From ink sucked out of car exhausts to a seat made from Chilean lava, the Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition at London's Design Museum showcases a vision of the future through design innovation.
© Luke Hayes, Design Museum
Grouped around 5 themes - Innovators, Activists, Brands, Makers and Builders - the designs on show reflect many of the most important issues upon us today: the environment, political divisions and humanitarian causes, the changing face of branding, the importance and revival of craft skills, and buildings and how they can adapt to complex local conditions.
Future Cities
Some of the most impressive designs on show were within the Innovator category, where designers were tackling the environmental challenges of transport, and how our future cities could operate.
Carlo Ratti - Italian architect, engineer, inventor, educator and activist - showed his 'Light Traffic' project, a traffic system designed for our future self-driving age.
The project sees sensor-equipped vehicles smoothly flow across a junction. Each car is allocated a crossing slot when they approach a junction, with their speed correspondingly adjusted to facilitate a safe distance from other cars. The technology could see huge reductions in both journey times and the amount of pollution emitted from otherwise stationary traffic.
Ratti states:
“Traffic intersections are particularly complex spaces, because you have [at least] two flows of traffic competing for the same piece of real estate. A slot-based system moves the focus from the traffic flow level to the vehicle level. Ultimately, it’s a much more efficient system, because vehicles will get to an intersection exactly when there is a slot available to them.”
(For Londoners, Carlo Ratti's forthcoming Royal Academy talk, 'Do you live in a senseable city?' is on 18th February. Tickets can be bought here)
Carlo Ratti 'Light Traffic' (Video courtesy of Dezeen)
Further sensor-led innovations hinted at new solutions for mass transit; the Autonomous Rapid Transit (Art) is a train which runs without a railway track and has many advantages over traditional transportation - it is easier to navigate than a bus, more flexible than a traditional train, and cheaper than running a metro. The train is currently in use in China, with plans to trial the system in America.
Autonomous Rapid Transit , image courtesy Design Museum
Creating a 'smart, safe and sustainable option for getting around', 'Olli' is the world's first self-driving, electric, cognitive, partially 3D-printed vehicle. Produced in partnership with IBM Watson, customers can simply book a trip via an app, much like an Uber. Once in the 12-seater shuttle, customers can chat with Olli, who can give local recommendations and weather advice.
'Olli', image courtesy Technical Institute of Denmark
The field of sensor-led and big data design was pivotal to some recent consultancy work I undertook about the future of the mobile workforce for a major technology company. My research uncovered the huge possibilities of new smart buildings, where sensors, big data and technology will combine to create a more harmonious, productive, energy-efficient and personalised workspace for happier employees.
Manufacturing Redesigned
Several projects on show sought to reinvent traditional manufacturing processes, incorporating new 3D printing technologies to create benefits for the environment and in democratising design.
Othr is a brand at the cutting edge of 3D print design. Billed as 'a de-centralised Bauhaus for the 21st century', the company collaborates with designers across the globe, using Dropbox and Skype to circumvent the limitations of geographical locations. Designer collaborations have linked the brand's New York City studio to designers from countries such as Bangalore, Norway, Montreal, Valencia, Brussels and Switzerland.
Zoë Mowat for Othr
As designer and judging panel member Steven Learner states:
"With the cost of living in major creative capitals skyrocketing, this working method may soon become a reality for designers everywhere."
Claiming to have surpassed the possibilities of 3D printing before it's even been fully realised, Rapid Liquid Printing is a process involving a robotic apparatus that extrudes shapes in a tank of gel. The gel hardens as it is printed, creating shapes that immediately become objects.
Interestingly, the process was developed by the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in association with Steelcase, an American furniture company.
Rapid Liquid Prototyping at Design Miami, image courtesy Dezeen
Second Life
Environmental concerns are at the forefront of many designer's minds, evident in the array of material innovations on show at the Design Museum. Many designers are turning to working with materials that are found abundantly in nature, that naturally biodegrade, or are developing processes that upcycle existing materials.
ECOALF is an upcycling initiative from Madrid that converts waste from the sea bed, such as pellets, yarn and fabric, into a selection of wearable products including accessories, clothing and footwear. The resulting products are designed to prompt the fashion industry into reconsidering how they could be more environmentally-friendly.
Image courtesy ECOALF
Similarly working with upcycled materials, furniture designer Max Lamb has collaborated with Kvadrat on a series of benches that are made from recycled textiles. The project aims to show the possibilities of Kvadrat's 'Really' sustainability start-up, which uses end-of-life fabrics such as cotton and wool.
Max Lamb for Kvadrat
gt2P, a design collective based in Santiago, began experimenting with the highly abundant material of lava back in 2013, and have since created lamps, tiles and stools from the material. The design collective are releasing their research data this year, hoping to promote wider applications in new and existing industries.
'Remolten' by gt2P
Operating at the opposite end of the design life cycle, Christien Meindertsma's Flax Chair is entirely biodegradable. The chair is cut from a board - comprising flax and a sustainable glue derived from sugar cane and corn starch - before being bent into form. The designer chose to work with flax after discovering it required very little resources to grow. The chair is the winner of two Dutch Design Awards.
Flax chair by Christien Meindertsma
The Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition shows an exciting and optimistic vision of the future, from sustainable material innovations, to future-ready manufacturing and smart sensor-led cities. The exhibition continues at the Design Museum until the 18th February.