Category: Design

Empower Playground – Playground Equipment Generating Electricity for Schools in Rural Ghana

Empower Playground – Playground Equipment Generating Electricity for Schools in Rural Ghana

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Each day all around the world, children play together.  In some communities and schools there are playgrounds and play equipment, but in rural Ghana, there is often no play equipment at the schools. Former ExxonMobil VP Ben Markham was volunteering with his wife as Mormon missionaries in Ghana, where he noticed the lack of electricity and basic playground equipment in most of the schools he visited.

He thought he could come up with a solution to help with this, and he worked to develop a merry-go-round that would generate about 150 watts of energy per hour as children played on it, that is stored in a battery pack.

Empower Playgrounds, founded by Markham is a nonprofit that has worked to develop these energy creating play equipment, and also works to get these systems to schools in Ghana.  Ghana is located just above the equator, and the day is divided between 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness for most of the year.  It is rated as one of the darkest places, and is great for stargazing, but maybe not so great for getting things done in the dark.

The electricity generated by Empower Playground’s merry-go-round goes to power 50 LED lanterns, that children are able to take home at night.  The playground provides equipment for up to 200 students.  Children are grouped into “Lantern Groups” according to neighborhoods, and usually have about 6 students who use the lanterns to study around the lantern.  Each lantern can last up to 50 hours per charge.

The project is ongoing, and individuals can support the project by donating money, and sharing the word about the project.  The website says that you can provide light for a child for $10 per year.

Image Source and Links:

http://emplay.squarespace.com/

History of Empower Playgrounds – YouTube Video

 

 

 

 

Edible Spoons: Eat your Soup and the Spoon Too

Edible Spoons: Eat your Soup and the Spoon Too

Posted on by Kbaumlier

A disposable plastic spoon in the best conditions will take more than 20 years to decompose. Under less than ideal conditions, such as in a landfill, plastic will take more than 1000 years to decompose.  The design firm Triangle Tree has created Edible Spoons, a eco-spoon design that can replace our plastic spoons.

The spoons are made of corn flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, eggs, separated milk, spices and herbs and comes in three flavors: plain, spicy, and sweet.  When you use one of the Edible Spoons, you can either compost or eat them. The spoon is also designed to break apart when you eat it, making the spoon into an easier snack to eat.

Triangle Tree who designed the spoons talk about the principle of uniqueness, and on their site they state the following values:

– Less is more. We are inspired by the simplicity of genius and the satisfaction of using a lovingly made product.

– Hybrids are hot. We endow long-familiar objects with new functionality borrowed from other objects or invented outright.

– Green or bust. Every one of our products considers the environment first and foremost.

– Objets d’art. We make beautiful things, pure and simple.

Want to eat your soup, ice cream, or noodles then eat the spoon? For more information about the spoons, you can read more on Triangle Tree’s website.

 

Image Source:
triangletree.com/index.php/industrial_design/edible-spoon/
Links:

 

triangletree.com/index.php/industrial_design/edible-spoon/

 

 

Street Furniture – Pop Up Public Seating

Street Furniture – Pop Up Public Seating

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Ever been somewhere and wanted to take a break, but there was no great place to sit?  Designer Oliver Show decided to create a simple way to put seating into public areas, using yellow drainage pipes that are found sound the city of Hamburg.  The pipes are flexible, cheap, and weather resistant.  The design is simple – find a spot and wrap it in the pipe material.

The result is a bright yellow solution to making benches, recliners, and loungers in any urban location.  The pipes can be wrapped around a bridge trussel, bike rack, or safety rail, and quickly create a place for you to sit.  I haven’t read anything about how comfortable the seats are, but in the pictures the seats look pretty good.

Show, who studied architecture, won a HFBK Leinemann Foundation for the Education and the Arts award for his seating idea.The series is called “Street Furniture,” and you can see a video about the construction online, or see more pictures on the Architizer website.

Image source:
Street Furniture – featured on the Architizer website

Links:

Video about the construction online

Street Furniture – featured on the Architizer website.

 

Superbrushes: Better Than Other Brushes

Superbrushes: Better Than Other Brushes

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Last Friday I attended a launch event by Evan Marcell where he introduced Superbrushes, a set of new Photoshop brushes that he has created for use to paint and create digital images.  Marcell created the brushes by taking pictures of textures around Cleveland, editing them, and preparing them as brush files to be loaded into Adobe Photoshop. The abstract brush forms provide a unique shape, texture, and pattern that make it easy to make great images and graphics.

Most of the time we use the standard brushes that come with Photoshop, but Superbrushes introduces a new exciting set of brushes to try.  One interesting thing about Superbrushes is that the process of how the brushes were created was through the phenomon of the “butterfly effect,” where one action affects another action.  One brush created another brush.  This new brush was used to make another brush, and so on. Marcell says that the project and process of reusing a brush to make a new brush was inspired by breakbeat music, where beats are cutup and reused to make new beats.

The goal of the project is to enable artists to make more work, and to appreciate the brush.  Marcell writes on the Superbrushes website, “.. artists are possibly the greatest appreciators/would-be art collectors if we didn’t feel obligated to put all of our funds right back into our art. SUPERBRUSHES brushes are beautiful compositions in themselves, enabling artists to fuel their art in appreciation of each gorgeous brush as an artwork in itself.”

At the launch event we were given direction to a webpage where we could download a set of  25 free Superbrushes.  We watched a demo of how to install and setup the brushes, which was followed by a live contest – a Superbrushdown, where the audience members who brought laptops, had about 8 minutes to make an image.  After the time was up, the group voted by clapping, and I am proud to say that I won(!), and got a prize of the full pack of 125 superbrushes, which usually sells for $20.00 off of the Superbrushes site..

Marcell is working to build a Superbrush community.  The website is currently featuring pieces made with Superbrushes on the website.  You can download a set of free 5 superbrushes to try, and then submit your image to be featured in the gallery.  Why use ordinary brushes when you can use Superbrushes?

Image Source
http://evanmarcell.wix.com/superbrushes
Links:

http://evanmarcell.wix.com/superbrushes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teachbox: A Toy Design for Emergency Supply Boxes

Teachbox: A Toy Design for Emergency Supply Boxes

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Each year, millions of boxes are shipped to developing countries by organizations like UNICEF, where food and medical supplies are needed. Designers Milad Mohajeri and Ali Haji came up with a idea for the boxes to be used for toys, and not to be used for just kindling. Their simple design integrates printing designs with perforated edges, so that they could be popped out and assembled like puzzles.

The designs when assembled become animals, vehicles, and people. Abuot their design, Tuvie writes, “Upon unpacking, most of these boxes are disposed of while these plain boxes enjoy a powerful potential to be creatively reused. In this concept, a sustainable solution is presented, based on which the simple model of 3-D puzzles is perforated on the boxes sent by UNICEF.”

Images of their design can be seen on tuvie.com

Image Source:
www.tuvie.com/teachbox-concept-trains-childrens-creative-mind

Links:

www.tuvie.com/teachbox-concept-trains-childrens-creative-mind