerizing design, transforming internal mechanics into an eye-catching feature that merges performance and aesthetics. More extraordinary smartphone concepts on our blog.

#BeOpenDESIGN In Melbourne’s Ashburton suburb, Mitch Studio by interior designer Danielle Brustman redefines the modern salon through a masterclass in colour, light, and spatial flow. The renovation embraces the brand’s signature yellow, using sunny glass partitions, mustard mosaic tiles, and droplet-shaped mirrors to craft a space that feels simultaneously energetic and calming. Brustman stripped the 1950s building to its bare structure, polishing the concrete floor and introducing bespoke joinery to create a layout that supports both movement and mindfulness. Each element, from the sculptural Entler chandelier to the carefully placed mirrors, contributes to an atmosphere that’s personal, radiant, and refreshingly optimistic. More cutting-edge hair salons on our blog.

#BeOpenDESIGN Twiny, the latest Red Dot Award: Design Concept winner, reimagines children's furniture through a modular, multifunctional design that seamlessly blends play, practicality, and sustainability. Created by Nurettin Badur for Ziel Home Furnishing Technology, this two-piece sofa cleverly transforms into an activity zone with an adjustable-height table and integrated storage, encouraging creativity, independence, and organization. Designed with both home and early childhood environments in mind, Twiny addresses the growing demand for adaptable, space-saving solutions in urban living. Its construction from 100% recycled polyester and a composite of recycled wood and plastic reflects a strong commitment to environmental responsibility, without compromising on aesthetics or safety.

#BeOpenDESIGN HAK Studio's UMA tableware collection bridges neuroscience and design to enhance taste perception, particularly for individuals with reduced sensitivity due to aging or post-COVID-19 effects. Grounded in gastrophysics research by Professor Charles Spence, UMA explores how sensory cues like color, texture, and form shape flavor expectations before food is even tasted. The collection includes a glossy, candy-inspired dessert plate that visually amplifies sweetness and a tactile, unglazed bowl referencing salt crystals to enhance savory sensations. Developed through user interviews and crafted in Copenhagen, UMA highlights how design can support sensory health, offering a thoughtful, research-driven approach to enriching the eating experience.

#BeOpenART #BeOpenNEWS We are thrilled to announce Joey Hernandez as the October winner of the ART LIMITLESS competition, hosted by BE OPEN Art. A California-based artist, Joey creates vivid acrylic paintings that explore the beauty and complexity of vision loss. After losing her sight due to Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON), she began using art to express how she perceives the world — filled with moving neon dots and blurred forms. Her work, marked by bright colors, expressive brushwork, and tactile techniques, captures her unique visual experience and challenges conventional ideas of perception. Her recognition marks another milestone in ART LIMITLESS, BE OPEN Art’s initiative celebrating inclusivity and sustainability in the creative industries. As the October winner, Joey now joins the running for the €1,000 grand prize, to be awarded later this year. Congratulations to Joey Hernandez — and stay tuned, as the next ART LIMITLESS winner will be announced soon!

#BeOpenDESIGN At Baoshan No. 2 Central Primary School in Shanghai, design studio OLA Shanghai (Our LEGO Agency Shanghai) in collaboration with LEGO China and NIKE, has transformed the traditional playground into a dynamic, modular environment that blurs the lines between play and movement. Inspired by the form and logic of a 2×3 LEGO brick, the design reimagines play structures as adaptable, interactive components that support climbing, balancing, and creative exploration. Rooted in NIKE’s Move to Zero sustainability initiative and informed by LEGO China’s Build the Change workshop with students, the project champions open-ended, collaborative play while promoting physical activity. The result is a vibrant, reconfigurable space where children can build their own routes merging education, design, and sustainability into a forward-thinking model for school playgrounds.

#BeOpenDESIGN Back in 2018, Central Saint Martins graduate Ching-Hui Yang developed Standardisation, a series of brass and leather training tools designed to enhance muscle memory in dancers. Collaborating with professional dancer Valerie Ebuwa, Yang created devices that lock the body into precise positions to help perfect movements like the pas de bourrée, accelerating the learning process that typically requires 10,000 hours of practice. Inspired by Laban movement analysis but seeking a more practical alternative to unreliable oral traditions and flat video tutorials, Yang envisioned these tools as three-dimensional notations of movement, offering a more efficient way to internalize and document body awareness in dance training.

#BeOpenDESIGN Inspired by the Australian peacock spider, researchers from the Harvard's Wyss Institute have developed a penny-sized soft robot that could one day navigate the human body to assist with minimally invasive procedures. Built using a novel fabrication technique called MORPH (Microfluidic Origami for Reconfigurable Pneumatic/Hydraulic devices), the robot is made from laser-cut layers of silicone and controlled by injecting phase-changing materials into micro-channels. This allows it to self-fold, move, and even change shape with remarkable precision. With 18 degrees of freedom, this tiny robot opens new possibilities for microsurgery, endoscopy, and other delicate medical tasks that demand extreme flexibility in tight spaces. More innovations that show the future of surgery on blog.

#BeOpenNEWS #BeOpenART BE OPEN Art is proud to announce Ahmed Partey, a contemporary artist based in Accra, Ghana, as the first Regional Artist of the Month for the Western Africa stage of its global art competition. This stage of the program runs from October through December and celebrates emerging artistic talent from across Western Africa, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Ahmed Partey is a self-taught artist whose practice, which he calls Afro-Ancestral Spiritualism, draws deep inspiration from West African masks, sculptures, patterns, and symbols. At the end of December, one regional artist will be selected as the overall Western Africa Regional Winner, receiving a €500 prize and global visibility through the BE OPEN Art platform.

#BeOpenDESIGN Neo Gamma is a humanoid home assistant designed by Norwegian robotics firm 1X to blend seamlessly into domestic spaces. Unlike its industrial-looking predecessors, Neo Gamma embraces a soft, Scandinavian aesthetic that makes it feel more like a housemate than a machine. Beneath its full-body suit of beige knitwear, the robot is equipped with advanced AI, responsive body language, and multi-jointed hands capable of handling chores like vacuuming, tidying, and folding laundry. More human-like robots on our blog.

#BeOpenDESIGN Dirt Shoes, a collaboration between conceptual design studio Basura and yerba mate brand Yerba Madre, are biodegradable shoes made from compacted dirt, sap, plant fibers, and wildflower seeds—designed not to endure, but to disappear. As they’re worn, the shoes slowly disintegrate, scattering seeds and encouraging native wildflower growth in the wearer’s path. This poetic erosion challenges conventional ideas of durability and disposability, emphasizing ecological renewal over permanence. Developed over five months by a team of artists and scientists, the project reframes footwear as a temporary, regenerative gesture—a quiet rebellion against fast fashion and a statement in favor of circular design.