This Week in Toronto- Design for the Other 90%

Design for the Other 90%
In it's last week
Until January 25, 2009
OCAD Professional Gallery

Originally curated by the Cooper Hewitt, it is thought provoking and fascinating.

From the website-
"Design for the Other 90% is show of design solutions addressing the basic needs of poor and marginalized populations. The exhibition explores a growing movement among designers to design low-cost solutions for the “other 90%” — that is, the 5.8 billion people (out of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion people) who have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted (...) for example, nearly half of the other 90% do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter."

You can also have a guided tour Thursday, January 22, 6:30 p.m. (I always think guided tours are fun) or buy the book. Below are a few designs I found rather ingenious.

Solar Dish Kitchen was designed for two informal poor urban settlements (squatter communities) in Mexico.

Built from bicycle parts, and small vanity mirrors create the parabolic mirror surface which concentrates the energy of the sun on a pot or stove in the kitchen.

Sugarcane charcoal was developed as an alternative to wood charcoal developed in Haiti.
In Haiti, the production of wood charcoal, the primary source of cooking fuel, contributes to severe deforestation and environmental degradation. More than 90% of Haiti is now deforested.

About half of the world’s poor suffer from waterborne diseases, and more than 6,000 people, mainly children, die each day by consuming unsafe drinking water. LifeStraw, a personal mobile water-purification tool is designed to turn any surface water into drinking water. It has proven to be effective against waterborne diseases such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery and diarrhea.