Author: 9ve8c

Making a environmentally friendly, low cost pet transporter that is easy to store away.

Define the problem/need you are solving or addressing with your project. How does it address the Open Call criteria, such as environmental impact, social engagement, circularity, user experience, resource efficiency, and community-driven solutions?

Standard cat carriers are mostly made of plastic and take up a lot of space, especially if we take into account that cats are vetted a couple of times a year. The idea was to apply a somewhat different approach and offer an alternative that takes into account the impact on the environment and the usability of the product itself. The project offers a solution through a foldable cardboard transporter, designed for short-term use that protects the environment. Plastic is replaced by a material that is recycled and supports more sustainable user behaviour. The structure of the material enables the product to be easily stored and disposed when not in use. Tactility and simple assembly improve the user experience, and cats’ affinity for boxes was also taken into account. It can be produced easily and locally, promotes good use of resources, circularity and a more responsible approach to products for pets.

Please describe your project, reflecting on the concept, inspiration, materials, technical aspects, methods and process(es).

The concept was designed by considering the daily habits, transport solutions of pet owners and material usage. It is made of cheap, recyclable material and can be easily produced by cutting on a CNC machine, with less than 10 minutes of work on each copy and the cutting layout is adapted to make the best use of the material. Multiple prototypes were developed in order to test structure, usability and assembly order. The design is optimized for folding and flat packing, and can also have an additional purpose as a cat house or toy. Air vents, safe and secure closing system as well as a reinforced handle for stable carrying are integrated into the product and taken into account. The project combines simple manufacturing methods and user-focused design.

What do you think makes your project innovative compared to the existing efforts and ideas in the field it addresses?

This solution simplifies the product, reduces the use of materials while keeping only the essence and utility value of the classic carrier. It looks at it from a new, more natural angle.

Does it impact or reflect young people need(s) and how?

This project caters to the everyday needs of younger people, especially those living in smaller spaces or moving frequently. Traditional pet carriers take up quiet a lot of space but are only used a few a times a year. The foldable design offers a more flexible and space-saving alternative that fits better into today’s lifestyle. It is also affordable and easy to produce, making it more accessible to students and younger pet owners. At the same time, many young people are becoming more and more aware of environmental issues and are trying to make more responsible choices. Using recyclable cardboard and reducing unnecessary material reflects that mindset. The carrier can also be used as a small shelter or object for the cat, extending its use beyond transportation. The project connects practical constraints with a more conscious and adaptable way of living.

Chaiterra explores the potential of tea waste to create biobased materials, transforming discarded organic matter from local industry into functional products for a sustainable future.

Define the problem/need you are solving or addressing with your project. How does it address the Open Call criteria, such as environmental impact, social engagement, circularity, user experience, resource efficiency, and community-driven solutions?

The project addresses the dual crisis of plastic pollution and industrial organic waste. While the food and drink industry generates massive amounts of tea residues, traditional production still relies heavily on fossil-fuel-based plastics that pollute our ecosystems for centuries. Chaiterra identifies a specific opportunity within a local company to intercept their tea waste before it reaches landfills.
This initiative directly impacts young people, who are increasingly vocal about the plastic crisis and demand transparent, local production cycles. By transforming specific waste streams from the local food industry into functional objects, the project provides a tangible alternative to single-use plastics. It empowers the younger generation to transition from a “take-make-waste” mindset to one of environmental stewardship and localized resource management.

Please describe your project, reflecting on the concept, inspiration, materials, technical aspects, methods and process(es).

The concept focuses on creating a natural, fully biodegradable alternative to plastic, using tea waste sourced from a local company. Inspired by the principles of regenerative design, the process explores how organic leftovers can be stabilized without synthetic additives.
The technical method involves drying and processing the industrial tea residues, which are then combined with bio-based binders through a low-energy compression process. This “kitchen-to-studio” approach ensures that the material remains non-toxic and structurally sound for its intended use. By maintaining a simple, transparent production line, Chaiterra highlights the raw, sensory qualities of the tea. The resulting product is not just an object but a functional carrier of a circular story, designed to support natural cycles at every stage of its existence.

What do you think makes your project innovative compared to the existing efforts and ideas in the field it addresses?

Chaiterra’s innovation lies in its regenerative approach to material sourcing, turning a local industry’s byproduct into a high-value resource. It prioritizes circularity and resource efficiency over traditional, high-impact manufacturing. By replacing plastic with a biobased material, the project significantly reduces environmental footprints.
Socially, it engages the local community by closing the loop between a neighborhood company and the final consumer. The user experience is defined by the material’s honesty—its ability to eventually return to the earth as compost, supporting natural cycles. This makes Chaiterra a community-driven solution that proves how design can move beyond sustainability toward true regeneration, ensuring that the product’s end is simply a new beginning for the soil.

Does it impact or reflect young people need(s) and how?

Chaiterra addresses the urgent need of young people to combat plastic pollution through tangible, regenerative actions. By transforming local industrial tea waste into functional design, it offers a transparent alternative to fossil-fuel-based products. This empowers a generation facing ecological anxiety to integrate their ethical values into daily sustainable rituals.

Chick-Inn reimagines the chicken coop as an architectural space of dignity, shifting small-scale food infrastructure from productivity toward care, individuality, and respectful human–animal interaction through spatial design that reduces stress and fosters interspecies coexistence.

Define the problem/need you are solving or addressing with your project. How does it address the Open Call criteria, such as environmental impact, social engagement, circularity, user experience, resource efficiency, and community-driven solutions?

Small-scale animal housing is often treated as purely functional infrastructure, where productivity outweighs wellbeing. Even outside industrial farming, chickens are reduced to egg-producing units, and spatial design rarely considers stress, behavioural needs, or respectful human–animal interaction.

Chick-Inn addresses this by redefining the coop as a space of care rather than extraction. It shifts the focus from output to dignity, proposing a more humane model of small-scale food production. By encouraging decentralised, local practices, the project supports environmental responsibility and reduces reliance on industrial systems. Its compact, durable construction promotes resource efficiency and longevity. At a social level, it reframes everyday agriculture as an opportunity for conscious engagement, empathy, and shared responsibility. The project aligns with the call’s vision by demonstrating how design can reshape relationships, not only between people, but between species.

Please describe your project, reflecting on the concept, inspiration, materials, technical aspects, methods and process(es).

Chick-Inn emerged from questioning why even small-scale animal housing replicates industrial logic. The project reimagines the chicken coop as an architectural micro-environment shaped by care, observation, and respect for non-human individuality.
The design process began with studying chickens’ behavioural patterns, such as nesting habits, stress responses, and movement rhythms, and translating these insights into spatial decisions. The structure separates human access from nesting areas through an external egg-collection system, reducing disturbance while maintaining functionality. An interactive feeding element transforms routine maintenance into intentional engagement.
Constructed as a compact, durable timber structure, the coop prioritises longevity, clarity of assembly, and resource-conscious material use. The design balances practicality with ethical intention, demonstrating how even modest rural infrastructure can embody architectural thinking.
Chick-Inn proposes that care can be embedded in construction itself, turning an everyday agricultural typology into a spatial expression of interspecies responsibility.

What do you think makes your project innovative compared to the existing efforts and ideas in the field it addresses?

Chick-Inn is innovative because it transforms a mundane, utilitarian structure into a small-scale architectural experiment that prioritises animal wellbeing, human engagement, and ethical design. Unlike conventional coops, which focus solely on containment and productivity, it treats each hen as an individual with needs, personality, and space to express natural behaviours.
Spatially, the design integrates verticality, playful perches, and interactive elements that reframe routine tasks, such as feeding, egg collection and cleaning, as moments of mindful interaction rather than mechanical chores. Each nesting box is playfully labelled with charming names such as “Hen-Riette” or “Koko Chanel,” highlighting individuality and celebrating the hens as inhabitants rather than mere producers.

Does it impact or reflect young people need(s) and how?

Yes, it reflects young people’s needs by inviting them to reconsider relationships with the living world and everyday infrastructure. Chick-Inn demonstrates that even small, ordinary spaces, like a chicken coop, can embody care, observation, and ethical design. By prioritising the hens’ dignity and individuality, the project encourages empathy, reflection, and a sense of responsibility for non-human lives.
The interactive feeding station and external egg-collection system make daily engagement playful, intuitive, and rewarding, promoting active participation rather than passive management. It shows that design can be humanistic, socially aware, and fun, not just functional.
Through humour, charm, and architectural clarity, like nesting boxes labelled “Hen-Riette” or “Koko Chanel”, Chick-Inn inspires young audiences to question standardized systems, rethink their impact, and explore creative solutions that integrate care, ethics, and environmental awareness into everyday practices.

An interactive audiovisual installation that reveals how data infrastructure reorganises ecology, territory, and memory in Guizhou, translating the hidden costs of digital expansion into a spatial experience of listening, sensing, and critical reflection.

Define the problem/need you are solving or addressing with your project. How does it address the Open Call criteria, such as environmental impact, social engagement, circularity, user experience, resource efficiency, and community-driven solutions?

Cloud of Polyphony addresses restrained public legibility around the environmental and social impact of digital infrastructure. Data centres, 5G networks, and platform expansion are framed through progress and economic growth, while their energy use, land transformation, and local consequences remain separated from everyday digital interfaces. The project focuses on Guizhou, where data-industrial policies has reshaped Karst landscapes, economic expectations, and public memory. Through an interactive sound installation with moving image, the work turns these hidden operations into a shared sensory encounter. Field recordings, oral histories, infrastructural imagery, reclaimed plywood, truss elements, and LiDAR-based interaction connect these impacts to listening, movement, and attention. The project formation with reused materials, restrained technical setup, and embodied social engagement that asks how design can mediate technology’s impacts on communities, territories and the planet.

Please describe your project, reflecting on the concept, inspiration, materials, technical aspects, methods and process(es).

Cloud of Polyphony is an interactive sound and moving-image installation focused on the data industry in Guizhou. The project takes 5G towers, abandoned Big Data Expo sites, data-centre architecture, Karst landscapes, and development signage as its visual and spatial language. Reclaimed construction elements form an antenna-like apparatus that holds power, speakers, and sensor. Field recordings, synthesized textures, oral histories, machine frequencies, and filmed landscape fragments are composed into a polyphonic audiovisual environment. LiDAR sensor register audience distance and movement, then shift the density, timing, and sequence of the sonic composition. The process combines filed research, archival montage, material reuse, custom-built interface, and spatial calibration. The installation turns a network receiver into a station for listening, so infrastructure can be access through sound, image, material, and bodily position.

What do you think makes your project innovative compared to the existing efforts and ideas in the field it addresses?

The project composed through low-tech formation that referral the material dependencies of data industry. It examines the large-scale systems that sustain the Cloud: data centres, network expansion, land transformation, and platform governance, and propaganda support its inevitable. These forces are condensed into an inverted antenna built from reclaimed construction elements. The apparatus changes a symbol of signal distribution into a civic listening station. LiDAR register audience position, then modulate sound through proximity, delay, density and rhythm. The audience encounters infrastructure as a bodily relation, sensing how digital dependency is tied to environmental pressure, industrial planning, and the uneven distribution of technological benefit.

Does it impact or reflect young people need(s) and how?

The project materialises the Cloud’s intangibility by treating digital technology as a material and political agent behind seamless service. For future generations, the work offers another way to access the systems they inherit: through land, water, sound, memory, and the images of progress they were promised. In Guizhou, the project follows the passage from Karst landscapes and hydrological change to data centres, abandoned expo sites, promotional signage, and infrastructural relics. These fragments are gathered through field recordings, oral histories, moving image, and an interactive listening apparatus. As visitors move through the installation, the Cloud appears a set of dependencies embedded in territory rather than an abstract service. The project opens a critical relation to digital futures by showing how technological dreams are planted in specific territories, and how their consequences remain after the development narrative moves on.