COCOVID

It’s 2022! Covid is almost over - or is it? Covid has changed our lives forever, and we need to adapt to the new normal and co-live with Covid. But please! No more plastic barriers! COCOVID advocates for a new way to keep distance between strangers at a mall bench when the malls return to their full capacity. The color scheme is part of a strategy to provoke a sense of funkiness that alleviates the anxiety that came with COVID.The design includes other features such as niches to hold hand sanitizers and indoor plants on the top surfaces, shoe disinfection sprays installed at the legs and hooks screwed into the sides for bag-hanging. All of these design features consider the needs of mall-goers in Hong Kong who need a few minutes to rest their feet – during this post-COVID era. A hybrid of coffee grounds, leftover foods, bio-resin and if needed, cement, can be cast into moulds to form the building blocks of this piece. Coffee grounds can be recycled from the many cafes in Hong Kong malls and mixed with the other cement for rigidity. Compressed coffee grounds alone may not be strong enough to support the weight of the seated people THEREFORE the ratio between the coffee grounds and the cement is to be determined through tests. If possible, bio-resin can be used in place of cement, which will allow for the furniture to be completely biodegradable. Leftover food, such as colorful fruit and vegetables, can be boiled down to natural coloring extract that can dye the material.