While most air purifiers use a HEPA filter to collect and store pollutants, Molekule applies a new technology called photoelectrochemical oxidation, which features a filter coated in nanoparticles. As air passes through the purifier, light activates the filter and creates a surface reaction that destroys allergens, bacteria, viruses and mould. Molekule claims the technology can get rid of pollutants 1,000 times smaller than comparable products. The device is said to clean a 55-square-metre room in an hour.

The first product from Project Jacquard comes in the form of a Levi’s Commuter denim jacket – aimed predominantly at cyclists – that will allow wearers to control their music, answer calls and even respond to messages. The jacket will be compatible with Google Apps such as Google Maps and Google Messaging, as well as Spotify and athletic activity tracking app Strava.

By weaving sensor grids, miniaturised electronics and imperceptible circuit boards into the jacquard fibers, the jacket is completely indistinguishable from other Levi’s clothing.

Even oceans need trash cans. The Seabin is a dock-based automated rubbish bin that catches floating plastic, oil and fuels. Australian surfers Andrew Turton, 40, and Peter Ceglinski, 37, developed the bin after witnessing growing pollution in marinas.

"I used to be a product designer," says Ceglinski. "When I realised we didn't need the plastic products I was making, I quit my job." Ceglinski found an old factory in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, and transformed it into a Seabin workshop, where he also lives.

Seabin

Ceglinski's invention offers a 24/7 alternative to the expensive "trash boats" traditionally used by harbours and marinas, which clean by scooping up rubbish in nets. The Seabin is most efficient in the marina's problem spots, where predominant currents amass heavy pollution. It's estimated to catch up to 1.5kg of rubbish per day - removing around half a tonne per year from the 250,000 tonnes the oceans are believed to hold.

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The Seabin is fixed to a floating dock, above the water surface. A pump creates a flow that sucks rubbish inside a recycled polyethylene bin and into a natural-fibre bag. The water is then pumped back into the marina. And don't worry about fish getting trapped: in four years, the Seabins haven't caught a single one. "Fish simply stay away from the surface and the current that the Seabin produces," says Ceglinski. If any did get caught, they would be freed by marina staff while emptying the bin.

An Indiegogo campaign collected over $267,000 (£189,000) in January, prompting Malta to express interest in installing Seabins around its island. "An eco-label programme advised 250 marinas on its mailing list to get a Seabin to increase their rating," says Ceglinski.

Eight backers paid the $3,825 campaign price for their exclusive prototype, but the eventual market price shouldn't exceed €3,000 (£2,300). French manufacturer Poralu Marine is making and distributing the first Seabins, which are scheduled to be ready to ship in late 2016.

The line that divides clothing and technology isn’t blurring, it’s disappearing – as proven by London-based fashion house CuteCircuit

A shirt that sends your friends virtual hugs. A handbag that displays tweets and messages. A dress that sparkles like the night sky. Today, the term “wearable” covers more than smartwatches and VR goggles. “We try to make experiences that make you feel empowered, and help people connect with one another in a way that is intimate or fun,” says Francesca Rosella, creative director of CuteCircuit – a design house that’s been producing fashion embedded with technology since 2004. “But gadget is a dirty word.”

Co-founded by Rosella and Ryan Gentz, the outfit’s first design was the Hug Shirt, which senses touch and can send – or receive – a squeeze and targeted warmth to someone also wearing the shirt. Originally producing concepts and catwalk pieces, Gentz and Rosella are now creating a line of ready-to-wear fashion. “We’re trying to change the way people consume ‘disposable’ fashion,” says Rosella. “We want our designs to last a really long time, so we use really nice luxury materials such as silk, and then we embed the micro-LEDs that we call magic fabric.”

Exploring the properties of resin  

Fabien Barrero-Carsenat’s ‘Pinus Pinaster’ (aka the Maritime Pine) collection is an exploration of resin. It all started when Barrero-Carsenat was wandering through a pine forest in the south of France and brown droplets of resin shining in the sunlight.

Curious, Barrero-Carsenat researched the history and composition of resin and then created a series of sustainable and eco-friendly applications for the material; cheese covers and trays, a carafe, a fruit bay, a lamp and an electric socket. “Every one is a result based on my resin exploration, each using a singular property.” says Barrero-Carsenat.

Cheese Cover and Tray make use of the anti-bacterial and fungicidal properties of resin. “What place is there in contemporary life for old fashioned cheese preservation? Nowadays we are used to think fridge only. This application uses the anti-bacterial substance contained inside resin. Using this method traditional cheese can stay longer in the maturity stage you like, without definitely stopping the cheese aging process. The covers can be used with three different wood trays, each with unique characteristics; Cedar, strong perfumed recommended for persons who want their cheese flavored and preserved longer, Cherry, an aesthetic tray for smooth and delicate taste and Hornbeam, a neutral tray with no smells.” Imperfections in the production of these items gave the pieces a unique material identity and aesthetic dimension.The Standard Carafe for drinking water uses the waterproofing qualities of resin and is made with unglazed white ceramic outside and a resin layer inside. “Every ‘bistro’ or popular restaurant [in France] re-uses empty wine bottles to serve the free drinking water on tables. This carafe design is a popular french restaurant standard. Waterproofing with resin means x12 the energy saved. You do not need to bake the ceramic at 1200°C a second time, resin is liquid enough at 85°C.”

The Electric Wall Socket is made “recycling all of my experiment’s waste. Installed inside our homes, this standard requires no change, it has to be static. Using a complex composite of resin waste, we are not only producing a simple standard, but also recycling all the unconsumed material in a cradle to cradle cycle. Moreover, the resin changes color with passing time, offering a ‘static evolution’ of our sockets, behaving like the Wabi-Sabi Japanese philosophy whose exposed object gets nicer and better day after day.” Photos: Paula Cermeno.

With the realisation that the ageing baby boomers are one of the largest demographic group and are living longer and more active lives we are beginning to see a rash of designs tailored to this new and growing market. One such product is Dirk Biotto's called ChopChop is a kitchen that aims to make cooking a meal safer and more accessible.

As aging baby boomers proliferate, the design community has become increasingly attuned to their needs. Take Dirk Biotto. The Berlin-based industrial designer has created a kitchen prototype that aims to make cooking a meal easier, safer, and more accessible for the elderly.

Called ChopChop, his design features a counter that is height adjustable and a backboard that hangs easily accessible kitchen utensils. An extendable hose allows pots to be filled from greater distances, so people don’t have to lug heavy pots of water across the kitchen. And if you want to fill a pot directly from the tap, a sloped sink makes it easy to slide heavy pots onto the working surface. The kitchen also takes inspiration from woodworking, and features a vise, which secures bottles and cans in place for easy opening.

Recent graduate from the Royal College of Art Johanna Schmeer considers the future of food based on her knowledge of the possibilities afforded by nanotechnology. Creating a series of synthetic foods for a future whereby the worlds growing population needs to tap into new resources she conceives how products made from enzyme enhanced bio plastics would in theory harvest essential nutrients as alternatives to traditional food sources.

Built on fact, her project is based on a recent scientific breakthrough by scientist Russell Johnson, who has identified a way to synthesise functioning biological cells made from plastics.

Adding a smattering of fantasy based on this fact, Johanna has created 7 food products that fulfil the essential food groups. For instance they produce water, sugar, fat, minerals and proteins. These speculative objects secrete powders and liquids that could be ingested in our distant future.

http://vimeo.com/98281097

Envisioning a future whereby digital technology has superseded analogue cooking, Marjorie Artieres visualises the domestic kitchen in 2024 where 3D printers are commonplace. 3D printing food has provided perfect nutrition, no waste and issues surrounding food shortages, but with it has come uniformly shaped, processed & diagnostically perfect pods of food that has removed the pleasure and rituals of cooking.

Her Note by Note project offers a laboratory style tool kit for creating and recapturing the heritage of analogue cooking that has been lost with the rise of the digital kitchen.

Unlike cooking today, her future kitchen proposal has no recipes, instead Note by Note uses experimental and innovative cooking to create a new repertoire of flavours, textures and colours.

Artieres's project is as a provocation to technologists to re think the future of cooking with passion and taste rather than just necessity.

http://vimeo.com/98531837

Reconsidering how we engage with food, utensils and experience are high on the design agenda with numerous projects exploring such subjects. One of the latest is from Ellie Corp - a jewellery designer who has collaborated with a chef to create a series of tools for eating.

The first part of a three part collaboration she has designed tools for the first course. Titled 'Suck: a ba starter' the tools focus on sucking of a kind of noodle soup and as such Ellie has designed objects that interact playfully with the rituals surrounding eating.

Working with soft and hard materials Ellie has used silver and stainless steel with natural sponges to help with the liquid retention and the over all experience of eating.

Part 2 and 3 are to follow as will be an actual dinner where visitors will be able to experience the utensils.

As people live in more crowded urban environments with less opportunity to grow fresh fruit and vegetables and a growing desire for consumers to know the provenance of their food, the Niwa project is the ultimate solution. A kickstarter funded project, Niwa is an automated hydroponics growing system that is easy to use and would blend into most homes and is being seen as a new generation of kitchen appliance. From watering, to lighting, to heat regulation the whole unit is controlled by a smartphone.

Once seeds are planted, the app uses its preset growing knowledge to keep the plant alive garnered from working with farming experts over a 2 year period.

Questioning whether cooking could be more about experimentation and less about tradition as well as the impact of the onset of the Internet of Everything - designers  Christian Isberg, Carl Berglöf and Lasse Korsgaard have devised a collaborative cooking machine that explores a new perspective on the future of cooking. A timber framework with a large cooking pot it has 35 food dispensers containing all the ingredients needed for an endless amount of dishes. Working remotely 5 anonymous chefs control the heat, timings and seasoning of the food via their smart phones.

The anonymity of the chefs also poses questions about the need for their physical presence and also redefines consumers relationship with food preparation and celebrity chef culture as well as our growing reliance on our technology as our digital guardians.

http://vimeo.com/96913610

Inspired by the 2013 report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations called Edible Insects, which investigates how eating insects could help future food shortages, design graduate Búi Bjarmar Aðalsteinsson has created a Fly Factory that breeds insect larvae for human consumption. Echoing the spider factory from Thomas Maincent in its aesthetic Aðalsteinsson's fly factory uses larvae bred in the factory to create pate and dessert.

The conceptual micro-factory utilises food waste as the feed for the insects reducing issues surrounding food waste whilst creating a new protein solution which according to Aðalsteinsson tastes like chicken.

Experimenting with the flavours and foodstuff he has also created a series of recipes such as coconut-chocolate larvae dessert. His designs are not expected to be for the home, rather for restaurants and industrial use but the debate still goes on to whether the western palette will except eating bugs and insects.

Aðalsteinsson is not the first designer to explore this area and is one of a growing number of designers and nutritionists who recognise the importance of finding an alternative source of protein for future diets.

Thanks to social media and smart phones we share our personal lives with complete strangers via curated feeds of Instagram and Facebook and the endless blogs citing what we have eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner - overloading the information about our lives and the lives of others, but in an attempt to create a more emphathetic approach to how others live their lives the new  20 Day Stranger app shares a persons live with a stranger for 20 days. Developed by Playful Systems, a research group at the MIT Media Lab and the Dalai Lama Centre for Ethics and Transformative Values, it is designed for the iPhone and reveals intimate, shared connections between two anonymous individuals offering up a mobile experience that exchanges one person's experience of the world with another's, while preserving anonymity on both sides.

Information is collected during the day using GPS and then images are collated from the internet to support what and where the user has been and these are then sent to the users app. Using Google Images and the likes of Foursquare, strangers will see the way you walked to work and your favourite cafe, but the actual locations and the identity of the user remains anonymous.

http://vimeo.com/92930928

The craft beer explosion looks like it is going to have to step aside for the DIY beer revolution. We have already seen the BrewBot that lets you brew your own beer at home and the DIY trend in the kitchen does not seem to be going anywhere which places the BrewNanny perfectly. The BrewNanny is a device that supervises your brewing so that nothing goes wrong, it will even alert you via Wifi if your beer is going bad.

Checking fermentation rate, temperature, light and CO2 the BrewNanny records the data of your beer batch which in turn can be shared with friends to share tips or to just celebrate the best local beer around.

This project is yet another example showing how consumers are taking control and utilising technology to make the experience even more seamless.

The brilliant Daan Rooesgarde who has already brought us light up highways, glowing trees as replacement for street lamps and anti smog parks in Beijing has unveiled his latest project - a luxury ring that is a bi product of his fight against urban pollution. Still in its design phase, the ring will be a metal band housing a clear central stone that will house smog particles that have been extracted from Beijing city air in the smog parks themselves. The black dust, which is made up mostly of carbon soot from coal will symbolise a cubic kilometer of smog that each ring has cleared from the skies.

In addition he wants to develop a higher end version whereby he presses the dirty air particles and turns them into a valuable stone that resembles a diamond.

Playing with notions of luxury and tackling an issue head on this project is both poetic and practical.

Designers have invented an edible water bottle that uses algae and a process borrowed from the molecular gastronomy industry. The holy grail of the bottled water industry - this prototype titled The Ooho has been created by Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, Pierre Paslier and Guillaume Couche. It works by holding water inside a transparent membrane that can be made in different sizes.

The technique itself is not new and was infact first developed by scientists in 1946 but was popularised again when El Bulli chef Ferran Adria used it for his unique recipes. Called spherification its a method of shaping liquids into spheres.

The flexible skin around the water is edible and made up of a combination of calcium chloride and brown algae and according to the designers is resistant, hygienic and biodegradable.

DNA testing and genetic modification are not new, but what is interesting is that a series of designers are looking to explore the ethics of this in a rash of projects coupled with advancements in DNA sequencing. Researchers have recently developed a technique that uses genetic analysis to create a computer composite of what the person looks like. In an article in the New Scientist,  the team captured images of 600 volunteers across ethnic backgrounds to build up a link between genes affects on facial structure based on sex and race. New Scientist had one of their writers volunteer their DNA with very accurate results. Commenting on issues surrounding privacy and ownership of DNA Artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo has created a DNA vending machine that dispenses human genetic material. The DNA Vending Machine replaces snacks with samples of peoples genetic code which can then be bought.

http://vimeo.com/72085813#at=0

Also driven by a social comment on a patent granted in 2013 that would allow a gene perfecting system for future parents to control the characteristics of their children, Ben Landau showed his First Gift Blanket during Dutch Design week last year.

A modern take on the heirloom blanket to be passed from generation to generation the blanket has interwoven into it familial DNA sequencing putting into question the value of our personal data. Alongside the blanket he also asked visitors to donate their DNA for sequence testing.

Pushing the boundaries of experience with smell and taste shows no sign of abating. The latest project to explore this subject is Molecule-R, who specialise in molecular gastronomy. Their product Aromafork is designed to elevate and enhance the eating experience via smell and taste combined. Based on the fact that most of what we taste is actually triggered by our sense of smell, the fork uses blotting paper that the user can infuse with a chosen scent to include bubble gum and wasabi. The fork adds the experience of taste through the added scent.

Citing it as a 'culinary revolution' the fork is ready to pre order now.

Continuing the theme around future synthetic cosmetics and beauty care, Lucy Mcrae has released her latest film in collaboration with Nowness exploring her swallowable parfum concept. Similarly to Amy Congdon the relationship between synthetic biology and cosmetics is a growing area of exploration for designers and scientist. As Lucy describes in her accompanying interview , “We are living in an era of no rules; technology is corrupting nature’s ballot, forcing us to redefine our bodies’ limitations and boundaries,” Lucy believes that in the not too distant future we will be eating our cosmetics to enhance our skin luminosity, colour and scent.