Students innovate to build biobased baby buggy for Bugaboo
In Finland, a large team of students at Aalto University has created a baby carriage for Dutch baby products company Bugaboo that includes unique biobased materials. The pram’s canopy was made from waste orange peel. Serranur Zileli developed the light brown, citrus-scented material, giving discarded orange peel a new use as a functional component of the design.
A biolace blanket made from hemp and lignin was designed by Julia Särkkä, while chemical engineering student Nikolai Kurochkin developed a composite material made from sawdust and methyl cellulose for the carriage’s back panel.
Alois Auer and Renata Khayrutdinova developed a brown, plant-based leather seat cover, treating the material with tar to maximize its water repellency. Nooa Laisalmi’s starch-based foam was combined with recycled fiber-foam stuffing developed by Elisabeth Baidoo from discarded egg cartons that otherwise would have gone to waste.
The pushchair’s product labels are also cellulose-based, developed by Alessandra Fini, Bianca-Elena Galan and Cathrin Simbikangwa.
“We need to imagine and experiment with what our future material world could look like, whether that means creating canopies from peels or foams from egg cartons,” Aalto University design professor Anna-Marie van der Lei told design publication Dezeen.
The carriage is a concept model and not for sale, but its design proved a valuable experience. “Students had opportunities to meet with Bugaboo’s design lead and engineer and discuss their experiments,” said Van der Lei. “Bugaboo gave us a lot of freedom, and the final stroller was developed by students who chose to continue working on the project themselves.”
Category: Chemicals & Materials
