Sph?ra
Useful information
- Team members
- Aymeric Delécaut
- Country
- Denmark
- Keywords
- Technology : Circular : Local : Opensource : User-centric : Earthwide : Modular : Co-creation
Short Description
Sph?ra is the home for designers who want to create better products for the user and the planet.
Detailed Description
The project involves taking existing electronics from broken headphones and placing them in a new case that is better suited to the user and the planet.
Through an online platform, the user can customize their new headphones by choosing the material, color, pattern and size.
Once done, it will generate a fictional creature called Metavore, which will enhance the relationship between humans and objects. It will also allow for better tracking of materials and the production process.
The custom object will be produced locally from a nearby fab lab using 3D printing for complex parts and local resources like sponges for the rest.
This project is open-source to encourage international co-creation and is distributed via an open access website.
The extreme modularity makes the object easily repairable and exchangeable.
We believe that by making design more accessible, people will be more aware of what they are using and therefore choose better products when buying or creating new ones.
Project Details
- Does your design take social and cultural challenges and human wellbeing into consideration?
With Sph?ra, we try to get people to interact with their environment, helping them better understand the world and take part in its creation.
Metavore's approach associates the object with a character, encouraging people to take better care of it and repair it rather than throw it away.
- Does your design support sustainable production, embodying circular or regenerative design practices?
The fact that the product is materialized in a more local setting through 3D printing makes distribution less restrictive in terms of transportation by using the digital network to teleport the concepts.
Printed materials are encouraged to be from recycled and plant-based resources. Sph?ra's entire system allows the user to recycle broken or out-of-use parts of the headphones to recreate new components later. The object thus remains the same but is pushed to a progressive upgrade and maintenance of forms.
- Does your design use principles of distribution and open source?
The project was created in a school context, there was no compensation. So it made sense that Sph?ra was opensource.
How? By making the website available for free, the user can experiment with the object and participate (to some extent) in the evolution of its design. This also allows an opening towards a mass customization directed by the users themselves.
As it is a digital design, the files are in ".obj" or ".stl" format before being printed, it is very easy to access them worldwide via the internet.
- Does your design promote awareness of responsible design and consumption?
With Sph?ra, you can reshape the world you live in. The headphones were taken as an example because they contain only a few electronic parts, making them easier to experiment with. Allowing the user to learn more about what they use on a daily basis and thus creating a more conscious consumer mentality.
The fact that the object also exists in the form of a fictional creature "the Metavore", the user can refer to it as a pet and take more into consideration its repair and maintenance.Another important aspect is that the product itself is under the control of the Sph?ra crew. Each new update of the object is reviewed by experts and designers and validated before being made available on the website to avoid unnecessary production.
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