A Sense of Place - Project 3

Rationale

The site I chose is in Bondi Junction. It is a small reserve that
is mostly used as a thoroughfare for commuters looking to
park for free in the surrounding areas. The reserve is quite
dull and offers two worn out benches, both of which are
recessed almost into the bushes. This poses a problem
because there are shady characters who cause mischief
there because they aren’t able to be seen when they sit on
the benches.
There are many businesses in the area, a lot of small law
firms, doctors surgeries and boutiques, not to mention the
westfield complex a little further down the road. The people
who live in the area are quite wealthy, and mostly work in
the professional industry. There also seemed to be many
mothers walking through and around the reserve with their
children and dogs.
My aim for this project is to brighten up the place to attract
the childrens sense of playfulness. I thought I’d use bright
colours for the furniture to do this. The shape of the product
is inspired by the popular video game tetris, in that it can
flip and turn and slide. I think children of all ages would
appreciate the interactivity of the design, as well as giving
them a place to rest or meet a friend. I also want to create a
place for the local office workers to go and have their lunch
in peace, that’s away from the Westfield food court or sitting
in a lunch room or their desk.
The material of the product is rotational moulded polypropylene.
I thought it would be suitable because it would make
it light weight so that it can easily be flipped or pivoted. The
design uses very little material as it is hollow, and the PP can
be recycled after it use.

CAD drawing

Different composotions of the street furniture

packaging peer comments

Jackson Walker

http://3289813.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/ventol-emergency-relief-rationale.html?showComment=1337866578984#!/2012/05/ventol-emergency-relief-rationale.html

Yvonne Sha

http://ides2161yvonnesha.blogspot.com.au/#!/2012/05/socially-responsible-packaging.html

Matt Caraig

http://mfredrick.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/accessible-packaging-sandwich-packaging.html?showComment=1337868083863#c3111965961819838677

Julie bunch

http://ides2161juliebunch.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/shampoo-cycle.html?showComment=1337868534065#!/2012/05/shampoo-cycle.html

Eugenie Barnett

http://studio1-bee.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/socially-responsible-packaging.html?showComment=1337868760578#c1611360784245199601

project 3: street furniture

SITE PHOTOS: Saber street reserve, Bondi Junction

Socially Responsible Packaging

Video blog: The Lightbulb Conspiracy

The video “the lightbulb conspiracy” is a documentary about the planned obsoletion of products today. Starting from the industrial revolution where people were able to mass manufacture products that were once hand made. The video shows the impact of mass manufacture on the economy and society. The mass manufacture industry created desires for people that they didn’t necessarily need just because products were readily available. However, this became a problem because the products were manufactured to last forever and once everybody bought what they needed or wanted they no longer bought new products, causing the production to slow down and the economy therefore suffered due to loss of sales. This lead to the Great Depression due to the ceasing of production.

The light bulb conspiracy is one example of planned obseletion. Here was a product that everybody needed in everyday life. Engineers were able to create a lightbulb that could last a very long time. There is even an example of one of these bulbs in a US firestation, it has been burning for over 100 years. So why do lightbulbs these days blow out after a certain amount of hours? Simply because if all lightbulbs were to last forever there would no longer be an industry for it. So the light bulb manufacturers got together to create an agreement pact that all light bulbs cannot have a lifespan of more than a certain amount of hours. This theory carried on into other sectors and soon all products were made to have an expiry date. This meant that production would continue to go on and machines would start cranking again. Soon after, the idea of marketing products was born creating even more desires to buy products, and a trend to buy the newest latest version of that product.

This ideal continues in today’s times but with a negative impact on the environment. With all the manufacturing comes a lot of waste and emissions. And what happens to the waste at the end of it’s life? They get thrown out and cannot be recycled.

The impact of manufacturing on the environment is the responsibility of the engineers and designers. It is up to them to ensure that the products they are making are safe for not only their purpose and demographic but also must keep in mind how the product will be disposed of at the end of its life. In the past manufactures had a cradle to grave mentality, but in recent times with all the environmental issues designers must think in a cradle to cradle mentality. That is; how will the product disassemble, how can it be reused, how can the manufacture of the product reduce emissions. These are all the things a young designer should know.

video blog "giving packaging new life" & "how its made"

In the videos they show how packaging is made and also how they are recycled. It’s a good thing for industrial designers to know so they are aware of what the manufacturing and recycling processes entail. It is useful to know for all so that they know the impact and/or damage done to the environment.

It was interesting to see how aluminium cans are produced and recycled. They are made from very little metal and you can reuse the aluminium as many times as you can without losing any quality. They can be recycled and formed back into sheet metal ready to use for the next batch. The excess cut offs from the stamping is also returned to the recycling plant to be melted down and formed into sheets. Packaging tubes are also made of aluminium and can be used to store creams and gels due to its malleable properties. The protective coating helps to form a barrier between the contents and the metal.

Tetra packs are also really interesting to be seen recycled. I always thought that it couldn’t be recycled due the bonding of foil, cardboard and plastic. But with technology these days the materials can be separated and then recycled.

Another interesting video was seeing how glass bottles are recycled. They are put into different colours so they don’t have to re-colour them. Recycling glass has to be quite precise in that the colours can not be contaminated otherwise it will compromise the quality of the colour, especially with clear glass. They combat this using a camera which photographs the pieces and scans for impurities. The impurities are then blown away with jets.

Cardboard packaging bonds layers of flat and corrugated boards to create thickness and strength while still being lightweight. Cardboard packaging can then be recycled to create newspaper print and toilet paper.

The technology used for sorting and recycling wastes is quite interesting especially the photoscanner and blower technique. Magnets are used to separate the metals from cardboards and plastics. And the technique they use for separating plastic and cardboard is where they ground the materials and put it in a blower, the lighterr materials fall over the edge and the heavier ones are passed through o the next stage.

3d rendering of plant pods

Peer Comments

Richard
http://richardtrajcevski.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/silver-fern-water-recycling-disk-rack.html#comment-form

Oun
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6561537982608082039&postID=6036589028779704071&isPopup=true

Rachael
http://rachaelsigley.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/final-design-poster.html#comment-form

Roman
http://romanradoczy.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/poster-bioinspired.html

Christine
http://mad-attic.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/rationale.html#comment-form

CAD Drawing

User guide

Product poster

The brief for this project was to develop a bio-inspired domestic storage system. Our team decided to focus on the storage of plants.  As part of our research we took surveys and gathered information on trends, biomorphic and bio-mimicked products, as well as existing storage solutions.

Once we collected our data, I decided to focus on two main problems people in apartments were having, 1: lack of balcony space to have a lot of pot plants, and 2: neglect to water the plants. To solve the problem of having little space on the balcony I designed a stackable modular pot plant stand. With this system users are able to build up their gardens with either a herb garden or small flowering plants. The parts are able to rotate so that if you have one plant that it starting to grow tall you can rotate it so that it does not interfere with the other pots. Or perhaps you would like to put it in a corner, so the user can manouver it to fit into the corner. The stem of the design is bio-inspired by a tree, and how a branches come from the trunk like the pods, the stem of the design is weighted down by the pot that it’s in just like a tree is rooted into the ground for stability.

Some of the interviews I conducted were from people who lived busy lifestyles and always forgot to water their plants. To overcome this I thought I’d look at how plants store water and nutrients. The cactus is well known for being able to survive in arid conditions and have roots that seek water supply. The self watering system in this design is inspired by this. The water in the reservoir wont drown the plant but will keep the soil at the bottom moist enough for the plant to stay hydrated.

the design is made entirely up of polyproplene. This plastic is durable and easily mass manufactured due to the injection moulding process. Having the product all one material also means that at the end of life there is no need to dismantle and sort into different parts, and can be melted back down to make something else new and wonderful!

video review: An Inconvenient Truth

An inconvenient truth talks about the effects of climate change and CO2 emissions effects on our environment. In this movie, Al Gore, is trying to spread the word on what human technology and industrialisation has done to our water supply, deforestation, soil erosion and extinction of wildlife. He also talks about the domino effect the melting glaciers have on the wildlife and the weather. There are steps we can take to reduce our carbon footprint and bring the emissions down to below what they were in the 70’s.

There are many sceptics out there who don’t believe that global warming is a problem and that looking back on the history of the earth glaciers have melted and reformed again. Have they not realised that since the beginning of industrialisation our output of co2 and other gases has increased speeding up the process that is meant to happen naturally. And with all that we are taking from the earth, what we are mining, the oil being pumped from the ground, the lakes we’ve drained for our agriculture, the forests we’ve cleared for urbanisation, we are not replenishing, which will in turn diminish if we don’t act soon enough.

Global warming is not only about the earth getting warmer. It is about how every living creature on this earth is being affected. For example, when the oceans get warmer the storms become stronger and more frequent, not only that but there are storms that are forming in areas that never have experienced hurricanes before like off the coast of Brazil. The coral reefs are dying which are homes to many marine and plant life. In the movie, Al talks about the migration of pine beetles and in the winter they are killed off but with winter getting warmer they are eating away at the trees and the pine forests are dying, which also means there are even less trees to filter the co2 gases. Not only that, but if the waters rise many coastal cities will become submerged and millions, maybe billions of people will be displaced.

There are steps we can take to reduce our carbon footprint. Al Gore showed a graph of the predicted gas emissions in the next 50 years if we keep going the way we are. The figures grew exponentially from present day to 50 years in the future. He outlined that if we all, as a global community used energy efficient appliances, reduced the amount of fossil fuels we use currently and use renewable energy we can reduce the predicted figured by a few percent each time. If we not only use less but we replenish our resources we will reduce it even more.  

As industrial designer students, I believe we should all watch this and learn about how each action has a consequence, whether it be good or bad. As designers, we can look to change the world with how we design by using sustainable materials, thinking about the end of the products life and how it will can be disposed or reused. We can look to changing the ways we do things to be more sustainable. Or by designing homes or appliances that will help people be kinder to the environment, or by making it easier for people to do the right thing.

Storage concepts

Below are some concepts for our bio-inspired storage systems. Our group is working on a range of ways to store plants. We conducted interviews and looked at what the trends are for pot plants in medium to high density housing. Most people said that they would like to have more plants on their balcony/courtyard, people with kids didn't keep potted plants indoors in case their pets or children ruined them, some people didnt keep plants indoors for fear of water leakage. 

Here is a coffee table based on the principle of the natural occuring water table. It is a glass case terrarium that has a lid that lifts up so you can water it. The water seeps through to the layers of soil, sand, charcoal and mineral rocks to filter the grey water being used. The water is then collected into a tray underneath which can be pulled out and the water can be used again.

the above concept is a floating shelf system that uses the same principle as the terrarium coffee table.

here is a planter that was inspired by the shape of a turtle shell. the planter boxes are arranged so that they sit off the ground and more plants can be potted. this also has a clever irrigation system inside that lets the water run from the top and trickles down to the lower planter boxes and excess water is collected and can be reused.

above is a planter system inspired by the heliconia flower. Its flowers come off a single stem so nutrients are provided to the ends from the roots.