By: Johnny Hartsfield  

 

Currently featured at the Museum of Modern Art Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit in New York City, SMIT’s (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology) new product called GROW.1, is designed to harness power from both sun and wind. Using emerging technology from the photovoltaic and piezo industries, this hybrid device is not only innovative but also aesthetically pleasing. Imagine the sides of your house fluttering in the wind like leaves on a tree - all the while providing your home with renewable energy. Wind power is generated by the fluttering of the solar leaves which can be attached to any building surface.

 

Teresita Cochran, CEO, and co-founder of SMIT, realized the GROW concept after collaborating with her brother Samuel Cochran, an Industrial Design student at Pratt, while she was getting her Masters in interactive technology from NYU from 2003-2005. Getting to the point where she is today was not easy and came with many challenges - the biggest of which was money. After a series of fundraisers and family donations, SMIT sent their prototype display to MoMA. When asked, in a recent interview by Ecolect, where she would like to see her product next year, Teresita replyed that “we would love GROW to be available for sale at some design-focused stores like the MoMA store and Design Within Reach, and we envision ourselves having done some client-based installs as well on a more architectural scale by then.

 

SMIT’s first residential product will be a solar-only version (GROW.2) of GROW. The modular ‘panel’ will be attached to a stainless steel mesh system designed to enable plant growth. Because of their modular design, “future iterations of GROW.2 will be able to include more efficient and less expensive PV modules once those products are both available and cost effective”. A standard grid-tie hardware will allow easy integration with existing electrical service providers.

The Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit at MoMA runs until May 12th, 2008.

 

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