Pet mobility

israeli industrial designer nir shalom presents his canine prosthetic as part of 'thinking hands', 
an exhibition in ventura lambrate at milan design week 2011. the device attaches at the hips of 
small dogs with disabled rear legs and allows for increased mobility over other dog wheelchairs
due to the dynamic and more independently moving supports.an elastic knee joint is set backwards,
allowing dogs to access stairs and lay down and sit up on their own. 

Peer comments

Patrick Dunns: http://patrickdunnindustrialdesign.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/blog-post_9990.html?showComment=1382428878243

Rowena Goodall: http://rowenagoodall.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/blog-post.html#comment-form

Felicia Levina: http://feliciaides1122.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/pss-voice-translator-travel-gadget.html#comment-form

Matt Patene: http://mpatanestudio3b.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/final-presentation.html#comment-form

Kevin peng http://kevinpeng3373311.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/goal-keeper-product-service-system.html?showComment=1382430485414#c8819210777427152745

Plant share

The big idea

The Plant share system grew from the idea that it should be possible to find plants, seeds, crops in your local area, given by neighbours who also garden. We all like to replace ornamental plants or try a new vegetable variety. As citizens, we also would like to get solidarity access to the food produced by vegetable gardens.

The avid garden allows has plants to offer. This may be plant that has multiplied, perhaps which doesn’t fare well in the garden conditions, or extra seedlings and seeds too. We don’t always know with whom to share this surplus of plants, and more than often than it ends up garbage in compost.

Plant share pot aims to solve both of these problems helping people find new plants for you and giving you the means to provide your own. This system targets household residents with the goal of creating a community around gardeners. The system includes a reusable plant pot provided by the council and an online mobile phone application. The mobile phone app integrated with augmented reality helps in way finding of plants available in the community, while also helping users take more accurate photos to help identify the plants size. The reusable pot is made from a decomposable that has a lifespan of 5years. handle helps users transport the plant efficiently and can be safely hung on the doors. The pot engages users by emphasizing potential benefits of the planet with friendly illustrations and instruction. Each pot has a unique ID which allows users to the pots history.

Root Pots last for multiple seasons of gardening and will generally begin to break down after about 3 to 5 years. They are designed to allow roots to breathe. Root Pots are not tapered like plastic pots, so they stand up well to strong winds and heavy harvests.

•     Made from 100% recycled material.
•     Root Pots are both reusable and biodegradable.
•     For soil & soilless gardens.
•     Allows water to evaporate more evenly.
•     Auto-prunes roots & prevents root circling .
•     Allows evaporative cooling in hot climates & provides thermal insulation in cold climates.
•     Creates a dense & fibrous root structure.
•     Compact storage

Interesting aquaponics garden system

Week 5

Scott: I think you should design a better pot with handles, a way to hook to doors, using a app to measure the plant and with strong branding.

Oun: probably too many products, the spade is too novel, 

Reflection: I'm going to focus on the pot making it easy for everyone to get from the council and then use the app to make things easier to search for plants.

Biggest Urbanized agriculture

Cuba has one the biggest urban agriculture in the world due to oil cuts meaning transporting vegetables was expensive. Advantages

TED talk: Urban farming

Mobile food collective and Connecting people with food

The Mobile Food Collective is a fleet of mobile structures inspiring a new food culture around growing, cooking, sharing, and eating.

The Mobile Food Collective is a fleet of mobile structures with a mission to bring people together around food, and inspire a new food culture around growing, cooking, sharing and eating.

The MFC was formed by a shared passion for food. It began with the recognition of the universal quality of food, as a social value beyond mere sustenance: everyone eats, and each culture has its own history around food. Food brings people together.

In pursuit of this traveling cultural center, we hope to facilitate conversations about food—issues of access, education around how to grow your own, food story narratives, seed/recipe exchange, or simply sharing a meal together. We bring people to the table (or, literally, bring our table to the people).

The seed of the collective grew from student work within Archeworks, an alternative design school where students work in multidisciplinary teams with nonprofit partners to create design solutions for social and environmental concerns. We devised the project as a public education campaign to inspire a rethinking of our relationship to food, emphasizing heritage, ownership, exchange, and connection. The MFC is many things: an education/exchange platform for planting, growing and cooking; demonstrations and distribution of seeds, soil, compost, and produce; a space activator within a community event; or the centerpiece of a harvest dinner.

Physically, the MFC is conceived as a fleet of mobile structures. The larger mobile unit houses a harvest table and flexible storage cabinets that double as seats. At a smaller scale, there are bikes and trailers, equipped to carry the modular storage cabinets. The mobility of the project allows this dialogue to be constant and moveable—we can go where we are needed, bringing different things to different audiences, connecting different groups across a city, or around the world.

Funding will go to completing the final steelwork details, fabricating the skin material, and building out our fleet of bikes and trailers. Also, we need support to build our archive of recipes and food story recordings.

In addition, we are honored to be selected to showcase the project at the 2010 Venice Biennale. We want to allocate funds to a series of workshops and other programming events while in Italy, to encourage cultural exchange around the topic of food and learn from the local Italian community.

Join us in inspiring a new food culture, moving more people to grow, cook, share, and eat— together.

http://vimeo.com/15450511

An interesting talk on the low income Toronto areas and how the lack of shops has severely restricted communities. He also discusses how food spaces are just as important as car parking spaces and how council policies should enable food access rather than restrict.

Plant catching

PlantCatching helps gardeners exchange plants and reduce waste by Maureen O'Connor @ 10:41 ampost a comment » What could be greener than exchanging green, living plants? Earlier this year Canadian gardener Nicolas Cadilhac started PlantCatching, a project created to reduce gardening waste, while connecting gardeners in both their local and global communities. In Cadilhac’s local Quebec area the concept has already taken root – over 330 donations have occurred in the Quebec province alone. Cadilhac is now working to expand the project’s scope to empower gardeners and farmers worldwide to share their excess materials and eliminate waste. PlantCatching is designed to provide gardeners the opportunity to find new plants for their garden, give away excess plants and network with like-minded horticulturists. How does it work? Find a plant locally: Members can search this website, indicating the desired address. The PlantCatching site will indicate all active plant donations within 1.5km (or greater if nothing is available) and users can then retrieve the sought after plant. Users read the donor comments regarding the plant and click a button indicating that the plant is no longer available to others. If you’re a passerby and discover a public donation at the edge of a property, simply read the label and decide whether to take the plant. Request a plant: Create a user account on PlantCatching and you will be able to add requests. You can list plants you’d like to acquire, supplies you need, or the new vegetable variety you wish to try. When a user makes a search on the map in your neighborhood, he will see the existing local demand and may be tempted to donate some of the requested plants. Gardening stuff you can give: a living plant in earth a seed package a bag of bulbs fruits and vegetables from your own production gardening materials like soil, compost, rocks, containers … Three modes of giving: Public mode: You leave your donated plant in front of your home or at an authorized public space and attach a special label printed from the website. Semi-private mode: When a plant is released, or offered, members consult a map on the website to find the plant’s location. A passersby cannot see the plant and cannot take it. Once you’ve discovered a plant near in your local area just follow the instructions left by the donor. Private mode: Members consult a map on the PlantCatcher site to discover plants and to contact a donor to arrange a pick up. This method of donation is similar to traditional ads but can be useful, for example, if two people are looking to divide a plant and minimize its suffering. PlantCatching is a global service that can be used by communities all around the world. Want to start a PlantCatcher network in your community? You can get free flyers and other help from

- See more at: http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/2012/09/18/plantcatching-helps-gardeners-exchange-plants-and-reduce-waste/#more-61796

http://www.cultivatingcommunity.org.au/food-systems-projects/urban-harvest/

Grow It, Share It, Eat It!

Cultivating Community Urban Harvests are about meeting other food growers, sharing information, and swapping your surplus produce for food you don’t have.

You’d be surprised just how much food is grown right here in the city. This means food that is fresh, seasonal, often organic, and comes with low/zero food miles. If your garden produces fruit and vegetables in abundance then this is the chance to share the spoils and get to know your neighbours while you’re at it.

week 2

This week, i discussed with classmates the Idea of having unwanted plants and wanting to share it with people.

Scott's comment: I think your system map needs to be more clear and who provides it. Work on the kit that will used to measure the plants and who is the provider.