Designers in residence 2014: Disruption

Fascinating exhibition at the Design Museum looking at work by this year’s four designers in residence who were given the theme of disruption to explore.

James Christian addresses current housing problems by looking at social housing of previous eras which although it was demolished because of the issues with it did have some good ideas which could be reused. He took as his examples the Victorian Rookeries and the 17th century London Bridge and applied the ideas to the De Beauvoir Estate in East London. The result was  interesting development of roof areas using self-build principles.

Ilona Gaynor looked at a hypothetical legal case regarding a lottery fraud to address how law can manipulated by how evidence is received. She used a series of scale models, photographs and graphical material to discuss the difference between drama and reality.

Patrick Stevenson-Keating looked at the role of the economy and currency via technological interfaces. He looked at how technology can make the connection between the act of digital payment and real money feel remote and how this might be addresses. There was a funky mock ATM producing he made up currency but I couldn’t get it to work.

Finally Torsten Sherwood had developed an innovative new construction type for children to build dens. It consisted of cardboard circles which could be bent and overlapped to produce buildings. There was a set to play with and I think they could really take off! However I think I may have missed how this fit the theme.

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