Project 1: Bioinspired

 

Rationale:

 

Fruitzle is designed to relive the olden times by using the traditional method of preserving fruits without relying the refrigerator. This is to encouraged users to learn and understand on how to store fruits properly and bringing back the connection between different levels of living things; as human beings and food ingredients. Fruitzle comes in pieces and the user is required to assemble the structure of the food storage just the way how termites would build storage chambers to store food. The horizontal surfaces with the divided parts of the storage allow fruits to be placed strategically. Fruitzle is made up of bamboo because the material is sustainable and cheaper than most of the hardwoods.

Fruitzle is inspired by the complicated structure of the termite hills. Termite hills are constantly built to assist thermoregulation, to control and create perfect temperature levels, moisture levels, oxygen and carbon dioxide intake so that the food that termites had brought in are in good condition and well-ventilated. Termites require lots of food and have many specialised chambers for food such as fungus, dried plants and wood. Termites store dried plants in the underground level that has low moisture levels and it is constantly exposed to cool air. The ceiling of the underground level has many rows of flat and thin plates facing down vertically which helps to trap moisture. Water vapour will be evaporated to cool down the temperature. Oxygen will flow in and carbon dioxide will flow out so that the mixture of air is fresh. This kind of process is suitable for cooling ripen fruits. Ripen fruits need lots of fresh air to stop the ripening process so that the ethylene produced by the fruits will be carried away by air. This is important because fruits do breath; it takes oxygen in and carbon dioxide, water vapour and heat out. The vertical arrangement of the flat plates can help to increase the surface area to trap more moisture and to minimise the contact with the fruits. The moisture collected will be cooled down by the flowing air that is coming in. This is because almost half of the fruits’ bodies are covered by the surfaces of bowls or trays which could increase the moisture release and could bruise the fruits after storing it for a long time. This way, respiration of fruits can be slowed down so that the fruits can last longer.  Ready-eat-fruits can be placed at this area as well.

Termites also cultivate fungal gardens in the nest for food. Termites eat fungus which would help them to extract nutrients from the dried plants’ cellulose they consume. The gardens generate lots of heat and moisture so that the crops are well grown. Termites would also huddle around to increase metabolic heat to keep the temperature ideal.  The moisture and heat would help the nutrient processing within the soil surrounding the nests. This will cause an increase in fertility due to higher nutrient status of the crops. Water loss is prevented by confining the pavement surrounding the nest to a small, curved area thus increasing its effectiveness. The curved design of Fruitzle promotes the idea to gather all unripened fruits so that they are close together to increase the production rate of ethylene, moisture and heat to speed up the ripening process. Besides that, fruits that has high production of ethylene such as apples, peaches and bananas can be placed with the unripened fruits to speed up their maturation rate. Fruits that are ripened can be placed at the other side to stop its ripening process.