Innovation > Innovation
GROVE ECOSYSTEM
R/GA, New York / GROVE LABS / 2015
Awards:
Overview
Credits
Overview
ClientBriefOrObjective
The Northeast United States is currently experiencing a boom in tech development. As big ideas and talent flow into and out of some of the world’s top universities a green-tech revolution is underway. Grove Labs, born in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology dorm room by Co-Founders Gabe Blanchet and Jamie Byron is one of the startups leading the charge in environmentally and socially conscious technology development. Millions of people in the Northeast United States and around the world are pursuing an interest in gardening and personal growing. Long winters and a short, volatile growing season are primary motivators in this cultural shift towards indoor controlled environment growing. Grove Labs is positioning itself at the core of this movement by lowering the barrier to successful indoor growing and building a beautiful, functional, and easy-to-use appliance for personal food production. Grove Labs has been influenced by the techniques of previous pioneers in indoor, controlled environment agriculture. This includes practices such a soilless growing, flood/drain, and constant flow system design paired with high efficiency LED lighting in a web-connected product. Grove Labs is a diverse team of engineers and designers, utilizing a wide array of tools and techniques. Rapid iteration on the product is achieved through 3D vacuum thermoforming. These are just some of the techniques that allow the engineers and designers at Grove Labs to create a unique product with very specific fabrication tolerances and demands.
Implementation
Grove Labs is solving the problem of an increasingly at-risk global food system. The global food production system has become centralized and industrialized in the pursuit of higher efficiency and profit margins, but to the detriment of healthy food and a resilient long term food production system. Grove Labs is trying to reverse this trend by putting the power to grow back in the hands of the general population. By empowering people to grow their own food, Grove Labs will help spur a cultural shift in people’s connection with their food. Already, the demand for healthy, sustainable, and naturally grown food is at an all-time high and we expect that demand to only grow larger. By developing the Grove Ecosystem, Grove Labs is helping to meet, and create more of, that demand. The Grove core technology is based on the thousands of years old practice of aquaponics. Grove Labs has brought this practice into the modern era by packaging it inside of a web-connected, sensing device. The theory of aquaponics is to harness the power of a living ecosystem to grow plants naturally. The system works like this: fish live in an aquarium in the system, the user feeds the fish who eat the food and produce fish waste. The fish waste is then converted into an optimal plant food by nitrifying bacteria that are a crucial part of the ecosystem that resides inside the system. Finally, the plumbing in the system carries this nitrogen rich water throughout the system to the waiting plants. The next steps for Grove Labs are to continue development and product iteration while expanding to more and more consumers.
Outcome
The long-term goal at Grove Labs is to continue product development and expand to more places where people want (or will want) to grow their own food inside of their homes and living spaces. The Grove Ecosystem will enable easy, fun and attractive indoor gardening for millions of people. Grove Labs is positioned to set the standard for user experience and user success in personal growing. The Boston-only Early Adopter program is currently underway with Ecosystems actively growing in homes throughout the Boston area.
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