Geo H2O
Self-watering plant pot
Taking care of plants is something a lot of people have issues with, and chief among these issues is watering. Too much or too little will result in the health of your houseplants declining. The Pikaplant Geo H2O automatically waters your plants so you don’t have to. Just refill the reservoir about once a month and most houseplant species will thrive.
I worked on the Geo H2O project in 2019 for Pikaplant, a company with a range of products which make it easier to care for your plants. For the Geo project, we aimed to make a smaller and simpler product using the absorbing quality of porous clay, which draws water from a reservoir and moistens the plant’s soil. I worked on the design and detailing of the product, helped with the necessary research. With the final design ready to produce, I designed, furnished and staffed a ceramic production space and oversaw the production of the product from raw material to shipping.
The basic structure of the pot was to have a ceramic plant pot submerged in water in a glass reservoir. There are many shape configurations that accomplish this, so this was a field to be thoroughly explored. The final shape should be a continuation of the existing Pikaplant product line, and be the starting point of a new ceramic line that could be extended with many variations in shape, size and purpose. Knowing the products that fulfill the same function or use a similar watering method, the Geo should stand out from the competition and be a better product overall.
The final design is pictured below. The ceramic part is the main focus. White ceramic is used with a slightly speckled white glaze. The rounding at the top is continued in the visible bottom glass edge. If the water level is visible here, the reservoir should be refilled. From this point on in the design, exact functional properties needed to be researched and the production set up.
One way of getting to a better product was to really nail down its functionality, i.e. watering houseplants sustainably. Providing the plants with the correct amount of water was crucial and required the fine-tuning of the ceramic material and the finishing. Only the unglazed surface area of the ceramic will absorb water, so this surface area was used to regulate the flow rate.
After inquiring many ceramic production companies none of them could provide us with a shape of this complexity and guarantee the specific glazing requirements. It was decided to do the production of the ceramic part in-house. This required a fully furnished new ceramic production space and a team of production employees to carry it out. The space was designed from scratch, allowing for an optimal workflow of the slip casting production method.
After the first production batches were done the Pikaplant Geo H2O was ready to sell. The packaging was designed to protect, inform and present the product in the best way. The self-watering plant pot comes with a soil tablet, information booklet, and additionally seeds or plants can be purchased together with the pot to start enjoying it straight away.
