Pieter De Smul

His ambitions lie in designing, and specifically his preference here falls on running through the design cycle from start to finish: from making a proposal to evaluating tests and finally building a prototype.

His interest in eco-design, in which the emphasis lies on minimal use of energy and raw materials, underpins the design he submitted for the Dyson Design Award, and which we have therefore selected as the deserved winning design.

Of all the entries the Ventra Shower was the best researched and developed solution, and the approach is comparable to that used at Dyson. Just like Dyson, when developing his washing machine, for example, researched the entire clothes washing process, Pieter started out with an analysis of the big consumers of water in a normal home, and then a more detailed analysis of the biggest consumer: the shower. He comes to the conclusion that we use 75% of time spent in the shower relaxing rather than washing!

His radical idea: why not use that water again?

There Is elegance in the simplicity with which he develops his idea. It consists of a valve in the water outlet, which can be opened using the thermostatic shower tap. The valve is normally closed and the water flows down the drain. However, when the water is clean, the user can open this valve by turning a knob at the shower control tap. Then, the water flows via the drain, a filter and the open valve to a Venturi tube. This draws the shower water into the hot water circuit and mixes it. This forms a wonderfully environmentally-friendly solution, which saves a great deal of water. The design can be easily incorporated into existing systems and is practical too. He has even given thought to cleaning the filter.