The inspiration
Eco-architecture
I went to a talk where architect Rafael Loschiavo talked about his eco-architecture firm Ecoeficientes and how - when building an eco-home - there are 6 factors to take into account: the reuse of water, recycled and natural materials, bioclimate, treatment of waste, energy generation and, what I'm interested in, growing plants.
An interesting point he made was that growing plants is usually the foot in the door for many people to start being eco-efficient. Somebody who grows their own garden are then more likely to be interested in capturing rainwater, and then solar energy, recycling waste, etc. It made me think, how could we make people want to grow plants? I thought about making a game about growing plants, but couldn't find a good way of doing it... but then another idea struck...
The Green Dip
I attended a lecture with Winy Maas in IAAC where he talked about The Green Dip, a project developed with the students of the Master in City & Technology. The idea was to quantify the consequences of completely covering our cities with plants, trees, green life, with metrics such as CO2 absorption, O2 emissions, temperature and noise reduction, and more.
After initial calculations they quickly realised that it wouldn’t be enough to have a significant impact and thought: “What if we covered the inside of buildings as well as the outside?”
IAAC’s students’ role in this project was to “create a Green Maker catalog, which lists out all of the floral species that can inhabit a particular biome, the manner of which it can grow in a city within that biome, and the impacts of covering a certain city with green.”
When seeing the furniture flashing before my eyes I thought… “why not actually make these furniture? It might be hard to cover the city with plants, but it wouldn’t be as hard to cover my flat in plants.”
The catalog the students developed includes maaany ideas, from chairs to tables, to stairs and balconies, and even pavements.
Bio photovoltaics
For this assignment I would make one furniture, but over time I could develop a range of them, such as tables, sofas, chairs, coffee tables, cupboards, TV stands and more.
Another idea was to integrate another project developed in IAAC called moss voltaic, plants that generate electricity. If integrated with this system it could power the electronics.
Moss Voltaics from Elena Mitro on Vimeo.
For my final project I decided to make an armchair, therefore all the questions below will be answered specifically for an armchair. If time allows I’d love to either make a coffee table or a desk. In most cases the answers are applicable for any furniture.
Questions
What will it do?
Depending on the furniture it will allow you to sit down, work, put your coffee mug on… 1000s of possibilities!
Side effects also include cleaner air, more life in the living room and increased mental health. Taking care of life is relaxing… when that life is a plant.
Who's done what beforehand?
I haven’t seen many examples of this specific example, a potted armchair. There’s a few example of tables though.
Most example I’ve seen are coffee tables which have a glass sheet on top. It could be applied to a desk if you leave leg space.
This one is more adapted as a normal table or desk
Terreform makes furniture out of mycelium. I know a few people in IAAC doing this as well.
There are some projects that actually convert furniture into flower pots, but none keeping the function of the furniture.
This design uses the legs of the table as support for the plants. This one has a glass sheet above the plants so that the table is still useable.
What will you design?
The actual furniture
I need to design some furniture, define the shape and functionality. I have some inspiration below.
In the case of an armchair it’ll include features to allow hooking cushions. A lot of the parametric furniture you see are raw, there isn't any padding. Surely it can’t be that comfortable to sit on and read a book or watch a film. I don’t want something that’s just pretty, and it needs to be used...
… and it will be, in the morning, so we can’t forget to take into account coffee cups needing a place.
I’ve seen around IAAC and other places people making furniture out of mushrooms. After a few days they dry up and make a solid structure. Maybe in this project the mushrooms could be used in areas where the sofa might need strengthening, or maybe it could be a structural and design part of its own.
I’d like to have grass on the armrests. I miss having grass between my toes, but I could settle with having it in between my fingers meanwhile.
Plant pots that can be adapted to every holes
As the furniture will be parametrically designed using these waffle patterns, it’ll allow for many dispositions of the plants. The downside of it is that it will be very curvy and you won’t be able to use the same pot for every possible location. I have different options for this.
- Do the “easy” way and 3D print a pot that has the shape of the hole.
- Use a plastic sheet that you can staple to the wood. I’m not a big fan because staples are kind of definitive or leave traces in the wood. The plastic sheet could also be held by some 3D printing pieces that can act as hooks.
- 3D print pots that can extend in the corners to grab the edges of the plywood.
- No plant pot and just block the bottom of the hole and fill it with soil - not sure if that’s good long term though? The structure being made of wood.
- Make the flower pots out of the recycled plastic using the Precious Plastic machines we have at the lab. The mixed plastic look could also look cool paired with the sofa. Now, I need to think about how to adapt those pots to each hole.
A water collection feature
It is easy to overwater plants, and they generally do not like sitting in water, as it may develop mold and kill the plant. It is usually preferable to have holes in the flower pot to allow for proper draining.
The water can gather in a water tank where you can easily take it out and use it to water the plants again if needed. I like the idea of emptying your cup of tea in the plant when you’re done with it.
You might wonder why it is necessary? It isn’t exactly. The pots could be 100% impermeable so water doesn’t leak through. It would be much easier as well.
That’ll be my fallback option if I don’t have time to implement the water collection.
Note //
A lot of projects automatically water plants for you, but I find that taking care of the plants is therapeutic. I like to check how they are doing, and water them if needed. Doing it automatically works when you want to do it on big scale, like indoor farms, but might be impersonal for at home.
A power supply for the electronics
A key feature to this is to integrate technology in it. Technology needs power (and power usually means cables, which are ugly).
I thought about integrating another project developed in IAAC called Moss Voltaics which harnesses energy from plants. The plant absorbs CO2 converts it to glucose and does sciency stuff. Basically it charges up in negative energy and becomes an anode which needs to get rid of its charge. We insert a cathode at the bottom of the pot to "collect" that charge.
The pots can be connected in serial or parallel to give more power or amperage. A small battery will be included to harness the energy non-stop and store it for later use.
Fallback option is that this battery can be charged with any normal charger and be inserted in the furniture after.
… and of course, some electronics
Now, to the actual electronics. We have to keep in mind that we are working with a system that is powered by plants, so we need to keep it low on energy consumption.
As I’m planning to make an armchair, the first thing I thought about having is a reading lamp. It doesn’t need to be super high-tech, only a few LEDs would do the trick. The body of the reading light could be a piece of one of the layers of the parametric design that folds up.
Note //
Again I’m not a massive fan of all these automations where the lights switch on when you get near it or things like this. What if I want to be in the dark? I guess just install a switch to turn it off.
It could be fun to use the actual plants as switches. Touch the cactus to switch the light on. Touch the Aloe Vera to turn the volume up.
In many cases when plants are involved people include sensors that detect the soil moisture, pH, and other things. In my case I think I will only use the soil moisture to give a reminder when the plants need watering. If I think of other ideas as I go along and it makes sense to add them, I will.
I want to keep the design minimalistic, I don’t want it to look like a super futuristic technologic armchair with different colored lights and cables everywhere. Therefore I want to keep the outputs and lights to a minimum. It also works with the low consumption theory I mentioned at the start of this chapter.
At the moment we only have the reading light as an output and maybe it should stay this way. It could flash when plants need watering. If we use RGB leds we could have blue light for watering, red light when the battery is low.
As the project plans to include different furniture, it could be interesting to explore the option of making them all connected somehow. We need some useful function for this, for example the sofa could communicate with the TV stand to change the volume (not very useful).
What materials and components will be used?
The furniture
For the furniture I thought of using cardboard, but I’m not sure combining cardboard with water and plants is a great idea if you want it to survive more than a few days. Instead I'm opting for our good old beloved plywood. The thickness is to be determined, but I’m guessing around 15mm.
The flower pots
I’d like to keep the flower pots made from natural material, as this project is made of wood and plants so far. Something like a hemp bag, or these coconuts bags you start to grow plants in. Only thing is, these would leak and would need the water collection system. I could make them out of clay, like in the moss voltaic article, but they aren’t that easy to make and they weigh a lot (I’m guessing this).
The electronics
The reading lamp would only need a few LEDs (RGB?). (Is it possible to have some strong bioluminescence? I’d be surprised. UPDATE: Gabriela said yes, but it'll take a while. Hello Gabriela.)
The circuit will consist of a few resistors, capacitors, an ESP32, a copper board and battery for storing the energy.
The bio-voltaic power source
The documentation of the voltaic greens include carbon fiber mesh as well as metal inox. It obviously need some electronic connections.
Where will they come from?
China.
Just kidding, the plywood from around the corner in Barcelona, the plants as well, the electronics most probably from Diotronics or DigiKey, the waste from around the corner of my flat, in the bin in the kitchen.
How much will they cost?
Here is a rough bill of materials.
| Part
|
Supplier
|
URL
|
Qty
|
Cost
|
Total
|
| Plywood
|
Fab Lab
|
|
2
|
15€
|
30€
|
| Plastic
|
Everybody
|
|
∞
|
0€
|
0€
|
| Plants
|
Plant Shop
|
|
7
|
4
|
28€
|
| Soil (50L)
|
Soil Shop
|
|
1
|
5€
|
5€
|
| Copper board
|
Fab Lab
|
|
1
|
|
|
| Resistor
|
DigiKey
|
|
4
|
0.1
|
0.4
|
| ESP32
|
DigiKey
|
|
1
|
1.99
|
1.99
|
| Carbon fiber
|
Alibaba
|
URL
|
1
|
15$
|
15$
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total
|
80.39€
|
What parts and systems will be made?
Everything. There will be the parametric kit, the electronic board, the plant pots, the reading light, sensors for the plants health.
What processes will be used?
2D and 3D design
-
3D design of the armchair’s body
-
3D design of adaptive plant pots
-
2D design of the electronic board
additive and subtractive fabrication processes
-
Subtractive when cutting the plywood
-
Additive when 3D printing the pots, or injecting them with mould
electronics design and production
-
Design for the board which needs to be able to read the health of the plants via diverse sensors, such as moisture, CO2, pH, air pollution.
-
Carbon fiber mesh to create the bio-voltaic system
-
Battery connected to a current converter to charge it from low voltage
-
Circuit around the armchair to connect the sensors
embedded microcontroller interfacing and programming
-
I think I will use the ESP32 chip as it is able to connect to the internet and therefore communicate with the outside world (me, other furniture, Netflix). Except if there’s other ways to do it, because it might use more power than other chips. Maybe it could be a simple ATtiny with a bluetooth module.
system integration and packaging
-
Due to the characteristics of waffle designed furniture, there’s plenty of space to store away electronics and cables. That’ll keep the design nice and tidy.
What questions need to be answered?
-
Can the cyber green voltaics (the name of the project that evolved from the moss voltaic) provide enough power? Will it even work? I’ve been talking to one of the people working on the project and he says it’s difficult to make it work.
-
What will the plant pot be made out of, and how will they be adaptable from one hole to another?
-
How deep does the soil for grass on the armrests need to be?
-
Is the water collection even necessary?
How will it be evaluated?
I’m not sure what this means. On what criteria? It’ll include everything you need.
I want it to be something people can make at home with simple tools (except the CNCing). The essential for this concept is to have plants live on furniture, the electronics side of it is only for fun.
