Saad Chinoy — Make
Things That
Make Sense.

Equal parts barista, biologist, and systems thinker. SalvageGarden began in 2018 as a volunteer interest group I co-founded with a number of other volunteers, as a space where broken things become building blocks — where e-waste becomes educational kit and discarded hardware becomes assistive technology. It remained an interest group until it was formalised in 2022 with the help of LJ (Leong Chia Jang).

EdibleMakerspace is where that same salvage instinct meets food and citizen science — a DIY bio community space for fermentation, environmental sensing, and participatory design. Its current work includes CitizenQuack: sensor nodes inside 3D-printed ducks (or whatever creature the community chooses that month) whose posture, colour and quack change with what they are sensing — air quality, humidity, noise, and more — built from the FAB25 “Smart Citizen Meets Meshtastic” hackathon, and now feeding a Singapore node of PLANETAI.

My practice lives at the art-science boundary: co-creating tactile games with disability communities, fermenting SCOBY bioplastics, running microbial fuel cell workshops, and building open-source braille printers across Southeast Asia.

I believe open source is infrastructure for democracy. The recipe should always be shared.

Guiding Principles

1. 01
   Reflexive Making

   Constant questioning of the tool and the result.

2. 02
   Frugal Innovation

   Maximising utility with minimal resources.

3. 03
   Salvage-Design

   Repair, reuse, and repurpose over buying new.

4. 04
   Inclusive Co-Creation

   Making with communities, not for them.

5. 05
   Open Source as Empowerment

   Technical transparency as a social right.