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Vision of the Future 2019 - Microsoft

Solid Poetry by Frederik Molenschot & Susanne Happle

Whenever the weather change the landscape transforms, the light becomes different and the whole atmosphere changes. All materials seem to alter. In my project I explore the possibilities for hidden design appearing as the environment changes. I applied techniques to enduring and solid materials as glass and concrete, so that natural processes like differences in temperature causing condense reveal patterns on windows. Rain uncovers decoration on a city square. The possible applications of solid poetry are various: either at home in the bathroom, in the garden, in saunas and dance clubs, where the humidity is high or public spaces like bus stops or pavements. All forms of solid poetry have in common that they change the whole setting; they are surprising and have a life of their own.

Designer: Frederik Molenschot & Susanne Happle

Fear of Laundry

I don’t know anyone who intentionally LOVES doing the laundry in their life, be it for their self or for their loved ones, and goodness forbid they enjoy doing it for an employer of theirs. But there it is. Laundry. And it has to be done! The designer of the subject matter contained in this post: the “Laundring” laundry machine, has some information of rather more important than just -having to do it- concern, and thus says that’ll be taken care of by this lovely concoction! Yes indeed, designer Shang-Che Wu relays information that renters in the area Wu designs who share washing machines with strangers are worried about the bacteria that flies around inside of the machine may cause infections through underwear. But. They simply do not have time to use the next best alternative means: hand washing. Then came Laundring! This amalgamation uses pedals to drive a coaxial bi-directional rotating machanism that generates high cleaning two-way flow to clean all dirty laundries. It saves time, strength, and energy that’d normally be used by hand-washing, not to mention irritated hands and the dreaded wrinkle-fingers. And! And! It could be used by renters in no-machine areas to avoid the laundromat down the street. Unless of course they’re into that sort of thing.

Course Director: Dr. Hsien-Hui TANG @ NTUST Design Dept.

Designer: Shang-Che Wu

Smart Street Lights Know How To Bloom

The street lights in my area have a mind of their own and flicker into life on whim. So when I hear of concepts like the Sustainable City Lights, it makes me go green with envy. It’s not asking too much for an intelligent lighting system that harnesses the solar and wind energy for itself. Lampposts intuitive enough to beam up the LEDs only when people are around, else emit a soft glow! Ah, Wishful Thinking.

Adapting itself to the environment, Sustainable City Lights mimic the opening and closing of a flower bud while harvesting the energies. Any surplus accumulated goes back to the main grid for powering other city things…

Designer: Philips Design

Cooking Up The Eco Greens

The Green Cuisine takes inspiration from the Japanese Teppanyaki steakhouse style of cooking and serving. Hosts and guest get comfy in the cooking area where preparation and consumption form the part of the eco-routine. Food is cooked in appliances like the Healthy Steamer, Smart Kettle & Cups, and Cooking Modules, that work together on an interactive Kitchen Table. The integrated performance indicator monitors and displays energy consumption, giving you a fair idea of how Green you have been!

The bottom line: with this futuristic kitchen you can reduce energy consumption and optimize waste management. Philips will dish out the details on questions like “How will this work?”, much later!

Designer: Philips Design

Ambient Lights Get Powered By Nothing

Well almost nothing. Here’s how the deal works: you have a multiple socket strip and probably using up all the sockets to power your gadgets. Its switched on and you keep forgetting to unplug or switch off the unused gadget from the strip and waste energy. With the Saving Energy Multitap, the so called wasted energy is no longer wasted….it gets sucked up to power this set of cool looking touch-sensitive ambient lights on the wall. The job of these ambient lights is to subtly remind you that you need to power off buddy!

The video of the working prototype convinces me that this is a neat idea!

Gold Award : The 22nd Koizumi International Lighting Design Competition for Students

Designers: Dong Hoon Han, Hwa Yong Shin & Dong Jin Shin

Bus Handles as Fine Music Power

Power up! While you’re jamming on down 1st Avenue, swinging from the bus poles on those hangers they’ve got there, what kind of power are you generating? I mean other than your body heat (everyone knows this is a whole lot of energy due to The Matrix, of course.) But what about that swing power? What about your whole body weight pulling down on that pole? We’ll whatddya know, here’s a project dealing with just that. It’s the “More+” bus handle and it’s going to power you up to Crazy Town.

Crazy Town is where you go when you’re jamming on music so hard that you just up and lose your mind. It’s a great place to be. You can GET THERE if you use these handles. Or at least if you’re at the end of the pole. Get plugged in! Piezoelectric ceramics technology makes this possible, sending all the power back to the bus where it can be redistributed to the passengers via power plugs for radio, television, chargers, or the lighting on the bus. Electricity!

Designer: Junjie Zhang

Skip To More Power

Besides being good for your flubber, skipping seems to be a good way for harnessing energy to recharge batteries. I know this idea is not so new; we have seen how jumping a rope can power a torch and juice batteries. However design is not only about problem solving, but also about refining existing solutions, hence the E Rope. Refinement comes in the form of aesthetics and interface. Both look gorgeously done in this one. Moreover, the video says it all…

Designer: Kyung Guk Lee

Water Weighs All

Instead of using all that precious and energy-wasting metal in the construction of a scale, why not use water? That’s what the designer of this fabulous project thought, then he brought it to life – Water Scale, a scale that uses Archimedes’ Principle in a simple container to create just what he thought of in his mind.

The object that is to be weighed is placed ont he scale plate which then sinks into the water in proportion to its mass, overflowing the water which then moves up through channel under the water reservoir. The weight of the object is measured with water and the plastic bead in the channel. This scale can weigh objects up to 1000 grams, and is more economical and lighter than most electric and mechanical scales in the market.

Plus no electricity, no energy consumption – green.

Designer: Muzaffer Kocer & Ayca Guven

Energy Consciousness

Do you know how much energy you use? Most of us don’t. Sure we have meters outside some where but those gauges only mean something to the trained city technicians that come by once a month. For the rest of us, we need something else that translates energy usage into laymen’s terms. Perhaps something like the Power Conscience.

It’s a simple device that gives you up to the minute stats on your energy usage and calculates your current electric bill. Designer Delroy Dennisur could have stopped right there but he decided to take it a step further and give you a purdy visual cue. The front panel is laden with LEDs forming a floral pattern. The more energy you use, the more light is emitted as if the florals are growing.

Personally I think the opposite should happen. The florals begin to recede the more energy you use. A visual reminder to conserve.

Designer: Delroy Dennisur

Silent Energy

Silent Energy is an interactive exhibition concept that helps us become aware of energy usage. The amount of energy we use has a direct effect on overall consumption. We usually think of energy as invisible so if that veil were lifted, and every moment clearly visualized, we’d might think twice about leaving lights on, turning off appliances, etc. This energy awareness is an important tool for all of us to learn if we’re to practice the first part of this mantra; reduce, recycle, reuse.

Designer: Jannis Huelsen

SONEA Converts Sound to Energy

That’s no boom box! That’s no ghetto blaster! That’s a Sonea unit! It’s basically a machine which protests the waste of perfectly good noise, converting it to energy we can use to do anything! Anything at all! But probably most often such things as lighting street lamps and such.

A single Sonea unit is 450mm by 450mm by 80mm, weighing in at a whole 7kg. It converts 30 watts of power per decibel of sound it intercepts. It’s made of Poly Carbonate elements, ABS, and other more obvious components listed in the layout picture below.

One airplane liftoff makes noise around 140dB. When taking off, the amount of energy [created with the SONEA] would be about 240kW. If we calculate with 500 airplanes per day, the amount of energy would be aproximately 120MW. If this amount of energy is generated for one year, it would be the same amount of energy that is generated by 8000tons of oil.

Humongoid possibilities. I’d lay one right outside my apartment window where sirens from the nearby fire brigade station let loose pretty darn often. Loudness for my free energy!

Designers: Jihoon Kim, Boyeon Kim, Myung-Suk Kim, and Da-Woon Chung

Sunshine On A Rainy Day Means Loads Of Energy

2020 is really not that far away, but are we prepared to experiment with what Philips has conjured up for our housing options of the future? They are proposing that we harness the energies of the elements to sustain our living quarters by entrapping the renewable resources on-site, using some membrane-type of contraption! Shifting the focus from eco-friendly building materials, Off the Grid Sustainable Habitat 2020 will do-away with “inert outer surfaces” that merely protect out exteriors by making them intelligent. Apparently the exteriors will feature functional and responsive ‘skins’ that react to the ever changing environment. The exteriors are thus built that they can capture the rainwater (recycled for domestic use and filtered for drinking), trap the sunlight (for electricity and solar power), harness the winds (for air cooling) and channelize daylight (for illumination).

The proposal sounds interesting, but the only area its gets too far fetched, is when Philips suggests, that the ‘intelligent membrane’ of the exterior could mean that the building would no longer need to be connected to traditional energy and water supply systems.

I don’t see this happening anytime soon, at least not in 2020.

Designer: Philips Design

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