Design & Architecture

This nifty counter top vase is the prettier, visual version of the electricity meters Swedes are starting to lend out at the library. Designed by the Danish Designnord group, the FlowerPod is a semi-transparent screen with an electronic flower display that grows, blooms or wilts according to how smartly the inhabitants of a house or apartment are using heating, cooling, water and electricity.

The FlowerPod, which is just now only a concept that Designnord hopes to produce for the 2009 post-Kyoto climate agreement talks to be held in Copenhagen next year, would be wirelessly connected to a home's meters as well as an individual Internet-based home page that keeps track of average energy use in the city or region where the devise is "planted". The home page would continually suggest ways to improve energy usage if your flower was wilted, or dying. Designnord said it planned to use a color EPD (electronic paper display) for displaying the FlowerPod's bloom, which would, it said, only use electricity at certain intervals when getting data from the home page or updating its visual appearance. Here's hoping they give us a choice of flowers! Via ::The Copenhagen Post (English)