Tag Archives: vivienmuller

Electree

Ah, Vivien Muller! Is there anything you make that I won’t post? Above is Electree, his latest creation. It’s a purple Photonsynthese, and is being presented at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris on the occasion of the 1.618 sustainable luxury fair.

Limited to 1000 editions. Price €4950 (~ $6354).

I like it. I like the blue of Photonsynthese more though. Don’t like the price at all. More disturbingly, it’s just too derivative of his earlier work. It seems like the big change in this one is that it uses rare earth magnets instead of headphone jacks to mount the solar cells. Really, really don’t like that price.

Orkys

Vivien Muller (previously) has created a new “plant,” Orkys. This one uses flexible photovoltaics as leaves to light what appears to be LEDs in in the flowers.

I prefer his previous work, PhotonSynthese more though. Aesthetically, it’s more pleasing with the brushed metal stems and the blue leaves, instead of the all black stem and leaves. However, the more flexible materials in Orkys makes it easier to introduce nitnol wires in the leaves for sun tracking. Also, PhotonSynthese does something, while Orkys just sits there and looks pretty. There’s no reason why you can’t have something like this do both.

Photonsynthese

Vivien Muller designed this tabletop solar usb charger. Designed to resemble a bonsai tree, it comes with multiple interchangeable parts allowing one to groom the tree, so to speak.

I really like the finish on the metal trunk and how it contrasts with the blue photovoltaics. Solar trees, aren’t new idea, but rarely is it pulled off so stylishly. One thing that I think that would be pretty cool with one of these would be if the panels would move with relation to the light. If you were going to moving leaves, the movement really should be silent, perhaps with nitinol or something.