A work of art, a place to keep your items and sustainable carbon storage all in one beautiful object. YPCS is designed with our signature approach to AI and generative design and 3D printed using PLA that contains mussel shells.  

Should all art last forever, and what is its role in our daily life? How long is forever, and is just a long time enough? While our Personal Carbon Storage will not provide the answers to these questions, it surely strives to be part of the conversation. We have developed this limited edition artwork using a circular design model, investigating the meeting point of design aesthetics and the lifespan of bio-based materials as a positive contribution to the food production cycle.

Aquaculture 

As intensive farming and unsustainable product cycles contribute to the ecological crisis, aquaculture - the cultivation of shellfish, algae and molluscs - provides a more responsible alternative. Mussels are sustainably farmed, a good source of nutrients and store CO2 inside their shells whilst growing, thus contributing to lowering carbon emissions. They are present in local cuisine on almost every continent, yet after consumption, their shells are usually just discarded, releasing the stored CO2 back into the environment. Returning the shells to the water or repurposing them as a bio-material ensures that the carbon footprint of the mussel production cycle does not increase. Your Personal Carbon Storage provides a beautiful solution by using a mussel-based PLA in the 3D printing process. 

Material Research

As 80% of marine litter is plastic, governing bodies are implementing policies, such as the 2021 EU ban on single-use plastics, to shift towards a circular economy of plastic reuse and increase funding for research and production of biomaterials. 

PLA stands for polylactic acid, a compostable bioplastic derived from plant sugars that can last for a long time when placed under average temperatures, approximately 12 to 18 years. If kept indoors, Your Personal Carbon Storage will bring you joy and purpose for a very long time, yet should you wish to alter its form, it can be reprinted an infinite amount of times or recycled in industrial conditions.

IM-A Studio is dedicated to ongoing research, and we believe that, just like everything on earth, all our projects evolve in time. Currently, each art piece stores 20 grams of CO2; this amounts to 1 km of emissions from a car ride that a tree would need 1,5 days to remove from the atmosphere.