2025
product design
peacefully detached coffee solution
A display designed to explore a more attentive relationship between human, nature, and emerging technology. It frames interaction not as convenience, but as awareness — measured, visible, and deliberate.
A year ago, an affiliated coffee company commissioned us to develop a roaster capable of challenging existing industry norms. Through extended travel and research, we shifted the proposal toward a device that integrates roasting, grinding, and pour-over brewing within a single transparent structure.
This compression of process references the origins of coffee culture in Ethiopia more than a thousand years ago. Traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremonies — still practiced today and honored in annual festivals — require time, care, and social presence, often taking hours to prepare a single cup. Our approach does not replicate this ritual; it reinterprets it, translating its sequence, attention, and material transformation into a contemporary, technological form. The device becomes a stage where process is not hidden but performed.
As a sculpture, the work foregrounds what is typically overlooked. Daily consumption often detaches coffee from its cultural and agricultural origins, and the farmers who produce the raw material remain structurally under-recognized within the global supply chain. By compressing the entire process into a single visible system, the project becomes a metaphor for both connection and omission — making the process visible while questioning how value is distributed within it.
As an interactive system, it invites both analog and digital engagement. Users may operate the device manually or through automated sequences, but in either mode, participation is required. An AI-assisted interface, currently in development, is intended to support first-time users while preserving the integrity of the process.
( credits )
Design — Gary Chen, Lidiia Velbovets
Engineering — Harsh Kuma
AI support — Amber Dian Chen, PhD, PolyU HK
Electronics & automation — Hanieh Fakhr, Minh Man Nguyen
Artistic advisor — Hank Bull