ddw14 – Interdependent Thoughts

While at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven I came across ‘Edible Growth‘: 3d printed edible pastries.

The interesting part it is that spores of mushrooms and seeds of small plants are printed within a little ‘basket’ of pastry, on the basis of your design. The spores and seeds sprout and grow over a period of five days, and then your little starter is finished. If you let it grow longer it will get richer in taste (more mature mushroom, bigger green plants), allowing for your personal preference. The pastry serves as food source and packaging for the seeds and spores.
What you end up with is an edible item that comes without waste products (no packaging, no left-over material etc.)

The project was conceived by Chloe Rutzerveld. She did it as her graduation project for a bachelor in industrial design at TUe, and in cooperation with TNO, a Dutch research firm. In the past she has worked on other food related projects. Reducing agricultural foodprint, waste streams, and food miles are part of the values she incorporates in her designs.

Three stages of growth after printing.

During the Dutch Design Week I came across Carolin Schulze’s “Bugs Bunny” (Falscher Hase in German), a project 3D printing foodstuffs using mealworms as material. She sought to work on both the general western aversion against eating insects, and the reduction of resource use to provide proteins. With a home built 3D printer she printed bunny (and grashopper) shaped snacks made of mealworms.

On 14 October she both won the public design award and the design award for most interesting experiment of the Burg Giebichenstein art academy in Halle, Germany where she is in her 2nd semester of an MA in industrial design.

Starting from ‘raising’ your own crop of mealworms, which you then shred into a past for your 3D printer, you can create various shapes that no longer generate the aversive reactions insect shapes normally create in western Europe.

Start with mealworm raising, end up with bunny shaped 3d printed snack