Consumer Products
SurfaceID led the industrial design and engineering of the entire Plantaform system, turning an early concept built on NASA-developed fogponics into an award-winning smart indoor garden and carrying it through to Plantaform 3.0.
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Plantaform is built on fogponics, a NASA-developed growing technology that feeds plants with a nutrient-rich mist instead of soil. When Plantaform came to SurfaceID, it had a promising early industrial design concept, but the shapes still needed refinement and it still needed full mechanical engineering. SurfaceID took that good beginning and made it remarkable. We refined the proportions, the surfaces and the sculpted enclosure until the garden looked like a premium appliance, and we did all of the mechanical engineering needed to turn it into a real, manufacturable smart indoor garden.
Plantaform chose to build in Canada. In 2024 it partnered with Gatineau’s Centre de travail Laro, a social enterprise, to assemble the gardens locally, a move Plantaform says increased its assembly output by 400% within weeks. In January 2025 the Smart Indoor Garden launched in the U.S. at CES 2025, where it was named a CES Innovation Awards® 2025 Best of Innovation honoree. In February 2025, CBC released Plantaform’s web-exclusive Dragons’ Den pitch, and the company announced a deal with Dragon Michele Romanow. In 2026 Plantaform opened pre-orders for Plantaform 3.0, the next generation, which SurfaceID also designed and engineered.
Starting from Plantaform’s early concept, SurfaceID delivered the industrial design and all of the engineering for the entire Plantaform system, from the original Smart Indoor Garden through to Plantaform 3.0. As Plantaform’s product development partner, our job was to turn a promising idea into an engineered, manufacturable product.
Inside one compact enclosure, our engineers packaged the fogging system, water reservoir, lighting, electronics, sensors, airflow, growing chamber and access panels, and worked through sealing, condensation, ventilation, assembly and serviceability, prototyping as the technology evolved. On the design side, we shaped the whole growing cycle, from setup and planting to refilling, harvesting and cleaning, and created the form, proportions and surfaces that make it feel like a premium appliance, not farm equipment.
At the heart of the garden is fogponics, a form of aeroponics with roots in NASA research. An ultrasonic fogger turns water and nutrients into a fine fog that fills the sealed root chamber and feeds the roots directly, with no soil. Pre-seeded plant pods sit on a central tower under built-in grow lights, and the Plantaform app manages lighting, fog cycles and the growing environment, then tells you when to refill or harvest.
15 podson 3 levels of 5
Ultrasonicfog feeds the roots
Applight, fog, temp, humidity, fan
~3 weeksto first harvest*
2–3 weeksbetween refills*
~60 Waverage power use*
*Plantaform’s figures; results vary by plant variety.
Water-savings and performance figures are Plantaform’s claims.
“The enclosure is one of my favorite aspects of this smart garden… The tinted windows of the Plantaform pod block the majority of that light, making it much more plausible to keep indoors.
Patrick Hearn, Digital Trends
“What sets Plantaform’s Smart Indoor Garden apart is that it uses nutrient-rich fog and no soil to help plants grow faster inside the system.
House Digest, Best of CES 2025
“…a fresh-produce garden year round, requiring minimal work, that also looks so futuristically awesome.
Katherine Stevenson, PCWorld, Best of CES 2025
Also named a Best of CES 2025 pick by PCWorld and House Digest. More coverage: Plantaform press page.
The Plantaform Smart Indoor Garden at home, in black and white. All generations designed and engineered by SurfaceID.
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