The Fuel Cover is a manhole cover that serves two essential purposes. Primarily it functions as a safety indicator, displaying the methane and noxious gas levels from the ducts running below the road. Secondly it acts as a hub to harness biogas and kinetic energy that can be used by maintenance workers for their equipments, when they require it. As far as innovation, the precautionary feature serves more purpose than the plausible use as a power reserve. No doubt, the cover looks slick!
Designers: Wang Yi & Ji Ze
Cover yer manhole!
Great concept: take something ugly and make it beautiful. You could invite street artists to create designs for entire neighborhoods to bring more color to urban areas.
I think maybe there’s an underlying problem (mind the pun) if there’s methane gas in a high enough concentration to blow 200lb manhole covers into pedestrian’s lattes. I appluad the effort, but I don’t know if it’s the right place for industrial design. Maybe we can get some civil engineers on the case.
it would be even better if we could harness the gas and channel it somewhere.