Two young designers from Northern Ireland launch their urban gardening project on Kickstarter.
Natureboy, started by two Royal College of Art graduates, have just released their first product to the world on Kickstarter. They have set out to raise £12,000, and want to take over the city with plants using their new invention: The Plant Bracket. It is a simple tool for keeping plants, growing gardens & living with nature. Indoor. Outdoor. Any surface, any plant, any pot, anywhere!
Designers David Hood and Seainin Passi have been working together for 13 years, meeting at college when they were 18! They left Belfast together to study in Brighton and then London, where they found themselves living in a top floor flat. They wanted to find a way to grow plants where there was no outdoor space. Inspired by the humble g-clamp, they set out on a mission to create a simple, colourful tool that would hold pots in place on any vertical surface. After months of prototyping, testing designs and refining the production process with manufacturers, the Plant Bracket was born!
With growing numbers of people living in cities, they saw a real need for bringing nature to where its not! This is why they decided to ask for support on Kickstarter: they wanted to share their beautiful, simple product that allows us to live more closely with nature and that fits our modern lives.
Seainin Passi of Natureboy said “We love nature! We also love living in the city! We wanted to be able to grow plants and bring nature into our apartment, where there is no real outdoor space. In the summer of 2014 we started to play with ideas for living more closely with nature; our mission became how to bring nature to where it’s not!”
Natureboy designer David Hood said ‘”We are very excited to get the Plant Bracket out into the world! The sense of reward of growing your own plants, whether it’s on a small balcony, a wall in your home or garden, or workspace, is not to be underestimated! City living is incredible, but we can’t stop gardening and growing things because more of us live in cities, in smaller spaces, and are working longer hours! I think it’s a human right to be able to grow and garden, we just need to be playful and clever about how we fit it in to our lives.”
The Plant Bracket is made from machined aluminium extrusions and cnc spun aluminium discs. All parts are powder coated in a matt satin finish. Each Bracket even comes with it own tidy drilling pouch to help you mark holes and gather dust while you drill.
Check out their project on Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com and join their mission to put plants everywhere. Be sure to follow Natureboy on Instagram @iamnatureboy and Facebook – iamnatureboy for all progress and updates. Find out about their treasure hunt for the Golden Plant Bracket! Back their project, help it to come to life and be among the first to discover how the Plant Bracket can transform the spaces we live in!
If you’d like more information about the Plant Bracket and Natureboy, or if you’d like to schedule an interview with David or Seainin please call or email david@hellonatureboy.com or send them a tweet @iamnatureboy.
David Hood studied 3D Design (BA Hons) at The University of Brighton and Design Products (MA) at The Royal College of Art. Seainin Passi studied Materials Practice: Wood, Metal, Ceramics & Plastics (BA Hons) at The University of Brighton and Colour Research, through GSMJ (MA) at The Royal College of Art.
Over 13 years, David and Seainin have worked together on research projects for the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Through Design (CELTD) to explore and document the ingenious making processes, entrepreneurial spirit and local design culture in Southern India.
They helped establish and deliver a Stanford D School model programme in Northern Ireland (Belfast Met) promoting the use of design thinking for entrepreneurship; training Northern Ireland’s next generation to create new business ideas with a user focused approach.
David and Seainin were commissioned to create and implement a huge scale permanent public art installation in Northern Ireland celebrating it’s textile making past. They are currently delivering an insanely experimental design education programme they created for a free school in West London, whilst building Natureboy and its awesome product range.
