Hasta La Ideas

Dutch Design Week 2011: Philips Design in Eindhoven present a conceptual self-sufficient  home that converts sewage and rubbish into power. 

The Microbial Home would function as a biological machine, using the waste from one area of the home to power another and creating a cyclical ecosystem.

A bio-digester kitchen island would break down solid bathroom waste and vegetable peelings into methane, while plastic packaging would be broken down by fungus.

Fresh food would be stored in an evaporative cooler and part of the dining table, while honey could be harvested from an urban beehive.

Five models of the system are on show at Piet Hein Eek‘s gallery as part of Dutch Design Week, which continues until 30 October. You can see all our coverage of the event here.

Previous Philips Design Probes feature tableware that glows when food is placed on it and a machine that prints food.

See more stories about kitchens here and all our stories about food here.

Here are some more details from Philips Design:

Philips presents its latest forward looking design project ‘Microbial Home’. This new forward looking group of design concepts represent an innovative and sustainable approach to energy, waste, lighting, food preservation, cleaning, grooming, and human waste management.

Microbial Home – creating a cyclical eco-system

The Microbial Home project is a proposal for an integrated cyclical ecosystem where each function’s output is another’s input. In the project the home has been viewed as a biological machine to filter, process and recylcle what we conventionally think of as waste – sewage, effluent, garbage, waste water.

Sustainability – closer to nature

The Microbial Home project suggests that people should move closer to nature and proposes strategies for developing a balanced microbial ecosystem in the home. “Designers have an obligation to explore solutions which are by nature less energy-consuming and non-polluting,” says Clive van Heerden, Senior Director of Design-led Innovation at Philips Design. ‘We need to push ourselves to rethink domestic appliances entirely, how homes consume energy and how entire communities can pool resources,” concludes Clive van Heerden.

Microbial Home concepts

Five lifelike models of the concepts within the Microbial Home domestic ecosystem will be shown to the public at the Piet Hein Eek gallery during Dutch Design Week (DDW) only. The DDW takes place from 22 – 30 October 2011. Visitors and press are welcome during the opening hours of Piet Hein Eek throughout the event.

Philips Design Probes

The ‘Microbial Home’ project is part of the Philips Design Probes program, which was established to explore far future lifestyle scenarios based on rigorous research in a wide range of areas. Probes projects are intended to understand future socio-cultural and technological shifts with a view to developing nearer-term scenarios. These scenario explorations are often carried out in collaboration with experts and thought leaders in different fields, culminating in a ‘provocation ‘designed to spark discussion and debate around new ideas and lifestyle concepts. Previous Probe projects include ‘Electronic Tattoo’, ‘Emotional sensing dresses’, ‘Sustainable Habitat’, and the ‘Food Probe’.

The Design Probe projects carried out by Philips Design are part of a wider Philips strategy aimed at improving the innovation hit rate. While it is not intended that design concepts coming out of the Probes program are translated to marketable solutions, insights gained from debate around the concepts feed into future innovation for the company.

Philips Design’s creative force of some 400 professionals, representing more than 35 different nationalities, embraces disciplines as diverse as psychology, cultural sociology, anthropology and trend research in addition to the more ‘conventional’ design-related skills. The mission of these professionals is to create solutions that satisfy people’s needs, empower them and make them happier, all of this without destroying the world in which we live.

See also:

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Ethical Kitchen by Alexandra Sten Jørgensen	r2b2 by Christoph Thetard	Flow2 kitchen by Studio Gorm

The PorscheBerry is here. In an effort to reclaim lost marketshare, Research in Motion has hearteningly sought to invest in design, tapping Porsche Design to develop their new P’9981 smartphone in the latter company’s striking, signature style.

The question is, will it be enough to get RIM back on the map?

In the ’90s, when all cell phones did was make phone calls, I was living in Japan. Several times I’d gone cell phone shopping with friends in Tokyo and the selection was staggering. The only thing to distinguish one phone from another was its physical design as the features were all largely the same—the most complicated thing you’d need to do was retrieve voicemail, and if I remember correctly, my phone only held three messages at a time so there wasn’t a lot of futzing to be done.

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Prison, wooden spikes and bedrock in an Australian design collective’s first history-based collection

When it came time for a concept to drive new design consortium Broached Commissions, rather than turn to exotic, far-flung influences, the firm looked to much more provincial sources—literally their backyard. Founded by Creative Director Lou Weis, the Melbourne-based collective includes three permanent designers, Trent Jansen, Adam Goodrum and Charles Wilson, who collaborate with an annually rotating cast of contributors on products related to Australian history. For this year’s project, Broached focused their sights on the Australian industrial revolution spanning 1788-1840.

Broached Colonial, as it’s called, draws on the expertise of curator John McPhee, chosen to guide the group, offering insight on how the time period’s “make do” sensibility remains a vital part of Australian design today. McPhee’s extensive knowledge, coupled with the designers’ two years of research and development, led to a five-piece collection that elegantly interprets this tumultuous moment.

One of the more striking pieces from the collection, Lucy McRae’s Prickly Light takes on the country’s infamous prisons. A “body architect,” McRae studies textures to create “skins.” After investigating the living conditions of female convicts at Parramatta Female Factory, she come up with the idea of an armor of wooden spikes to ward off potential predators, painstakingly dying each wooden piece before attaching it to the tripod and light.

Cool Hunting favorite Max Lamb developed a beautifully polished furniture collection made of sandstone from Sydney’s Gosford Quarry, an area explored by Governor Arthur Phillip during the first year of settlement. Not only is the Hawkesbury Sandstone Collection made from the country’s bedrock, but the stools are similar to what people would sit on in colonial period paintings, while the tables reference the exposed sandstone rock faces found along the shoreline of Sydney Bay.

With four detachable shades, Lucy Chen’s glowing Dream Lantern (at top) nicely rounds out the other designers’ works. Chen tapped Australian graphic design studio Coöp to complete the pattern work, inspired by Mary Bryant and her famous escape from an Australian penal colony. The cordless light works as both hanging and table lamp.

Goodrum’s Birdsmouth Table, Jansen’s Briggs Family Tea Service set and Wilson’s Tall Boy table complete the collection. The Melbourne-based practice will exhibit the pieces through pop-up galleries and all are available for purchase. Broached Colonial will be on display through 5 November in Melbourne before moving on to Sydney, where it will remain through 17 November 2011. Check the Broached Commissions site for location details.

Amidst a flutter of black-clad designers, the Prince of Denmark and the sounds of a 4-piece live jazz band, there was much to celebrate at the grand opening of the Carl Hansen & Son New York City Showroom. The Danish Fusion event showcased Carl Hansen & Son seating and tables, lighting by Pandul, silver collectibles and table objects from Georg Jensen and Kvadrat Soft Cells acoustic textiles on display. But the most interesting happening at the showroom was going on behind the scenes. Danish craftsmen from Carl Hansen & Son were busy hand-weaving the seat of the iconic Wishbone chair, designed by Hans Wegner and in uninterrupted production since 1950.

The Wishbone chair, which is produced in Denmark using steambent wood, has over 100 production steps all carried out by hand. In the video below, we see the process of hand-weaving the seat using 120 meters of paper cord. The dinging in the background is from a craftsman demonstrating the precision and work that goes into hand-hammered silver.

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