The Nature of Transformation

Lessons from a Potato

2021

Humans are constantly striving for perfection, and dream of immortality. Nature is able to achieve this aspiration in an exemplary way. Often ignoring the cycles of nature, humans declare  materials as waste/dead before their time is actually over. When we look at  the potato we are offered a metaphor of this type of process. The potato grows, get harvested, is cleaned to perfection, loosing its natural protection, it gets green and produces Solanin, a toxic green substance that invades the skin of the potato making it inedible. Tonnes of potatoes are thrown as garbage around the world every year. The aim of this project is to show that everything we need already exists in nature, and that it is simply about transforming a raw material that we can explore its many uses. The potato was chosen as raw material by considering several aspects like global availability, efficiency in production, waste management and natural composition.

The design of the future should respect the raw material by mirroring its behaviour. The potato is a natural pot, unlike other major field crops, they are reproduced vegetatively, from other potatoes. Apparently one of the most primitive fruits in nature, the potato, will be treated through an unsophisticated processes of micronizing, fermenting, molding, heating and drying to transform it to new sophisticated material.  From this process we create a material that dries and solidifies in the sun into a pot where domesticated plants are planted. In there, new life will grow and feed off of its container. Through a gentle process, and by recognizing nature as perfectly engineered, a single product of nature is transformed into a favorable product for nature.