Baker Cookstove, an Energy Efficient Cookstove by Claesson Koivisto Rune

The majority of women in the developing world prepare food on a technology called a three-stone fire. It is basically three rocks that support a pot with an open fire in the middle. This cooking method is very inefficient and leads to many environmental and health problems. One very real side effect being that children are denied education and future because they are sent to collect firewood. Wood that every day is founder at further distances. The walk takes all day and leaves no time for school.

However, since the three-stone method is a tradition since thousand of years a new stove must allow the user to keep their way of life intact to be successful. The solution found by Claesson Koivisto Rune is to make a stove that burns wood, but as efficient as possible.

The design approach has really been the same as with any design project. Design is about solutions – function, usability, unification – and about adding an immaterial – humane, aesthetic, iconic – dimension.

You can still cook over burning wood, but with the Baker stove you need only one third of the wood of before. In numbers from tests at the University of Nairobi the
Baker Cookstove achieve a 56% reduction in CO and 38% reduction in particulate matter.