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ELIOOO.
How To Go To IKEA And Build An Hydroponic Device To Grow Food In Your Apartment.

2014

By following the instructions in this book, you will become the manufacturer of an idea. This book is an instruction manual for a product that only exists if you build it. Here are the instructions. I have designed this device to produce your food, using some inexpensive IKEA boxes and the directions in this book.

This system uses hydroponics, a farming technique that can grow plants in water instead of soil. Hydroponics allows you to save up to 90% of the water used in traditional agriculture systems, requires much less space, and provides you with complete control of the nutrients needed by the plants at each stage of their growth. Another great thing about hydroponics is that you don’t have to worry about watering the plants.
The system I have designed combines different hydroponics techniques. These are adapted to make them easy to use at home, which means that you become a farmer, perhaps an urban farmer. However, this book is not a book on urban farming, nor is it a general book about hydroponics. This book is a manual that will show you how to build and run a simple hydroponic system with some inexpensive IKEA boxes.

I believe that the ultimate object of design is knowledge. As a designer, I visualize quantities and dimensions, organize briefs, I explain procedures. Sometimes this has more to do with storytelling than with technical drawings. These stories and their illustrations are traditionally given to artisans who turn them into tangible things. But as a designer, I like to design things that anyone can make. Today design can turn the world’s population into the most prominent creative industry ever known. Rather than mindlessly producing new stuff, distributing it, and reinventing new production and distribution chains, we should find new ways of assembling what we already have. For this reason, ELIOOO is using items from IKEA.

But the goal of design is also to inspire. ELIOOO is designed so that you can play around with the different setups I suggest in the book, with or without the use of IKEA components. Tinker with the configurations, tweak the system, play with the design, build something. Be inventive. Grow your food. The book is available as a paperback copy and as an ebook for Kindle on Amazon and on iTunes.

Collaborators: Stefano Massa, images and video editing, crowdfunding campaign assistance and much beyond.


Exhibitions:

- 2022 Edible; Or the Architecture of Metabolism, Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB).

- 2022 Designing Urban Imaginaries, Bi-City Biennal of Urbanim / Architecture Shenzhen, China. 

- 2022 PLANT FEVER, Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.

- 2021 VIENNA BIENNALE FOR CHANGE 2021: PLANET LOVE. Climate Care in the Digital Age, Architekturzentrum, Vienna.

- 2020 PLANT FEVER, CID, Center for Design and Innovation Grand-Hornu, Belgium.

- 2015 Art Container 2015, Steffisburg, Switzerland.

- 2013 DEGNI DI NOTA. Design Week, Berlin, Germany.

2012 FOSTER CARE, Fuori Salone 2013, Milan, Italy.


Awards:

- 2012 KATERVA SUSTAINABILITY AWARD, finalist.


Publications:

- 2018 A. Scarponi, ELIOOO, in AA.VV. Storie. Il Design Italiano. Catalogue of the Exhibition, Electa, Milano, p.505.

- 2016 A. Scarponi, ELIOOO, German, French and Russian Edition, 3rdO, Zurich.

- 2015 A. Scarponi, Profiled Designer, in Axis, Japan, issue July 2015, p. 110.

- 2014 A. Scarponi, ELIOOO, Japanese Edition. Edited by Kione Kochi, 3rdO, Zurich, 2014.

- 2013 A. Scarponi, ELIOOO. How to go to IKEA and Build a Device to Grow Food in your Apartment, 3rdO, Zurich, 2013.

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