G2S :: Green Gardening System

Domus Academy 2008 – Domestic Garden

Project Leaders: Domenico Pisaturo, Claudio Moderini

Collaborators:

Gianpaolo Tucci, Mauro D’Alessandro, Jonning Chng

Abstract

Our project aims to design a system that connects user’s home behaviours to the cultivation of a garden shared by a community.  The system creates environmental awareness in the user through suggestions of sustainable behaviours that is translated into the satisfaction of the garden needs.  A reward system in terms of harvest is put in place to stimulate the community towards a sustainable lifestyle.

Keywords

+  awareness

+  sustainability

+  behaviours

+  resource optimization

+  harvest

Introduction

G²S is system that is applicable to different models of dwellings: high rise urban infrastructures and horizontal flat neighbourhoods.  Essentially our interactive system works in the domestic environment, as a medium between users and the common garden, which is the shared open space in which the community seed, cultivate and harvest different crops (i.e. food fruits, flowers, etc.).   This space is eventually perceived as our domestic garden.

The system is set in a community of users who are concern about their footprint on the environment, and loves the idea of cultivating biological food for a healthy diet.  Hence, our project hopes to encourage people to a more sustainable lifestyle.

Our research was oriented to survey daily resource consumption in an average urban lifestyle.  As the footprint of humans on the planet is getting more evident, it is important to encourage people to be aware about the concept of sharing resources with the nature, because this will be more and more necessary in the future.  Some of our research is referencing from existing verticalfarm projects.

Details

Like human beings, plants require water and energy for their growth and survival.  G²S is an interactive system which is aimed at harmoniously connecting plants with people in terms of behaviours and needs.

Through the system’s interface, the user is able to monitor his resource consumption within the home.  Resources are identified as water and energy consumed in daily home activities.  Primarily, G²S works on a utility system whereby the user is able to project and set his consumption rates for the month, which is defined in our project as 100%.  Within this 100% of resources (Water Bank and Energy Bank), the user will able to make contributions to the garden whenever he feels that he has the capacity to do so.

The system’s interface also allows the user to constantly monitor the status of the garden.  Status in terms of health, needs, and harvest periods of the crops.  This information could be communicated to the user both through a local network and a mobile web service.  Hence, the interface is essentially the triggering point of actions performed on the common garden.  Garden needs are defined as water and energy; therefore the user can remotely decide to satisfy these needs via the contributions of their exceeding daily resources.  In return, the system will assign them a corresponding amount of credits to use for the harvest sharing.

G²S is also designed to be able to suggest to the user home activities in terms of water and energy consumption according to their objective. These objectives are defined as mid-long term cultivation planning.  For instance, if the user learns that the upcoming harvest is something that he wants, through the system he is able to indicate the amount he intends to receive.  The system understands the user’s objectives and suggests different combination of daily activities (ie duration of appliance usage, duration of showers, etc).  These suggested home actions will maintain the overall consumption under a sustainable threshold which allows them to reach an optimum level of contributions, hence achieving their objectives.

Scenario Illustrations ::

< coming soon … >

System Functions ::

Monthly excess of allocated resources are translated into credits for the exchange of available harvests.

System generates a comparison between the users resource consumption and the gardens needs.

System translates the gardens needs visually for the user.

User is able to set objectives in terms of harvests and system will suggest home activities in relation to resource consumption.

In Conclusion …

Currently G²S is a basic ubiquitous home system that we are proposing.  What we have presented gives a brief outline of how the concept of gardening could be fused into daily habits of our society and promoting sustainability as a result, creating sustainable awareness in people in relation to their physical behaviours in their homes.  What G²S is doing basically gives users a concrete translation of their daily activities into contribution towards a shared cultivation.  In return of their good behaviours, they get to enjoy a good harvest of biological food.

The potentiality of our project is primarily focused on the elements surrounding the idea of gardening.  A future enhancement to the project will be to focus more on the physical aspect of gardening.  For instance, physical daily involvement by the user can be encouraged through bonus credits system, or recognition of ‘gardener-status’ levels.  In this case, G²S can enhance its role of directing people towards a more sustainable civilization.  To further stimulate the awareness, knowledge and experience sharing can also be possible through the system, hence creating a collaborative environment within the community.  Remote monitoring could also be implemented through mobile web services.  This will allow the users to be more closely knitted to their garden and their sustainable cause.  We do believe this consciousness of sustainable habits can be embedded deeper in modern lifestyles through involvement of people in collaborative activities like gardening.

<some of the icon graphics are extracted from sites like www.istockphoto.com>