Cumulus Green 2024

honorable mention

The Town of Sharing is Caring

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Honorable Mention

The Town of Sharing is Caring

Amalie Aadalen, Elias Rølvåg Horsgård, Henning D. Nygaard & Andrea Skovdahl

The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway
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The system today contains several problems within these three main areas: social, production and land use.

Social

In Norway, being a farmer is considered to be a lonesome and undesirable occupation. Back in the days, the farm used to be a place for work and socialization. Today however, there are fewer jobs and less people at the farms and in the districts in general. This leaves hard work and long hours for the farmer and contributes to urbanization.

Production

Despite the workload and long hours there is little profit to be made by the farmer. Distributors and suppliers acting as the middle man between farmer and consumer takes a big chunk of the profit-pie making it hard to change production and investing in new innovations.
And the consumers values and habits contributes to a constant battle to lower the prices, in the end really just affecting the farmer as the import and food waste increases.

Land Use

It is also important to exploit the potential in the little farmable land Norway has (only 3%). Much of the land is producing animal feed and yet we have great potential in outfield pasture.

Concept

An arrangement and culture between farmers located close together of sharing their equipment and at the same time creating an arena for sharing knowledge and skill. This would start off with a small circuit of farmer-friends who team up before it over time evolves into a model of how to operate a farm. When keeping the circles small, farmers are more likely to trust each other with their equipment, more willing to share and more willing to invest in new equipment together with each other. Of course some equipment such as basic tractors will not make sense to share. A potential problem is that some equipment is needed at the very same time which makes a potential pain point.

However, this concept will make it easier to change production both because of the easy accessibility to a range of farming equipment and also the easy accessibility to knowledge, a helping hand and a second opinion. This will make it easier to keep the soil cultivable over longer periods of time.

The main motivation for implementing this intervention will be the cost saving effect it has. By sharing equipment, knowledge and skill among people who know each other will spread the cost and create more economic freedom. It will also create a professional community that the farmer has been missing and contribute to making it a more social occupation.

This sharing mentality and community will also have great benefits and influence on other problematic areas in the food system and society. For starters it will make it easier financially for small farmers to survive as the costs of equipment are shared.

It would e.g. provoke innovation as there is more conversation around problems and opportunities, and networking will contribute to the possibility of realization. This again could lead to jobs and attractiveness of living in the districts.

TRAYning

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Honorable Mention

TRAYning

Andrea Gentile, Angela Riveros, Mariia Ershova

Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
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The current school system in many states does not pay proper attention to educating children about nutrition, not teaching them the correct amount of food to consume and avoiding wasting it.

At the same time, many kindergartens and elementary schools do not have ecologically sustainable canteen and do not invest in upgrading them; many canteens use disposable plastic plates and do not engage in responsible waste management. The result is not only food waste, but also a significant plastic waste.

TRAYning wants to improve the food system in kindergarten and elementary school canteens through food education and generating awareness about proper nutrition and avoiding food waste.

Through a combination of shapes and colors, the child learns over time the correct amount of food and the right combination of foods and types of it in a meal:

  • The different sizes and layout of the plates reinforce the perception of the right amounts of food to be consumed;
  • Different colors allow the child to learn and recognize food types over time.

The material of the plates is selected to be sustainable and compostable, respecting a circular economy. Disposable plates are made from sugarcane, an organic, easily compostable, low-cost material that is a sustainable alternative to plastic disposable plates.

Treddik

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Honorable Mention

Treddik

Serena Alampi

Tongji University, China
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In a society where companies use the SDGs as ideological factors, manifesto pillars, or general premise, the effective implementation of what can contribute to sustainable development often remains only a theoretical scenario. Intending to guarantee a real impact on today’s and future society, this project focuses, in particular, on how emerging technologies contribute to healthy and sustainable lifestyles, by proposing a design solution for the food sector that involves the macro-areas of sustainability, technology, and interaction design. The project offers a personalized food 3D printing service for school canteens (or similar space of collective and scheduled food consumption) that use AI to manage food waste. The combination of Artificial Intelligence and 3D food printing provides flexibility and scalability of the solution. 3D food printing allows for finished and ready-made food manufacturing that can quickly implement the requests handled by the AI.

The project is the outcome of a Master Thesis in Interaction Design, which includes (1) literature review on the relationships between sustainability, technology, and interaction design, (2) definition and analysis of design direction for sustainable innovation in the food sector, (3) ideation of a design solution that combines feasibility and sustainable societal needs, (4) working prototype of UX, UI and technology schema realization, (5) test the solution to collect feedback and ideas for future improvements.

The prototype is called Treddik: a platform that allows primary and secondary school students to create and print their snacks from fruit leftovers. AI plays a fundamental role: it detects food availability and displays it directly on the platform, and it helps operators in managing the snack production flow according to the required timing. The platform assumes both an educational and a ludic role for the primary user.

The impact of the solution is multifaceted and addresses the needs of different stakeholders. The child can educate himself on how to eat better and which behaviors positively and negatively impact the environment and society. They have the opportunity to carry out an alternative and different activity from the traditional classroom, an activity whose outcome is school is physical and tangible, and enjoyable. The system allows children to augment knowledge, be engaged in the food process, as well as the reduction of food waste.

Research suggested that the school (in Italy at least) is one of the places of more significant food waste. In addition, children do not have the proper awareness of nutrition and they are significantly influenced by the shape and aesthetic of what they eat.

Tests were carried out for the digital part of the designed system, a first MVP, with target users.
The solution not only demonstrated the interest of the users but also how the school food system can be improved from a more sustainable perspective.

Vertical

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Honorable Mention

Vertical

Valentino Bosetti, Francesco Magenta, Gaia Zarantonello

IED Istituto Europeo di Design, Italy
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Having noticed that:

  • personal food culture returned recently to be part of individual hobbies;
  • that peoples are realising the physical and psychological benefits of growind their own food
  • that more and more people are looking for food use plants to be used directly in their kitchen…

It become vital to find a solution for people not able to grow plants due to their agricultural limited knowledge or for the ones not having time to keep up with all the needs of a plant.

That’s why we decided to combine the two macro scenario of the hydroponic technology combined to the well known internet of things.

The first one helps with the technical growth of the planet, making it grow quicker and with less usage of raw materials, specifically with no soil, using only water with dissolved minerals salts.

This helps Vertical and the user because the product needs only a refill of water once in a while. Plus it needs only a short amount of heat and light that turns into short use of energy.

The other one is IOT known as Internet of Things. This helps us build a relationship between product and user by connecting Vertical with the user’s mobile devices increasing information sharing. It supports the user with: remembering to fill the tank of water for the hydroponic system, knowing when the plant is ready to use and setting the lighting cycle to better match with personal rhythms.

VERTICAL design aim to minimise user efforts in the growth process allowing the user to enjoy most of the rewarding phases.

The system consist of 4 product:

  • The lingotto: the organic substrate where the seeds can germinate.
  • The greenhouse: the main product.
  • The maintainer: a little greenhouse to be located in the kitchen to keep the plant alive during the consumption time.
  • The application: which is supposed to lead the user to the process of growth. From the setup of the greenhouse, passing through the choice of Lingotto with the user’s favorite seeds and the management of the plant during the growth and maintenance phase, to the disposal of the organic substate with the seeds.

Use plant to give life!