Save Our Seeds
Final Design Project
June 2008
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The exhibition of the design projects took place on June 25, 26, 27 and 28 in Design Academy Eindhoven, and is expected to happen again for Graduation Show 2008 in October.
To all of you who didn’t have the occasion to come, I am showing here a few pictures, along with the captions which I consider gave a nice ambiance to the exhibition as a whole.
That plant grows wild. ‘It is not even beautiful’, says the wanderer. ‘It is worth nothing’, says the industry.
This plant represents most species on the planet. In the mean time, a few others are being coveted, patented, over-exploited.
I am responsible for this; we all are.
This project tells about opportunities for design to help preserving vegetal diversity. Smaller steps first, as we need to know what we are talking about. To experience it.
Initiating a social debate is a strong way to support structural projects.
A fertile ground for seeds to grow.
PITS WE DON’T EAT
I like to germinate pits; this is the only way I can understand their value. It feels like being a farmer, for whom seeds are essential. And then I must plant the sprouts, let them grow outside. It is all about caring.
Pits germinated in the seed saver cannot escape, unless it is planted in the ground. In this case the glass will act as a miniature greenhouse, a rainwater collector and a protection against slugs.
A GROWING TREE
It had been standing here for decades. They decided to cut it down, because it was taking to much space.
I wish people would think about removing bits of the sidewalk first.
Or simply allow spaces around trees
to break eventually.
I believe we can let trees growing as much as they need, without impairing the urban planning. This project is a set of tiles which breakage is designed – dotted lines create weaker spots, but also visually signify the future evolution.
UNDERGROUND
Seeds underneath the city, growing through the grey as they look for the light; some find it fascinating, others annoying. It wouldn’t take much to turn it into a social experience.
Just like guerrilla gardeners, people could go out and plant seeds, as a gift to the whole neighborhood.
I imagine tiles that become an invitation for people to invest their own environment. To accept plants growing in unexpected spaces. To simply enjoy planting seeds and seeing them growing.
IVY, AND OTHER CLIMBING PLANTS
Sparrows nesting in a hole. Ivy climbing along fissures. Urban landscapes abound with wildlife.
Cities are lively ecosystems.
Yet the niches constituted by older buildings are being taken down; biodiversity in newly built neighborhoods becomes sparse.
With this project I aim to integrate empty spaces within construction materials. As soon as a wall is built, new niches appear.
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OTHER PROJECTS
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Here is the section where I’ll be posting the projects I think about all along my reasearches. The purpose is double : get my mind free of them by writing about, maybe developing them quickly, so that I can see further by the end; and compiling bulks of ideas that I can’t exploit or don’t see their value directly, so that I can always come back to them.
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POST-IT a list of issues related to my topic
biopiracy
The illegitimate patenting of Traditional Knowledge or Endemic Plants, often depriving local communities of their rights and potential benefits.
homogenous demand
The decreasing variety of local products we are willing to eat, leading to abandoning the cultivation of some plant species.
monocropping
The cultivation of few “cash” crops on huge areas of land, that misbalance the natural osmosis, thus critically impoverishing the soil.
narrowing ecosystems
The loss of ecological niches, due to many facts : urbanization, logging, ranching or monocropping.
organic seeds certification
The legal need for organic farmers to grow their crops from organic-certified seeds, only supplied by corporate seed-suppliers, thus outlawing peer-to-peer exchange.
The future extension of those norms to countries from the South, regardless from inappropriate contexts.
terminated seeds
The possibility to engineer sterile seeds, thus making seed-saving impossible, in order to have seed patents respected. Doing so critically addicts farmers to their seed supplier, forcing them to pay a license on an annual basis.
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SEED SAVING AND SOCIAL INVOLVEMENT
Considering seed saving as a first step towards personal but also public sensitization, using public spaces as a target place for people to socialize and debate. A location where people can plant and exchange seeds as well as ideas must be clearly visualized and cleverly designed. The success of the project depends on the platform appeal.
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SEED GENEALOGY
How to generate awareness, directly in the shops, of what a seed represents in terms of natural and man-made processes ? I want to generate a range of packaging that visually displays this information. I was thinking about using the colors of the packaging itself to display the location of a specific product within its genealogy : darker colors are the most ancient, the original varieties; brighter colors are, a contrario, newly developed species. The differences in hues shows the seed’s genetic location. Offspring due to open pollinization (only one parent) therefore keep the same hue but get brighter, when hybrids also get a hue that represents the mixed genes of both parents.
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PIRATING PIRATS
How could we make that the agricultural system functions without – if not against – those who benefit from biopiracy, depriving indigenous communities of their rights overwhat they developed ? All that remaining as legal as possible.
The main question woud be : how to skip the corporate step of the process, directly linking producers and consumer in a closer relationship.
What should freely flow around the planet, out of the grasp of patentees ? Seeds, as they are the very condition for people’s subsistence. Information about the seeds and related knowledge, as the input of civilizations we consider “primitive” must be recognized and valued. Or the people themselves, who can directly teach how to use this knowledge.
I would like to have a look at what is happening in the digital world.
Is this similar to pirating content ? It legally is, if we consider who owns the patent. It is, indeed, getting the use without paying the license.
Is it similar to content sharing ? It practically is, since the greatest interest from the populations who originated the knowledge is to disclose it, thus making the patent invalid.
Is it similar to creative commons ? It should be, from a moral point of view, that the consumer get involved in the development of the knowledge and its inventor.
Some will argue that the knowledge should remain confidential; it might be subject to debate if it was still so, but considering pirated knowledge, the priority is to recognize its true origins and stakeholders.
Now let’s define what should be done : protected and recognized knowledge, free access to it, moral rights and financial compensation to the inventors, free circulation of materials (seeds, products) between consumers and producers.
- How to protect ? Generating reliable database of knowledge, that can help invalidate actual and future patents.
- How to recognize ? Disclosing information contained in the database, if not all at least what puts a name on a technique.
- How to provide rights ? From the recognition, considering the need to get prior informed consent to any exploitation plan.
- How to access information ? Along with the product ? Media relays ? Participative networking ?
- How to pay ? TO BE CONSIDERED
- How to to generate material flows ? Using postmail ? Tourism ? Sending seeds back to the producer ?
As you can see many things are still to be defined. Feel very free to make suggestions !
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Stories from the other world
Design for debate translates problematic situations into domestic objects in order to generate a social debate.
Egopiracy turns biopiracy towards occidental civilizations by patenting our traditional knowledge. What if we had to pay everytime we brush our teeth ?
Terminated feeds address engineered sterility; like a lamp which bulb gets burnt anytime you turn the light off.
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Filling up Setting about
As raising awareness should not exempt from trying to solve the problem, pedagogic tools aim to turn knowledge into action in a pragmatic way.
Around the seeds provides gardeners an appealing alternative to chemical fertilizers by displaying information about the ancient art of crop rotation.
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Taste, adopt
Experience design considers the opportunity to generate durable habits by providing new, pleasant scenarios.
Colors and shapes recipe book incites people to cook with forgotten ingredients by considering the aesthetic of the meal as much as its taste.
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Reinforcement
As most problematic situations are already being addressed, practical action aims to provide appropriate designs whilst keeping in mind existing initiatives.
At hand stresses the excessive centralization of seed-saving structures by proposing a local seed bank for individuals and small communities to save their seeds.
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Linking the ends
As material distances are growing smaller, communication intends to make proper understanding available.
Prior story addresses the struggle of oral cultures in establishing their rights by generating a prior act – written disclosure of a knowledge – and transmitting it to the final consumer, therefore initiating a more intimate relationship.
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traditional knowledge
As I am documenting on this issue regarding the protection of indigenous knowledge against abusive appropriation, I can’t help feeling that populations we consider as primitive have many things to teach us. I mean it on both scientific and politic level. The problem is that we are not taking their teaching as a whole; we “discover” their ancient, experienced-developed techniques and patent them, without ever considering the political – often related to spiritual – conditions which used to determine the fair exchange of this knowledge for centuries. Instead of it we export our industry-based patenting, system. We therefore deprive the concerned populations of both their innovation and their regulation system.
A project I could deal with is about accepting this teaching as a whole, in a very direct way. I have no plans about it, but I consider it as an approach to consider.
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crop rotation for amateur gardenners
I think almost everyone knows that there are agricultural techniques dedicated to make soil more fertile by alternating the varieties we grow on it. I myself remember having learnt it in junior school. Yet we forget about these skills which come right from our ancestors’ science, and start relying on our technologies – fertilizers, pesticides.
By “we” I mean amateurs, people who like to garden for themselves, pleasure, challenge and strawberries. The thing is, amateur gardenners have a very biased sense of proportions, and it has recenty been shown that they are using ten times more chemical products in their garden than what a conventionnal farmer would – not by will but simple misjudgement. And by not reading the label on the bottle.
I want to create a more sustainable alternative for people to deal with their gardenning; rotating crops seems of interest, yet one need to go into books to get the information, or on the internet. This is a voluntary approach that not everyone will have. My option is to bring the indications, in a very visual and understandable way, in gardenning shops together with other chemical products. By making it simpler, cheaper and more appealing to use that fertilizers, I believe I could generate new habits for people who don’t even care about ecological issues. Still, once the habit is assimilated, it may open up on different ways of gardenning. If it doesn’t, it will at least reduce the amount of toxic products released in nature by amateurs.
My proposal is to create a tool which would be put in the center of the garden, acting as a visual display to show the gardenner in which place he has to grow defined categories of plants. The user manipulates the product only once every year to change the display, so that he knows how he must organize his garden according to what he did the year before; it is not even his task to generate the information, he simply needs to follow the instructions.
The parameters that I imagine to be considered in the system are the number of bits, the varieties of plants and the seasonnality.
In order to develop this project further, I am planning to go and meet people in community gardens in a first time, maybe also pedagogic farms for kids. I will have to check my asumptions through probing techniques with the involved people.
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mixed seeds
An incitation for people to change ther habits can easily be perceived as a restraint. Yet it is possible to present the new direction as an attractive alternative; this is what I tried to impose myself in this project.
In order to give people the envy to use this alternative, some people use financial arguments – taxes refund, statiegeld… I believe the same goal can be achieved without targetting people’s greed, but their interest for novelty.This new service offers the opportunity for people to experience a different way to approach gorceries shopping, not buying predefined packs but elaborating their own supply. Doing so allows a greater personnalisation of alimentation, but also incitate people to go on mixing groceries, discovering new tastes, new cereals, spices…
The price politic of such an initiative is the key of it success; it has to be relevant in order to allow the greater amount of mixes possible, without asking for fastidious calculations.
As an extension of the service, the container meets both domestic and shopping needs; assemblate the two parts and it becomes a refined, almost precious object calling for memories from the past, when people used to store food in ceramic jars. But separate them, and you will be able to use only the inner container – lighter, more resistant, and quantity-ready – to go refilling it to the shop.
This combination of service and product allows both the user and the supplier to skip the “promotional package” phase, hence decreasing the global price of the product.
