The ongoing battle to persuade individuals to use less water and to look after the environment in which they live is a seemingly uphill one but fortunately there are some innovative, and often a little bit imblanaced, designers out there that take the fight to them. Yan Lu is one such designer (innovative, that is, not necessarily mentally imbalanced) and his latest innovation is the Poor Little Fishbowl Sink which persuades people to think about how much water they’re using by basically threatening to drown a goldfish in air.
A goldfish bowl is located on the top of the sink with a real life goldfish in. As the user pours water out of the tap, the goldfish bowl empties convincing the tap user to turn off the water and save the goldfish. The not so subtle device doesn’t actually empty so goldfish hating sadists won’t actually be able to kill the fish off although presumably by turning the tap on and off quickly and repeatedly they would be able to whip up something of a goldfish bowl storm.
Also, the water in the tap isn’t actually connected to the goldfish bowl so you won’t be drinking stringy fish poo either (although, presumably, this would also save water because who would want to use that?)
Lu himself describes the sink as an “emotional way to persuade consumers to think about saving water, by making consumption tangible.”
This is far from the first off the wall design that Lu has completed either. His tree trunk ring toilet paper design was meant as a subtle way to persuade the subconscious that they need to use less toilet roll and he designed a furniture design system that enabled consumers to turn cardboard packaging into unique furniture complete with its own design decals.
Would you save the fish?
Source:- TreeHugger
