DAILY HAPTICS
How can material experiences reconnect people with tactility in our digitized lives ?
In the digitalized world we live in, our senses are less and less triggered. The interactions that we entertain with everyday devices are lacking sensibility, tactility, sensory experiences.
Senses are just like muscles, if we don’t exercise them, they loose strength ! We might end up in loosing them if we loose our awareness of their importance.
Skin is our largest sense organ, and we experience the world through it. As a textile designer, I am particularly interested in what we call the sense(s) of « touch ». (which probably includes hundreds of different senses : our fingertips for instance can feel warmth, cold, pleasure, pain, pressure, vibration, and an infinite array of textures … ) How sad is that we are loosing our awareness of this plurality ?
Through my design, I am creating tactile experiences in order to reconnect people with tactility, and make them aware of this ability they don’t pay attention to anymore.
My outcomes are a series of everyday objects that are provided with a new materiality in order to make you wonder, question your ability to sense. Sometimes surprising, sometimes attractive, sometimes pleasurable or the opposite, in any case you have to touch the objects, carry them, feel them to get the tactile feedback they can provide you with, and therefore you realize your ability to touch and you can consciously access information.
rouillon.marie@gmail.com
+44 (0) 7503196567
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AIR MOMENTUM
How can air be a tool, a material and a design process?
Using the performance of air as a research and design methodology in textile allows a poetic take on the direction of design for the future which shows how in the context of sustainability, energies will be used not exclusively for harvesting electrical energy or to claim air pollution. Contrarily air will mutate to the production or transformation process of material and lead to the
enhancement of our relationship to space and the current perception of material properties and qualities. Air is found in our environment and acts as an invisible material. The air momentum is about a human vision, perception and relationship to our surroundings and to the natural boundaries of air. Air manifests itself in time and can be documented as an impulse or an action. At the same time air is metaphorically used for “nothing” or ‚‘non existing‘‘ and ‚‘non-material‘‘ because it cannot be seen and it is not easy to control; the indifference and ignorance towards it leads to pollution and scary future scenarios such as the development in geoengineering. The negative connotations air has in our language could be reversed into positive ones that would lead to air being elevated to a tangible notion and appreciation of space.
My project aims to have an impact on imagination and on the relevance of air, even if indisputable, it is still mainly not regarded as such. As the project suggests air is always connected to dreams, the wish to fly, lightness and inspiration, and the task of the project is to communicate the poetry of air in a tangible way.
I have divided my project into three categories: air as a tool, as a material or as a design process. The project combines knowledge about physical laws with poetic experience.
miriam.ribul@gmail.com
+44 (0) 7889668141
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AMY PLISZKA
BEES BESIDE US
How can textiles help inform a new kind of architecture for the urban honeybee ?
The future of mankind is dependant on the survival of the bee.
“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” Albert Einstein
City living potentially provides a rich and varied pollen resource giving bees all the nutrients they require for their good health. Rural bees choosing to relocate in the city may benefit from a new kind of architecture that is designed purely from their perspective.
Textiles have allowed me to explore an architectural alternative for bees to fulfill multi functional aspects of their lifestyle needs.
Using my understanding of honeybee organism I was able to compile my bee brief from which all my textile processes and material choices evolved. My materials had to match necessary practicalities such as waterproofing, insulation and ventilation whilst being visually enticing to bees.
My final collection will be a series of expandable living spaces designed for urban bees, using natural, biodegradable materials. I see these structures as architectural proposals honeybee colonies may choose to inhabit.
Overall I wanted my design to work with the natural cycle of the bees so we can come to understand and more fully appreciate our connection with them.
My main inspiration has been the architecture of bee nests as seen in the wild, forms from fashion particularly the structure of historical bonnets (such as the 18th Century Caleshe), and Le Corbusier’s Chapelle de Ronchamps.
My key themes are biodiversity, relocation (voyages) and choice (freedom).
amypliszka@gmail.com
+44 (0) 7900196853
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SLOW DOMO DESIGN : MODERATING TECHNOLOGY
What will be the house of the future and influence of technology (social networking)? In this utopian celebration of the speed of techno-evolution, is it going to be a prescript need to slow down?
The aim of this project is to address the imbalance and reposition our selves towards technology, reasserting balance by respecting boundaries. I studied a future scenario where the city will be your home. With the development of a software that will be a mix between Fourthsquare, Twitter and Facebook the inhabitants of the city will be able to live as nomads. Issues caused by overpopulation will be solved by the creation of a community that will work in a net where the primary needs for a fulfilled live (eating, washing,etc) will be solved in a an enhance of sharing.
Derived from this hypothesis, issues with personal belongings appear. So in parallel to the software appears a storage service. It will work with a token based system where you will have a virtual space for that object to storage also the memories derived from that object.
All this approach to technology seen it as an Utopia based for me a second reflection about our relationship with networking technology and te need to slow down.
It matches with research that I did at the beginning about the concept of home, as a place which main purpose has to be the creation of self. And a recently approach to read about cyborg anthropology make change to see the project from the perspective of a “positive” dystopia.
My project is built in this need that some of us have to disconnect. To close the door to your 2.0 persona, who is going to be more and more integrated in our analog life with ubiquouss and AIm technology, and to take time to the creation of self.
Through a ritual you will be able to slow down and be able to disconnect and see the laptop as a no business tool or a burden to the hyperconnectivity and create a new environment appropriate for reflection.
+44 (0) 7538882783
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BHARAT BHARGAVA
ENERGIZING NEIGHBOURHOODS
How can design be used to change and improve perceptions about shared spaces?
This project investigates the area of health and fitness and placemaking in the outdoor realm. Initial Research concluded that several neighbourhoods in the built environment currently face challenges of decreased human interaction.
An addition to the city’s ongoing narrative with its outdoor spaces, developing on the existing typology of a park bench a new affordance is created. The outcome of the strategy subverts existing public furniture into a multifunctional object. This new object can also be used for exercise and thereby a new typology is created which aims to question how a public space can be used.
The combined functionality allows for social interaction amongst strangers. It offers opportunities and encourages fitmess in the outdoors for free and is accessible by all. Using human power, this strategy also addresses ownership issues by allowing users to pedal to power their neighbourhood park lighting.
bharatbhargava@gmail.com
+44 (0) 7540350302
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My thesis is centred around the idea that kinesthetic experience can open up new information to a furniture design culture that primarily operates visually in its efforts to re-conceptualize objects. While there have been many strides made in our approach to innovative materials and manufacturing methods, our collective understanding of the physical experience that furniture should support, remains largely unchallenged. One of the reason for this may be that because we are living in such an image orientated culture, that we have become used to working with indirect visual experience as opposed to direct physical experience. There is nothing inherently wrong with operating visually, however when physical knowledge is forgotten, as designers we lose access to massive amount of product information and design data.
So how do we begin to subvert our aesthetic habits and our visual biases? What are the possibilities for more direct research methodologies?
PROCESS:
Choosing the chair as an iconic object to be explored, I created a research process that borrows from the theories of improvisational contact dance and somatic psychology. By physically encountering the chair through intuitive and improvisational movement, I have created my own set of ergonomic data from which to design. In documenting my process, I employed photography and video, as well the use of a body scanner where I took ‘3D’ measurements of these interactions in digital space. Phenomenologically, working with my own body also allows me to gain critical insight into the subtle emotional and psychological nuances of user experience in a way that more visual and indirect manners of documentation might miss.
OUTCOME:
The final aim of the project is to take the design data which is created from ‘direct experience’ and produce a collection of furniture that can then be put out into the public to undergo a kind of universal scrutiny. The information distilled from that process is then information that can be used to create future furniture developments, whether commercial or research based.
annefrobeen@gmail.com
+44 (0) 7403967491
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ELENA NUNZIATA
EDUCATIONAL AND INTERACTIVE FURNITURE FOR CHILDREN
How can furniture engage parents and children in a common experience?
The aim of my research project is to design practical storage whereby children can organize their bedroom through play allowing to develop creativity and imagination according to age.
“Organisation into play” is an effective way for children to learn through a different practice, therefore it is important to create systems that suits the child’s needs.
Narrative is for instance a significant process of human communication and a powerful tool to educate, hence a story behind the furniture can nurture interest for the child. The set of pieces I am designing will satisfy a wide range of families as made of neutral and simple shapes. Such characteristic will be the key to a comprehensible product at the same time sensible for the child as well as attractive for adults. A central element is fantasy in its relation to memories and the transfiguration of ambiguous shapes to stimulate the child ‘s power of invention.
Children and parents’ worlds are connected through a cognitive semantic based on elements that each person recognise by instinct.
elena.nunziata@googlemail.com
+44 (0) 7531595637
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MIN HYUNG LEE
SKIN OF SPACE
Nature, a root of art, provides sources of a creative movement to perceive an infinite mystique and a universal principle of creation. Nature is also a place for lives and the origin to increase consciousness of aesthetic about beauty. Additionally it plays an important role to refine emotions such as disconnection, anxiety, nervousness, loneliness and stress.
Human is born in nature and grows up and goes back to nature. This is a natural circulation as a part of nature. The cycle of creation, growth and extinction in silent order gives us inspiration constantly and we create infinite products and destroy them. We need to recognize that we need harmony with nature.
There are many ways to communicate between people and a space. One of them
That are efficient and active is to stimulate senses such as taste, sight, smell, hearing and touch. The ways for interaction through aesthetic included visual and tactile ways. Senses of tactile and natural texture have a connection deeply. There is no doubt that texture is also a powerful factor. This relationship makes people intriguing and energizing. I hope people can be influence positively by this textured tile.
The intention of this design is to trigger people’s senses and invite people for their personal ‘Journey.’ Natural texture can enhance interactive experience.
light4860@gmail.com
+44 (0) 7859100770
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CSM DESIGN EXPLORATIONS 