Tag Archives: Garden

A LEGO-inspired modular indoor garden system doubles up as a fun DIY arrangement

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Planterior is a LEGO-inspired indoor garden system that uses LEGO’s building block method to attach modular planters to a wall-mountable base platform.

Since WFH orders were first put in place, we all went looking for ways to make our living spaces feel more like homes. Whether it was a matter of finding a new couch or filling our walls with our favorite pieces of artwork, our ‘temporary’ home offices soon became where we wanted to spend most of our time even outside of work.

Designer: Dasol Jeong

Countless indoor garden designs have also emerged to help enliven our WFH spaces and make them more intimate. One of the latest, a LEGO-inspired indoor garden called Planterior by designer Dasol Jeong merges LEGO’s building blocks with the frame of a bulletin board to create a unique, modular garden system for any WFH space.

Planterior keeps the shape and size of a traditional bulletin board and integrates a gardening system into its structure to bring greenery to any workspace. Describing Planterior’s inspiration in their own words, Dasol notes, “Due to the influence of fine dust and COVID-19, people, who do not have the opportunity to access plants outdoors, are increasingly putting plants into their homes…Home gardening and plant territories are gaining vitality [as a result].”

Using LEGO’s approach to building, each individual planter attaches to the larger board the same way LEGO building blocks are stacked together. Playing into this stacking method, Planterior keeps a modular structure by design, allowing users to create endless configurations for their indoor garden.

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LG’s latest indoor gardening appliance stands at 3 feet tall and will automatically grow all your plants for you

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Sure, a refrigerator can keep your veggies fresh… but LG’s tiiun can keep it fresher! Designed as a unique home appliance that lets you grow your own herbs and veggies the LG tiiun was announced in the run-up to CES 2022. The indoor gardening appliance is roughly the size of a dorm refrigerator, standing at approximately 3 feet tall, and features two shelves that can accommodate up to 6 all-in-one seed packages and various seed kits.

The term tiiun comes from the Korean word meaning ‘to sprout’ and is LG’s way of indicating that this appliance is an all-in-one self-sufficient garden. The appliance creates a perfect microclimate and all the right conditions for the plants to grow, even mimicking light cycles so you could potentially keep your tiiun anywhere in a room without worrying about access to proper sunlight. LG’s Flexible Weather Control System creates the ideal situations for organic growth while also keeping pests at bay. An internal watering system also delivers water to the plants (8 times a day) to keep them hydrated. All you really have to do is install the tiiun and sit back while your plants grow on their own!

The LG tiiun comes at a time when companies are realizing our push to self-reliance. The pandemic has done its job of exposing the fragile nature of our supply chain, and it’s no surprise that a lot of people are now taking to home and kitchen gardening, while increasingly attempting at making our own food (whether it’s sourdough loaves or banana bread) from scratch. The tiiun encourages that vision by giving you a foolproof way to grow your own veggies and herbs in the comfort of your home without worrying about plant-care.

Some may remember LG’s massive vertical farm from back in January 2020. Occupying the size of a large double-door refrigerator, the vertical farm was merely a starting point for what LG’s offering today with the tiiun. The radically smaller tiiun is perfect for any household, and can sit in a room, doubling as a couchside table that also happens to grow plants within it. Sure, it’s not as bohemian as your ceramic or concrete planter with those lovely indoor plants, but it caters to a different audience. The idea LG is selling is that growing your own greens can be as easy as plugging a device in and hitting the power switch. LG sells all-in-one seed kits that sit in the tiiun’s shelves, and once you’ve put the kits in place and switched the appliance on, the tiiun takes over. “A stylish addition to one’s home or apartment, our smart gardening system makes growing herbs, leafy greens and flowers fun and simple, even for those of us with zero gardening experience”, says Lyu Jae-cheol, president of LG Electronics Home Appliance & Air Solution Company.

Designer: LG

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Creative brick design with a built-in planter turns the outer facade of this house into a vertical garden!

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Created by architecture and interior design firm OA-Lab, the ‘Alley House’ is a small multi-family housing project with a brick facade, located in Seoul, South Korea. The house sits on a developed, relatively crowded street with buildings on either side… but the lack of proper space for a garden prompted OA-Lab to devise a clever workaround – turn the house into a garden itself! The Alley House comes with a beautifully earthy exposed brick outer facade, and the lower floor uses a stretcher bond bricklaying pattern with a few unusually designed bricks that also function as planters! These wavy bricks protrude out from the wall, providing a series of ‘shelves’ or basins to grow plants in. The hollow space within the bricks is enough to lay in some soil and add a few seeds, and given that the bricks are made from concrete, they’re perfect for containing the plants in too!

Designer: OA-Lab

The bricks are located more densely on the ground level, so they can easily be watered manually every few days while also creating a vertical garden that runs along the perimeter of the building. The individual bricks are perfectly sized for smaller plants, offering the possibility of a tiny flower or herb garden, and when fully cultivated, add a beautiful touch of greenery to the white and red color scheme of the building’s exterior!

Photography by Kyungsub Shin

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This architecture-inspired vegetable cultivator was designed for city dwellers to farm at home!

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Vegetment is a sustainable vegetable cultivator for city dwellers to have the means to all the perks of farming without the mess and bulk.

Adapting to tiny living spaces like compact city apartments means finding small-scale alternatives to our favorite large-scale pastimes. The ways we cook, clean, and store home goods inevitably change to fit comfortably within the small floor plan of efficiency studios and micro-apartments.

In crowded cities, vegetable cultivators provide all the perks of gardening without the mess and bulky appliances. Vegetment, a gardening appliance designed by Subin Cho, is a tiny-living solution for city dwellers to have access to a garden and fresh produce.

Inspired by the cogency of urban architecture, Cho downsized different aspects of city infrastructure and applied them to the design of Vegetment. Especially influenced by the open-air nature and voluminous space of verandas, Vegetment’s overall structure echos the look of deep outdoor deck spaces. Vertical by design, Vegetment appears like a micro-sized high-rise apartment complex, with each level leaving space for miniature gardens to grow and thrive.

Since city apartments aren’t well-suited for large gardens, Vegetment was conceptualized as a solution for city dwellers who’d still like to grow their own produce. Comprised of three tiers, Vegetment grows vegetables on its bottom two verandas. Taking cues from macro architectural concepts, a sliding louver system mimics the look of a sliding glass door and backdrops each veranda.

As Cho explains, the louver system, “opens and closes according to the flow of nature and adjusts sunlight and ventilation appropriately. It is automatically operated in a motorized manner according to the environment of the veranda (sunlight, temperature, wind) without any separate operation.”

In addition to the clever louver system, Cho design Vegetment with built-in solar panels for each garden to receive sunlight during the day and artificial light from LEDs at night. Then, a drain system brings water to the plants and a water reservoir where any excess water is stored. Owners of Vegetment also receive regular deliveries of seed pods, making gardening in the big city as easy as ever.

Designer: Subin Cho

The louver system mimics the movement and appeal of sliding glass doors. 

When sunlight is provided, the louver system automatically opens for the plants to receive light.

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This smart indoor garden uses hydroponics to cultivate plants in a growth tray that resembles natural outdoor landscapes!

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Vista is a smart gardening system that uses hydroponics to cultivate lush greenery in a growth tray that mimics the natural terrain of a mountainous landscape.

Smart gardens have taken the design world by storm in recent years. With so much of our time now spent indoors, we’re craving the freshness and beauty of nature. Even so, many of the smart gardens currently on the market are too sterile and rigid to actually make us feel close to nature.

Too many of the smart gardens on the market today prioritize function over aesthetics, amounting to cold, vertical farms that would look more at home in a research center’s greenhouse than a living room. That’s why designer Juhyuck Han created Vista, a smart garden appliance that mimics a landscape’s natural terrain and scales it down to fit in our homes.

Designed to either stand alone or be mounted on an interior wall, Vista takes up around the same space as a large fish tank. Featuring a hydroponic gardening system, Vista’s grow tray mimics the terrain of a natural landscape to bring users closer to nature. Through an immersive structure and smart technology, Vista combines functionality with aesthetics to create a gardening experience.

Trading a cold structure for a design that appeals to the senses, Han notes, “It designed a new smart green appliance that allows you to feel nature and experience growing plants in natural scenery, not in such an artificial box. Vista is a smart green appliance that brings natural scenery into the product and provides a new experience that seems to be cultivated directly in nature.”

Measuring the size of a large fish tank, Vista is designed to be the centerpiece of any interior space. The entire hydroponic cultivation system is encased within a transparent, panoramic glass container that comes with its own array of smart features.

Equipped with GPS technology, the glass container reveals various pieces of daily information such as the weather, temperature, date, and time. Defined by a louver window system, Vista’s plants are also kept ventilated with plenty of fresh air.

Designer: Juhyuck Han

 

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A smart compost tracking system that analyses soil conditions to send alerts to users

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Monty is a smart compost tracking system that analyzes soil conditions with Bluetooth and smart technology before sending alerts to users through a mobile app of when their soil could use some extra care.

Everyone thinks about composting at some point. Whether you have a small, windowsill herb garden or a full grassy yard, composting helps keep greenery abundant and healthy while also recycling organic waste back into the soil. While the benefits are many, actual compost gardens are few and far between. Making the composting game accessible and easy for everyone, Monty is a smart compost system that connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth to track compost data and break the process down into simple steps.

“Compost can reduce our waste, feed our food, and save our soil but not enough people do it,” as the creators behind Monty put it. Monty Compost Company developed its smart compost system to help make composting more efficient and approachable for people with all types of gardens. Using integrated smart technology, Monty’s soil sensors connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth and use an app-based management system to help track the conditions of the compost in your garden. Monty is comprised of a mobile app and sensor wand that analyzes the state of your soil to indicate when more compost can be added.

Stocked with first-class smart technology, Monty tracks the key compost health indicators such as soil temperature, humidity, and VOCs. Wireless by design, Monty can be disassembled and plugged into an external charging basin, where the batteries can power up before hitting the soil again. Through the mobile app, users will be alerted when their soil needs water, less sunshine, or more compost as the wand tracks its conditions.

Designer: Monty Compost Co.

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This smart self-watering indoor planter is a futuristic appliance that is almost sculptural in nature

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Indoor gardening became all the craze during this pandemic! Since we spent most of our time indoors, gardening became a therapeutic activity that we could engage in. Growing, tending to, and being surrounded by plants is intensely satisfying, all your worries slowly fade away, and you are simply enthralled by nature. Indoor planters are a great option, to nurture plants within the comfort of your own home. They are simple, modern, and almost wholly self-sufficient. The Klaustrafloria planter is one such example! The tall cage-like planter has a sleek futuristic appeal. Available in a stark white color, the planter has been amped with phytolamps, a backlight, and an automatic watering system.

A decorative cage, within which the plants grow, makes up the main body of the planter, followed by a base that consists of a removable inner pot, a water chute, a LED water level indicator, an auto watering system, and a 12-liter water tank. The removable inner pot includes containers that are filled with drainage rocks. Once planted, the plants sprout their roots through the slots in the containers, within 2-3 months. Water is supplied to the plant via the water chute which is connected to the reservoir of water below. Once the plants have grown for more than 2-3 months, they are able to supply themselves with the amount of water they need, owing to the self-watering system. After the 4th month, you only need to fill up the water reservoir once it’s dry. An intuitive indicator lets you know when to fill it, and how much water to fill it with.

The planter is equipped with built-in phytolamps. These lights are extremely useful in the case of young plants, or when it’s winter season, and there isn’t enough light. The LED lights emit light from the exact spectrum that the plants need for photosynthesis. Also, the automatic watering system doesn’t require any power! The phytolamps, backlight, and the indicator that displays the water level, are powered by a power plug, which is inserted at the back of the planter.

The Klaustrafloria is a smart self-watering planter that takes the best care of our plants, as we manage our modern lifestyles. Planters like these make indoor gardening a true pleasure and also super easy to practice.

Designer: Vladimir Popov

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This compostable flower scoop made from peanut shells is an award-winning packaging design!

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Packaging design is so interesting but the best innovation always comes when great packaging meets sustainability! Seed Scoop Fertilizer is a prime example of sustainable packaging design – it is seed packaging that includes a scoop made of peanut shell material and seeds…natural materials down to every last element!

Designed by students from the Royal College of Art, this award-winning green design shows the practical process of how the compostable product was made. The user should take out the seeds first, then use the scoop to dig the soil out and bury the seeds in the flowerpot. Finally, the user could break the spatula into pieces, put it in the soil, and drip it with water, to make the scoop become fertilizer and give nutrients. Designing environment-friendly products have always been the mission of designers. We hope to let more people pay attention to the sustainable use of resources through this design.

Peanut shells are often discarded by people in daily life, but we found that peanut shells still contain a lot of nutrients and can be used as fertilizer. Seed Scoop Fertilizer has a flower scoop made of peanut shells and seeds. When using, the user first takes out the seeds from the flower scoop, then uses the flower scoop to dig the soil out and plant the seeds in the flowerpot. Finally, the user could break the flower scoop into pieces, place it in the soil, and drip it with water, so that the flower scoop becomes fertilizer to give nutrients!

Designers: Zhixi Dai, Zixi Chen, and Hao Yao

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T-Rex Eating Gnomes Garden Sculpture: Jurassic Yard

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Garden gnomes: they live hard lives. They constantly have to be on the lookout for hungry cats and other wild animals. Apparently including dinosaurs, as is the case with this t-rex eating garden gnomes sculpture made by SOWSUN and available on Amazon (affiliate link). I can already see all my existing gnomes scrambling in terror.

Each resin statue is hand-painted with UV-resistant paint to prevent fading and measures approximately 14″H x 10″L x 6″W. Am I going to buy a whole army of them? I mean, it’s kind of hard not to know that the idea is in my head. Hey honey – I’m just going to borrow your credit card for a minute, okay?

Which gnome is your favorite? I like the one that’s being trampled underfoot. I also like the one in the t-rex’s jaws with his eyes closed, already resigned to a painful, crushing death. Clearly, that gnome didn’t grow up with a cartoon frog-choking-the-stork-that’s-eating-it ‘NEVER GIVE UP’ poster in his bedroom.

[via BoingBoing]

These designers are using 3D-printing robots to turn the city’s plastic waste into beautiful public furniture

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That detergent bottle you threw into recycling could someday turn into furniture instead of ending up in a landfill, if The New Raw had its way. The Netherlands-based studio is looking to turn Rubbish into Raw Materials, with its innovative material sorting system and its massive robotic 3D printers that effectively repurpose plastic waste into some of the most beautiful furniture ever. The Pots Plus, showcased here, absolutely reimagines what recycled plastic bottles are capable of. What was once a container for chemical detergents, soaps, or solvents, is now turned into an artistically fluid piece of furniture that welcomes humans and plants alike, with its amoeboid design that’s a cross between a chaise lounge and a large planter!

The transformation isn’t just a material one, it’s a philosophical one too. Mass-produced chemical-holding shampoo/detergent bottles, a perfect example of capitalistic use-and-throw culture, are turned into street furniture that welcomes humans and plants, and is designed to actually help the public as well as the environment. This design process relies on an extremely complex material processing system that The New Raw has perfected in their Rotterdam-based studio. Founded in 2015 by architects Panos Sakkas and Foteini Setaki, the studio aims at giving new life to discarded materials through design, robots, and craftsmanship. In every way, it’s the antithesis of consumerism. The benches aren’t mass-produced, but are painstakingly crafted one by one. They’re designed using recycled materials, are made for the welfare of public, and most importantly, they’re designed to last.

The benches come in a variety of organic shapes, designed around human contours and proportions. Designed to accommodate human bodies in relaxed positions, the Pots Plus create novel working and recreational spaces, replacing the benches found in public spaces. Designed for lobbies, libraries, airports, and a host of other spaces that see people resting, waiting, and working, the benches have enough space for humans as well as their belongings, like their small bags, laptops, tablets,books, coffee cups, etc.

What’s fascinating about the Pots Plus (and all of The New Raw’s work), is its sheer scale. The 3D printing robots they use aren’t your run-of-the-mill desktop or even industrial printers. They’re developed in-house by The New Raw to suit their larger-than-life needs, and the results look nothing short of stunning as if they were rotationally molded. The furniture, however, comes covered with a set of horizontal ‘stepped’ lines, a textural detail that’s common with all 3D printed objects. Instead of removing the texture using sandpapers, primers, heat-guns, etc., The New Raw celebrates those lines as a way of showing off how capable their massive 3D printing robots are.

On one side of the Pots Plus is a large opening to add a planter, which gives the furniture a vibrant pop of green, and reinforces its earth-friendly approach. Each bench then becomes a place not just for humans to rest, but for plants to grow too, turning common public furniture into a spot of fresh greenery that’s conveniently located to provide a canopy of shade while someone rests on the bench too!

Designers: Panos Sakkas and Foteini Setaki (The New Raw)

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