Nicer to nature

On view in Bangkok, ingenious ideas to please the planet and keep humanity around a lot longer

Getting back on good terms with Mother Nature |after more than a century of reckless industrial consumption has felt like a forced diet, always |cutting back to conserve her resources, but maybe this could be more fun.

An exhibition called "Everything Forever Now: Designs for a Sustainable Future" suggests that technology and innovation can put humans back in harmony with the planet in exciting and relatively easy ways.

The British Council-sponsored show at the Thailand Creative and Design Centre includes a bicycle made of nylon powder, a table lamp powered by moss, and a bench built with seaweed. And we actually could stop pulling gold and gems out of the earth and instead wear jewellery made from recycled plastic.

Henrietta Thompson in Britain and Nuttinee Karnchanaporn in Thailand were in charge of scouting out these and other amazing ideas. They're housed between walls that local firm Green Board made with discarded milk cartons - toxin-free, flame-retardant and resistant to moisture and termites. That's pretty clever.

So are the hemp partitions by HemThai - stronger than cotton fibre and, if needs be, affording 95-per-cent UV protection.

Hi-tech production methods are everywhere on view. The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Group "grew" its Airbike from nylon powder in a process called "additive layer manufacturing". All of the bicycle's components are formed as a unit at the same time - just as space satellites have been built in this past, but this one's for us regular folks.

"It's 65-per-cent lighter than an aluminium bike and requires no conventional maintenance or assembly, no factories or production lines," says Thompson.

Markus Kayser of the Royal College of Art in London built a "printer" that can form objects using only sun and sand, which both happen to be abundant in any desert. Feed it a 3D design and it will spit out the actual item.

The Solar Sinter - "sintering" is the process of baking a powder into a solid form - extrapolates on the concept and precision of 3D printing with lasers, but utilises sunbeams in place of laser beams and sand instead of resin. The heat of the sun melts the sand, and as it cools again it solidifies in glass as the desired object.

Here at home, Associate Professor Serm Janjai has been using the sun to dry fruit. That's not new, but he uses a glass-wrapped parabolic dome, and it works even in the rainy season.

The Banana Society has been using the device in Phitsanulok, drying 55 kilograms of bananas in three days, which is two days faster that the sun does the job naturally. You can control the temperature and moisture as well to produce fruit that's spotless, tastier, smoother in colour and even more hygienic.

Designers and biochemists at Cambridge University came up with the Moss Table, which tests the "potential" technology of biophotovoltaics in using fuel cells to harness light energy from living sources such as moss and algae.

The energy that the moss produces through photosynthesis is stored in a battery housed beneath the table's glass top, and in the evening it lights a lamp sitting on top.

British designer Florie Salnot worked with talented craftsmen at a Sahawari refugee camp in the Algerian desert to create stunning jewellery out of what little they had - just plastic bottles and more of that sand.

They paint the bottle, cut it into thin strips and wind the strips around nails in a board to form patterns and pictures. This assembly is then buried in the hot sand to shrink the plastic, but the pattern or imagery is retained. Skilled weavers can produce beautiful necklaces, bracelets and chokers.

Architects Kasama Yamtree and Narongkorn Ravirutvuttana of Openspace set up the Elderly on the Move project in Pathum Thani. With the use of bamboo and bicycle-tyre inner tubes, a vacant lot became a place for the young and old to exercise, grow herbs in a garden, or just lounge and relax.

You can see a model of the "park" in the exhibition. The chairs vary in height for a more casual gathering and the inner-tube rubber gives them some bounce so you can exercise your hips and legs while sitting.

Proving that everyday objects don't necessarily lose value as they age, Bethan Laura Wood treated the inner surface of ceramic teacups so they retain the tea stains in predetermined patterns. Every time you use the cup, more of the pattern is revealed. The idea is to encourage people to hang on to their possessions longer and thus slow the waste cycle.

Students at King Mongkut's Institute of Technology in Lat Krabang pursued the same ambition with a set of stationery called 66.6 Genuine. It's made from leather "meal" that a local tannery was discarding.

Mixed with ethylene-vinyl acetate and transformed into thin sheets with a calendering machine, the material can be adorned with patterns by impressing it with a heat-resistant stencil. The sheets retain two-thirds of the original leather, so they're better quality than artificial leather.

SEE THE FUTURE

<< "Everything Forever Now: Designs for a Sustainable Future" continues until March 18.

<< The Thailand Creative and Design Centre is on the sixth floor of the Emporium mall. It's open daily except Monday from 10.30am to 9pm.

<< Learn more at (02) 664 8448, extension 213-4 and visit www.TCDC.or.th.