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Industrial Design Student Work: An In-River Bamboo Washing Machine

This Bamboo Washing Machine concept, designed by a team of no less than eight ID students from China’s Dalian Minzu University, is intended to free up time for those living in extremely rural circumstances. “Laundry is very time-consuming, especially in rural communities,” the team, led by Xu Bin, writes. “[The] Bamboo Washing Machine helps people free up their time in rural communities so they can channel their time and energy to more meaningful activities, like combating poverty.”

The idea is that the slatted housing’s spiked feet are driven into the riverbed. Water flows into the bottom, rotating an array of impeller blades. This then rotates the bucket full of clothing placed within it, providing a primitive agitating action.

The thought is that each family in the village would have their own bucket, with the main housing being a communal object.

I’m not convinced that the housing itself wouldn’t wash away, and I’d like to see some shots of the bottom of the buckets to see what provisions they made for drainage. But overall the concept is interesting, and I greatly prefer seeing design student work that addresses poverty rather than the current and worrying trend towards producing “luxury” goods.