Spotted: According to the World Health Organization, nearly one in five people globally are Deaf or have difficulty hearing. And often, social media and machines that provide services do not incorporate sign language – making them less inclusive for those who are hard of hearing.
Startup Deaf AI is working to change this by using artificial intelligence (AI) to train machines to do sign language. Its goal is to make both the real world and the virtual world more inclusive by providing sign language translation on demand. The company has already developed a sign detector that works with online meetings of groups of Deaf people. It uses computer vision to determine who is the “speaker” at any given time in a group, “muting” the others in the meeting so users do not sign over each other.
The company is also developing an app that will transfer real-time speech and talk into sign language, for use in augmented and virtual reality spaces such as games and cultural sites, as well as in the metaverse. Its vision is to develop digital humans as sign language interpreters for real-time interpreting of voice to sign languages.
According to Deaf AI, the company aims “to address the societal issue by engaging artificial intelligence to improve the experience of using the digital world for [deaf] people, making technology more accessible.”
Deaf AI joins a growing list of smart devices and tech companies that are working to make the world more accessible for everyone. Other innovations Springwise has spotted include a glove that translates the spoken word into sign language, and an app that lets users of sign language communicate with Alexa.
Interior architect Jonas Bohlin has designed a bar featuring a wall made from dress shirts and a ceiling decorated with emergency blankets at Stockholm Furniture Fair.
Bohlin worked closely with Christine Ingridsdotter, who previously designed the colouring and textiles for restaurants by Bohlin, on the project.
Silvery emergency blankets decorate the ceiling
Called Underbar, a pun on the word bar that means wonderful in Swedish, the space is located at the centre of the Stockholm Furniture Fair trade show and was made from materials that will be reused once the fair is over.
Its design was based on a previous bar that Bohlin created for the furniture fair in the early 1980s, which had the same proportions.
The back wall is made from dress shirts
All of the bar’s furniture was designed by Bohlin and made in Sweden, and all the materials used for Underbar were chosen so that they could be reused after the fair closes.
“As a designer, there are three things that are of interest: nature, life and the future,” Bohlin told Dezeen. “We wanted to create a space where everything could be reused, nothing would be allowed to be thrown away afterward.”
“We borrowed the shirts for the dress shirt wall from friends who will get them back, while the vases are from second-hand store Myrorna and will be given back to it when the bar closes,” he said.
“The willow mats used for the walls will be used at garden fair Trädgårdsmässan; the chairs I’ve borrowed from restaurants I’ve designed, the tables have already been sold, and the bench was made from wooden flooring and a steel frame that can also be reused.”
Bohlin constructed the lamps for the space himself
The felt lamps were designed by Bohlin for a lighting company that didn’t want to produce them, blaming a lack of time.
“That made me slightly annoyed as I’d already envisioned the lamps here, so I had to sit down and make them all myself,” Bohlin said.
“The idea was that they would be good for the acoustics,” he added. “The best thing is to dampen the sound close to the source, the mouth, which is why I made the lamps from felt and in these half-circle shapes that catch the sound. Some of these will go to a restaurant after and I’ll sell the rest of them.”
Vases were bought from a second-hand store
The bar was made from leather on a steel frame in collaboration with Ahls Mekaniska in Småland, which also helped make the tables.
The ceiling was decorated with emergency blankets that will be donated after the end of the fair, potentially to Ukraine, Bohlin said. His lamps Andromeda and Atom were used to create sculptural lighting designs in the bar.
Shirts were leant by friends and will be returned
“When I design something I try to relate to the space, play on the space as if it is Chinese chequers – I want to keep something of the history of the space when I create something new and respect the history that has been,” Bohlin said.
“But I also try to create a landscape of dreams,” he added. “We’re all different, and I think it’s important in a public space for everyone to find something – in the colour or form – that they feel safe with or recognise, something they can talk about.”
“Fancy restaurants may target just one typical audience, while I want everyone who comes here to feel welcome and for everyone to have an experience, both of the food and of the spatiality.”
Other projects on show during Stockholm Design Week include a pavilion by Daniel Rybakken in the waters of Stockholm and an exhibition that visualizes the carbon emissions of common materials.
Underbar is on show until 11 February as part of Stockholm Design Week. Browse our digital guide to the festival here and see Dezeen Events Guide for details of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Health is one area where humanity has made impressive progress over the past century. Since 1900, the global average life expectancy has more than doubled. And even over the past twenty years, we have seen continuous improvements in key health metrics. For example, between 2000 and 2019, global life expectancy increased by more than six years.
The past 20 years have also seen a range of extraordinary medical breakthroughs from effective HIV treatments and targeted cancer therapies to nanomedicines and the mapping of the human genome. Meanwhile, tech innovators are becoming serious about the possibility of tackling the ageing process itself, investing increasingly vast sums of money in the field. For example, in 2022, startup Altos raised $3 billion in funding to conduct anti-ageing research.
There are clearly reasons to be optimistic about the future of human health. However, the futurists we consulted for our Future 2043 report struck a note of caution, reminding us that pitfalls remain. “Unfortunately, I predict the world will be less healthy in developed nations, as we aren’t addressing primary prevention,” explains Hugh Montgomery, OBE, Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London. “The budget for treating an escalating number of increasingly sick people won’t be there, and the drivers for non-communicable diseases (which include a lack of active transport, diets comprising ultra-processed foods, and poor air quality) are sustained,” he adds.
Meanwhile, Biofuturist Melissa Sterry warns that: “In 2043, the threat of another pandemic (or multiple pandemics) will likely continue to loom large.” She adds that: “While medical advances could help in the early identification of pandemic threats, many of the issues we have seen with COVID-19 are likely to persist.”
Despite these challenges – or perhaps because of them – we expect to see increasing levels of healthcare innovation. Discover below, three innovations that could indicate the direction of travel for human health technology.
Medical students at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge no longer need to rely on actors for some of their training. Using holograms and mixed reality accessed via headsets, students and doctors interact in real-time to adjust treatments and assess severity of illness for a range of digital patients. Called HoloScenarios, the programme was developed by the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust using technology developed by GigXR. Students move about the space treating patients for common respiratory ailments, including pneumonia, anaphylaxis, and pulmonary embolism. Read more
Cell biologist Dr Leila Strickland came up with the idea for BIOMILQ while she was breastfeeding her own newborn. Struggling to produce enough milk, she turned to formula. Although the choice was the right one, she also realised that it was not ideal, as formula does not have the perfect nutritional composition for babies. Eleven years later, Strickland worked out how to culture breast cells in a lab and collect the milk they secrete. Read more
Researchers at Brown University have developed a material that responds to the presence of bacteria by releasing encapsulated medication. Although still in the research stages, the material could lead to the development of wound dressings that deliver medication only when it is needed. This, in turn, could reduce the use of antibiotics and the growth of antibiotic-resistant infections. Read more
Want to discover more about what the world will look like in 2043? Download our free Future 2043 report which draws on the insights of 20 of the world’s leading futurists.For more innovations, head to the Springwise Innovation Library.
Spotted: As they drink their morning takeaway coffee, many people don’t give much thought to the cup. After all, it’s just one cup. But they add up – every year, more than 500 billion single-use paper and plastic cups are manufactured globally. Although these cups are often technically recyclable, it costs more to recycle them than to send them to make brand new plastic lids. Now, one company is tackling the problem of plastic lids by removing them altogether.
ChoosePlanetA has created a single-use cup – dubbed the Good Cup – that has an integrated lid and is made entirely from fully recyclable and compostable paper. The cups pack flat, saving storage space and energy in transportation, and are designed so that the top flap is built into the cup itself, folding and locking into place when closed to create a lid.
The sustainable paper used in the cup comes from EnvoPAP, and is made from renewable sources like sugarcane waste, instead of wood pulp. Manufacturing of the Good Cup is also compatible with existing machinery built to produce traditional paper cups.
Cyril Drouet, co-founder and managing director of ChoosePlanetA, explained: “The impact of the Good Cup’s use is far-reaching and varied; from creating significant savings at the point of production and increasing brand awareness to its most crucial and necessary impact – helping to alleviate the environmental crisis by removing plastic, one lid at a time.”
ChoosePlanetA joins various other companies in the drive for sustainable food and drink containers. Springwise has also spotted a vegetable-oil-based reusable cup, and packaging made from food waste.
Spotted: Living organisms leave behind genetic tracks in the environment – DNA or eDNA. Ecologists then inspect these tracks to catalogue biodiversity, uncovering which species are active in that area. However, while following some organisms is easy, others reside in hard-to-reach areas, often turning research into a cold case. To improve the data collection, researchers at the ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL have developed a drone that can land on tree branches and collect samples.
The aircraft first lands on a branch to gather the sample using a sticky strip. Then, back at the lab, researchers can extract DNA from the adhesive strip and analyse it. Finally, the team will assign genetic matches of the various organisms using database comparisons.
But all branches are different, with varying elasticity, thickness, and sturdiness and overcoming these issues proved a challenge for the team, as landing on the branches required complex control. To address this, the researchers fitted the drone with a force-sensing cage to enable it to gauge the flexibility of the branch on a case-by-case basis and incorporate this into its landing technique.
To date, the drone has been tested on seven tree species. But now, the team has been prompted to improve the device in the hopes of winning a competition to detect as many species as possible across 100 hectares of Singaporean forest in 24 hours.
Springwise has previously spotted other innovative drone technologies, including a drone that can inspect and repair wind turbines, and a startup that revolutionises drone control interface.
Spotted: Almost all industrial facilities emit CO2, and while there are options for capturing the carbon emitted by large plants, there are few options for small- and medium-sized facilities. Now, Danish startup Algiecel has developed a modular photobioreactor (PBR) that can capture CO2 and transform it into algae-based derivative products.
Algiecel’s PBR’s are highly compact and fit into standard 40-foot shipping containers. The PBRs capture CO2 from industrial point emissions using algae, with energy for photosynthesis coming from LED lighting, and the only waste streams being oxygen and process heat – which can be reused. The containers can also be easily scaled for use by almost any facility.
The microalgae grown in the PBR are rich in protein, omega-3, vitamins, and carotenoids and can be split into biomass and bio-oil. This makes it especially useful in products such as aquaculture feed and as a human food supplement. So, not only do the bioreactors prevent CO2 from reaching the atmosphere – they are also a source of new products.
Algiecel adds: “We can thus achieve constantly efficient production with increasing scale compared with competing solutions. The container-based plug and play structure also means a more flexible capex solution for clients.”
In 2022, Algiecel successfully operated a pilot plant and has recently raised kr.10 million (about €1.3 million) in funding to further optimise the technology and create its first full-scale demonstration unit.
Springwise has spotted other flexible carbon capture and storage solutions, such as a novel way to remove carbon from the air and reuse it, and a process that can retrofit HVAC units to remove CO2.
Avanto Architects and Joanna Laajisto have designed a logistics centre for retailer Finnish Design Shop that features warm timber, a foraged-food restaurant for staff and visitors, and views of the surrounding forest.
Located on the outskirts of Turku, west of Helsinki, the logistics centre is the hub for storage, management and dispatch of products from the Finnish Design Shop, which says it is the world’s largest online store for Nordic design.
The company needed a new logistics centre after a period of high growth, but founder and CEO Teemu Kiiski also aimed for it to be a meaningful place for employees and visitors.
The Finnish Design Shop logistics centre is located in the Pomponrahka nature reserve in Turku. Photo is by Kuvio
Employees of the logistics centre can enjoy plenty of light and forest views as well as warm timber environments and a restaurant run by Sami Tallberg, an award-winning chef who specialises in foraging.
The Finnish Design Shop had first explored whether it could convert an existing building in the Turku area, but, finding nothing suitable, chose to build on a site in the Pomponrahka nature reserve, where the surrounding forest would provide a calming work environment and reflect the appreciation for wood in Nordic design.
To undertake construction there responsibly, the Finnish Design Shop says the builders saved as many trees as possible and landscaped the area with natural forest undergrowth and stones excavated from the site.
The entrance features glass curtain walls that connect the interior and exterior. Photo by Kuvio
Avanto Architects designed the 12,000-square-metre building to blend into the forest as much as possible — a challenge given its massing, a product of the warehouse layout.
The layout was created beforehand by specialist consultants to maximise the efficiency of operations, which are carried out by robots in an automated system.
The centre includes a showroom. Photo by Mikko Ryhänen
The architects opted for a dark facade with a vertical relief pattern that becomes visible on approach and echoes the tree trunks in the surrounding woodlands.
“The pattern forms a more human scale to the large facade surfaces,” Avanto Architects co-founder Anu Puustinen told Dezeen. “We also used warm wooden accents in the main entrance vestibule, balcony and windows.”
There is also a restaurant that specialises in foraged food. Photo by Mikko Ryhänen
The architects gave the office spaces large windows so the employees could enjoy frequent views of the forest and lots of light, and included a balcony for access to the outdoors on the first floor.
The entrance to the centre is through the showroom, which features glass curtain walls that showcase the use of the building and a long, straight staircase made from two massive glulam beams.
The first-floor offices have a view of the warehouse floor. Photo by Kuvio
The interior was designed by Laajisto and her studio, who aimed to make the space feel well-proportioned and comfortable despite its size and to create a good acoustic environment by liberally applying sound-absorbing materials.
She kept the colour and material palette neutral and natural, with lots of solid pine and ash wood to continue the forest connection, but used furniture from the Finnish Design Shop in bright colours to punctuate the space.
“The aim was that every aspect in the interior should be done well and beautifully,” Laajisto told Dezeen. “Attention to detail was embraced in things that typically are overlooked, such as doors, plumbing fixtures and electrical hardware selections and applications, acoustic ceiling panels and ceramic tiles.”
The project is the first logistics building in Finland to be certified BREEAM Excellent, the second highest level.
Special attention has been paid to creating a good acoustic environment with sound-dampening materials. Photo by Mikko Ryhänen
Kiiski, who positions the company as the opposite of multinational e-commerce players such as Amazon, aimed for the new centre to be the most socially and environmentally sustainable online store.
“The values that life in the Nordic countries is based on include transparency, equality and respect for nature,” said Kiiski. “It would have been impossible to create this company and our new logistics centre without unwavering respect for these values.”
Wood is featured throughout the interior
He believes that global online shopping can be socially and environmentally sustainable when issues in supply chains, logistics and operations are addressed.
“Many studies show that online shopping can have a lower carbon footprint as compared to in-store shopping,” said Kiiski. “This is due to the more efficient logistics in e-commerce and the fact that in-store shopping usually involves private transport.”
“We want to push the whole industry towards a more sustainable future,” he continued.
The hub is meant to offer employees a healthy and humane working environment. Photo by Mikko Ryhänen
Past work by Avanto Architects includes the Löyly waterfront sauna in Helsinki, which has a multifaceted exterior that visitors can climb, and the Villa Lumi, a house with a sculptural white staircase.
Laajisto’s previous projects include office interiors for service design company Fjord and the Airisto furniture collection for Made by Choice, which was inspired by Scandinavian holiday culture.
Spotted: Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries were first developed in 1985 and have since become ubiquitous in products such as toys, wireless headphones, electric vehicles, and electrical energy storage systems. However, one issue with these batteries is the fact that they contain numerous toxic metals, which make their manufacture, recycling, and use environmentally problematic.
Startup Form Energy, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has found a way to make an alternative battery technology, metal-air batteries, more viable. Today’s metal-air batteries, such as the zinc-air batteries used in hearing aids, use fewer toxic materials than Li-ion batteries but are not rechargeable as they corrode quickly. The MIT researchers, however, have found a way to reverse the corrosion process, creating rechargeable iron-air batteries.
Iron was chosen for use in the new design because it is cheap and abundant, with the new batteries likely costing around $20 per kilowatt-hour, compared to up to $200 for Li-ion batteries. The company says they will be perfect for grid-level energy storage as they excel at long-term energy storage and can deliver more than three milliwatts output capacity per acre of batteries.
Form CEO Mateo Jaramillo explains: “We believe that to meet supply chain challenges and to run the grid reliably and affordably, we need new domestically manufactured energy storage technologies (…) The active components of our iron-air battery system are some of the safest, cheapest, and most abundant materials on the planet – low-cost iron, water, and air.”
Improving battery technology to make it cheaper, safer, and more efficient is the impetus behind a growing number of innovations spotted by Springwise. Some recent developments include a green method for recycling the materials used in Li-ion batteries, and improved, high-performance hydrogen fuel cells.
The COP27 conference was made a miserable affair by its dreadful architecture as much as the disheartening tenor of the discussions and debates, writes Smith Mordak.
No! I don’t want to read another opinion piece on how COP27 was a disappointment and “we must” do better. I know. We all know. Attending COP27 was a deeply depressing experience. I heard nothing I hadn’t heard a million times before and even though I’d have been drunk under the table if I’d taken a sip every time someone said “breakthrough”, I heard nothing of any actual breakthroughs.
I’m not saying that no action on climate change is happening, or that there isn’t powerful thinking opening up universes of possibilities for better futures going on all around us – there are! But until these international forums give themselves permission to consider transformative social and economic policy, we’re not going to get anywhere.
I’d have been drunk under the table if I’d taken a sip every time someone said “breakthrough”
One anecdote to make this point if you’ll bear with me: at a panel in the Buildings Pavilion, one of the attendees asked for ideas from the panel for retrofitting the mobile homes of low-income residents in the US.
The panel bent over backwards to try to address this within their remits. Their frankly preposterous answers included things like creating district-wide projects that might convince investors that they can clinch a worthwhile profit from the scale of the work, showing investors that they can get a higher rental income from green buildings, and the “uberization” of construction. Nobody said anything about tackling the crippling poverty constraining these people’s access to resources (from food to insulation), or the redistribution of wealth (financial wealth and housing wealth) that could address this.
So long as we’re only allowed to use the tubes of paint marked “return on investment” or “profit motive” our vision of the future is monochrome. COP27 delegates were acting as if there wasn’t a rainbow of solutions to choose from. Hand me a gorgeous bright “equity” and some effervescent “deliberative democracy” and I’ll paint you a kaleidoscopic future. Meanwhile, is there anything worth learning from COP27?
Maybe it’s because I’m an architect, but the surprise take-home for me was a rekindled fervour for the importance of designing healthy, comfortable spaces. I attended the conference as part of the RIBA delegation during the second week, joining round tables and speaking on panel debates in the “Blue Zone”. What I experienced was that the COP27 campus of temporary buildings was not conducive to the expansive imagining and radical collaboration needed for a transition out of the climate crisis.
The COP27 campus of temporary buildings was not conducive to expansive imagining and radical collaboration
On the one hand, I hate to pile on the requirements: not only do we need to worry about energy use, water consumption, whole-life carbon, and, and, and, but now I’m also saying we need to design spaces that will facilitate the conversations needed for climate action – that’s a bit much isn’t it? It is a lot, but on the other hand, isn’t this what we’ve been training for? Advocates of “Good Design” have been arguing for impacts on learning outcomes in education settings, for productivity in office buildings, on health outcomes in hospitals and so on for a long time.
There’s a wealth of literature out there. I’ve seen John Zeisel’s Inquiry by Design inhabit numerous bookshelves in video call backgrounds over the last couple of years. Since the WELL Building Standard launched in 2014, more and more clients and design teams have focused attention on the ways that the buildings we design can enhance our health and wellbeing.
I’m not sure what the designers of the COP27 site had on their bookshelves, and I doubt they were given the scope and time and resources to go beyond a minimum viable conference centre. This is not a dig: we’ve all done less than our best work for difficult clients in difficult circumstances. But it’s still worth learning from a bad experience.
The complex consisted of several large temporary buildings: the brood that might ensue from a love affair between a wedding marquee and an airport hangar. Difficulty navigating the site was the first stressor. The buildings all looked the same with almost identical supergraphics and in a layout that didn’t appear to align with the maps.
I went on Google Maps while I was on site to help me get my bearings where the printed isometrics let me down and could see that the spot had recently been a bare bit of desert. Microphones from the various pavilions were competing with the thunderous aircon, each other, and various videos on loop.
The existential threat of the climate crisis provides enough doom and panic without turning the screws through the design of our negotiating spaces
Pavilions had numerous doors but no ceilings. My acoustician colleagues would have cried. The lighting was also challenging, with most pavilions opting for the slightly dressed-up cousin of the site light, oriented directly at the stages and audiences like every cartoon of an interrogation. It was too cold, and my portable VOC monitor (okay, my nose) detected high levels of off-gassing from the carpets, furniture, and the inhabitable 3D pdfs that passed for pavilions. Thanks to the Australian pavilion that kept us in coffee, I know it was the smellscape and not caffeine withdrawal maintaining a continuous low-grade headache.
All of this is to say it was always going to be a challenging few days, but the built environment didn’t help to manage this – instead, it added to my levels of discomfort and stress. The existential threat of the climate crisis provides enough doom and panic without turning the screws through the design of our negotiating spaces.
Many of us headed to COP armed with statistics of how bad things are today, together with bundles of reports setting out how we have the solutions for reducing carbon emissions, energy use, and resource use. We were met with what we’re always met with: “tell me how this is going to make me money and we’ll talk”. Well, we’re not going to profiteer our way out of climate change, I’m sorry.
It’s clear we need to be having a different conversation. Is it naive to suggest that a different space might help us have that different conversation? Am I clutching at straws or grasping the nettle?
There’s a lovely (and sometimes not so lovely) comments section below. If you know of examples of projects where a space has been created to facilitate working together to imagine social justice or transformative futures, please share it! What was done differently and how were the outcomes different?
Smith Mordak is a multi-award-winning architect, engineer, writer and curator and the director of sustainability and physics at British engineering firm Buro Happold.
Spotted: Broccoli is a healthy food containing fibre, vitamin C, vitamin K, iron, and potassium. It also boasts more protein than most other vegetables, with virtually no fat. However, around 70 per cent of the entire broccoli harvest is left in the field. This is because only the small, centre portion of each plant – the florets – is harvested for food, leaving most of the stems and leaves to rot, even though they are perfectly edible.
Startup Upp is working to change this, with a two-pronged approach. The company is developing an automated harvester that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision to harvest the centre portion and stems separately. The harvester will then deliver the fresh broccoli for sale and the stems and leaves for upcycling into new products.
These upcycled stems and leaves will be used to produce protein by-products, as the company is looking to provide an alternative plant-based protein to pea and soya. Upp argues that using broccoli as a protein source is less carbon-intensive than soy or peas because the broccoli is already being grown for other uses.
David Whitewood, CEO of Upp says: “Upp is all about making the most of the crops that we already grow (…) In a future market of bioreactor and lab-grown alt-proteins, plant-based foods with good provenance will attract a premium like organic grass-fed beef does today.”
Upp has recently secured £500,000 (around €560,000) in pre-seed funding, in a round led by Elbow Beach Capital, to develop and commercialise its technology.
Food waste is a massive issue. Luckily, there is no shortage of innovations seeking to tackle it. Some that Springwise has spotted recently include a handheld system that uses AI to check freshness levels of fruit, and a closed-loop system that converts food waste into nutrients for use in hydroponics.
