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.

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

Dutch Design Week 2011: designers Raw Color and Studio Mkgk present people dressed as trees as part of Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven this week. Watch the movie on Dezeen Screen »

The Temporary Trees series of images and movie feature models in motion with coloured strips of paper, balloons or translucent scarves representing the leaves of different trees.

The designers were invited by Eindhoven cultural institute MU to create the project for the Make a Forest initiative, where fake trees are installed all over the world to celebrate the United Nations International Year of Forests.

It’s on show at Wild-S in the Strijp-S district of Eindhoven.

Dutch Design Week continues until 30 October – see all our stories about it here.

Here are some more details from the designers:

Temporary Trees
Raw Color & Mkgk for MU, Make a Forest

Trees are often regarded as objects and are removed according to the landscape plan ruthlessly. In the Netherlands trees typically reach only one tenth of the age that they could make.

For Raw Color and studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters trees are anything but static. They ever changing life forms that determine how we experience light, shade, wind and changes of the seasons. This observation, is translated to “illusions” of trees in different materials, that represent the life, dynamics and transformation of trees.

The Temporary Trees have a place in the MU pavilion ‘Wild-S’ on the Strijp-S area. Invited by MU the project is part of Make a Forest, an international platform, founded by Joanna van der Zanden and Anne van der Zwaag.

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The Patient Gardener by Visiondivision	Wool Modern by Not Tom	Fraser Ross at Dezeen Platform

Dutch Design Week 2011: best known for his grown-up furniture that would be quite at home in a fairy tale, Amsterdam designer Bo Reudler presents a collection of children’s furniture in Eindhoven as part of Dutch Design Week this week. 

The series is made of solid Dutch oak from a traditional wind-powered saw mill.

It comprises a table, chair, rocking horse, wheelbarrow and doll’s cradle, constructed from basic shapes that retain the curve of each raw board.

The collection will be auctioned on Ebay and at the Klokgebouw exhibition at Strijp-s this week, to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund.

Dutch Design Week continues until 30 October.

See more work by Bo Reudler here and more furniture for children here.

Photographs courtesy of Bo Reudler Studio.

Here are some more details from Bo Reudler:

DUTCH DESIGN WEEK 2011
Kids’ Furniture by Bo Reudler Studio
World Wildlife Fund Design Auction

Bo Reudler Studio presents the Kids’ Furniture series during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven 22-30 October 2011. The furniture will be exhibited at a design auction and exhibition organised by the World Wildlife Fund to held in the Klokgebouw, Strijp-S.

A wooden furniture series for children. The collection is composed from elemental shapes and basic materials, built in an intuitive, playful way.

The series comprises a table and chair, rocking horse, wheelbarrow and doll’s cradle.

The objects are hand made from solid oak finished with a coating of natural oil and soft colorful footings of woollen felt. The edges of the furniture retain the original curves of the trunk or branch enabling every piece to be unique.

The wood originates from fallen Dutch trees that are sawn in the traditional wind-powered sawmill Het Jonge Schaap situated in the Zaanse Schans, Zaanstad.

The collection was realized with the generous support of Het Jonge Schaap and Jantien Ranzijn & vdr.

Bo Reudler Studio is a product and interior design studio led by Bo Reudler, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Bo graduated from the ArtEZ Academy of Art and Design and is also co-founder of Asylum Collection. The work of the studio aims to charge objects with imagination and meaning,working as storytellers through matter, experimenting with materials, following their hidden qualities to bring out their natural beauty.

World Wildlife Fund Design Auction

The design exhibition and auction organized by the World Wildlife Fund will be held from 22-30 October 2011 in the Klokgebouw on the Strijp-s terrain. Buyers can bid for the products online via e-bay or via auction forms at the exhibition. The proceeds of each sale will be donated to a WWF project as nominated by the buyer. The exhibition is open daily from 12-18:00pm.

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Haute Bamboo by Bo Reudler and Olav Bruin	Slow White Series by Bo Reudler	More Slow White furniture by Bo Reudler