www.ro-ad.org

Who are you ?
RO&AD Architecten is an architectural firm established officially in 2006 , but informally we, Ro Koster and Ad Kil, started to work together in 2002. With the start of the office, we discussed thoroughly the goals of what we wanted to achieve with our office. What came out of this discussions was twofold. First is that we want to make a better, cleaner, more fertile world. Secondly, which is as important, we want to make the world more fun as well, and having a lot of fun ourselves in the process. At that moment we just started to do so on horse sense. But in the years after that we spent a lot of time and energy in gathering contacts and knowledge in sustainability. We came across the concepts and did courses in Cradle to Cradle and Biomimicry and we tried to incorporate this in our thinking and in our projects. At present time we have a lot of experience and are good at making up architectural and spatial concepts and realizing them.

what is your vision ?
One of our strongest points is coming up with ideas. We are true idea makers. Concepts always come before design. Plans are stronger when design is firmly based on a good concept. Concepts can steer design in all stages, from development to execution. This results in plans that speak the same language on all levels, making them clear and transparent as well as well thought-out and layered. We seek out the essences and issues of an assignment and let them fertilize each other. And in the meantime we try to make our positive footprint as big as possible.

What IS YOUR BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT?
We have made some nice designs through the years, such as the Moses Bridge, and an office out of cardboard, but what we are really proud of, is that we broaden our horizon with every new commission or project. The best has still yet to come....

WHAT CHALLENGES DOES THE designworld FACE? 
The biggest challenge is that we need to be really become home again on the earth. It is all we have! So we have a challenge to make products that contribute to the richness, diversity and wellness of the earth.

what WILL you do if you WIN the green design competition? 
We will be happy, and we will be probably just keep doing what we are doing. It will be an incentive though to keep us on this path.

www.atuppertu.com

WHO ARE YOU ? I started my profession in 2009 under the firm ‘Studio Atuppertu’, with an ambitious work plan: dealing with the impact of design on the environment, mainly focusing on topics such as energy consumption and recyclability of resources. Nowadays my work covers topics that space from the study of human behaviours until the understanding of their implications on energy consumption and environmental pollution, the results of this philosophy being objects that often aim to provoke sparks for changes in people’s cultural habits. In my working methods the key element is the use of design to experience ourselves and consequently start a process of self-awareness. The strategy is to create the conditions to fortify the positive values of our own behaviours by facing at the same time their limits. This is what the word “Atuppertu” finally expresses: the necessity to face our limits as a first spark for a global massive change.

WHAT IS YOUR VISION ?
Nowadays we are living in an era where the industrial production of any type of product has the absolute priority. No matters about the changes that our world is currently facing in terms of global warming and air, soil, water pollution. Most of the industries brought social groups to believe that their desires of consumption can be always satisfy in short periods: as an example, we get access to every type of fruit and vegetable during every season of the year. The same applies to energy consumption. I believe the rule of Design can be massive within this scenario, especially in relation to a new approach to critical consumption. As designers, we have the unique opportunity to launch Values into the market, to suggest consumers to buy certain things instead of others, but we especially have a big educative challenge: to stimulate people to be aware of their own actions.

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT?
Once, a few months ago, I felt very enthusiastic after a chat with a woman that bought one of my designs, a product based on the concept of light recyclability. She explained me that it was the first time that a product talked to her without explicitly telling her how to behave. I felt in that sentence she explain to me how I should work and what a designer could do being aware of this. A Designer can push people to think without manipulate, therefore a Designer can stimulate thoughts of conscious freedom.

WHAT CHALLENGES DOES THE DESIGNWORLD FACE?
As mentioned before I strongly believe that our profession needs to involve in its foundations topics much more environment-related. I would say that I am not even thinking about ways of designing the greenest, less polluting product. I believe we are living in a historical period of “transaction” between the era of decadent design and the next future where the universe of production (of food, energy, products) will be completely different. In this present time a Designer should introduce the upcoming scenario through meaningful concepts that people need to start exploring and especially experiencing. To give an example, renewable energies nowadays make sense more than ever, but at the same time people have to figure out what to do to consume less and above all they need to feel happy in doing so. This is the big real challenge, and our profession must necessarily interact with it.

WHAT WILL YOU DO IF YOU WIN THE GREEN DESIGN COMPETITION?
I will start the development of my design concept. I will divide the project in areas of intervention and involve specific professionals to assist me in their development. Being my concept not only based on the launch of some products, but also based on the use of products in order to launch a new criteria for critical consumption, I will also dedicate part of my research on testing the designs on the market and documenting people reactions. This is for me one the most important outcome: get to understand and document how a label can raise the level of awareness toward the environmental effect of a purchase action.

Who are you ?
My name is Minjoo Kwon, designer based in South KOREA. Since 2008, when I was an University student, I have been working and getting ideas from the question what is me or the events that I have experienced. Especially and thankfully, I have lived in the nature unlike the children living in the city, because my parents operated floral store and floral farm. So, while spending my time in flowers and trees, I have experienced how plants are raised and what is necessary for them (plants) naturally. Over time, when I become a designer, my childhood experience gave me an answer to the question that “what should I design for?” Thus, my works are mostly related to the environment and I named it “Microorganism Design” which means the design contributing to society and the world starting from the small place of society and bringing practical changes.

what is your vision ?
Since the birth of notion of Design, numerous paradigms have changed the world with broaden influence in various fields. Those have changed industries, the way of thinking, lifestyle, and now, those made the culture of present generation. In the future I want to be a designer who can suggest the new paradigm with my design works. And I hope that it could affect to start positive changes in the world.

What IS YOUR BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT?
The biggest achievement for me is Plan’s Earth. It was my ‘First’ as a design work, product exhibited in overseas and sold in shops. Also, It becomes the base of my design topic “Microorganism Design.” Plan’s Earth is the flowerpot made by earth. People raise plants in the flowerpot made by plastic or ceramic so as to raise them indoor. If plants are raised after times go by, the root of plant is damaged or weakened during the process to change the flowerpot to the bigger one. In here, I think that the purpose of this design is to make a flowerpot like the Earth to the plant, just like that trees are planted firstly on the earth and this earth is like the big flowerpot of the plant.

WHAT CHALLENGES DOES THE designworld FACE? 
In design, the area saying benefits or convenience brought to ‘Human’ is already far enough. And as a result of Industrial development overly weighted toward Human, not only design but also other fields are facing the complex problem such as serious environmental contamination and depletion of resources. Therefore, from our generation, it is the time to deeply consider for whom I design or for what I design. At the same time, as the Topic of Green Design Competition mentioned, present designers should make an effort to design a virtuous circle of the Environment, Industry and Human.

what WILL you do if you WIN the green design competition?
Firstly, it would be really glad. Because winning The Green Design Competition means that my design topic could be one of the solutions to solve the problem between sustaining biodiversity and Industry. Though I suggested only one product through the competition, I would like to design and suggest various ways and products for people to make sustaining biodiversity a part of their daily routine.

www.bubentraum.com

WHO ARE YOU ?
Sergio Studer and Sandro Lopez met in Milan in 2009 while studying a Master's course in Design. At this time Sandro had just left his in-house design job in a North italian furniture company and Sergio ran a design collective studio in Zurich. Having engaged in diverse working experiences and professional formations not common to typical design graduates from photography to illustration, sculpture, business and carpentry adding up to a shared love of minimal techno music created the early grounds for them to start working on a shared taste and conception of practice. After graduating, parallel to their personal work, they kept meeting at monthly intervals discussing life, design and work in a series of random meetings that coinciding with the reading of Carson's Silent Spring gave birth to an initiative called the hub, a brand concept for a business that has the promotion of biodiversity as its main objective.

WHAT IS YOUR VISION ?
We believe that a major task of the new century is to redefine our future priorities. As the 21st century opens with the promise of bigger, bolder and denser cities the environmental quality of urban life becomes a key argument. Our working platform is the city and we like to envision the city of tomorrow not as a congestion highway but as a massive outdoor performance center that could be inhabited and openly shared by all, a space where you enjoy spending your time in, escapism is not the solution. In the hub we are mostly concerned with the social aspect of design, we don't believe in products or services as stand alone solutions, we believe in systems and interactions that are capable of growing in an organic fashion

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT?
The ability to merge a stream of diverse and sometimes opposing ideas and working methods in one structure that balances itself through self-correction.

WHAT CHALLENGES DOES THE DESIGNWORLD FACE?
We think that sustaining biodiversity requires not solely a redesign of products or services but a reconsideration of design thinking as a system of thought. We need to approach design and production processes as systems, a view that can not be restricted to materials, technology or resources but also networks, cultures, distribution, economy and all fields of human interaction. One of the most significant challenges the design world is facing today is the risk of growing increasingly self-sustaining, closing itself up in a sterile vacuum becoming "Design for design enthusiasts" and as a consequence losing contact with other terrains of actuality which are invaluable sources of input for the generation of varied and fresh content. Taking the concept of biodiversity as a model, we understand that the health of a system is in direct relation to the amount of variation of its contents.

WHAT WILL YOU DO IF YOU WIN THE GREEN DESIGN COMPETITION?
Winning the green design competition will provide us priceless resources and publicity for the launch of the hub project. Our hope is to be able to create a better standard of living quality inside cities though our project and engage with a wide range of city dwellers and local organizations.

www.earnestly.org

WHO ARE YOU ?
My name is Rachel Griffin and I am the proprietor of Earnest Studio: a multi-disciplinary design practice based in Rotterdam. Earnest's work is characterised by in-depth research into traditional and industrial production methods while looking for innovative ways to address sustainability. We try to look not only at the numbers, but also at our behaviour towards products; not only the material and method of production, but how we buy, use, repair and discard. The studio works on a combination of self-initiated projects and industry collaborations.

WHAT IS YOUR VISION ?
Whether through production method, material choice or the way that a product is assembled and distributed, Earnest is concerned with the tension between durability (to prevent premature disposal) and degradation (to embrace inevitable disposal). This will yield products that are built for change, and thus, make room for evolution and diversity in our system of objects. Such diversity stimulates intelligent and informed consumption. Informed consumption in turn creates healthier individuals, communities, economies and environments. My ideal world is a place where we don't feel guilty about making something new, because we've made it in a good, responsible way.

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT?
It's difficult to choose any one achievement; I'm pleased with how things have gone so far, and will try to do something better tomorrow.

WHAT CHALLENGES DOES THE DESIGNWORLD FACE?
I believe that acknowledging the problem is an obstacle; many designers still avoid the issue. The last decades have shown that the call for new products is not going to abate, and acknowledging this will push us to make wiser choices for these products.

WHAT WILL YOU DO IF YOU WIN THE GREEN DESIGN COMPETITION?
Our first priority is getting the project "Timber" into production; it is an idea that I've thought long and hard about, very much believe in and would love to see come to fruition. Beyond that, winning can offer the recognition and resources that will allow me to continue with other long-incubated ideas.