Originally, my plan for my final project was to create a drink maker machine that would create mixed drinks at the push of the button. Unfortunately, because of delayed parts I realized that I was not going to be able to complete it on time. Instead, I transitioned my focus to creating a home hydroponics system.

Hydroponics is the process of growing food without soil. It is an old technology, but is recently being explored more. Hydroponic farming uses 0 soil, 10% the amount of water as traditional farming, and allows plants to grow up to 2x faster.

There are many DIY hydroponics systems that I was able to find. However, most of these were purely functional and not very aesthetically pleasing. Because hydroponics boasts being the ‘farming of the future’, I wanted to try to encapsulate a post-modernism high-tech aesthetic for this project. I originally thought that by using white PVC, it would give the system the aesthetic I desired; trying to mimic the clean white used by Apple. I’m over all pretty disappointed with this, and I am considering taking it down to spray paint it some metallic color to look more like stainless. Also, I ended up using plastic cups for the pots, and I definitely think this detracts from the aesthetic. Im trying to figure out a better (but still cheep) alternative to this. I also wanted to emphasis that hydroponics isn’t just a means to get food, it should be celebrated as art. Thats why instead of putting this in my back yard I wanted to put it right in my living room. I think the fact that it is so clean and that it’s so easy are the coolest aspects of hydroponics, and I feel like that would be wasted outside.

Im quite happy with the project overall, and love having it in my living room. The plants so far are doing okay; although, I’m already starting to notice some are going to probably die, and I’m guessing it has to do with the water’s pH not being compatible with the wide range of plants I seeded.