Object details
| Designer / Studio | Sree Krishna Pillarisetti |
| Brand | S9XY LLC, United States |
| Materials | Mycelium, hemp and PHA bio-composite enclosure |
| Award | EPDA 2026 Best Eco-Design; Top Design, Cameras: Digital and Sustainable: Eco Design Products |
The disposable camera was built to be thrown away. Its shell, its film and its brief usefulness were all designed around a single trip to the processing counter.
Soft-pixel, by industrial designer Sree Krishna Pillarisetti, keeps the idea of a small, dedicated camera but changes almost everything around it. It received the Best Eco-Design prize at the 2026 European Product Design Award.
The enclosure is grown rather than moulded. Mycelium, the root structure of fungi, is combined with hemp and PHA, then guided through biological growth and heat-press fabrication. The result is a light shell that absorbs impact, protecting the camera and the photos it holds, and that can be composted at the end of its life.
Pillarisetti began working with mycelium during his master’s at Parsons School of Design, where his thesis developed a shock-resistant bio-composite for consumer technology. Soft-pixel carries that research into an object people would actually hold.
The camera’s second argument concerns data. Photos are stored and shared locally, outside phones and data centres, so families and friends keep control of their own memories. Repairability is part of the same idea: ownership extends to the device as well as the images.
Soft-pixel suggests that a sustainable object can have a point of view beyond its material. Here the shell and the storage say the same thing: these pictures belong to you.
View Soft-pixel on the European Product Design Award winner’s page →
Image: S9XY LLC. Photos by Sree Krishna Pillarisetti.
