A Carleton industrial design grad is in the running to win $16,000 in the James Dyson Foundation’s international design competition.
Mendel Skulski’s Out of Thin Air (OOTA) has made the top 100 for the annual award. The device he created is capable of extracting water from air even in extremely dry conditions.
Entering into this contest was something of an afterthought for Skulski. He heard about the Dyson Award last year in November, but got busy with his final school year.
It wasn’t until after he finished the OOTA device and graduated that he remembered the competition.
“I was back in Vancouver and realized the Dyson Award was still open and I entered it, because why not?” he said.
Skulski is one of the 50 finalists from the initial 700-plus applicants. The final 15 will be announced Oct. 18 and the winner will be announced Nov. 18.
Skulski said it all began with his interest in solving real world problems.
“If I’m going to be responsible for bringing more stuff into the world than I want it to be a point of making the world better,” he said.
Although he admires his artistic colleagues, he said he’s never been creative and that’s not where his passion lies.
In fourth year, he joined the “blue sky” group in his studio class, taught by industrial design professor Stephen Field. The group focuses on designing objects with technology so advanced it’s still in the research or testing phases.
Skulski said it was Mike McGuire of Wingspan Design in Ottawa who suggested he solve a humanitarian aid problem like access to water in Haitian refugee camps.
“There’s a growing contingent of people that are socially concerned and not monetarily driven. I think Mendel falls into that category,” McGuire said, who served as a design consultant in Skulski’s class.
McGuire said although he suggested a sustainability-focused project, it was solely Skulski who responded to the many tight design constraints and successfully turned a hypothetical solution into a plausible one.
“He designed OOTA to be very compact and easy to repair. His design really… takes advantage of the unique technology he’s found,” McGuire said. “He was a pretty smart guy before he ever came to Carleton.”
Skulski came across this “unique technology” with the help of research assistants at the library. The unnamed material is a two-layer plastic composed of hydrophilic and hydrophobic layers and is currently being designed at the University of Sydney.
The way it collects water mimics the arid Namibian beetle. Living in the world’s driest areas, at night the bug turns fog into water by condensing it onto its wings. The plastic became the foundation for Skulski’s project.
“It’s brilliant. Getting the idea from nature and applying it. He did a fantastic job,” Field said.
Skulski also contributed a personal innovation, which came from the need to place the technology into a structure that could properly support it and collect water.
After much trial and error, the result is a six-by-10 foot origami structure able to pack down into two feet by two inches.
Skulski said OOTA’s compactness was a priority because he wanted to take as little space away from vital supplies like medical equipment in aid trucks.
Now graduated, Skulski’s taking a break from design school and working in construction. He said he’s now beginning to get the urge to return to design, and yearning for the easily accessible resources he had at Carleton.
“Starting off now by myself is a little bit weird without the wonderful support net and all these talented people to bounce ideas off of. I’m on my own out here now. It’s a bit terrifying,” he said.
Both Field and McGuire cite the recession as a concern for graduates.
“That’s modern reality, you’ve got to make your own opportunities. Anybody that’s entrepreneurial or really driven is going to find a position,” McGuire said.
Despite the tough economic times, Field said design is a relatively new field and he’s optimistic of it’s future, siting Skulski as proof.
“[Mendel’s] showing that a young person out of school can be quite entrepreneurial… and he’s designed something that could possibly change the world,” Field said.
