Holey Roket
Eco-centric vernacular design

by Rok Oblak

BAA Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2004
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Masters of Applied Art in Design

Emily Carr University of Arts + Design
Vancouver, British Columbia

Rok Oblak © 2009

Abstract
Holey Roket is a cooking stove type designed to improve existing cooking

systems. Recognizing that more than fifty communities in Africa, South America
and Asia use briquettes as a primary cooking fuel, this design project seeks to
help improve local cooking solutions. Designed to use the biomass briquettes

similar to those available in rural communities around the world, Holey Roket

was developed in collaboration with Legacy Foundation, an Oregon-based NGO
advocating alternative fuel technology. Designed for biomass briquettes, Holey
Roket aims to dramatically reduce fuel consumption and harmful emissions.
Borrowing from existing stove technologies and working in

collaboration with local entrepreneurs, this design typology and social network
has evolved as the fabrication of briquettes improves and knowledge about

this alternative fuel is shared. Holey Roket is based on the understanding that,
together with stove design and briquette fabrication, information sharing

is necessary to help create better cooking systems. Holey Roket designs are

currently being tested in four international contexts: DR Congo, Chad, Uganda,
and Cambodia. Existing briquette manufacturing enterprises in each place

represent different sets of socio-cultural relations and demand an adaptable

consultant-design methodology capable of working with different materials,
briquette recipes, gastronomic cultures, and social structures. Holey Roket
represents a methodology designed to connect with local entrepreneurial

networks and involves communicating information about stove technology and
the adaptation of a Holey Roket typology across different contexts.

This project is informed by the eco-centric concept of “ecosophy”

developed in writings of Arne Naess and Felix Guattari. Ecosophy recognizes
the philosophical milieu as a field of intrinsic social, economic, and cultural

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relations where one needs to find ways of partaking in non-anthropocentric
collaboration. Extending ecosophy to a design context, Holey Roket looks at

‘vernacular’ building processes that unfold according to traditional, site-specific
designs. Holey Roket engages with the virtual environment as a form of direct

action. Accumulated information from various environments contributes to the

single product-type data-base, and brings diverse local knowledge to a common
table. Adaptations of Holey Roket show how experimentation gradually

becomes tradition, and in the process, resilient, ever-more efficient cooking
stove concepts are adapted to an increasing number of environments.

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Table of Contents

Abstract							

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Acknowledgements						

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Table of Contents						

List of Figures						
Holey Roket - Eco Centric Vernacular Design

Cited Works							
Consulted Works						
					

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Slovenian Ministry of Culture and Emily Carr University for

financially supporting my research program. Emily Carr’s President’s Research Fund
enabled me to visit a Cooking Stove Camp organized by Engineers in Technical and

Humanitarian Opportunities of Service (ETHOS), August 2008, in Eugene, OR; to visit

the Aprovecho research center, January 2009, Eugene, OR; to attend the ETHOS Stoves
conference, January 2009, Kirkland, WA; and to visit the Legacy Foundation, January
2009, Ashland, OR. Specifically, I would like to thank Emily Carr President Dr. Ron

Burnett for recognizing these vital opportunities for me to develop my research and
providing additional support.

In March 2009, I was sponsored by Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) to

visit an international forum on indoor air pollution in Kampala, Uganda. I would like
to thank PCIA for this great opportunity that has allowed me to visit local briquette
manufacturing centers in Kampala.

I would also like to acknowledge Emily Faculty: Dr. Glen Lowry, my supervisor,

for helping to take my thinking to the next level; Karolle Wall, for additional

encouragement and support in the writing of this thesis; and Dr. Patrick Chan for

additional academic advice. In addition, I would like to thank the following Emily Carr
staff for help in project realizations: Leon Popik, ceramic studio; Ian Rhodes, metal
studio; Simon Lysander, Intersections Digital Studio; Bobbi Kozniuk, sound studio;
Carlos Mendez, Digital Output Centre.

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I would also like to express a special acknowledgement to all people from

the stove and briquette community: first and foremost Mr. Richard Stanley (Legacy
Foundation), who believed in the project potentials from the very start; Dr. Larry
Winiarski, for his ingenious work related to ‘roket’ stove technology; Aprovecho
research center staff for free accommodation and use of their state-of-the-art

equipment. I also owe a debt of gratitude to local entrepreneurs that are actively

engaged with this project: Virginia Echavarria, Katudu project (DR Congo); Mark
Heath, Chad; Kari Grady Grossman, Grady Grossmann School (Cambodia); Bosco

Epila, briquetting entrepreneurship (Uganda). I look forward to future collaborations
with these and other committed individuals who will take this project in exciting,
unexpected directions.

Last but not least, my thanks goes to my friends Victor Ballesteros, Katrin Svana

Eythórsdóttir, Haavard Pedersen, Margherita Marzorati, Sarah Hay, and all the other
MAA students and consulting faculty at Emily Carr.

Hugs to my family: Olga, Lojze and my brother Matej.
This project is dedicated to my lovely Tina.

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(…) nature herself, in the experience of history, became a conscious cultural
model, an intellectual alternative choice to culture.
					

—Massimo Montanari, Food is Culture

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List of Figures
Figure 1: sound transmitting device installation in the Kitsilano beach park,
April, 2008: representation of the ambient with the projected sound

Figure 2: Supermarket viscourses in Kitsilano in Vancouver, June, 2008:
spaghetti, blueberries, chocolate, bananas, tomatoes

Figure3: study of tree-climbing for an architectural concept, June2008:

a model (toothpicks), tree-climbing, 3D rapid prototype, installation representation

Figure 4: a video-shooting process: a shopping cart on a forest path, ‘cast-crete’ apples
imitating the biggest apple in the world, high-definition camera in use, final scene
Figure 5: traditional, inefficient cooking systems using biomass briquettes

Figure 6: diagram of the ‘rocket’ stove technology developed by Dr. Larry Winiarski
and Dean Still in Aprovecho research center

Figure 7: diagram of the Holey Roket stove type: two briquettes inserted in the combustion chamber of the stove body. The air enters through the briquette hole where

pyrolysis takes place and continues through the (insulated) stove body to the pot; the
dimensions can vary according to different materials and cooking processes

Figure 8: process of making the Holey Roket using plastic pipes to make briquettes

Figure 9: overview on the prototyping process of the Holey Roket type. Following from

top left: 1. A functional improvisation model at Aprovecho Stoves Camp, 2008. 2. A readymade combustion chamber from a ventilation pipe. 3. An aluminium mock-up of the

‘elbow’ design. 4. A clay/sawdust model with plastic pipes; 5. The same model in action. 6.

Briquette holders provide dry and warm briquettes before burn; 7. The front door provide
a simple but efficient fire-volume manipulation. 8. Introduction of the rocket principle to

WWF’s Mdula stove. 9. A thicker-wall version of the stove for slow-burn performance and
improve heat transfer to the pot with a wider top rim. 10. An attempt to test double feed
with inserting two briquettes from opposite sides to improve the heat output

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Figure 10: a ‘household’ cooking space at ECUAD studio space on West 3rd Avenue:
Roket Mdula stove with a carpet, Holey Roket stove, improvised briquette-making

Figure 11: emission testing at Aprovecho research center: Enerac 3000E, live-feed
data: CO (red), CO2 (blue), PM/smoke (white), flow (green), T (yellow)

Figure 12: tested stoves: ‘3-stone’ fire, Aprovecho ‘China’ stove, Holey Roket, Larry

Winiarski rocket stove (Nicaragua), an improvised very high combustion chamber
Figure 13: feedback loops between different participants in the design process

Figure 14: Chad Prototype; an existing stove; a sketch over the photo to suggest the

construction adaptation (part of the Creative Commons innitiative); the prototype of
an adapted stove (photo: Mark Heath)

Figure 15: DR Congo prototype; a metal prototype from Vancouver; a local entrepreneur; the new prototype in Congo (photo: Virginia Echavarria)

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I

The departure point for this history of space is not to be found in

geographical descriptions of natural space, but rather in the study

of natural rhythms, and the modification of those rhythms and their

inscription in space by means of human actions, especially work-related
actions. (Lefebvre 117)

Eco-centric theories believe in natural systems as a foundation for

conceptualizing our work, or in this case, design processes. They challenge

the notion of the human being as a dominant figure who is constantly capable
of changing or appropriating elements of the environment to fit to his or her
own needs. As a creative discipline, design is based on the premise of the

importance of change, innovation and progress, and thus, design processes
tend to situate human beings as protagonists who posses a special ability
to control the environment. Beginning with an eco-centric approach, this

research project sets out to challenge the role of the designer as a conventional
‘developer’ and position him/her in the middle of a forest of complex

relationships where diverse environmental imperatives rather than an
individual designer or universal design sets the agenda.

According to Arne Naess, organisms and milieux are intrinsically

connected: “organisms presuppose milieux” (56). His concept of ecosophy

rejects “the man-in-environment image in favor of the relational, ‘total field

image’ of organisms as knots in a field of intrinsic relations” (28). To help me
understand, how Naess’s notion of ecosophy might be developed within a

design situation, I set out to participate in a series of collaborative experiments.

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During the first year of my graduate research, I worked with designers and

artists to define and represent certain ideas about our varying relationships

to things and spaces, design objects/projects and different environments. The
core idea of these projects, which are presented in the following experiments,

is a dialog with the various notions of ecosophy: work conceived and unfolding
in an immediate relation to a specific milieu. In each of these aesthetic or

conceptual experiments, the environment is given the role of the protagonist.

The environment is considered in terms of its raw phenomenological, visual or
conceptual materiality.

The most representative project of this conceptual framework was the design
of the apparatus that enabled live sound-transmission from one environment
to the other. The idea was oriented around the phenomena of how sound

projections from remote spaces might awaken spontaneous mental images or

imaginary visual experiences. A sound-transmitting device was built to enable

the listener to become exposed to the sounds of natural landscapes (or ‘sound-

Figure 1: sound transmitting device installation in the Kitsilano beach park,
April, 2008: representation of the ambient with the projected sound

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scapes’) in the home interior. Disguised as a wooden birdhouse the apparatus

was installed in a park, sometimes capturing lively discussions of dog-walkers,
hours of silence, wind noises and bird-songs. Every moment represented the
possibility for unpredictable and random sounds.

The service was planned to function as an online live-sound library

freely available on the Internet, and individual pieces could be downloaded
in the form of a sound screen-saver. A generic installment draft was made,
like an open-source suggestive design that could be upgraded by anyone

and potentially hooked up in a virtual network. Participants were invited

to produce collages that could be redistributed in the live mode. The 1.8W
transmitter functioned on an 88-91MHz FM band and connected to a 12V

battery with the option of using solar cells to provide increased functionality.

In Supermarket Viscourses, the shopping experience was addressed as

something beyond logical planning that is usually practiced in consumer

environments with a rational mission to promote the items being sold. The
notion of presenting or displaying familiar, everyday grocery items was

addressed in an unfamiliar way. Various images sourced from a collection of
National Geographic magazines (1925 to 2004) were juxtaposed with food

items in a local grocery store in Vancouver. The design approach was opposed
to the usual graphic design process: metaphors for food items were sourced

before choosing the addressed item itself. Browsing random magazines helped
give us ideas and to set the design agenda. These images were suggestive: a

ritual with bamboo-sticks in Papua New Guinea became a tag for spaghetti; 3

meter blueberries were distributed with a carrier-ship; Jerusalem was built on

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Figure 2: Supermarket viscourses in Kitsilano in Vancouver, June, 2008:
spaghetti, blueberries, chocolate, bananas, tomatoes
chocolate; tomatoes were hand woven from the 50’s; and bananas were carried
with donkeys in a picturesque Colombian rain-forest.

As a ‘guerilla design’ intervention in public space, the store’s visual

identity was made to appear closer to private-owned stores in developing

countries, where owners decorate their spaces more expressively, according to
individual or local tastes rather than larger corporate branding initiatives. The

particular shop-owner we approached for this experiment became enthusiastic
about working with images that might be amusing to his customers, even
though he was skeptical at first because of the possibility of the project
confusing customers. Very different interpretations of the images were
possible, the juxtaposed images created semiotic tensions.

This case study draws on Rene Dubos and his ideas discussed in So Human

an Animal. In this book, Dubos addressed our built environment in relation

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to our immediate biological environment. He argues that many details of our
environment are over-designed in terms of safety, ergonomics and passivity

of our physical performance. Thus, I developed ‘En(danger)ed playgrounds,’

which depicts climbing as a generic body-movement and attempts to imagine
a situation in which the whole body is in motion. This proposal attempts to

offer an interesting potential for application to an everyday environment in the
context of a 3-dimensional space.

Figure3: study of tree-climbing for an architectural concept, June2008:
a model (toothpicks), tree-climbing, 3D rapid prototype, installation representation
For me, the activity of tree-climbing represents the most natural way

of performing full-body movement. To create a climbing apparatus, I looked at
tree-branches as a construction element. Their structure was scanned using a

3-dimensional scanner. The gathered data served as a model for thinking about a new

architectural building material that might be used to construct generic spaces, in which
the human body would be allowed to move freely in all 3 dimensions, while remaining
somewhat protected (at least in relation to the dangers involved in climbing real trees.

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The final piece of this project was a proposal that suggested a site-

specific climbing tower in Queen Elizabeth park for Vancouver tourists where
they could take in an overview of the city, much like people in ancient times
who navigated their position in large, flat landscapes by climbing trees. The
sculpture was printed in 3-dimensions using a rapid-prototyping printer.

Buy a Shopping Day engaged with the idea of an alternative participation within
the built environment. In collaboration with four other international students

from the Emily Carr MAA program, I created in a short video piece that looks at
the idea of a hyper-real shopping experience that takes place in the forest was.
The story-line followed a couple with a shopping cart as they pick over-sized

apples in a dense forest. This video work attempts to idealize a future ‘freegan’
society, which is based on a particular life-style where people survive on free,
organic local produce.

Figure 4: a video-shooting process: a shopping cart on a forest path, ‘cast-crete’ apples
imitating the biggest apple in the world, high-definition camera in use, final scene
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Even though the presented experiments were not directly related to the core

project of designing cooking stoves, working with these ideas was essential to

my design research. It allowed me to further develop an alternative eco-centric
perspective on the product design process. The research was attempted to

look beyond the classic notion of the designer as one who creates a finite and

optimal object according to a specific problem. Instead, I was more interested
in addressing the design processes within the everyday living and to shift

strategic product development away from the industrial sector and from a drive
for large-scale commercial success. According to Bill Adams, who discusses

design work in relation to the developing world, eco-centric notions represent
post-materialistic thinking that promotes a participative relation to our

environment where we do design within the process of living itself. He refers
to this mode of thinking as a “Green strategy” (179) that emphasizes microrevolutions, local experiments, and intuitive, open and concrete solutions,

mostly based within the small community settings. The projects conceptualized
in the collaborative experiments in my first year of research were aimed

at exploring a ‘green strategy’ through developing suggestive designs and
engaging in collaborative processes.

To further develop this concept, my research in everyday design draws on

Felix Guattari notion of ‘eco-art,’ which he defines as an ‘opening-out’ practice,

where “an artist may be led to alter his work after the intrusion of some accidental
detail, an event-incident that suddenly makes his initial project bifurcate, making
it drift far from its previous path, however certain it had once appeared to be”
(52). What Guattari wants to imply is the importance of understanding and
working with the precarious nature of the immediate situation, which as he

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suggests is the primary to milieu in which the artist (as opposed to the ‘strategical’
designer) tends to function. This notion was reflected in my experimental projects
because they engaged the designer with his lived, immediate local milieu. Rather
than products, these studies were looking at creating site-specific situations or
thinking about the social spaces in which objects exist.

Working in close proximity with the environment is an element of

design that was ‘stolen’ or disappeared with industrialization, mass production

and the emergence of global markets. The modern design process often focuses
on research on remote environments and ‘focus groups’ to which the designer
has limited access but for whom the designer is supposed to create better,

more useful products. In the case of this study, one might say that designing a
single cooking stove for use across numerous globally dispersed community
settings is a representative (an ultimate) scenario of this type of disengaged

design: a one stove fits all solution. In contrast, my research attempts to find

ways of working simultaneously across a great variety of dynamic and diverse
ecosystems that form different geographical, social and cultural structures

and that presuppose relative processes of product adaptation. Amos Rapoport
articulates these structures as genre-de-vivre in which, we might say, ‘form

follows the milieu’: “natural, spiritual, material and social aspects (culture,

ethos, world view, national character) which affect the form” (48). Collaborative
stove design unfolding across diverse genre-de-vivre thus requires a very

different approach to design research and knowledge development/sharing.
A major role in realizing the stove projects represents working with

entrepreneurs already engaged in stove-development. These entrepreneurs

possess advanced knowledge of local materials and a profound understanding
of social and executive relations with the local community. In the process

of stove’s-type adaptation, where the authority of the production (and thus
production and usability innovation) is in local entrepreneur’s hands, the

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designer’s intervention represents merely the initiative idea facilitation. The

key phase of design process unfolds when the stove type is adapted according
to each local milieu.

As Adams suggests in reference to the work of David Pepper:

The environmental struggles (of the developing world) are still about
the basic requirements for an environmentally secure life, which

is a distant world from the obsession with aesthetic aspects of the

environment and the rhetoric of sustainable development planning in
industrialized countries. (180-181)

To help understand and work through the implications of the gap in design

processes and situations that are usually involved in creating products for use
in the developing world, this thesis research sets out to establish a product

development process where all environments seem to relate to each other in

an independent but connected cohabitation, in somewhat ‘inter-independent’

relations of autonomous communities. This notion helps to define the concept
of what is meant by sustaining heterogeneity, which Guattari defines as

“expression of desire, of a becoming that is always in the process of adapting,
transforming and modifying itself according to its environment.” He suggests

that ‘heterogenesis’ is a “continuous singularization” of local milieux where the
design intervention is projected (49). The process of introducing a new stove
type to or adapting it for an existing cooking system or context represents an
opportunity for each local iteration.

Therefore, the eco-centric designer attempts to position him/herself

in non-hierarchical relations where his/her authority only suggests different

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interventions in a form of dialogue. The designer does not try to use the

local fabric as his study-field, but lets it unfold through interactions with

independent collaborators—entrepreneurs—living in the field. The autonomy
of these independent actors can play an interesting and important role in the

design process, particularly when communication is able to expand on a crosscultural level.

To realize this change in design process or approach, the concept of time

has to adapt accordingly. Strategic thinking in design has to position itself in

a more flexible relation to different environments and planning has to adapt
much shorter cycles. To this end, I would suggest that we look at the figure

of the vernacular builder and extend the idea to the concept of a vernacular

design process, based on involvement with international networks of briquetteusers. David Rapoport’s House Form and Culture defines a vernacular process
as an immediate action, taking place according to the context of the situation

in the present moment. And social scientist Henri Lefebvre describes a similar
eco-centric process using the image of the spider making a web in which the
construction of the space is closely dependent on the ‘laws of nature’: “The

relationship between nature and space is immediate in the sense that it does

not depend on the mediation of an external force” (172). He refers to ‘primitive
life’ as lived experience and bodily intelligence that exists before analyzing

thought. “Intentionality,” for Lefebvre, thus represents a “late development”

(174). Yochai Benkler, who speaks from the perspective of social networking,
suggests that the design process should be adjusted to the situation, and it
should not be imposed by the time-based design schedule. The vernacular
designer should let the schedule unfold by itself in dialogue with local
constraints.

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II

African economies depend on wood-fuels for up to 90% of their energy

requirements and in many areas this is having a quite devastating effect
on forests. (Bennet, 14)

The majority of the world’s population is still using cooking systems that have
been known from times when humans started to use fire to broaden their

gastronomic repertoire. The assembly of a ‘3-stone fire’ is probably the most
fundamental ‘product’ or representative object that has been used from the

beginning of humanity’s cultural endeavors. The features of the “3-stone fire”

are extremely convenient: the assembly of the stones can be fit to almost every
pot, and they can be found anywhere and are super-durable. It is difficult to

compete with the 3-stone fire, especially in situations in which rural families
cannot afford more efficient products.

The situation that often drives people to rethink their cooking practice

is the critical scarcity of local fuel. Most problematic are dense-populated rural

areas, where the natural-grown wood has been over-harvested and has resulted in
serious deforestation problems and where the prices for urban-fuel (liquid fuels,
gas fuels, charcoal briquettes) are too high. Low density, locally manufactured

biomass briquettes made of organic waste materials are emerging as an alternative

on all continents. Since the late 1980’s, many communities have embraced this new

technology despite the effort required in the manufacturing process. A great advantage
with locally manufactured briquettes, however, is that they can be tailored to specific

end uses and make use of different materials and shapes, according to local resources
and conditions.

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In traditional cooking systems, people use briquettes as charcoal or wood-fuel

and simply lay them on top of the fireplace with the hole directing the flames from

the fireplace to the pot. The form of the briquette is designed according to the airflow

dynamics of the combustion process. The briquette is ignited through the hole, where

the flames radiate the heat one against another, as compared to sticks of wood, where
the heat is being dispersed away from the fuel mass. This also represents a powerful
marketing feature of briquettes, as the effect is visually recognizable. It has been

one of the key features when demonstrating briquettes to local communities. People

appreciate the notion of the designed, technological advanced modern briquette form
because it also represents a step up the social ladder. The hole of the briquette is an
important feature or design element for users.

Figure 5: traditional, inefficient cooking systems using biomass briquettes
According to Ian McChesney, a briquette researcher working in the field,

traditional briquette manufacturing results in an inefficient burn: not enough energy

output has been produced during the first phases of the burn. McChesney as suggests

that poorly designed briquettes are difficult to ignite and –they cause too much smoke
to be present in the kitchen. In fact, excessive amounts of kitchen smoke, represents
one of the biggest health hazards for many communities and individuals living in
developing countries.

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Recent studies at Aprovecho in January 2009 provided me with an opportunity

to further evaluate the Holey Roket design. Aprovecho is a cooking stove research

center in Eugene, Oregon, and its basic mission is to scientifically evaluate the new

stove models with the help of advanced technology. Research at Aprovecho confirmed
McChesney’s findings and showed critical levels of carbon-monoxide (CO) being

produced in the burn. CO represents one of the major factors of indoor air pollution

(IAP) – generated largely by inefficient and poorly ventilated stoves burning biomass
fuels such as wood, crop waste and dung, or coal. According to the World Health

Organization, IAP “is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.6 million people

annually” (WHO). These emissions tend to be worse in traditional cooking systems

that use briquettes as the only ‘combustion chambers’ and are, especially bad in open
fires. This fact represents a great danger in communities that rely on conventional

fuels because they have no way of measuring CO presence: CO is invisible and cannot
be smelled, only traceable with advanced technology. Eliminating the CO emissions

therefore represents one of the key benefits of improved cooking stove technologies
for biomass briquettes and is one of the important contributions high-tech,
industrialized design can add to the conversation.

Dr. Larry Winiarski, a technical director at the Aprovecho research laboratory
formulated a very basic, but long studied solution to the problem of efficient

combustion for traditional fuels. Under the name of the ‘rocket’ stove, he devised a set

of design principles that define the optimum combustion process and improve the heat

transfer to the pot. Basic features include the ‘elbow’ shape of the combustion chamber
that allows the fuel (wood) to burn only at its tips, an insulated material for the

combustion chamber that prevents cooling down the combustion process, and a precise
set of dimensions that help users and designers to optimize the pot rim/interface.

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Figure 6: diagram of the ‘rocket’ stove technology developed by Dr. Larry Winiarski and
Dean Still in Aprovecho research center
Holey Roket takes Winiarski’s rocket design and modifies it for use with

custom-designed, doughnut-shaped briquettes. The name ‘Holey Roket’ refers to a

hollow briquette, or the hole in the centre of it. In contrast to stove systems that use

wood as a fuel, the briquette and the stove of the Holey Roket are designed together as
interdependent parts in the cooking system. My research in this specific engineering
field investigates the construction and material variables of this system. Winiarski’s
combustion model is one of the existing universal applications that can be used as

a reference technology; however, my work appropriating the hollow briquette and

designing a cooking system for household use significantly extends an area of stove
engineering that has not yet been explored in depth. At the Stove Camp in August,
2008, the rocket technology was applied to burning briquettes as an experiment

together with Dr. Winiarski. First tests showed a great potential in this application
as the form of the briquette, with its central hole, extensively helped the rocket

combustion process. With further research performed through several prototypes
of briquette shapes and cooking stoves constructions, the technology was further
developed at Emily Carr University and these were again tested at the Aprovecho
laboratory in January 2009.

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In the Holey Roket prototype, the hole in the biomass briquette provides an

essential part of the combustion process. The briquette is pushed into the stove from
the side, as opposed to classic top-fed briquettes where the cold fuel-mass directly
exposed to flames chills down the fire causing smoke and harmful emissions The

combustion process is similar to classic rocket stoves used for wood fuel; however,
the refined briquette with its hole provides an extension of the stove’s combustion

chamber and follows the form of the stove. The combustion of gasses takes place in the
briquette’s hole before they are allowed to enter the center of the stove’s combustion
chamber, resulting in an extremely clean burn. This new design with its change in
the position of the briquette has the benefit of enabling quick ignition. Incoming

air is drawn directly into the hot central chamber of the stove. The burning is very

economic and steady, with a convenient option for volume regulation where we limit

Figure 7: diagram of the Holey Roket stove type: two briquettes inserted in the combustion chamber of the stove body. The air enters through the briquette hole where
pyrolysis takes place and continues through the (insulated) stove body to the pot; the
dimensions can vary according to different materials and cooking processes
the incoming excess air with blocking the briquette’s hole. Also because briquettes are
inserted from below, there is no longer a need to remove the pot to feed the stove with
new briquettes. This in turn allows the cook to maintain eye contact with the fire.

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McChesney recognizes two important factors of briquette cooking systems:

first, the convenience of using different fuels with one stove, and the other, the need to
combine different fuels in one burning process. This is especially true in rural areas,

where people cannot always afford to switch to exclusive briquette use. These issues
were important in the development and promotion of the new stove type. Cooking

with Holey Roket enables the use of different fuels or even the ability to combine wood
and briquettes. Wood-sticks can also be inserted into the hole of the briquette, which
allows them to maintain higher heat output further in the process. This capacity to
burn different fuels is also useful in the ignition phase as wood burns faster.

Primitive’s people indicators of measurement remained purely qualitative in
character (Levebvre, 1991).

Figure 8: process of making the Holey Roket using plastic pipes to make briquettes
The construction of the Holey Roket’s ceramic body is based on many existing

technologies, but the stoves conception was based on no drafts whatsoever. Its
basic form is a mold that represents the exact same plastic pipe that is used for

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manufacturing briquettes. The clay is mixed with sawdust (or ashes, vermiculite,

pumice-rock, rice-husks) to improve the insulation and represents an essential feature
of the stove material. When the stove is fired in a kiln, the sawdust burns out, making
tiny air-bubbles that insulate the stove body from cold air. The combustion chamber
is constructed by simply piling clay mixture around the pipes in the same thickness,
left to dry and fired in a kiln such as that used to make building bricks, which is the
one and only truly universal manufacturing enterprise in rural areas of developing
countries. Originating the idea of stove design and development based as much as

possible on briquette production, this makes the best use of an available resource at

hand. All the product development sketching took the form of 3D prototyping because
the only viable way to proceed under the circumstance was to develop a functioning
model. The making of the prototype without paper, but relying on our perceptual,
memory and skill sets, and using existing materials at hand, is consistent with a

‘vernacular’ building process. Paper-drafts and careful calculations are being replaced
by rough estimations, recognized on higher gestalt levels of a cooking system as a

complex set of interdependent variables at play. Like with the vernacular process,

the development was a manifest of a direct action, an “unselfconscious translation
in physical”(Rapoport 2). The design process is one of models and adjustments or
variations. According to Rapoport, the vernacular process was supposed to be a

profoundly flexible precisely due to its non-fixed, not measured reality. It adapted a

tradition-driven generic product type according to local environments and let the user
depict its final function with the actual participation in its conception and final use.

The concept of designing a type can thus be extremely resilient and able to adapt to

and sustain the heterogeneity of local environments where the stove is being adapted.

17

Figure 9: overview on the prototyping process of the Holey Roket tyipe. Following

from top left: 1. A functional improvisation model at Aprovecho Stoves Camp, 2008. 2.
A ready-made combustion chamber from a ventilation pipe. 3. An aluminium mock-up
of the ‘elbow’ design. 4. A clay/sawdust model with plastic pipes; 5. The same model
in action. 6. Briquette holders provide dry and warm briquettes before burn; 7. The

front door provide a simple but efficient fire-volume manipulation. 8. Introduction of
the rocket principle to WWF’s Mdula stove. 9. A thicker-wall version of the stove for

slow-burn performance and improve heat transfer to the pot with a wider top rim. 10.
An attempt to test double feed with inserting two briquettes from opposite sides to
improve the heat output

18

Regular use, that is cooking, was an important part of the design process and

the continuous development of prototypes of the Holey Roket. Cooking is and

was a continuous testing practice. It was a rather representational action of the
lived experience of the designer and functioned as an alternative or addition to

conventional product design and the dependence on scientific, goal-oriented testing.
In November and December 2008, Emily Carr University facilities at 1612 West 3rd
Avenue were used as a household space where briquettes were made and meals

cooked on the everyday basis. The complexity of meals cooked evolved with cooking
skills, starting with simpler recipes and shorter cooking times. At first, meals were

consisted of simple items, like instant noodle soups, marshmallows or sausages. When
basic manipulating skills with fire were accomplished and the prototype improved,

there was time and ability to cook more complex recipes, like rice, cooked vegetables
and sauces. Approximately 20 cooking sessions were performed with more than 80
briquettes burned.

Figure 10: a ‘household’ cooking space at ECUAD studio space on West 3rd Avenue:
Roket Mdula stove with a carpet, Holey Roket stove, improvised briquette-making

19

A more qualitative approach to the testing practice provided a rich body of

knowledge directly related to the designer/cook’s experience. The information and
knowledge developed through practical use provides an important experiential

background for the designer, which will enable a sincere communication with the
users in the field. Even though meals, ingredients and cooking processes will be
different, the experience of working with the stove will help give the designer a

shared vocabulary with users in the field and has been valuable to the development of
prototypes.

In addition to everyday experience with the stoves and a commitment to vernacular

design process, I had the opportunity to test aspects of the Holey Roket in a state-of-

the-art research facility at the Aprovecho research center in Eugene, Oregon. I call this
part of the experimentation “scientific cooking.”

So far, low-density biomass briquette burning was undergoing very few

laboratory-based tests. Briquette fabrication represents many variables, including

locally differentiated briquette materials with radically different burning properties,
different weights or densities of the material and the production of char residues.

Using a one-recipe approach is unable to not provide results that can be guaranteed

in the field. Despite this fact, one test was performed at Aprovecho in 2007, using one
stove designed to burn wood that has never been used with briquettes in the field

and the other designed by Joel Chaney, an engineer at the University of Nottingham,
to work solely with biomass briquettes. This comparison test with solid briquettes

proved that briquettes with a centre hole were much more efficient in terms of output
power.

20

Tests were focused on emission exhaustion and heat output. The tests used

the Enerac 3000E, a computer designed to measure the air-flow of the combustion
process and providing with detailed statistics of the current heat output and CO

emissions. This state of the art performance/emission tester, specifically designed
to test low-powered biomass cooking stoves, was extremely useful in helping add
to knowledge and information about the burning process, especially on Carbon

Monoxide (CO) emissions. Following the qualitative testing in Vancouver, the livefeed data was used to monitor the current process to see if the measured output

matched my initial observations. The use of Enerac enabled a dynamic dialogue in

Figure 11: emission testing at Aprovecho research center: Enerac 3000E, livefeed data: CO (red), CO2 (blue), PM/smoke (white), flow (green), T (yellow)
which learning was pursued through introducing disturbances to the burning process
and read how the system reacts. These tests were very useful to find out when the
CO would appear, how CO levels relate to the stove’s heat output, and how we can

avoid or reduce CO emissions with different interventions to the fire. This scientific
information is critical because CO is impossible to detect in regular use. One of the

key challenges of this stove development design has to do with informing users and

entrepreneurs about CO emissions, or better, to embed the functional solutions into
the model so they can copy it when adapting their stoves accordingly.

21

Different stoves were tested, sourced from Aprovecho’s global stove-library.

Each test was consisted of 3 briquettes made of the same material with about the

same weight (100 g), boiling one liter of cold water without a lid and simmering it till
the fuel was providing enough power.

Figure 12: tested stoves: ‘3-stone’ fire, Aprovecho ‘China’ stove, Holey Roket, Larry
Winiarski rocket stove (Nicaragua), an improvised very high combustion chamber

My active participation in introducing disruptions to the burn process helped me

to better and faster understand the pattern of briquette combustion. The live-feed
data provided a detailed reading of the process that was not possible in my initial

visual observations. I wanted to imaginatively examine the awareness the instrument
enabled for understanding the burn. Referring to Peter Senge and his description

of the notion of scientific measurement, I acquired a position of a ‘native realist’ as

someone who “intuitively experiments the process” (196); therefore, with continuous
shaping my knowledge and immersion in the process I became a prototype myself!

22

“Staying connected to the larger will while in action builds on the capacities for

‘sensing’, ‘presencing’ and ‘crystallizing’ intent: the capacity for prototyping isn’t

actually separate from these but includes and grows from them. The result is action
shaped by the field of the future rather than by the patterns of the past” (148).

This shift from the classical testing practice points towards opening stove’s

implications to new emerging contexts, not to close itself on its measurement statistics
as “it can easily become elevated to a sweeping generalization about reality” (192).
Diverse experiences will be valuable in consulting the briquette performance to

different, yet unknown environments. As the process as such is tied in its immediate
environment, it lives independently from the actual product type implementation,

but because it is tied up with the designer’s subjectivity, it works as an investment
in his knowledge accumulation. Senge articulates this qualitative, tacitly acquired
knowledge as ‘the sacred mind’: “the unbounded awareness within which all

individual experiences occur, the living matrix where minds meet and engage” (Senge,
161). What is crucial is that the information from the tests will be immediately

shared through the network of designers and users connected to Legacy Foundation
‘briquetting community’, rather than protected as proprietary knowledge.

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III

When we address the process of product development and the communication of

these ideas to remote environments, we have to distinguish the process of adaptation
of cooking stoves from their implementation. With implementation, a certain design

model is developed and distributed as a finite product. One of the world’s biggest stove
manufacturing projects signifying this concept was revealed at the 2009 ETHOS Stoves
Conference in Seattle. It initiated in 2008, when Aprovecho researchers were able

to come up with a universal solution of the ‘rocket stove’ that is capable of covering

the majority of global cooking methods. Manufactured in China by one of the biggest
traditional pottery makers, this stove model is of high quality and can be distributed

for a low price. The other scenario of stove implementation is one conceived by Philips
Design, which developed a very efficient but expensive stove innovation. Philips

devised an ingenious stove burning waste material with a help of an electric fan that

powers itself with the actual waste-fuel being used for cooking. A significant endeavor

of this project is how Philips, being a large global corporation, is able to re-appropriate
the economic system of local, rural environments with their own, locally based microfinancing grid so people can purchase the stove with a loan. These two projects

currently represent the biggest universal improved stove introductions in the history
of developing countries and are still in their starting phases.

My ‘Mdula’ stove project, an earlier stove project conceived for WWF in Malawi

in 2003, involved the development and implementation of a stove ‘recipe’ that would
allow local users to create home-built stoves that were fabricated out of mud with
the help of a simple wooden mold based on pre-set measurements. This project

represents an important change in the design process, switching to the information
transaction as a basic tool to communicate the product. However, Mdula project is

still trapped in a static, non-resilient focus on the product form. Thus the Holey Roket

24

stove, which still essentially a recipe, endeavors to create or work within a situation

or network that will allow for continued development of the product as it is adapted
to/by locally existing technologies, available resources and labor. In this process,

based on the open-source collaboration, where the users conceive the final product
according to their needs and desires, the designer is a facilitator of the idea and a

consultant in the further phases of the process. The design methodology developed
with this research represents an attempt to move beyond the dominant mode of

industrial design, which tends to be based on a system of proprietary knowledge.

The conventional notion of intellectual property has no particular value here; instead
the stove type is intentionally designed to be copied by anybody, with technology

exposed and open to adaptation. The process of adapting the stove type to the local

environment represents a key element of the design process. Demanding commitment
from the local entrepreneur and an openness to simultaneous innovations by remote
users, this project expects that the final product design will be taken away from the

ultimate control of the designer. The project is successful when the design is taken up
and adapted to fit the social and economic needs of local users.

The relational bonds between people in the work process in the developing societies
functioned with little or no differentiation in the use of space and labor, where the
initiatives and actions were taking place everywhere. According to John Zerzan

who elaborates on the values of ‘primitivism’, hunter tribes existed on a very non-

hierarchical, autonomous level for every individual taking various functions, but all
food and commodities were collectively shared. A design structure sourcing from
this concept challenges a classic categorical separation between a user, designer

and manufacturer. All people are being independently engaged on all levels of the

(adaptation) process. Philosophically, my understanding of the design process thus

25

borrows from the writing of Ulla Johansson, a radical social scientist who based her
ideas on Mary Parker Follet’s work: (1868-1933). Johansson proposed that human
beings are a holistic entity. Her knowledge draws on Whitehead and Hegel, as well

as on chaos and complexity theories, and she has worked as a strategist, working for

H&M and IKEA. Johansson’s suggests that design leadership should be recognized as

a type of behavior, rather than as a role. In her thinking, the social context of design is
extremely important. Designers bring specialized knowledge to the process, but the
context appropriates that specialized knowledge and uses in conjunction with local
genre-de-vivre.

Figure 13: feedback loops between different participants of the design process
resemble ‘strange attractors’
Another interesting and exciting idea that might be related to this design

process with regard to understanding and developing dynamic relationships might

be recognized in the concept of the ‘strange attractors’: relational fields of juxtaposed
simple mathematical equations. For these relational systems, introducing small

(and possibly diverse or even contradicting) bifurcations to the process is essential,

where it is not the critical mass that nurtures the idea but a critical relation. Margaret

26

Wheatley, who speaks of ‘open systems’ states that “when a system is non-linear and
webbed with feedback loops, repetition feeds the change back on itself, causing it

to amplify and grow” (120). “In a non-linear world, there is no relation between the
strength of the cause and the consequence of the effect “(121). When the system is
far from equilibrium, singular or small influences can have enormous impact. The

stove adaptation process is based on feedback loops between participants managing

its development. Loops travel out of the designer’s range, coming back or just getting
lost in the field. This represents a shift in the perspective of the role of the designer.

Again the design context plays the role of the protagonist. For Wheatley, the idealized

plans are not effective, since they plan to re-appropriate the environment. Or they use
enormous energy, like the Philips stove project. The fluctuations in social relations

are essential to the process; anything that “disturbs the system plays a crucial role in
helping to self-organize into new form of order” (Wheatley 87). As Johansson writes,
these social situations should take precedence over principles: “what is required for
the situation at hand should be the ultimate order” (Johansen, 2008).

Following Mary Parker Follet’s work, Johansson suggests that the design

process should be less analytic and more holistic and iterative. She constantly moved
between the individualist and collectivist perspectives (personal contribution to a
collective thought) as a vibrant place to suggest ideas. Chaos and structure should

always collaborate in contradictory ways, and the design process needs to allow itself
to be open to coincidences. The sparks of new ideas initiate with the introduction of
random elements into the design process, but to realize the powerful potential of

these sparks we have to be free of conventional product design constraints. Through
the process of continuous improvisation, we have to open to planning for future
developments and innovations by the users.

We can identify many commonalities of the unfolding process in this paper

with Participatory Action Research (PAR). PAR is a methodology that is situated within
counseling psychology and involves a primary relationship between researcher/

27

counselor and a community PAR might be used as a qualitative approach to (design)
research practice, it believes in a dialectic movement between action and reflection,
where the people being studied have control in defining the relationship with the

researcher. More than a method, PAR defines a designer attitude towards the context,
and it potentially “requires the researcher to alter beliefs that are entrenched in

Western culture” (Sean A. Kidd, Michael J.Kral, 188). According to this definition of

PAR, the relation of the designer to his/her participant is inextricably linked to action
and needs of a particular community, blurring the hierarchical separation between
the two. In the case of a cooking stove adaptation, the designer’s behavior is taken

further as s/he is in parallel relation with the participant. Like the local entrepreneur,
the designer contributes his product and his accompanying local milieu where the

product has been developed (in this case Vancouver). He is integrated in the process,

can reflect to the other and is therefore a valid participant on a non-hierarchical, nonanthropocentric level. This is an essential part of the designer’s credibility.

According to David Rapoport, work unfolds within forms of personal

relationships, with a great respect to other person’s needs and desires, and paying

close attention to the local environment. The process is performed in “the simplest,

most unobtrusive way possible, with a lack of theoretical and aesthetic pretensions”
(5). Vernacular work is driven by the traditional knowledge and a heritage

accumulated through years or even generations of working (and design) experiences.
The stove with its distinctive, but locally adaptive construction type carries with

it certain social patterns that are similar to Rapoport’s concept of the vernacular,

but coming in a much shorter time-frames and various geographical positions. The

designer is the expert, but his or her collaboration with local entrepreneurs is integral

to the design process and sets the final product form. Vernacular design might be seen
as a process of working within a given order that is as cultural as it is natural.

An interesting and inspiring idea comes from thinking of stories as products.

According to Alenka Goljevsek, the Slovenian writer who writes about folk ritual, every

28

teller presents a new original version of the story. What is useful here is the notion
of the teller’s contribution to the tale that becomes a new entity that can be very

different from the ‘original.’ In the individual telling, only structure (or type) of the

story remains the same; the story is different. Time and space add new dimensions to

the tale, as the tellers contemporary spirit updates the content subconsciously – when
he forgets a detail, he adds something from his own experience, or he adds a detail to
retain attraction for the listener. The specificity of the supposedly ‘first’ tale (which
we never really know), takes off with different interpretations leaving the first one

behind, creating new entities. The Holey Roket Stove aims at a similar process. That
is, it imagines a social process that is marked by ‘tradition’, where the Holey Roket

represents initiative content that is capable of accumulating different interpretations
in the continuing process. The vernacular designer doesn’t posses the power to lead
the process. Instead, the vernacular process bifurcates and lives on its own as users
become responsible for new design elements.

An essential factor of an adaptive and vernacular design process is to build new

knowledge based on the use of existing materials and social relations. The stove

project initially started with an existing network of local entrepreneurs who are

working with biomass briquettes and who have established relationships with end-

users and stove manufacturers over many years of briquette manufacturing practice.
The Holey Roket was prototyped to a stage where it can be applied to environments
with complex, existing infrastructure and where it can help suggest adaptations to

existing cooking systems. Currently, four briquette centers are developing the model

out of different materials but according to my suggestions: DR Congo, Chad, Tanzania
and Cambodia. Each of these centers represents a different network of researchers,

communities, and other interested parties: the stove project in DRC is running under

29

project Katudu, which helps sexually abused women in DR Congo regain confidence

through briquette manufacturing as a ‘social’ micro-enterprise. Mark Heath, working

in Chad, has taken the Holey Roket model to the stage of a commercially available final
product. In Cambodia, the Holey Roket is in experimental stage, where a local pottery
expert is sophisticating the clay material to achieve best performance. The stove

will be part of the Grady Grossman school program, educating kids in sustainable

development. Mr. Bosco Epila, situated in Uganda has tried first prototypes, but the
briquettes failed with burning and further consultation is expected. The project in

Uganda was introduced by Legacy Foundation as part of their ‘training of the trainers’
process for making briquettes in the local community in Kampala.

Regarding progress of development phases, I will use DR Congo and Chad

as representative case studies to inform the theoretical inquiry from the practical
perspective of stove adaptation process to the local environments. Mark Heath, a

research-entrepreneur working with briquettes in Chad, developed a metal version

of the Holey Roket model. In his scenario, pictures of two existing models were sent

from Chad, where the rocket principle was adapted to the stoves with a new, side-feed
introduction. Since my work with metal stoves is somewhat limited, I only suggested
the basic intervention to the construction: the side-feed. Heath has since taken the
model to the next level, where he recognized the need for a briquette support that
functions like a grate. His estimation was oriented around the space where ashes

would be collected as his experiences with briquettes were based on a long cooking.
With this feature, the ashes are collected in a small chamber under the briquette.

Virginia Echavarria, a Portuguese entrepreneur located in DR Congo developed

a metal Holey Roket model with the help of local craftsmen. The outcomes were

somewhat surprising. I suggested they redesign one of their ingenious, low-cost
bucket stoves, which could be, from my point-of-view, easier, quicker and more

ingrained within the existing production, but the photo was more suggestive as a

ready-made functional model. The construction of the metal stove was closely copied

30

Figure 14: Chad Prototype; an existing stove; a sketch over the photo to suggest the
construction adaptation (part of the Creative Commons initiative); the prototype of an
adapted stove (photo: Mark Heath, February, 2009)

Figure 15: DR Congo prototype; a metal prototype from Vancouver; a local entrepreneur; the new prototype in Congo (photo: Virginia Echavarria, December, 2008)
at the bottom part from my photo of the first metal prototype made in Vancouver,

while at the top, the craftsman has taken more freedom and designed a complex set of
round, bent metal beams and made a pot stand. The briquettes were burning slowly

due to the fact that the burn hole was too small and did not provide not enough excess
air into the combustion chamber. New briquettes are being made to pursue further
testing.

31

The innovation, the alternative use of briquette ‘side-feed’ is visually

recognizable and presents a curiosity, thus it functions as internal motivation for
the entrepreneurs to experiment with the design within their own locality. The

combustion principle is so clear, that usually no questions are asked about it but rather
immediate prototyping takes place. The designer no longer posses complete authority
for the project. The designer’s intervention is expanded by the local initiatives at

the very beginning of the adaptation process. It is essential though to recognize that
feedback loops and information sharing are regular aspects of the design process

following the first phase. Some product features demand attention to detail, especially

in aspects of dimensions, materials and relation to local briquette recipes. Experiences
of the designer and other users in relation to burning different briquette systems

come into play here. If the function of the entrepreneur’s design is not discussed, it is
possible that the new system might not work optimally, and enthusiasm for further

implementation of the new type might stop. Thus, communication networks are a vital
part of the Holey Roket design process.

This design project aims to further implement the Holey Roket technology

in several other local communities and environments, and it is primarily focused
on briquette centers with most experiences and largest manufacturing output.

These centers represent a development space for other ‘followers’ to become active
in sophisticating the briquetting technology. East Africa currently represents a

major stove and briquette development context. During my recent visit to Kampala,
Uganda, new relations were established with Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische

Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GTZ) (on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic
Cooperation and Development) which is forming a new research center, similar to

Aprovecho in Eugene, Oregon. Further work with the Holey Roket will unfold within
this center, and the GTZ will provide an immediate environment of development

where the local community might take over the scientific development endeavor.

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IV

“(...) a product that a user-innovator develops and freely reveals might be

perfectly suited to that user-innovator’s requirements but less well suited to
the requirements of free riders [those who take from the discussion without
contributing]. Innovation communities thus illustrate a “private-collective”
model of innovation incentive” (Von Hippel 11)

Eric Von Hippel addresses user participation within ‘open-innovation’ networks in

an interesting way by speaking of very personal contributions from innovators’ own
local development milieu that are not perfectly available for ‘free-riders’ or other

users. Following this, we might theoreticize that other users have to participate more

actively to successfully implement the user-innovators idea. Simultaneously, that these

committed users contribute their own personal milieu to product development. Hippel
aims at showing how the virtual networking enables or even demands recognition of
heterogeneity in product development process.

Household Energy Network (HEDON) is a stove resource network, where

people can source information about stoves from a collective knowledge database and

join the discussion group. The debate is very vibrant (5-10 messages daily); the critical
mass of participants has grown rapidly over the last few years. All the information is

collected on one web-site (http://www.hedon.info), but the discussion of participants

is somewhat separated from the representational space of stoves ‘exhibited’. Briquette
Google group (http://groups.google.com/group/fuelbriquetting) on the other hand

represents a much quieter space, where discussions usually unfold with accompanying
visual material. The community consists of a much smaller number of participants
and the relationships are more informal, sometimes even personal. This allows for

33

the sharing of even smaller-grained contributions and the involvement of participants

with less technical experiences but valuable micro-information. As an extension to the
Google group network, a personal weblog Mdulastove (http://mdulastove.wordpress.

com), documents the process of developing the WWF project of ‘Mdula’ stove and later
Holey Roket stove. The virtual space is set as a working architecture: continuously
rebuilding itself as a side-product of the development consultations involved in

adapting the Holey Roket stove to local environments. The focus of this weblog is to

carefully document the residues of the design process whether in-field or in the virtual
space. Guattari marked this moment as capturing (the work)-in-time. The design

process stays immediate in its nature, while its consequences are mapped according
to what already happened or is still happening and used in further development

process. The space functions as a virtual library database, a tool for the designer

communicating ideas. It’s available and usable for the public, but its reality is bound to
manifest design as service, a consultation.

More than merely offering a generic ‘open-source’ platform to other active

members of the community, these virtual networks allow the designer to participate
on the same hierarchical level with local entrepreneurs and to share his own set

of specific skills, contributing to and sourcing from the common shared material.

With active participation, the designer is directly engaged in collective production

and adopts a user perspective himself. The designer’s immediate environment thus
contributes its own diversity and requires ‘free-rider’ entrepreneurs to adjust the

innovation features according to their local milieu using their-own skills and local

resources. The product development thus depends on each individual environment
and its representative.

Designers act within socio-relational systems and their work often functions

on the basis of micro-initiatives. It is a profound difference from strategically planning
larger-scale product designs with its focus on developing the process of heterogenesis.
Each local milieu develops their stove from the ground-up, accumulating its material

34

within a time/space frame. In Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling calls this specific history
of a product or environment a ‘meta-history’: a historical inscription of geographic,

socio-cultural material. Designers cannot control it, but they can access feedback on
micro-interventions.

A very useful extension of this concept comes into play with Yochai Benkler

and his book The wealth of networks, where he addresses ‘open production’ in
contemporary networking systems:

we are seeing the emergence of a new folk culture—a practice that has been 		
largely suppressed in the industrial era of cultural production—where many 		
more of us participate actively in making cultural moves and finding meaning

in the world around us. These practices make their practitioners better 		

“readers” of their own culture and more self-reflective and critical of the culture
they occupy, thereby enabling them to become more self-reflective 			
participants in conversations within that culture. (Benkler 15)

Benkler offers an excellent contribution to the process of dealing with the

heterogenesis of local environments similar to those engaged with stove development

project. Virtual environments represent a convenient space for participation, which do
not need to be bound to external time frames. Entrepreneurs just don’t respond if they
don’t feel the need. This instance sustains the autonomy of the remote environments.
The design process necessary to developing a satisfactory functional product

might take up more prototypes, as models are adjustments or varied. But the quantity
of prototypes here can represent a valuable richness for other centers from different
cultures. The diversity of skills across cultures has great amplitude on a material or
construction or usage level. Nigel Thrift speaks of how new spaces for innovation

might turn up anywhere, and how they bifurcate according to particular conditions.
Re-appropriating Elizabeth Sanders expression: ‘the fuzzy front end’ (of the design

35

process), we might think about a ‘fuzzy never end’: a process of continuous fluctuation,
as Wheatley, referring a scientific metaphor, might put it.

Through virtual networks, design features are altered through information

transaction. Benkler speaks about the great convenience of participation in the
virtual space: the Internet architecture represents a more informal and finely

grained structure that allows micro-contributions. Networking evolved through

the recognition of this need by users themselves. It allows smaller innovations to

be shared and potentially amplified and used in other contexts. This turned out to
be especially convenient for new stove-entrepreneurs who are yet not recognized

within the virtual community but who have valuable knowledge to contribute to the

discussion. Informal social relations get stronger and support this process by ignoring
formal social or economic constraints that are external to the local community.

Benkler refers to Maurice Godelier and his book Enigma of the Gift, where he speaks

about the essence of the social exchange in both, the modern and the ancient societies:
“The mark of the gift between close friends and relatives (...) is not the absence of
obligations, it is the absence of calculation “(Benkler and Godelier, 109).

In the world of advanced capital, the switch to exclusive gift-economy seems

a rather vague and fuzzy medium for work-related information exchange, but in

some ‘peasant’ societies it was a very crisp relation that was based on respect for
tacit knowledge. The point is that even if social exchange does not require formal
defining of gestures “it still requires tremendous investment, acculturation, and

maintenance. But once functional, however, social exchanges require less information

crispness at the margin” (110). Benkler is surprised social production is ignored as an
economic phenomena, even though it has a great deal of influence on the work done.
Stove network and the relation are first and foremost based on social production

and internal motivation of the entrepreneur to initiate the product idea in his or her
environment.

36

We can recognize the emergent independence of participants that is being enabled
by virtual networks. The ‘peer’ contributions on the Internet are very diverse in
their quality, quantity, and focus, in their timing and geographic location. Its not
that the designer would constructively departure from authority altogether, he

doesn’t even have the access to the control of the product or design process any

more. From the product perspective, this can be a very romantic notion, and you
never know where your project is being developed, in what kind of a bifurcated

state it may departure or exist. The adaptation process will not be limited to a single
effect, but is likely to spread out in ever-widening patterns. It may be amplified by

interdependent feedback loops, which may completely obscure the original source.

Legacy Foundation has distributed over 1000 ‘e-manuals’, describing the process of
initiating briquette manufacturing locally, and this has proved to be a very efficient

tool to spread briquette technology. The series consists of eight issues, ranging from

purely technological to more entrepreneurial skill-sets. The text is easy to access and

understand. Legacy Foundation keeps a very well followed prototyping community of

5-10 biggest manufacturing centers, where ‘training of the trainers’ is taking place and
the most in-depth feedback is tracked. The information is shared globally as an open-

source variation, where the results cannot be tracked anymore. The design process “by
increasing the rate of innovation and invention through the acceleration of connective
mutation” (Thrift 281) is not defined in relation to a final endpoint. The production
process “has no final goals, no natural target or final user, but rather continuously
feeds on itself” (Thrift 295).

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V
Open innovation’ cannot be seen only as one of the next big management fads
but also as a means of challenging current property regimes by building new

kinds of creative commons through a wider culture of knowledge (Thrift 301)
Thrift suggests the new form of efficacy (of the design process) lies somewhere

between business and art with three main deportments: epistemological, economical
and aesthetic. Following Thrift, the Holey Roket stove development has come to

depend on open-source sharing of design ideas and information with users and

entrepreneurs as actual designers in the field. This innovative approach to product
development, with its background in ecosophy and a radical, non-anthropocentric
positioning of the designer as an educator or facilitator of specialized knowledge,
attempts to challenge current property regimes and the conventional process of

product innovation. What we might call a milieu-centered design becomes remote from
the designers intentions and positions the project right in the middle of Thrift’s design
process efficacy definition.

In the development of Holey Roket as an open-source design project, the

interdependent relations between the object in development and the space where

the process unfolds was addressed in a way that finally challenges the physicality or
primacy of both. Moving the design process into a virtual space enabled the stove to
become dematerialized information that consists of many models: prototypes and

final products but represented by one single stove type. In the historic vernacular, a

cooking stove type represents a development of many product generations through a
dynamic, ever-evolving process of adjustments. With actual use (in dwellings and as

tools), users themselves finished the product development, or the product remained

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at the prototype phase and their existence continuously changed or developed over

time. In a local vernacular, the Holey Roket stove type exists in the space of the virtual
through an emerging open-source database, that is becoming ever more resilient with
entrepreneurial participation. This somewhat experimental design ecology is based on
continuous interactions with diverse users, and this has resulted in greater emphasis
on rapid experimentation in the production process.

Novelist Bruce Sterling fictionalizes the open-source product development

in the virtual space, taking the concept to its ultimate ends. In Shaping Things

Sterling shifts the locus of production to consumers, and he demonstrates how

users’ intellectual labor can itself be a powerful source of innovation. With rhetorical
inventions like Spime, Wrangler, Meta-history and Synchronic society, his terminology

is also useful within the Holey Roket project definition. According to Sterling’s

fictionalized design process, every Spime represents a product that has been wrangled

– discussed and developed through feedback in the virtual space by We - wranglers

– individuals who surf Internet and engage in product conception and development.
Thus, Holey Roket represents a product that is currently being wrangled by

entrepreneurs in specific local environments, stove community members, designers,
or other interested individuals. Every stove model contains (and is continuously

forming) its own meta-history – a time/space related description of it, a database
documenting its failures and successes. This information or feedback loop than
constitutes the future of the product design and development.

The stove community is composed of diverse cultures participating in the

process of adaptation that is both actual and virtual. This community is what Sterling
calls a synchronized society that synchronizes multiple histories of the stove spime
and enables the product to evolve in time and space as information accumulates.

In Sterling’s vision, the conception of a shared dialogue and database overrides the

conventional ecological process of design, a process that tends to be bound to control
and inspection of the designer who is outside the circuits or communities of use. The

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virtual environment formed as a weblog or Google-group enables storage system that
is capable of remembering failures as well as successful design adaptation. The Holey
Roket design process recognizes that in different contexts (times or space) that may
represent great opportunities for further development or innovation.

For advocates of open source development, the level of progression, credibility

and ethics of ‘wranglers’ far exceeds the power of corporate or private product

development initiatives. The users that contribute to specialized networks about the
product development usually represent expert users who are often more capable
or committed than employees. The virtual network represents a decentralized

organization for development that is better able to respond to the needs of users

and entrepreneurs, outside of the economic or political situations that tend to define
corporate relations. Returning to the writing of Henri Lefebvre, we might say this

that theoretical and practical foundation is aimed at constructing an autonomous and
dynamic representational space for product development. In this space, designers
might practice the making of stoves as a continuous consultation or collaboration

with briquette manufacturing centers. Thus, a lived and creative (social) space has

been constructed, similar to what Lefebvre signifies with his definition of a peasant
dwelling: “No matter how prosperous or humble such a dwelling may be, it is as

much a work as it is a product, even though it is invariably representative of a type.
It remains to a greater or lesser degree, part of nature. It is an object intermediate
between work and product, between nature and labor” (83). It is simultaneously
“immediate and mediated, given and artificial” (84).

Biomass briquette use represents a direct reflection on Lefebvre’s description

of the dwelling space in which the household is engaged in processing organic waste
material and making mud-stoves on the basis of a local vernacular. This notion

of vernacular design extends its implications to mental, environmental and social
ecologies (Felix Guattari): the ephemeral stove and fuel life-cycle together with

production provides people with a better understanding of the natural material-

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flow where waste material becomes a precious and respectful resource. Briquette
production establishes community settings where ideas are exchanged, fostering

simultaneous innovation in the vernacular sphere. In addition, the new design space

resides in the new virtual-vernacular extending its implications across an alternative
time/space paradigm. My research suggests that the designer should no longer be

thought of as the employee of a particular corporate or organizational strategy, but
instead he or she much be understood to function within a very diverse and opensocial structure. This space might incorporate individuals and groups as well as

users and engineers, and people working in so-called developing and developed

countries. This design strategy opens itself to embrace the ubiquity and ambiguity

with its extensions in the unknown, remote situations—material and social—where

the designer has a limited access and essentially no control to strategically modify
according to a systemic plan. Ultimately, it is design space that unifies these

fragmented or scattered product-histories while simultaneously constructing a new
synchronic society.

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