The Future Home: Innovative Design for Human and Plant Cohabitation: Desert Bounty Terrarium

Statement

We are a design lab based in Joshua Tree, California. Our purpose is to:
1) Look at plants as technology but from a human and creative perspective
2) Pursue the potential many plant species have for removing toxins and adding moisture to the breathing zones in our homes, offices, clinical spaces, and commercial spaces.
3) Encourage the co-habitation of plants and humans.
4) Increase the appeal of incorporating plants into our living spaces by applying good, sustainable design principles to existing methods of keeping houseplants.
5) Personalize the breathing zones of individuals based on their environmental health concerns such as benzene or formaldehyde exposure.
6) Re-imagine the kitchen’s tea cupboard and spice rack as a living resource.
7) Re-imagine the bathroom’s medicine cabinet as a living resource offering safer, lasting, fresher, and more holistic alternatives to many of the commercial items that are conventionally stocked in medicine cabinets at home.
8) Critically engage the ways in which plants can be used for aesthetic purposes in interior design.

In this pursuit we are currently developing the following design lines:
“Sustainable Air Filtration”
“Sustainable Humidity Maintenance”
“Living Medical Resource”
“Living Kitchen Resource”
“Built-In and Mobile Terrarium Installations”
“Interior Desert-scaping”

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Desert Bounty Terrarium

The goal of the Desert Bounty project is to apply smart design to the problem of sustainable agriculture in desert and draught-prone climates. Accessibility to users both in the developed and underdeveloped worlds is one of our principle design priorities. The ability to grow food in dry, unpredictable climates is an increasing concern for our world as it is presented with devestating, tangible effects of climate change. Since we are situated directly in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California, we are directly challenged to come up with solutions for growing food in an extremely hot, sunny, dry climate. The main Desert Bounty project is constructing large acrylic enclosed growing boxes fed by mounted florescent lights to practice intensive produce cultivation. This design creates its own internal climate---one that with very little care, maintenance, or watering stays suitable for many food-producing plants. Faced with a quickly approaching desert summer here in Joshua Tree, CA (and more and more of the world will face similar challenges with desertification and a shifting climate), we have begun this project by designing a “Seed Room” which is equipped with low-hanging florescent lights over hundreds of trays of germinating seeds. The “Seed Room” is an extremely efficient design for starting seeds at home. Some of these seedlings will be transferred in Spring 2009 to the outdoor greenhouse we are currently designing using salvaged materials.