All Blog Posts (111)

I'm very impressed with the design and ideas incorporated into this Philips kitchen.

However, instead of seeing oil based plastics as inevitable, we should be considering the many other and less environmentally damaging alternatives - waxed paper, polysterenes made of fungi, leaves, hemp, wood, cardboard etc.

The clever use of these materials could completely avoid the need for the use of conventional plastics in the future.

As da Vinci once said, "Simplicity is the…

http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Modular_Housing_Units

One of the most important times there. was learning to deconstruct my life and live off of the land for about five years. Learning how to grow food and make fire for cooking, recycling and cycling. It was amazing to learn how things grew. We take for granted that we know what we eat, but I learned so much out what I ate and where it came from.



It was I time in my life for grow and I, as with all things in my life, tried to put all that I had into it. I wanted to be the kind of…

Beepods were created in 2010 in response to the increased interest in beekeeping... Basically to give people a choice.

Stacked-Box Beehives (Langstroths) were the only choice for newbee beekeepers. Beepods takes an ancient design called a Top Bar Hive and updates it with some inventive techniques... making…

After a crazy busy presentation at the Piet Hein Eek venue during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven (which was amazing!), we generated a lot of feedback on the Microbial Home probe. Meanwhile on the internet there has also been some great coverage by a lot of our favourite blogs: Dezeen,…

I am very glad to see an electronics multinational conglomerate participating in dealing with a future which includes the organisms we have disregarded and denigrated in the past.

We have more bacteria inside our bodies than we have human cells. We have spent the past two centuries trying to kill off virtually all these organisms in order to be clean, disease free and closer to some or other God of all things.

It did not work, does not work and will not work. We need to…

The bio-light uses different biological technologies to create ambient light effects. The concept explores the use of bioluminescent bacteria, which are fed with methane and composted material (drawn from the methane digester in the Microbial Home system).…

A waste separating squatting toilet that filters effluent while channelling excreta to a methane digester in the Microbial Home system.



The squatting toilet incorporates a handrail to support a person (and improve comfort)  in the…

The Apothecary let’s you analyze the state of your health using 4 diagnostic tools that analyze breath, tongue, skin and eyes. These tools help inform you of the state of your health and in particular your health balance. Breath and saliva testing show the state of intestinal flora…

The urban beehive is a concept for keeping bees at home. The beehive is designed to allow us a glimpse into the fascinating world of these industrious creatures and to harvest the honey that they produce.



The design of the beehive is…

The larder concept is a system designed to keep ‘living food’ fresh, by using natural processes (as opposed to dead food in the refrigerator). The larder consists of an evaporative cooler and vegetable storage system built into a dining table.



The…

The Paternoster is a concept for a domestic (or school) plastic waste up-cycler that uses mycelium to break down plastic packaging waste. 



In this design, plastics are ground into small chips and mixed with…

The Bio-digester kitchen island is the central hub in the Microbial Home system. It consists of a methane digester which coverts bathroom waste solids and vegetable trimmings into methane gas that is used to power a series of functions in the home.…

Before explaining all individual concepts, this infograpic shows how all concepts work together within a domestic setting. As you can see, the digester is the central hub turning human waste solids and vegetable trimmings into methane to power the stove, the gas lamps and the larder.…

Our newest design probe will be on show during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven at the venue of Piet Hein Eek. The Microbial Home probe adopts a systemic ­approach to many…

I found this fascinating project on the 'wemakemoneynotart' blog, an exceptionally good and inspiring blog. There is an interview with the people behind…

While working on robot illustrations, one of the illustrators found this amazing robot dog. It seems that the dog as an robotic model keeps coming back to me (see post 1 and…

Open Source Ecology (OSE)is a network of farmers, engineers and other supporters. The main goal of OSE is the eventual manufacturing of the…

Dutch newspaper NRC from last weekend wrote an article on urban beekeepers, in the article they also refer to the Rabobank report, which was mentioned earlier on this blog. The…

Climate skepticism remains an area of ongoing interest, not so much because of truth finding more because it is interesting to see how people deal with problems and the complexity of an interwoven problem as climate change. While watching a short video with Stephen…