In 2013, the Gate Foundation put out a grand challenge to revolutionize condoms. When the foundation put out the grant, there were about 1,700 applicants. Everyone’s interested in new condom solutions because there’s obviously a need. Many of the projects focus on how we put on condoms, reducing psychological barriers to usage, innovative new materials, or lubricants and gels to make them more pleasurable. Among 52 projects that got the first round funding. One of the one that go the most press attention by far is the a material invented by Robert Gorkin -grapheme inspired hydrogel substance that is strong and can mimic real skin. The biodegradability of this material is not mentioned in the interview I found but they used the same way I made my condom by dipping a mould into the solution. The material is much stronger than mine but as they mentioned in interview, the biggest downside is that this class of hydrogels has only been around for the last ten years or so. When you’re talking about attempting to disrupt a whole industry based on latex, the limitation is that they’re not known, there’s not the supply chain there to make them as cost effective as they could be down the line. But my algae-based condom are made with cheap and easily accessible ingredients so that could be a huge advantage in terms of establishing supply chain and manufacturing process.

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https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/9bg9e5/meet-the-guy-trying-to-revolutionize-condoms-139

I started to brainstorm some ideas for my condom packaging. I started with taking apart two of the condom boxes I bought and traced the outline of the boxes.

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Then I read a variety of information sheet that comes within the box.

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Box from Durex can be unfold and the instruction and information are printed inside the box. It did solve the problem of printing all the information on a separate sheet but after unfolding the box, the user lose the place to safely store and organize the condom. The box act as a second layer of protection other than the wrapper to protect the condom from heat and light, by destroying that protection in order to see the instruction seems very counter productive. The ones from Boots and Skins and Hanx are just a sheet with very tiny letters and not much useful information. One has the best info sheet in my opinion. It is fun to read with very clear illustration about how to use condoms and the information are divided/compartmentalized by the individual page. After reading the info sheet, I realized that this one piece of paper is a really important sex education tool. Therefore, I wanted to redesign the info sheet so it will give useful information about how to correct using condoms in a clear and fun way.

It will format like a simple zine and I want to maybe collaborate with a cartoonist or illustrator to print sex education comics at the back of the info sheet.

I also noticed that the condom package/product design was under the assumption that male will be the one that buys condoms. For example, the creative condom packaging using vegetable size to indicate the size of the condom. If single women who potentially could have multiple sex partners go to the shop, how is she suppose to get the right condom size for someone whose size she can’t even anticipate, let along choose a size by feeling the diameter of the cylindrical condom package.

Hanx is a brand that claims they deign condoms for women. I think it is true the discrete packaging is definitely very feminine, elegant and chic. But it is still latex condom in terms of material. But this is the first product I found that target women as the condom buyer.

Also, most condom brands have mixed pack that has different flavors and textures but not mixed sizes. It is assuming that man is the one that buys condoms and they do not need different sizes because their size does not change. But if a single women who has multiple sex partners and they might have different sizes, she will have to purchase multiple boxes of different sizes. Also women should not rely only on the men to provide protection during sex. Women should always have some condoms with her in her purse or by her bed. And lots of women are embarrassed if someone spot a condom in her purse. So I think maybe a pouch for storing condoms so it is not soo obvious will be a good idea.

(https://www.glamour.com/story/women-should-buy-condoms-men)

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One of the test condom manufacturer do is to test for water leakage and also tensile strength by putting water in the condom and check if there are any water leakage or bursting. I have left the water in the jar for two days (48 hours). The material is still holding up with no bursting or leaking or degrading (because the material is biodegradable and can dissolve in hot water).

To test the biodegradability, I put a piece of material in tap water and observed the process of degradation.

I also soaked my material in white vinegar to see if it can hold up in an acidic environment because vaginal environment is acidic with PH value about 3.8 to 4.5. Where distilled white vinegar usually measures around PH 2.4.

The discover of Neri’s material-based design theory helped me find the theoretical foundation for my design practice.

When I searched Neri Oxman’s name on the internet, this video is probably the easiest found result. In this TED talk video, Oxman talked about how natural informed her design theory and how design is heading to a material-based design future.

“The institutionalized separation between form, structure and material, deeply embedded in modernist design theory, paralleled by a methodological partitioning between modeling, analysis and fabrication, resulted in geometric-driven form generation. Today, under the imperatives and growing recognition of failures and environmental liabilities of this approach, modern design culture is experiencing a shift to material-aware design.”

-Neri Oxman

As a designer with a material-driven practice, my interests in bio-based materials and ecology have led me to Neri Oxman’s work. Coming from a background in ceramics, my design practice has been deeply rooted in craft. In craft production, material and form go hand-and-hand. However, in design and architecture these two aspects have separated over time, and form is typically prioritized. As a more sustainable alternative to this form-based design practice which has dominated the modern design culture, Oxman prioritizes material behavior and environmental performance over form generation. She suggests modern design culture is heading towards a material-based design future.

Having experienced with CAD software like Rhino, I realized just how easy it is to create 3D objects and the logic of CAD reinforced the form-structural-material design approach. In Rhino, you only apply materials as the last step in rendering the 3D model. As a result, designer can produce many products with unsustainable materials like plastic in such short amount time without prioritizing the material use of their product.

In nature, organism optimize material use to create structures. Neri’s interest in biology inspired design can be linked with the study of biomimicry in architecture and design.

Architects and designers have looked to nature for inspiration in building forms and interior decorations throughout history. Antoni Gaudi took the concept of tree branches and incorporated these elements into the design of the structural form of the interior columns in La Sagrada Familia. The Beijing Olympics National Stadium was inspired by the structural strength provided by the intertwined branches from bird nests. Norman Foster used the stress-dispersing characteristic of the lattice-like exoskeleton of the venus flower basket sponge for The Gherkin’s hexagonal building skin.

It is not a new idea to use nature as the source for inspiration in design but Neri’s research focus is how to combine biomaterial with 3D printing so we can manufacture/editing nature. It emphasis improving the digital fabrication process with biomaterials.

I want to rethink the way we package condoms and I had an idea of embossing different penis shaped fruit like cucumber, carrots and bananas etc on the condom wrapper to indicate different sizes or flavor or colors(as I wanted to use natural dye from for my condoms). Like aways, someone had the same idea!!

Condom packaging using fruits and veggies to give sizing context, as dreamed up by Guan-Hao Pan.

(https://99u.adobe.com/articles/54712/designing-the-next-generation-of-condom-packaging)

(https://www.dezeen.com/tag/condoms/)

The packaging design illustrated a good concept but it created too many excessive and unnecessary packaging waste. Like the foil sealer and the plastic cap for the whole packaging and the buttercup individual package.

Following this trail, I discovered a company in China that makes buttercup condom packaging.

(https://www.customcondomsfactory.com/tag/buttercup-condom/)

Condom brand One(started as an American company, but acquired by Karex later), hold design contest for their condom wrappers every year. They are also one of the few company that uses the round wrapper design instead of the conventional square one with serrated edge. It is largely a part of their branding and marketing campaign effort but end up building an online package graphic design community which is very interesting. There are no innovation on the material of the wrapper though, it is still the old fashion foil plastic wrapper that is pretty standard in the industry.

Even the round packaging seems using smaller amount of material than the square one. In fact it does not make that much of a difference. Because that whether you throw away offcuts of packing during production or the wrappers being thrown away by end user. It is all nonrenewable waste, just disposed at different state.

Also inclusiveness in terms of condom packaging is rarely in discussion. British designer Ben Pawle come up with a condom wrapper for people with disabilities that can be opened with a simple finger-clicking action.

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(https://www.dezeen.com/2012/09/05/one-handed-condom-wrapper-by-ben-pawle/)

A group of students from Wuhan University designed a Blind Condom wrapper for visually impaired people to distinguish the positive side from negative, which brings a great trouble to them during sex. And the wrong application of condoms are one of the factor that impact the effectiveness of condoms.

If the packaging can be made by the same material as the condom or more renewable materials, then any offcuts of the packaging can be recycled and made into new products or packaging.

If I add some sort of Organic UV absorbers to the packaging material it might be a good option?

(https://www.newfoodmagazine.com/article/1307/uv-protection-for-packaged-foods/)

These are all great creative ideas for condom package design, and I will work on incorporating these ideas into my own packaging design for biocondom

I was running into issues of not able to create a consistent and even coat for my dipping test and the solution ran off the mold quite often. As a result, the film it end up producing has weak spots and easy to break when stretching. I learnt that in latex manufacturing process, they use chemicals to adjust the concentration of the latex to produce a homogenous and consistent solution for dipping.

Therefore, I adjusted the concentration of my solution and successfully got a very even coating with no running problems. The film resembles an ultra thin polyurethane condom and can hold water without breaking.

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I came across this article on Dezeen about a group of Australian scientists developed a way of extracting nanocellulose from the Australian native spinifex grass, which can be used as an additive in latex production. According to researcher Darren Martin, the addition of spinifex nanocellulose significantly improves the physical properties of latex, making condoms both stronger and more flexible.

Algae and agricultural wastes can both be used for cellulose extraction and they are more accessible for everyone than a plant that is only native to Australia. This breakthrough will definitely help localize condom production in Australia. If this material can be an additive to latex to increase the physical properties of latex and produce stronger and thiner condoms, then Australia could potentially get a bigger share on the global condom manufacturing market-a market that is currently being dominated by southeast asian countries. However, condom accessibilities are largely depends on the cost of the condom.

Retail price of a box of 12 pack Durex condoms are between £9.99-£12.99. How much is that in currencies in African countries? For example, that is 189 south african rand and the average monthly income in south africa is R21,432. The social marketing of condoms has two main components. First, a government agency or other organization buys condoms to sell at a discount or works with manufacturers to subsidize their cost, absorbing some of the financial burden so the public has to spend less money. The goal is for condoms to be affordable rather than free since people are more likely to use something they paid for. The rule of thumb is that a year’s supply of condoms should cost no more than 1 percent of the target country’s per-capita gross national product (GNP) 

If people can’t get free or discounted socially marketed condoms, then they will choose to risk not using them. But no matter who end up paying for those condoms, the money of condoms sales goes to the pocket of those big condom making companies. With the global condoms being dominated by few big brands(Trojan, Durex, Okamoto, Lifestyle) and the condom manufacturing market being dominated by Karex-a malaysia company who manufacture around 60% of the world condoms. The price condoms are controlled by these companies driven by profitability.

If condoms can be made with easily accessible raw materials from everywhere in the world, then we don’t have to rely on latex condoms produced exclusively in southeast asia. If we can empower people in Africa to manufacturing condoms there, distribute and supply their own domestic market with affordable condoms, then it will dramatically improve the accessibility of birth control in developing countries.

This piece of information also gave me an idea of adding my material to latex to see if it will improve the physical property of it or adding natural latex to my material to see if it will increase the physical properties of my material since it is not as elastic as latex.

(https://health.howstuffworks.com/sexual-health/contraception/condom8.htm)

(https://www.dezeen.com/2016/02/24/australian-scientists-university-of-queensland-condom-product-design-grass-fibres/)

The latex used to make condoms comes from tapping rubber trees in Southeast Asia or West Africa. But the rubber tree sap isn’t the only ingredient in the latex condom. When it’s ready to be made into condoms, the latex can contain:

• Antifungal and antibacterial compounds
• Zinc oxide, a vulcanization accelerator
• Potassium laureate, a stabilizer
• Sulfur, a vulcanizing agent
• Ammonia, an anticoagulant
• Other preservatives and pigments

­Many of these ingredients add to the shelf life of the latex, but they also make rubber-a naturally biodegradable substance-harder to break down. The temporary preservation of latex fresh from the tree is of importance in avoiding blemishes in sheet rubber produced from the latex, particularly bubbles and dark colourations, ammonia, an anticoagulant, is added to fresh latex as a common practice in producing natural latex.

To better understand how latex condoms are created, I decided to try to recreate the process with the material so I can observe how the material adhere to the mold, how long does it takes to dry fully and how the material behave after drying.

I purchased 1L liquid natural latex from Amazon. When I first opened the bottle, I noticed a strong ammonia smell. I poured the milky white liquid into a plastic cup and dipped a plastic mold into the liquid. The mold picked up most of the air bubble on the surface, therefore created an uneven coat. But the material stick to the mold very well and adhere quickly. I waited about 5 minutes and dipped it second time as in the factory to create a ticker coat.

After drying for half an hour, a thin rubber film was created. The color turned from milky white to transparent and the uneven bubbles disappeared as it dried. A created a rim by rolling up the edges gently, then it fully rolled in to a condom!! Because I did not powder it, t stick together after rolling up. I was unable to unroll it unfortunately. I will need to create another one with powders like cornstarch so I can unroll it.

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This test helped me to understand the material properties of latex, essentially, it is the material I am try to replace for my biocondom. By comparing the process of dipping my material and latex, I could clearly see the similarity of material behavior between these two materials in the process of dipping. Latex dries a lot faster but stick to itself, where my material become a jelly like substance but eventually form a thin film after drying overnight. Dehydrator or oven can be used to accelerate process of drying. And the strong elasticity of latex is definitely something I aim to achieve with my material after modifying my recipes.

(https://patents.google.com/patent/US2932678A/en)

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875389209000224)

Man uses nature in a particular important manner by draining its resources. I consider waste is consumed nature . By transforming waste into value product, it is my way of restoring nature that we all drained and sucked dry and have taken for granted.

Whether we simply copy from it, using living organisms in our projects or transfer some of its technologies, nature offers us a fantastic terrain for creativity.

In recent years, many waste-based biomaterial projects have emerged.

Pinatex

Piñatex^® is an innovative natural textile made from pineapple leaf fiber. Started by an RCA textile alumni-Dr. Carmen Hijosa. Pinatex is a great example of designers’ attempt to harness the value from waste we produce by consuming nature (Pinatex is made with a by-product of the pineapple harvest). These leaves are discarded from the pineapple harvest, so the raw material requires no additional environmental resources to produce.

Shellworks

As a project by another RCA and Imperial College alumni, Shellworks have developed a series of machines that turn seafood waste into a biodegradable and recyclable plastic. This project transform the shells of crustaceans into a paper-like material that could act as a sustainable alternative to single-use plastic. The material consists of a mixture of vinegar and a biopolymer named chitin- a fibrous substance that makes up the exoskeleton of crustaceans and the cell walls of fungi.

Biocouture

Suzanne Lee, the founder of BioCouture explore how organisms like bacteria, yeast, fungi and algae could be harnessed to produce fabrics. Fashion industry is one of the most polluting industry. If the future of fashion can be waste-based biomaterial, it might transform the entire industry and the way we consume fashion and textile.

Neri Oxman is an architect, designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she led the mediated matter group -an experimental design practice operates at the intersection of fields such as generative design, digital fabrication, materials science, synthetic biology and ecology.

I was very happy to have found her work because the attention and praises her work have gotten confirmed this biodesign trend I have observed in the design field. And her material-based approach have gave me so much more confidence in the direction where my practice is heading towards.

The work that is the most relevant to my own research interest is the aguahoja pavilion project. A five meters tall structure composed of pectin, cellulose, calcium carbonate and chitosan—the most abundant biopolymer in nature. It is the first structure made with this material at an architectural scale. The bone structure of aguahoja looks like a cocoon or ribcage. The material of the building skin is a type of bioplastic that is biodegradable in water and can be 3D printed. For my own research in applications of biopolymer, I have not thought about any architectural applications. I was mostly focusing on consumer products.

This structure is made with a novel technology called variable property rapid prototyping. Combining cutting-edge 3D printing technology and innovative materials, VPRP is a patented digital fabrication processes Oxman and her team developed to support rapid augmentation, product customization and variable property fabrication. This technology enabled them to 3D print various organic materials such as glass, chitosan, pectin and melanin at different scales, which has not been achieved in digital design before.