Brook S. Kennedy

Role: Design and Research Lead

Awards: European Product Design Award 2022, IDA Silver Award 2022

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As a part of the BioDesign Research Group at Virginia Tech, I initiated collaborations with a variety of partners in Germany and the USA in the co-development of three distinct bio-based degradable polymers for the furniture and consumer products industries. After receiving strong interest from industrial partners, I have been developing materials in partnership with the Center for Renewable Materials at UCSD. These materials are especially suited to the work-from-home environments of post-pandemic life. These include over-molded cork, algae based resin/ wood fiber composites and cottonid. While furniture should be designed to last long term, making materials that can be easily reclaimed in a circular economy industrial system will further enhance the environmental performance of the pieces we cherish around us in daily life.

Status: Currently in process. Emerging developments coming soon.

Role: Design Research Lead, Co-inventor.

Awards: IDEA Finalist, Professional Social Impact Category, 2020, Finalist, National Collegiate Inventors Competition 2019, ICAT Innovation Award 2019

Exhibitions: Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC 2019. Featured in the award-winning documentary “Finite Water,” 2019

Press: BBC Newsday (min 45), PBS Newshour, Czech National Radio, CNN, the Washington Post, the Verge, the Boston Globe and more

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Fog Harp collects drinkable water from moving fog. Recent tests demonstrated they can yield more than 10x as much water as existing fog collectors, without energy. At present, the Fog Farm module is an experimental design under development from ongoing university research and collaborating stakeholders in California, Chile and Spain.

Addressing the billions of people facing water scarcity today, fog collecting has played a valuable role in a growing number of communities around the world but it has yet to be deployed at scale. Fog can provide clean drinking and agricultural water that surpasses stringent (WHO) safety standards. A July 31, 2019 PBS Newshour special about water shortages summarizes our fog collecting work.

Fog Harp’s potential lies in the parallel wire design, distinct from cross woven meshes that have been tested widely around the world. These mesh materials are either too porous or so dense they clog with droplets. Parallel vertical wires deter clogging by encouraging droplets to fall away quickly to a gutter below. Fog Harp was influenced by the parallel geometry of redwood tree needles, which satisfy up to 1/3 of the water needs of costal redwood ecosystems.

Working with stakeholders around the world, we have identified 3 essential qualities that fog harvesters must deliver: Durability in high winds, low maintenance and low cost. Communities must be engaged to care and clean these structures. Otherwise they are abandoned when they break.

Fog Harps could be deployed at scale much like wind and solar farms. The project is a collaboration between Brook Kennedy and Jonathan Boreyko with students researchers Weiwei Shi, Jimmy Kaindu, Kevin Murphy, Xandra Jones, Nick Kowalski, Tom Van der Sloot, Josh Tulkoff, Brandon Hart, Zach Kennedy and Mark Anderson. The design was granted a utility patent in 2022.

Role: Industrial Design Team Leader

Awards: Red Dot Best of the Best 2011, IDEA Silver 2011, Spark! Silver 2011, iF Award 2012 and Consumer Reports Best Pick 2013

Press: The New. York Times, Business Week and numerous blogs

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The OXO tot Sprout™ high chair is the flagship of a brand of modern childrens' products aimed at pleasing both parents and children simultaneously. It is designed to last longer by growing with your child.

I led a multi-disciplinary team of designers and engineers from first napkin sketches through manufacture and delivery. Moreover, I partnered with brand and communication designers to define the character of this new brand and business within the OXO portfolio. The Sprout chair contributed to earning Smart Design’s 2010 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, in Product Design as well, one of the field’s top honors. The design pays homage to the adaptable Stokke Trip Trap while adding a more chair-like enclosure for the child.

It sold more that 150,000 units making it a best seller in the USA, EU and Japan. The Sprout™ Chair holds three patents internationally. Photos courtesy of OXO.

Role: Industrial Design Team Leader, Creative Director

Awards: IDEA Gold 2012, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design 2012, and Spark! Silver 2012

Press: Netflix’ Queer Eye Season 5, Episode 6. Tan France recommended the Perch seat for his client.

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The OXO tot Perch booster seat is meant to be versatile, whether in the home or on the go. The seat back folds in making it compact and easy to carry with you to Grandmom’s for thanksgiving or dining out. The OXO tot booster seat was an original idea proposed to OXO based on insights developed from the OXO tot line development. As with most design projects, a diverse, talented team at Smart Design and OXO led to their success. From beginning to the end the Perch team consisted of Steven Vordenberg, Colin Kelly, Charlie Paradise and others. The team for the OXO tot Nest booster seat, shown below and developed later, consisted of Christian Stolarz and Ayca Cakmakli. Neil Kwiatowki led design evolutions later. As of 2024, both the Perch and the Nest Booster seats remain on the market, the Nest in particular receiving high critical review. Photos courtesy of OXO.

Reimagining Alternative Technology for Design in the 21st Century surveys traditional, underused and often abandoned technologies and design systems to explore how forgotten knowledge can be relevant to meet society’s goals today, as energy conservation, single-use product pollution and climate charge are top of mind. Written for designers, architects, academics and a public audience interested in the subject matter. Peer reviewed and published May, 2023 by Routledge, UK and New York.

Role: Industrial Design Team Leader

More about the project: Too often life-stage based products live a short life before graduating to the landfill. Children’s products especially suffer this environmental fate or, alternatively are often mothballed, unused, for sentimental reasons. What if products could be reincarnated and adapt to new uses, or return to old ones? This concept high chair step stool reintroduces an old high chair icon enabling years of practical use after children grow up. This theme was present in the early children’s products I worked on for OXO and has potential to be expanded in other consumer product categories. To that end, this kind of ‘Adaptable Design’ proposes a form of durable design solutions which can serve user needs seamlessly to fit new roles even as the needs of users change over time. Adaptable Design can also serve two functions simultaneously for different users.

Fluid repellent chemicals have provided convenient human benefits in numerous categories: Scotchgard™ for textiles, Rain-X™ for automotive windshields and RustOleum Never Wet™. The disadvantage of these spray treatments is that they wear off and the chemistry ends up in our water systems and bodies. Some of these substances have been linked with serious health problems.

What if materials could be “imprinted” with micro textures that produce the same effect but without washing away? Some plants, such as the Lotus plants have the ability the achieve this goal through micro scaled texture. Today, the manufacture of Lotus leaf-emulating textiles are in the realm of near possibility, for clothing, outdoor gear, umbrellas and architectural surfaces. Sharklet™ an antimicrobial film has been used in pilot settings in medical environments.

Folium, a conceptual bicycle seat, proposes what products using such textiles might be like. Cyclists often suffer the soggy consequences of wet pants after rainfall when their bikes or shared bikes are parked outside. Most bicycle seats, while focusing on comfort and aesthetics, miss a grand opportunity: shedding water. Numerous "workarounds" are visible on bicycles everywhere, from big cities to small college towns (covering the seat with a plastic grocery bag). Folium borrows design principles found in many leaves, notably those of the lotus plant which can famously divert heavy rains from their surfaces, an adaptation of grand utility. Folium received an A' Design Silver Award in 2018 and an Honorable Mention Award with the 2017 Eleven Biomimicry Competition in the UK. Our research group is consulting with a nanotechnology manufacturer to engrave a micro texture into a recycled polyester material suitable for bicycle seats.

Role: Design Research Lead, Co-inventor.

Publications: Bio Inspired Fog Harvesting Meshes: A Review Advanced Functional Materials (Wiley), 2023.

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As an additional frontier of passive water collection research, we have been exploring and developing highly precise, 3d printed geometries that are able to collect substantial atmospheric moisture. These geometries further optimize the bio-inspired principles of coniferous tree nettles to help increase drinking water yield compared with commonly used textiles like Raschel mesh. In the current stage, we are developing ways to rapidly 3d print these geometries at scale such that the 3d printed material can be affixed to existing fog harvesting structures without the need for tensioning. Soon, we will be prototyping custom additive manufacturing machinery able to produce these materials economically and rapidly. Initial prototypes, supported by the instrumental help of research assistant Zach Kennedy, have been preliminarily tested in May 2021. This emerging work has been generously supported by the Institute for Creativity Arts and Technology and the Proof of Concept LAUNCH Fund at Virginia Tech.

Please check back for new updates.

Role: Industrial Designer and Inventor

Awards: A’ Design Silver Award, Consumer Electronics, 2017

Press: NPR, Pulse of the Planet and Zygote Quarterly 19

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Macronaut is a DIY smartphone loupe that greatly augments the optical ability of these devices – applications have included 2 main directions: design inspiration and affordable tele-health scenarios.

Design Inspiration: Macronaut can help anyone discover design inspiration in the minute, barely visible world around us.The natural world especially holds significant insight for solving problems - Macronaut enables users to explore natural phenomenon in ones own neighborhood. Just as Georges de Mestral discovered the principle driving Velcro by looking at burdock seeds clinging to his dog's fur, Macronaut aims to inspire a new generation of inventors. The Fog Harp project, featured in this portfolio, benefited from using a Macronaut to observe and understand fog drip.

Tele-Health Care: Macronaut has also been piloted in primary care phyiscians offices and at home, to help patients understand the severity of bites, cuts and injuries remotely. It can also be used to augment physician diagnostics via online specialist health forums like RubiconMD. Macronaut has been successfully used to help avoid costly specialist consultations by identifying false alarms and has also expedited urgent specialist care. Medai, Macronaut’s medical variant, is under development, using artificial intelligence to identify cancerous skin lesions and tick bite identification.

Macronaut has been published widely and used internationally. The Silver A' Design-winning tool is available for non-commercial use. Please send a message to (brook.kennedy@vt.edu) if you are interested in piloting the tool as a researcher or educator. See more at biodesign17 on Instagram.

In a world searching for new materials that go beyond recycling and biodegradability, looking to the ocean and its bounty provides a wealth of clues. Mollusk shells, including scallops, oysters, clams and many others are ‘manufactured’ using readily available minerals in the sea, including calcium. As these organisms grow they synthesize their own protective armor from these materials, taking carbon dioxide out of the ocean in the process to produce calcium carbonate. This ongoing project explores the ways these mollusks make these shells through their mantles both in terms of material and process. To date, the project explores how Mollusks essentially 3d print their own shells.

Fuse Deposition Modeling (FDM/ FFF) 3d printing offers extensive opportunities for the design and production of products in new ways. While the technology has somewhat democratized access to creating 3d objects, the process uses heat and considerable energy to melt plastic filament to produce a part. Sea shells, by comparison, are built in successive layers in a similar way, using a process which is far less energy intensive, and performed underwater gathering minerals and carbon from the ocean as mentioned before. This project explores how such sea shells could inform the design of 3d printing systems.

A first step in this investigation is Corlayer. Corlayer (Corrugated Layering) uses the print head of an FFF/ FDM 3d printer (like a Makerbot Replicator or Massportal) to produce corrugated layers for building up a 3d printed part. Many FFF/ FDM parts are "isotropic," or, like some woods, split along the grain. By corrugating the filament deposition, thin wall parts can be made stronger along the axis of the filament's deposition. Modeled after the growth layering of specific ocean clam shells' prismatic layer, Corlayer was developed after an inspirational discovery using a Macronaut. An international patent application was filed on June 7, 2017.  The application was published on the WIPO website here on January 25, 2018. Currently, my research collaborators and I are exploring the mechanical and visual potential of manipulating the deposition of filament along the Z-axis. More work is underway, about leveraging biological science in biomineralization to create table top ceramics that sequester CO2 rather than create it through the kiln firing process. Please check back soon.

Role: Lead Industrial Designer at Michael Graves Design Group, 2005

Client: Crypton Fabrics

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Crypton Fabrics, makers of weather resistant textiles, engaged Michael Graves Design Group to design an object for the home to showcase the amazing properties of their fabrics. As part of a team, with Yuka Midorikawa I led the hands-on design and development of this fabric folding chair, based in part on the iconic “Butterfly Chair.” We developed a full scale prototype to demonstrate the unique folding mechanism. The design was intended to celebrate the chair surface (and fabric).

Role: Original concept inventor, Industrial Design team leader, Creative director

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The OXO tot roll up bib was an original concept for children and parents, especially for an on the go parent. I later served as the industrial design creative director through its commercialization. The unique roll up design contains a post-mealtime messy spoon, fork and knife and stores easily in a bag. While the idea received a design patent (it should have been protected with a utility patent), it was mostly unenforceable and the design was widely counterfeited. As of 2024, the product remains on the market with top reviews. Images courtesy of OXO.

Role: Industrial Design Team Leader

Awards: A’ Design 2018, Laudato Si 2017

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Soli is a versatile safety light and flashlight for college campuses. It charges either with sunlight or USB.

Soli was designed for Nokero, maker of solar lighting for emerging economy users lacking grid electricity. Many resort to using kerosene lamps for light after dark. Kerosene and other fuels are responsible for over 1 million deaths per year from smoke inhalation illnesses and fires. Currently, Nokero sells versions of their patented high-performing solar light to emerging markets and has been honored with many awards globally for their humanitarian efforts. Since 2016 I have advised Nokero in design matters including the speculative introduction of US market solar lighting products using a “buy one, give one” business model similar to Tom’s shoes. The collaboration work was undertaken with the instrumental design partnership of Josh Tulkoff. Pictured at left is the development of a flashlight form factor that can be hung, stood up or held in the hand. Developed user research about campus safety, the design earned an A’Design Award in 2018. A second under development variant with a soft triangular section relies more on USB charging but can be solar charged more efficiently with the sun-facing 60 degree angle born of its shape.

Role: Industrial Design Team Leader

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More about the project: I served as creative director leading the design of many programs for SC Johnson’s home care brands, including Scrubbing Bubbles, Pledge, Glade, Raid and Ziplock. These projects were the result of deep consumer research, need finding and strategic roadmapping of opportunities for these brands. Some concepts resulting from my many years working with this client have been embodied and commercialized by competitors and startups.

One of my main contributions here was to identify opportunities for creating new products that meet unfulfilled human needs. What this means is that the designs on this page reflect new products that were developed in teams for clients that were not requested but recommended in the course of the product development cycle. The result has been 20 Patents issued in the US, Europe, China and Canada (a full list can be viewed here). 

Well health was a startup venture for which I served as Design Director and co-founder in 2014-2015. The flagship product, a connected tele-health thermometer device monitors a family member’s temperature over time that can be shared with health professionals remotely.  More comprehensive data offers better diagnostic results. The form factor was designed to promote reassurance to a sick child (by enabling one to hold the child’s head), rather than inspiring fear by looking like an invasive probe. The technology is enabled by low-energy bluetooth and an infrared (IR) sensor to take temperature from the skin. Minimum viable product prototypes were developed along with a navigable UI that aggregates data from the device. Well was honored as a finalist for both Tandem and Highway1 hardware accelerators in San Francisco, CA in 2014. Today, Withings, a subsidiary of Nokia, developed Thermo which achieves a similar result and which has received numerous honors. Note the uncanny similarity in some details. Such devices have proved highly useful during the Covid-19 pandemic, where quick temperature readings have been a front-line tool to avoid the spread of the deadly virus. More such devices are needed to reduce costs and increase accessibility of this vital technology.