Sunday 25 March 2012

Studio 2 - Project One: BioInspired












BioInspired: Plant Storage (Herbs)

Design is one of the most crucial things that people can contribute in to society. Biomimetic/biomorphic designing is another stage where design is influenced by things in ecosystem. It gave me a glimpse in to the heart of ecosystem from the simplest to the complex stages that are happening around it. In this project, I have accomplished to design a Herb Storage mimicking some of the features and characteristics of vines. It is inspiring how designers can change a simple old form of storage into something quirky and exciting.



A vine is a plant with a growth habit of trailing and sometimes it refers to as stem runners. It has this delicate, exotic and exaggerated looks when it’s in the ground, walls or anything that they can climb into. Being inspired by this plant, this herb storage offers these characteristics. It is consists of three parts the base, stand and the individual planter that can be assembled or disassembled for storage purpose. In terms of the stand, it mimics how the vines grow in a way that user can add more branches to meet their preferred height of the storage. On the other hand, the individual planter mimics the leaves of the vines and the spiralling effect of it. User can also add more planters to plant more herbs to meet their needs. The shape of the planter is an exaggerated form of vine leaves and its twisting form. The dark olive green and anodised grey symbolised natures stability and delicateness.     

Adaptability into different domestic landscapes like apartments, condominiums and houses is not a problem. It can be easily place into small to high density living which lands under space saving storage category.

Made out of recycled plastics, this herb storage gives an eco-friendly product. In terms of the recycled plastic, heat compression is the process use to melt the collected plastics which is relatively easy to perform. Three moulds are made for injection moulding. The finish product is sprayed by a soy-based sealant so factors such as sun’s UV rays and water are not a big problem. Furthermore, using a recycled plastic as the primary material, the product then is durable and contained less harmful materials that will affect the environment and humans. Reusing recycled plastics can also be recycled again in the end of its product life span.

This Bio-inspired herb storage offers you awareness towards health, environment and safety through its materials; chemicals and processes used which comes from planning and designing of the product. The product being biomimetically and biomorphically inspired and designed, gives you an abstract, exotic and quirky appearance which is likable to many users. It is adaptive into different trends of living particularly the landscapes and the type of shelter. This product has the ability to add-more or take-less with a stackable individual planter and stands to meet the user’s needs. Using recycled plastics and required process gives a sense of practicality and awareness towards design practice being able to utilise these factors. The design of this product, being inspired of vines, has the nature’s sustainable design principle which can benefit the community and the environment. Marcel Wanders once said that ‘designing with nature has the potential to inspire; to contribute to the concept of a world changing opportunity but most importantly it is directed by the designer’s heart and mind’. 
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous25 March 2012 at 16:19

    An interesting design. An aspect i like is the way that the plants can grow almost on top of eachother yet still be easy to access. One issue i can see arising though is the depth and size of the pots, as there is not much area the plant may not be able to establish a root system, hence being a short lived plant, so maybe a deeper/more hollowed out pot would be more appropriate.

    nicely done.

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  2. Sunprit Singh25 March 2012 at 18:29

    This is a very unique design that is simple yet functions well. I really like how the compartments revolve around the middle and you have created some nice organic forms which mimic aspects of nature. I think to improve you could have been more efficient by adding extra compartments and more gaps for plants to sit in.

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  3. Olivia Qiuyuan LIN25 March 2012 at 23:03

    a fancy design, i like it. maybe you could use of differnt sizes or shapes in each part to show the variety...?

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  4. Daming25 March 2012 at 23:13

    I think you may consider rounding the base of the compartment instead of leaving it at a straight-angle. Rounding and/or enlarging the storage-hole can increase the surface area to hold much more soil and nutrients. This then may create more storage-efficiency without the need to increase the whole size of the leaf-unit. Because I can see from your CAD that you can still extend the size of the carry-space within the leaf.

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  5. Felicia Levina26 March 2012 at 01:01

    I like your design as it's very practical and functional. It's a very interesting idea that enables the users to plant the herbs. My only improvement would be to play around more with shapes? i like the organic form though, except it looks a bit bulky :) but overall it's good! Keep up the good works! :)

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  6. m.noorsjamsi26 March 2012 at 01:07

    i really like your design and how space-saving it is. the fact that you could have the plants on top of eachother and still use the same amount of space is great. for improvement i would suggest that you look into the form a bit more and maybe a different colour would be nicer.

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