An Illustrated Weekly of World Design, 24 August 2010

Researchers at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, have developed a nano-fiber-filled tea bag that can effectively filter a liter of water for less than 1 US cent. The pre production tea bags use nano-fibers to suck contaminants and bacteria out of water, providing a desperately-needed, cheap solution for the billions of people without clean drinking water. The invention is from the university’s Water Institute and is part of the Hope Project, a science for society strategy aimed at tackling some of the world’s toughest challenges. Via Inhabitat. 

Today marks the next step of the first openIDEO challenge; How can we raise kids' awareness of the benefits of fresh food so they can make better choices? or better known as the Jamie Oliver challenge with the Inspiration phase over the next phase being Concepting. The first part of Concepting is to identify a series of hurdles as key to overcome in finding solutions to helping raise kids' awareness of the benefits of fresh food. So far it looks like a great design project. Today also marks the launch of IDEO’s new column; PATTERNS on Fast Company’s FastCoDesign site. The first article is IDEO's Axioms for Starting Disruptive New Businesses which discusses the use of prototypes as a tool for business in unproven markets. Apart from the fact that the idea was written about over a year ago and appeared in PATTERNS it is still valid and useful.

Continuing on a food related theme is 'Magdalena Gravity', from designer Burkhard Schäller, a mini mobile kitchen intended for various personal and professional applications in office and catering environments which remind us a bit of our own visual identity. If kitchens are your thing have a look at Bulthaup’s B2 kitchen workshop. Image: Burkhard Schäller.

Integrating sustainability into design education: The Toolkit is the result of last years The Designers Accord Global Summit on Sustainability & Education and records the insights gathered. Valerie Casey, founder of the Designers Accord states: "It's a strong statement about the future of design education. We hope the site will be a living library. Site users can add examples of their own discussions, exercises, and projects, as well as adding feedback, comments, and illustrations to enrich or improve other posted examples." See Core77’s report of the summit here. 

We like audio related design here at Terrestrial so we like this roundup from PSFK, Headphones: 10 Exceptional Designs, ranging from the Psyko Audio headset which has 7 speakers to Heartbeats from Lady Gaga. Image: PSFK.