Let’s ‘ketchup’ folks!

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Future Primitives

Have you ever tried to get ketchup out of bottle at dinner table and either ended with a mess or no condiment despite using all kinds of implements?

An Indian-origin engineer, Prof Kripa Varanasi, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his research team, the Varanasi Research Group, has designed a coating, named LiquiGlide, which once applied to bottles, canisters and tubes, helps thick contents slide out easily. The best part is that, the coating is made of food materials and can also be ingested.
The coating was applied to a ketchup bottle by the research team and it made the bottle non-sticky and if used commercially it can reduce food waste drastically.
The revolutionary invention has been shortlisted by London’s Design Museum for its annual prestigious Design of the Year Award. It is one of the best designs from around the world in the last 12 months chosen from the seven subdivided categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Product and Transport.
The winners will be announced in April. Last year, the prestigious award was won by design studio, BarberOsgerby for the London 2012 Olympic Torch.
Olympic Cauldron by Heatherwick Studio; Britain’s latest skyscraper, The Shard, designed by Renzo Piano; British-based Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid’s Galaxy Soho building in Beijing; and the Book Mountain in Holland town of Spijkennisse are among the shortlisted designs. A prototype pair of self-adjustable glasses for children with no access to opticians by the Centre for Vision in Developing World in Oxford and a wheelchair that folds flat with its revolutionary collapsing wheels technology by Vitamins Design have also been shortlisted for innovative product designs.
Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul has also been shortlisted. The Museum of Innocence is a book by Pamuk, telling the story of the novel’s protagonist, Kemal in 1950s and 1960s Istanbul. Pamuk set up the museum, based on the description in the book, exhibiting everyday life and culture in Istanbul during the period in which the novel is set.
Award-winning exhibition Road in London’s South Kensington by Dixon Jones, which integrates vehicle and foot traffic with its rejection of boundaries between pavement and road, also has been shortlisted for the Design of the Year award.
Zaha Hadid has been nominated for the second time for Liquid Glacial Table, which resembles running water.