Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Ilja Schamle has replaced batteries with living plants in this self-built server system to explore how technology could enter into a symbiotic relationship with nature.
Showcased as part of the Missed Your Call graduate exhibition at Milan design week, the project sees renewable energy derived from tomato vines used to run a cloud server, while the heat generated by the computer provides optimal growing temperatures for the vegetables.
The Warm Earth system sees tomato plants housed in a server cabinet
The self-sufficient system, dubbed Warm Earth, was designed for an apocalyptic future, in which humanity can no longer depend on power stations and must instead turn to live plants as an alternative energy source. "Having the whole internet run on plants, it wouldn't be possible with the way that we're using servers right now and how much content there is," Schamle told Dezeen.
"We wouldn't be able to function in this way and that is a very harsh reality,"  she said. "It can help us understand how much energy is needed to run these systems and how far detached we are from them."
Electricity from the plants is used to power a server
Schamle's artificial ecosystem was conceived to take data centres from being foreign entities, hidden from our daily lives, to everyday fixtures in our homes.
It sees the tomato plants housed within a traditional server rack cabinet while the server itself is mounted to the exterior....