How can design preserve culture in a changing world?

Brief Propose a new model for the human-ocean relationship. This project was the outcome of a collaboration between the Royal College of Art and the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution), seeking new futures for coastal communities.

Concept Seeshell is a biocentric ocean health monitor that reinforces the human connection to the ocean environment. Seeshell tracks shellfish motion to measure water contamination, and demonstrates the ability of clams and mussels to purify the ocean. Seeshell introduces a new point of exchange with aquatic life; as commercial fishing fades to tourism and climate change threatens fisheries Seeshell expresses the tangible value of native species if cultivated and helped to flourish.

Insight The town of Poole, England was the inspiration for this project and basis for ethnographic field work and literature analysis. This proposal comes in response to several large seawater contamination events along the Southeast Coast of England, and the observation that as Poole’s economy drifts away from the seafood industry an important cultural history fades from daily life.

Replace a button with a mindful act.

Concept Instigate interaction with natural materials in the built environment. Rockbell is a new form of interface that calls attention to mundane actions. Strike one rock with another to trigger a ring; the act of arrival becomes a meditative and restorative experience.

Insight Rockbell is a respite from technology and mass-manufactured materials; a more fulfilling sensory experience that feels like an escape to nature. Rockbell was inspired by Florence Williams’s The Nature Fix (which details the myriad of benefits that come from exposure to the outdoors) and the overly digital world of the remote days of covid-19.

How does the practice of healthcare change when we emphasize sensory information over absolute measurements and values? This thermometer reminds the user to pay close attention to signals from their body, and that sickness and health are more than binary.

This device produces two tones, one effected by the user’s temperature. The device is tuned so a healthy temperature will align the two sound waves and a slight fever will prevent the tones from synchronizing. Place device to forehead and listen (closely) to your body.

Out of the cupboard and into the living room.

Brief How can something seldom used become something useful?

Concept Cam Bench is a furniture set that creates utility from the state of being in storage. Cam Bench repurposes objects, material, tools, and scraps as utilities. A pair of triangular legs act as a fixture for a bench or coffee table, providing a sturdy base to support seats made of ladders, brooms and mops, leftover construction materials, and anything else too important or sentimental to throw out. The legs secure a seat without tools or fasteners, simply by rotating into place; to make building accessible to non-builders, and to avoid modifications to supplied material.

Potential user-supplied seat materials include: cardboard boxes, fence posts, sticks and yard trimmings, books and paper, boats and oars, camping equipment, car parts, broken furniture, pallets, bodies.

Insight Households accumulate clutter, storage fills up. We hold artifacts, materials, and tools for their nostalgic value, potential future need, or their expected but infrequent use. Could these utilities be preserved without taking up space?

Making the mundane absurd. Flexible rubber case for glasses.