Tag Archives: James Dyson Awards

This sustainable beehive is designed to replicates the microclimate of the bee’s natural habitat!

Posted on by



Bees are essential to keep our ecosystem running as we know it, these master pollinators play a huge role in supporting the growth of trees, flowers, and other plants that serve as food + shelter for all living beings. They contribute to complex, interconnected ecosystems that allow a diverse number of different species to co-exist. HIIVE is a beehive designed to help beekeepers to keep their bees in a more natural way compared to traditional hives. It is crafted from sustainable materials and with low-energy sensors to give the beekeeping experience a much-needed upgrade since it has been 150 years since the conventional bee box design!

It supports the inherent behavior of the Apis Mellifera aka the European honeybee which is one of the most common types. “At first we just wanted to design a more ergonomic beehive. While studying design, we accompanied several beekeepers. The first time we saw the treatment against the Varroa Mite (biggest enemy of the honeybee), it was shocking. The chemical treatment had a direct effect on the bees‘ behavior. We found that there is a more serious problem to be solved than the ergonomics of beekeeping. So we spoke to scientists for advice and they repeatedly pointed out the problem with the wrong microclimate in conventional bee-boxes,” explained Potthast and that is how the concept came to bee.

HIIVE is designed to replicate the microclimate of a tree cave which is the natural habitat of the European honey bee. According to research, honey bees in tree caves live healthier lives and are better equipped to deal with parasites because of circumstantial lessons. HIIVE is essentially the first tree cave that can be produced at an industrial scale.

It offers a tree cave-like geometry without cold bridges which makes it easy for the winter bees. The frame is made from recycled plastic and a textile cover to protect against the weather. Its also insulated with natural thermo hemp wool and an additional vapor barrier film for optimum moisture control. Thanks to the insulation the animals have to use less energy to heat up or cool down the house and this “leisure time” has positive effects on their behavior which promotes grooming naturally.

Potthast spent a year researching and studying design with beekeepers to understand the demands of both animals and humans. When biologists pointed out that the microclimate is the biggest issue, the build of the first version of HIIVE was made and insulated with natural hemp wool. “For the prototyping phase, we used 3D printing for all structural components and laser cutting for the wood parts. We have tested the first prototype with a bee colony and it worked well for the microclimate. But the handling wasn’t satisfying and the volume needed to be adjusted,” explained Potthast.

The redesign was more efficient and has a two-chamber system – one honey chamber and one brood chamber – which are easily extractable. This makes it possible to harvest honey respectfully. The amount of plastic was also reduced by over 85% thanks to the use of the textile cover. It has a low manufacturing cost and therefore can be affordable for beekeepers across the globe.

Conventional bee boxes neglect the demands that honey bees actually make on a home. Bees prefer a round shape and good insulation which is naturally found in tree caves. But in conventional boxes, they need to spend a lot of energy on keeping the desired temperature during the seasons. There is also no living space for symbionts and if parasites enter then the bees get in trouble which results in beekeepers having to treat them with chemicals. In contrast, HIIVE was designed with a human-animal-centered approach. It brings beekeeping back to nature and ensures a healthy life for bees.

“At the moment we are conducting a field test with 10 prototypes of the latest version. The plan is to bring HIIVE to series production after all tests are made,” said Potthast as he spoke about the design’s future. “The next step is also the development of the campanion app, which will create a new way of keeping bees. With smart sensors we have the possibility to create not only health tracking of each colony, but also a swarm alarm combined with a swarm net. In this way beekeepers get notified when exactly to expect a swarm so they can keep bees in a very natural way without regulating their swarm behavior,” he added.

HIIVE is the perfect combination of a natural and healthy home for bees as well as ergonomic and easy to use by beekeepers. The integrated app will make beekeeping more efficient and safe while the low-cost design will make it easy to be mass-produced without adding to the plastic pollution problem. It is un-bee-lievably good for a beehive!

Designer: Philip Potthast

HIIVE is a runner-up for the James Dyson Awards 2021 and has many more notable achievements through its journey from concept to completion.

This ergonomic washing machine design helps save our oceans by filtering out microplastics!

Posted on by

Martina Mancini’s Ocean washing system is as sustainable as it is ergonomic, with special filters that recycle out microplastics and hidden adaptive features for intuitive and accessible operation.

Each time we wash a load of laundry, microfibers detach from our favorite polyester and acrylic clothes and end up in wastewater. Contributing close to 35% of the microplastics found in our oceans, washing machines are due for a sustainability cleanup. Designer Martina Mancini was recently recognized by The James Dyson Award for her work in developing an ergonomic washing machine called Ocean that filters out microplastics and recirculates the water used between cycles.

With Ocean, Mancini set out to develop a washing machine that’s friendly to the environment and ergonomic for most users. The Ocean is designed like preexisting washing machines, equipped with a basket, drum, and display control panel, to ensure familiarity during use. Once the clothes are placed inside Ocean’s drum and basket, users can start their wash cycle by selecting one on the machine’s front display panel. From there, water flows into the drum from a centrifugal pump that’s connected to a purification filter to prepare the water for recirculation once the cycle is complete.

The post-cycle water purification process first passes through a stainless steel sieve grid and then a polyester filter sponge to remove larger microplastics. Following that, the water surges into a pipe that’s connected to the machine’s centrifugal pump, which propels the water against a hollow fiber membrane through a tangential filtration process. Once the filtration process makes its rounds, the water is purified by an Ozonator before recirculating for future use. Ensuring that Ocean is as ergonomic as it is sustainable, Mancini designed the washing machine so that users can remove the machine’s filters on their own before obtaining a new one from an offsite factory. There, company workers will remove and recycle the microplastics to give them a new life.

Given that the hardware required to construct Ocean would be bulky, Mancini knew the washing machine would reach a higher height than those already on the market. Working with a bigger machine allowed Mancini to incorporate more ergonomic features, including an adjustable table located beneath the drum, where users can prepare their laundry before and following washing cycles.

Designer: Martina Mancini

Artificial wood made out of Kombucha brewing waste wins the 2021 USA James Dyson Award

Posted on by



Winning the US-leg of the James Dyson Award, Pyrus™ (a kombucha-based wood-alternative) now progresses to the international stage of the James Dyson Award to compete with the other participants, with the international winner being declared on the 17th of November.

With its uniquely rustic, wood-like finish, Pyrus has the ability to offset the use of exotic woods as a material, helping protect fragile ecosystems in the Amazon rainforests from excess deforestation. Its primary ingredient? Kombucha! Well, rather, the Scoby from the kombucha brewing process. Right before going to college, Gabe Tavas became aware of deteriorating environmental issues and conditions after living in an indigenous community in Ecuador. His interests and research led him to focus on bio-design, where Tavas soon committed himself to creating a new, lab-grown synthetic wood that could be used as an alternative to actually felling trees for exotic woods. Tavas’ research helped him understand that wood could essentially be broken down into two components – cellulose (which gives the wood its structure) and lignin (which binds everything together like glue). Cellulose, he discovered, could also be found in abundance as a waste by-product of kombucha-brewing.

Often referred to as the ‘mother’ or the Scoby in your kombucha, the small jelly-like sheets that float on the top of your drink are rich in cellulose. Given that they aren’t consumed along with the kombucha, these sheets are either reused to brew more beverages or are discarded as a waste product. To make Pyrus, Tavas blended these sheets of cellulose to an even consistency and then embedded them in Agar, an algae-based gel. As the gel dried, it hardened significantly and could be placed under a mechanical press to form a flat sheet of wood. “This material can then be sanded, cut, and coated with resins just like its tree-based counterparts”, Tavas mentions.

Symmetry Wood (the group founded by Tavas) mentions that the one thing that sets Pyrus apart from other engineered woods is that it doesn’t harm a single tree. Engineered woods like MDF uses compressed sawdust in their production, which while being relatively waste-free compared to wood, still requires trees to be chopped/sanded/processed. Pyrus, on the other hand, can be made without harming a single tree. In fact, Symmetry Wood touts that it’s petroleum-free too, unlike other artificial woods.

Tavas has produced 74 wood samples of Pyrus in a variety of colors and textures over the past year, mimicking high-demand woods like Ebony and Mahogany among others. Pyrus woods can be treated like regular woods, being spun on lathes, cut with hacksaws, sanded, and even laser-engraved/etched. The Symmetry Wood website even lets you buy Pyrus products, including a set of 3 guitar-picks made from the ‘booch-wood’ (that’s my phrase, not theirs) as well as Pyrus Earrings.

As a winner of the USA James Dyson Award, Tavas was awarded $2,600 prize money. He plans on using it to expand production facilities and even develop 3D printing processes. “The top priority is to put Pyrus into various environmentally-friendly product forms that meet consumer needs and are commercially viable”, Tavas says. “Eventually, we hope to turn any customer interest into revenue streams that will sustain a formal company, Symmetry, and fund improvements for the material that will let it work at larger scales like furniture and even buildings.”

Designer: Gabe Tavas (Symmetry Wood)

This sustainable floating pod converts seawater into drinking water through a natural desalination process!

Posted on by

WaterPod is a sustainable floating pod that turns seawater into drinking water through a natural desalination process.

97% of the earth’s water is found in its oceans, yet in its primary state, ocean water is unsuitable for human needs like drinking and cleaning. Since sustainable designs that rely on alternative energy production have been on the rise in response to environmental concerns, we’re closer than ever to scaling down macro desalination plants for individual use. One team of designers was recently recognized by The James Dyson Award for their desalination pod concept called WaterPod that turns seawater into drinkable water through an array of sustainable features.

WaterPod operates as a self-cleaning solar desalination system that absorbs seawater via underwater wicks, inspired by mangrove trees, which then passes through a condensation and evaporation process to remove the salt particles from the seawater. Just like mangrove trees, WaterPod’s underwater wicks fill the pod with seawater until its water levels reach the pod’s black fabric dome. Inside the dome, seawater undergoes evaporation as water vapors gradually flow from the transparent covering and collect in WaterPod’s storage compartment. Then, users can pump drinking water from the storage compartment’s recess. While the desalination process takes place, the WaterPod remains floating atop the water in a similar fashion to a conventional buoy. WaterPod’s top lid is filled with expanded polyurethane foam for thermal insulation and flotation enhancement while a cement base offers buoyancy stability.

The team of designers behind WaterPod developed the concept in response to a lack of clean, drinking water in Sandakan, Malaysia. Noticing the seafaring community’s reliance on the sea, the team of designers wanted to develop a means for individuals to have access to clean drinking water, no matter the amount of plastic pollution in the ocean. WaterPod is a modern solution that takes cues from the surrounding environment to bring drinking water to those who depend on it most.

Designers: Bennie Beh Hue May, Yap Chun Yoon, & Loo Xin Yang

This transparent display for captions designed for the DHH community makes sure facial expressions aren’t missed!

Posted on by

See-Through Captions is a simple, understated solution for the DHH community that uses a transparent subtitle display screen to project conversations with ASR technology and incorporate facial expressions to bridge communication gaps between DHH and hearing individuals.

While there are some adaptive designs that aim to help those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH), most of them rely too heavily on subtitles and audio, losing out on physical gestures and facial expressions. Some products are designed to convert sign language to text, some AI robots are meant to replace hearing dogs, and then there’s even a wearable device that translates sign language into speech. Awarded by James Dyson with Japan’s highest award, a team of designers from Digital Nature Group developed a new solution for bridging communication gaps between hearing and hard-of-hearing folks called See-Through Captions.

Developed for those who are deaf or experience varying levels of hearing loss, See-Through Captions was designed by a team of hearing and deaf individuals and tested in real-life situations to ensure its effectiveness. See-Through Captions is essentially a transparent projector that converts audio to subtitles and displays those conversations on its two-way screen. Since most pre-existing related products only focus on translating audio to subtitles, Digital Nature Group gave See-Through Captions a transparent screen to guarantee that users’ facial expressions and physical gestures aren’t missed. In addition to the incorporation of physical expression, Digital Nature Group improved its automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology to optimize real-time captioning and ensure an accurate relay of communication.

The See-Through Captions product comes in two different physical forms, stationary and portable, so the ASR technology can be applied across different interactions. In developing See-Through Captions, Digital Nature Group demonstrated different prototypes in a museum setting. In the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, See-Through Captions was used in its stationary form at the museum’s front desk as well as its portable form on guided tours. Following its demonstration, Digital Nature Group decided some improvements could be made to the size and amount of text displayed on the portable product. Overall, See-Through Captions is a simple, understated solution for the DHH community that incorporates facial expression as well as accurate ASR technology to bridge communication gaps between DHH and hearing individuals.

Designer: Digital Nature Group

On a transparent screen, ASR technology converts audio to subtitles in real time. 

The transparent screen allows DHH individuals to maintain eye contact while engaging with hearing people. 

The portable form of See-Through Captions is handheld and can be applied in social settings such as guided tours and offsite meetings. 

After using prototypes in real-life situations, Digital Nature Group is improving the amount and visibility of text on the screen. 

This drone + carrier monitors, protects, and restores reefs by planting 100 corals per day sustainably!

Posted on by




Climate change is not leaving any sphere of life untouched and a lot of that damage is irreversible. Coral reefs are one such natural treasure that is facing the harsh effects of global warming and they are dying at an alarming rate. If things continue at this speed, 90% of coral reefs will vanish by 2050. While they only occupy 0.1% of the total area of the ocean, they actually support 25% of all marine species on earth! Nemo is an award-winning device designed to assist with coral restoration in an efficient, sustainable way, with large-scale capacity. It can plant 100 corals a day and only requires 2-3 people to complete the operation.

Coral reefs help us breathe, protect us from storms, provide us with food and support the economy of coastal communities – and that is why we need to save them at all costs. Nemo consists of a digital platform, a specialized transport box, and a collaborative drone that works within its four-stage service program to help municipalities. The digital platform helps scientists to research and monitor coral reefs more accurately and at the same time, it spreads global awareness about coral reefs to citizens. The platform keeps a record of all the data gathered from monitoring the reefs. The specialized transport box protects corals during their relocation from the nursery site to the outplant site by regulating the temperature of the saltwater and pH value to give the young corals the best chance for survival during their journey. Meanwhile, the collaborative drone helps scientists monitor by 3D scanning and mapping the coral reefs. This information is uploaded to a digital platform for the benefit of coral restoration agencies. The main parts of Nemo are made from recycled plastic to reduce its environmental impact.

“We used a human-centered design approach to help solve an environment-centered design problem. We combined the best of both processes and implemented our findings from both approaches. The process behind Nemo was also highly iterative and involved multiple experts from different sectors. During our research, we got feedback from experts on our concepts and ideas to verify them and to make sure we were heading in the right direction. We also hosted creative workshops to get input from more designers across disciplines to make our product better which included digital prototyping and iterative sketching exercises,” said the team while describing their process of creating Nemo. The system uses a combination of growing corals on pre-manufactured locally recycled structures using bioadhesives and drilling holes into the ocean floor to optimize the process for 2-3 people instead of the traditional 10-15 team which saves the restoration agencies’ resources.

Nemo was created to rebuild and support healthy ecosystems which is crucial for a sustainable future, it was the answer to the question “How can the journey towards a more sustainable, efficient, and simple coral restoration process be designed?” While there are many coral restoration efforts and technology, none are as comprehensive as Nemo because it goes beyond just planting new corals and takes the entire lifecycle as well as education about the crisis into account. It allows coral restoration organizations to scale up their efforts and accelerate the positive impact. Nemo has been shortlisted for the James Dyson 2021 National Winner and has also been recognized at the Red Dot Concept Awards 2020, the Core77 Design for Social Impact Notable, and Core77 Transportation Notable.

Designer: Elias Thaddäus Pfuner and Mario Kapsalis

This herb garden was designed with smart monitoring tech & fits inside your kitchen cabinet to save space!

Posted on by

We have all killed a plant or two let’s just admit it. Gardening isn’t for everyone but it is sure nice to have fresh herbs to add to your meals. Imagine making a bomb pizza and realizing you don’t have basil (gasps!). To avoid such catastrophes even those of us without green thumbs do our best to keep herbs in our kitchen. The only drawback is that having five small pots takes up a lot of counter space and also can attract bugs. Leaving herbs out on the window is not an option because they won’t survive extreme weather and maybe birds will get to it before you do. But this herb garden design takes care of all these minor inconveniences while making sure your plants thrive!

The design lets you have access to fresh greenery 365 days a year without sacrificing any counter space or causing a mess. It is compact and works wonderfully for small urban apartments or big suburban houses. What makes this herb garden unique its compactness because it makes it invisible in your kitchen space. Designer Igor Abakumov drew inspiration from his own life experience for this. “My mom is a real culinary virtuoso and she often complains about the lack of specific greens in the store. And then I got the idea to design a home garden that will be built into the kitchen and will delight with greenery all year round,” he explains.

Simply named Home Garden, this nifty design is basically a herb drawer that is built into the kitchen. It comes with an integrated smart system that monitors the moisture and temperature of plants, as well as their freshness and readiness for use. It is 2021, so of course, all of this can be adjusted directly from your phone. Home Garden is one of the entries for the James Dyson Awards 2021.

Designer: Igor Abakumov

Dyson Award-winning Blue Box helps women easily detect breast cancer at home

Posted on by

The Blue Box is perhaps one of the best examples of how design thinking and problem-solving can truly make a difference to the quality of life of millions of people. An estimate of 43,600 women die of breast cancer each year… that’s from the millions of women who are diagnosed with it; sometimes often too late in the cancer stages. This stems from the fact that the medical screening procedure for breast cancer can be quite literally painful. According to the CDC, more than 40% of women opt out of getting mammograms done because it’s a pain-inducing procedure that also requires exposing yourself to X-ray radiation. A student at the Universitat de Barcelona, however, is changing that by making breast-cancer screening easy, pain-free, and something you can do at home.

When Judit Giró Benet saw the CDC report that outlined how many women skipped getting mammograms done, she realized the scope of the problem and the need to have an alternate solution. Furthermore, she was frustrated by the fact that 93.55% of breast cancers diagnosed by a mammogram are “false alarms” according to the Catalan Department of Health, and that periodic exposure to X-rays can in fact be a cause for breast cancer. In response, Benet began working on her alternative… The Blue Box – a tiny at-home device that could detect breast cancer with 95% accuracy by just scanning a urine sample. “A household owning The Blue Box can have all its female members tested at their desired frequency and convenience. After creating a profile at The Blue App, the user just needs to collect some urine in a plastic container and subsequently place it inside The Blue Box”, says Benet, a biomedical engineering student who then went on to found her own company to help develop this technology. The Blue Box uses a proprietary set of cloud-based AI-based algorithms that react to specific urine metabolites, delivering results that are up to 95% accurate. The box scans the urine sample and sends the results to the cloud, where the algorithm runs its quick diagnosis, sending the results to the app. The entire process is 100% pain-free, non-irradiating, and actually encourages women to test themselves more, helping catch breast cancer in its early stages. It also brings easy testing to places with no access to medical facilities. Since all the Blue Box needs is an internet connection, breast-cancer testing can easily be brought to remote areas, helping women from all walks of life get tested.

The Blue Box was awarded as the International Winner at the James Dyson Awards in 2020. The team has just started seeking funding to afford both the patent application as well as the next set of human studies to help refine the product and the app.

Designer: Judit Giró Benet (Founder of The Blue Box)

This biodegradable single-use dental flosser actually takes carbon OUT of the atmosphere

Posted on by

“Increasingly, our material choices have become moral choices”, says Jessica Smith, a design graduate from Pratt Institute and the developer of a new kind of carbon-negative plastic – Carbyn.

Carbyn seeks to mitigate the climate crisis by creating a carbon-negative bioplastic that stores more carbon than it releases throughout its lifecycle. The world generates nearly 10 billion tonnes of agricultural waste each year. When this organic matter decomposes or is burnt, it emits carbon, which contributes to our global emissions in a significant way. Through its unique composition, Carbyn absorbs that atmospheric carbon, and its biodegradable nature means it safely decomposes into dirt once its job is done.

Carbyn is a composite of two materials – PHA bioplastic, and Biochar. PHA is a bioplastic which is produced by bacteria through fermentation. It is unique because it is both home compostable and easily formed using existing plastic processing methods, while Biochar is produced by burning organic material at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen. By combining these two materials, Jessica created a carbon-storing biocomposite that can be produced using conventional manufacturing processes. To demonstrate how effective her material was in replacing traditional plastics, Jessica decided to mold a single-use floss stick out of it. The polymer has a signature black color thanks to the Biochar, and can easily be thrown away after a single use. Whether disposed of in a home garden, a landfill, or even the ocean, the Biochar in Carbyn will actively suck carbon from the air around it before safely degrading into dirt. In fact, Carbyn even possesses the ability to make the soil more fertile as it biodegrades, helping the environment by reducing emissions, waste, and increasing soil fertility!

Carbyn made it into the International Top 20 of the James Dyson Award for the year 2020.

Designer: Jessica Smith

This modular habitat system was designed to save the bees – it is their Good Place neighborhood!

Posted on by

Bees are essential to keep our ecosystem running as we know it, these master pollinators play a huge role in supporting the growth of trees, flowers, and other plants that serve as food + shelter for all living beings. Bees contribute to complex, interconnected ecosystems that allow a diverse number of different species to co-exist. However, majority of the 20,000 species of bees in the world face the threat of extinction. Australian designer Amelia Henderson-Pitman wanted to create something to mitigate this problem so she looked within her own country and found that there are more than 1700 species of native bee in Australia, yet only 11 species living in hives and producing honey. Keeping this in mind, she designed Pollen – a modular system that provides a range of nesting materials to support the native bee populations.

Pollen can be installed in any location and has also been optimized for small spaces to keep it city-friendly. The idea was to have a modular system that could be integrated anywhere from inner-city gardens to exterior building structures. Pollen is basically The Good Place neighborhood for bees. Each nest module contains a variety of materials like recycled hardwood, sustainable bamboo, or handmade mud brick. They also have a series of holes that vary in diameter to provide nesting locations for bees. The shell of the modules is an injection tube crafted from recycled HDPE and has been designed to be easily assembled as well as mounted without fixtures. I love that the internal modules (molded from recycled PET) are transparent because it offers us a closer look at how the bees are adapting. The transparency of the design shows us that seeing is bee-lieving.

“Many of these native bee populations are easily supported by providing nesting material and forage, but there are currently no products that provide both of those features whilst also being suitable for urban areas. The solution arose from seeing the variety of native bees that were present in my city balcony garden, and I realized there was a market for a product that provided these features as well as an educational component,” says Amelia who also made sure to include a comprehensive booklet with easy-to-follow instructions on assembly and information about native bee identification, bee behavior and the best flowering species to plant to attract the bees. This added educational component makes the product more attractive for beginners too!

Pollen stands out from its competitors because it goes beyond the purpose of just helping bees, it includes interactive elements that make the process fun for the user without disturbing the insects through clear tubes which contribute to citizen science and aid in research. It also comes with an optional planter to expand the habitat and will be located behind the assembled modules and can also be mounted to the wall. Amelia’s design has won the 2019 Frank Fisher Prize for the Most Sustainable Design – the Swinburne University of Technology, it has been named one of the 10 Most Innovative Projects of the 2020 Virtual Design Festival School Shows and has also been nominated for the Design Institute of Australia’s 2020 Graduate of the Year along with being a notable entry for the James Dyson Award 2020.

Designer: Amelia Henderson-Pitman