2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Consumer Product Design Category Winner

Green Screen

Tim Larsen, TL-Engineering
Virum, Denmark

Solving both the problem of traffic noise and flooding in the event of cloudbursts, a combined noise and climate screen — the Green Screen — is developed in natural materials such as willow, larch, and robinie, which create attractive urban spaces.

The core of the Green Screen consists of noise-absorbing mineral wool, which also serves as a vertical surface for evaporating rain coming from the roofs of the adjacent buildings.

Green Screen is sized to handle a 10-year rain event, and therefore, has a capacity equivalent to the public sewer. In the event of extreme rainfall exceeding its capacity, the excess water is directed to a green garden area, which with the help of an encircling rampart, can withstand up to 100 years of rain events.

After gravity has pushed rainwater to the top of the screen, it runs along an open perforated gutter, so that the entire screen receives part of the water. From the gutter, water seeps into the mineral wool inside the screen. In Green Screen, therefore, the mineral wool acts as a sponge, receiving water from the roof and then gradually releasing it into the air. If the mineral wool becoming fully water-saturated with prolonged or heavy rains, the excess drips out into the bottom of the mineral wool, where it is collected in a planting pit. Here it benefits the plants.

Green Screen appears as a wooden screen and not a metal screen or a heavy wall. To emphasize the furniture function, the screen is equipped with some benches. The willow trunks are straight, powerful, and not cut up into slats, and this is essential to achieve the desired service life, which is estimated to be at least 30 years. Steel is still included, but to a discreet extent as the load-bearing structural parts.

Green Screen has created a small and quiet green living space close to one of Denmark’s busiest roads. Facades made of willow wood have meant that the screens today have a 60-67 percent lower carbon footprint compared to a conventional noise barrier made of steel cassettes.

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Honorable Mentions

Human Friendly Mug

Amin Hasani, CURVD®, Brooklyn, NY

The CURVD^® Ergonomic mug adds a new level of comfort to your morning coffee. The patent-pending handle transfers the weight of the drink to the muscles and not to the joints. This way the mug requires minimum effort to pick up and allows for a more enjoyable experience for all users while still being accessible to the elderly and those with disabilities, creating a friendlier, more inclusive environment for everyone.

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Passive Porous Tube Nutrient Delivery System

Jacob Torres and Tom Dreschel, Kennedy Space Center, FL

The system is a plant growth technique developed for space applications that delivers a nutrient solution to the roots of plants via capillary action. It utilizes a ceramic porous tube and water/nutrients bags connected in a loop. No electricity or moving parts are required. The system provides an autonomous plant growth apparatus that is simple to assemble, plant, and harvest, minimizing the amount of intervention needed in microgravity.

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Air-Clenz^TM Enabled Monitors and Laptops Clean Ex- haled Air of COVID and other Airborne Respiratory Pathogens

Ronald Blum, Anita Broach, Stuart Sheldon, Russell French, and Jack Loeb, CSI: Create. Solve. Innovate., Christiansburg, VA

An exhaled air capture and purification system, Air-Clenz^™ can quickly capture and clean exhaled air within 1 inch to 3 feet of one’s face. It can be attached to desktop computer monitors or laptops. In five seconds or less, it captures exhaled air close to the user’s face, before it disperses in the room environment, which is then cleaned by the air purification chamber and released back into the room, free of all airborne pathogens.

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BlisCare

Chinmaya Naik, BlisCare, Nagpur, India

This EdTech innovation aims to provide affordable digital education solutions for visually impaired students. A Digital Braille Display System (Braille Tablet) can replicate at real time into digital braille that replicates any text, graphical diagram to standard Braille, at affordable cost. It also reduces the cost burden of current education model while providing access to unlimited content currently not accessible to the visually impaired community.

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See the rest of this year's winners: