Progress in Paris!

Ellie and I were at Le Laboratoire until after midnight last night and we got a lot done! We began to lay out our business plan and we got a substantial amount of work done on our first provisional patent for vertical gardening technology! In addition, we filed as an LLC which means that we'll be an official company very soon! We're incredibly excited about the progress that we're making.

Yesterday, Ellie and I were able to see on of Patrick Blanc's Vertical Gardens. It was really amazing and incredibly inspiring. Check out his work here: http://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com/

More updates later!

VertiGrow in Paris!

Ellie and I are currently in Paris with the Summer 2009 Idea Translation Lab workshop at Le Laboratoire (www.lelaboratoire.org). We just gave our presentation on VertiGrow to a group of fellow students, graphic designers, and product designers. This afternoon we're meeting with the graphic designers to to figure out our visual materials for the November 8th Idea Translation Lab launch at Harvard!

Also be sure to check out our new website: www.vertigrow.org !

The Evolution of VertiGrow

...a video montage to catch you up on our work this week!

~enjoy~

Food shortages in Kenya

I saw this article in the Daily Nation today, and thought it was pretty relevant to our work. It's discussing food security in the nation as a whole (especially the big agricultural regions), but the rising costs of food pertain to everyone, including people in Kibera.

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/637224/-/ulmj6i/-/

Go team.

We organized a meeting with a group of community women yesterday, and the discussion flowed so well it was almost too easy. We introduced the project, they talked about it for a while, and then divided themselves into two teams and wanted to know when they could start.

I was not expecting that at all. We were prepared to survey a population of people, ask them some baseline questions, and start to formulate an idea of how this could get off the ground. But then, here it was, already being launched and it didn't take that much time or energy. The energy is already there, I guess we just tapped into it in the right way.

So now we have two teams of women, both of which have experience running community gardens, and they have asked to take control of and test our pilot prototypes. I'm getting all the materials together this weekend, and we will start setting them up on Monday!

VertiGrow Prototype on it's way to Nairobi (we hope!).

Here are some pictures Ellie sent us of our prototype. We have affectionately named her "VertiGrow" (go figure). At the moment, VertiGrow is stuck somewhere between London and Nairobi and Ellie tells me that the people at Virgin America airlines keep passing her off to other people! It's these sort of issues that you can never, ever predict. Regardless, we have photographic proof that VertiGrow does exist - now "she" just needs to get to Nairobi so that Ellie can introduce her to the community!

Deconstructed VertiGrow. Here you see the pipes cut lengthwise. These will be the troughs that will hold the soil and the plants.

Trough layers 1 and 2. We are looking at stacking the layers like a ladder to maximize the utility of the vertical space for growing plants.

Here you see how Ellie has constructed VertiGrow to stand at a 90 degree angle. This serves several purposes; first of all, VertiGrow can stand on it's own without falling over (as you see illustrated above), secondly, the angle allows VertiGrow to be placed around the corner of a house - using minimal space and not leaning on the housing structure for support - genius!

We've got our fingers crossed that VertiGrow will be making its appearance in Nairobi soon! The clinic and Ellie are waiting!

-Windsor