The most important point of urban building is its response to the urban environment, culture, and history. The main purpose of urban building is to better integrate the building into the surrounding environment, maintain the continuous urban streetscape, create attractive architectural spaces, while also contribute to the creation of a beautiful and harmonious urban environment.

This portfolio is mainly about the design of an urban building for health and well-being located on Clyde Street in the city center. Start from the urban background scale to the specific block scale, discussing the selection of site and the potential of the site. Then, by introducing the site research, analyzing the current problems of the site and possible causes, and providing certain solutions to these problems. These research lead to the selection of the program. Finally, combined with the analysis of the urban context, a design scheme is proposed.

The following study explores a new form of urbanism that can take over the Glasgow city center. The study is based on observations and modeled with reasoning studying theories that back the reasoning. The study looks at modeling an architectural form that amalgamates architecture and play using an array of curated elements, thresholds and functions. The study is developed in 3 stages:

Stage 1: Observations The observations collected have been collected post exhaustive exploration of Glasgow’s city center, especially its history, culture and development over time. The site was analyzed for its land use, junctions, accessibility, density, pedestrian and vehicular traffic, larger city connections as well as the differences in elevations. These observations culminate in raising a series of questions. These questions, in turn help in pointing our certain obvious issues with the urban fabric. The lack of open to sky spaces, the rising levels of density, the lack of breakout spaces and the diminishing centers of public assembly. Conversely, the observation couples with questions helped the analysis of site in terms of identifying its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Moreover, the observations, lead to the exploration of play as an architectural element. The observations prove to be an important stage of our study as they are notes to fallback on and model design developments from the perspective of children and adults, in adherence to their movement and activity across the site.

Stage 2: Literature Primary and secondary data collection was all done in adherence to references and citations that have explored similar strategies in similar situations to create new forms. The study of literature culminates in the analysis of site that provides us with a formidable hypothesis – architecture and play can be amalgamated to create an urban form. The urban form itself is developed from experiments around expansion and contraction of spaces that respond to changing vision cones. The composition and organization of architectural elements is curated to efficiently engage user groups and functions. Furthermore, the parameters set for data analysis emerge from the surrounding buildings and site barriers, thrusting the study us to adopt and iterate Stallan Brand’s design proposal.

Stage 3: Modeling parameters The architectural language is developed as a result of user movement, site massing, and composition of the form. Plot divisions, accessibility, and functions give an order to aesthetics and design. The massing itself is a response to the urban fabric. It is an attempt to play with surfaces that integrate seamlessly into one another and the streetscape. The urban form generated as a result of design development addresses the notion of play at varying thresholds. It imbibes the childlike wonder of being in spaces, exaggerated through modeling of masses, portals, and thresholds in accordance with a user experience that looks at users to develop their own navigation system based on the order the form adopts from materiality and color. It is an attempt to curate scales such that it creates a paradigm shift in the way we look at Glasgow’s urban fabric.

Conclusion

The form is majorly modeled to be an open public space that curated movement by instilling a sense of navigation on its elements. The entire form can be collectively viewed as a coming together of the smaller kits of parts and engage with one another at varying scales. Each part has a certain role to play in hosting children and adults and activating multiple functions using materiality and color.

The integration of play through the urban form is rooted within the response the form offers by opening up its ground plane and terraces (both of which are internally connected as well). The permeable nature of the built form, in terms of both structure and the skin, develops from contracting and expanding spaces based on the site parameters and the surrounding built form. Furthermore, distinct circulation blocks double as navigational nodes that engage users and help them develop a sense of wonder through navigation.

The attempt is to create a new sense of urbanism amidst the city center, one that is more inclusive and active in its approach and management of users, that provides breakout spaces at varying scales and forms to develop niches that can best activate the structure in terms of aesthetics and functionality. There is a careful consideration given to threshold treatments and their engagement with the user is particularly curated to create memorable experiences through exaggeration of scale and modeled features such as furniture, walls and openings. Holistically speaking the urban form is an experiment that stemmed from the observations of Merchant city’s urban fabric. It is an attempt at bringing curiosity back into the users by appealing to everyone’s sensibility, vision and movement to narrate a sequence of urban play.

Creative Urban Practice.

An artistic exploration into urban space.

The production of a series of digital screen prints to create opportunity for speculation on how terrain vague urban spaces are viewed.

The considered urban spaces are ‘terrain vague spaces’. These spaces are often under appreciated, or misunderstood. They are overlooked.

This project consists of a series of images to provoke the viewer to consider these ‘terrain vague spaces’ differently, to contemplate value in otherwise undervalued spaces.

The artistic process allows characteristics of terrain vague spaces to be revealed. Highlighting the spaces value, and prompting these spaces to become part of the city in a way that wasn’t previously considered.

The final output of the project is three series of art practice, digital screen print images, which challenge conventional readings of urban space. Each series draws attention to a key principle of terrain vague spaces evident across three studied sites.

The images use abstraction to allow for the displacing and realigning of knowledge to realign thought. Specifically, this is the realigning of logic from spatial knowledge to re-frame thought on urban space.

Printed editions at A0.

The ‘Other’ Playground: An Interactive and Heterotopic Right to the City

This project speculates about the exercise of the public’s right to play in the city through an interactive three-dimensional design proposal. Developed out of a rich understanding of the host space, the project combines the ideas of community gardens and sculptural playgrounds, to convert a previously in-between, overlooked or interstitial space in Glasgow into a site of rich cultural activity.

Through embodied experiences of play, the design aims to engage and stimulate an interaction amongst the local population and the site; improving and enhancing the relationships between the body and the urban fabric, whilst giving the users a voice to celebrate their own imagination and creativity.

Based in Possilpark, the project takes advantage of growth opportunities and embraces innovative ways of working to develop a model for finding sustainable, attractive and economically viable ways to re-engage interest in lost and forgotten civic spaces. Until around 1870 Possilpark was no more than a mansion house and home farm with few residents.

Since the 1950’s Glasgow, as with many cities across Scotland, has seen the demise of its industrial sector. The inter and post-war period was the most traumatic for the industries and although Glasgow clung onto being the “workshop of the Empire”, by the 1990s most of the engine shops were derelict and the shipyards reduced to wasteland. The most rapid deindustrialization took place during the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the traditional industries drastically shrunk or completely closed down. Although many initiatives promised revival, a shift towards a new service-oriented economy emerged to replace traditional heavy industries. This left many Scottish cities peppered with derelict spaces and industrial wastelands.

Possilpark was unable to avoid this pattern of urban decay, and today 100% of residents live within 500m of vacant or derelict land. The district is also one of Scotland’s most deprived areas with 15% undeployed.

The site is located on the intersection of Allander St and Barloch St in Possilpark.

Previously supporting the east corner of a tenement block, demolished in 1970, the stalled space currently functions as a car park.

Along with the scale and derelict condition of the space, which provided a huge canvas for the project, the fundamental reasons for choosing the site was its location in Possilpark and the area’s social demographic context. At the epicentre of one of Glasgow’s poorest neighbourhoods and running parallel to Saracen Highstreet, the site provided the opportunity to benefit an extremely diverse and deprived community.

The site, as with many streets throughout Possilpark, had become an avenue of anonymity, rather than a place of rich culture and activity. After visiting the site and talking to local residents it became apparent the traditional sense of a community had broken down. The increased transience of people in and out of Possilpark had developed a situation of people living in close quarters to each other but operating very isolated and separate lives. This ultimately breeds fear, contempt and frustration, bringing on a sense of alienation and powerlessness within the community.

This observation drove the development of a community based, public spaces project. These spaces are important assets to the urban fabric, providing people with opportunities to come together and engage with the community. When successful they can become a ‘self-organising public service’ for everyone in the society to participate in, learn from and to help create local attachments.

In Topographies of Contemporary Architecture Ignasi de Solà-Morales says architecture has gone silent. However, have we in fact just become deaf to the spaces around us through a lack of interaction and embodied experiences of play?

Relying less on visual stimulation and targeting a wider range of sensory stimuli the proposal shows how adding something new and enhancing the existing can positively change the way we experience and interact with the built environment.

The visuals explore the finer details of the design, whilst showing the inhabited capacity and tactile nature of the space from four different perspectives. To represent the demographic of people in Possilpark the images are populated with a range of figures, of varying heights, body shapes and abilities. These figures animate the design; suggesting how the space could be used and the rich variety of experiential goals the design can yield.

The project did not explore the technical details and specifications of the designed objects; how they would be made and what they would be made from, however, the visuals suggest a pallet of materials and textures which would achieve the goals of the space and design.

A conscious decision was made to crop the images and shape the field for view. Stepping away from a rectilinear frame not only avoided traditional presentation aesthetics, in line with the motifs of the project but also listened to David Hockney’s criticism of ‘traditional’ photography’s static field of view, revealed during early research into collage. Furthermore, the use of organic shapes to frame the visuals playfully focuses the attention on the designed space, drawing the eye into the centre of the space and reducing the attention given to the surrounding buildings.

After graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2019 with a first-class in BA (Hons) Interior Design, I am extremely proud to have completed my masters of Architectural Studies at the Mackintosh School of Architecture.

Having spent the last two summers interning at Interior Visions in Thailand and Waldo Works in London, I’m currently looking to widen my knowledge and experience within the growing discipline of design and architecture.

Sushmitha Srihari is a Postgraduate student at Mackintosh School of Architecture. Through the work experience as an architect, she believes the built environment is the key element which shapes the city and its people. At GSA, she has been learning the concepts of Urban design and their applications in today’s world.

The research and design project is focused on urban issues such as i) tension between the future of markets as a city-wide ‘destination’ versus neighbourhood or local amenity ii) Importance of socialising space in the city. The research conducted shows the study of 19th C market building typologies in the UK and Socialising patterns or usage of markets in the daily lives of the people.

This project studied and combined sociological, historic and architectural research to envision one of the most complex spaces in the urban fabric – the market place. Each of these aspects can define and impact the local economy and trade as well as how public open spaces are perceived. The project is aimed to understand how to successfully regenerate the market place as a lively functional and economic community space in the urban setting.

Activating Edges and Shadow

Resolving the Western M8 Corridor in Glasgow

Glasgow’s City Centre has the majority of its area devoted to roads and parking. In order to prioritise social and spatial justice, Glasgow needs to manage its walkability, safety, sustainability and quality of public spaces and places. This is how the city will be able to tackle current challenges, as well as creating robust infrastructures which allow flexibility for future needs and uses.

The lack of quantity and quality of public spaces across the stretch in study creates a hostile place to be. The traffic of motor-vehicles dominates the surrounding areas, leaving pedestrians to dark underpasses or bridges, neither being DDA accessible. In order to enhance quality of life and attractiveness, Glasgow needs to promote healthy lifestyles through its surroundings. The control over noise and air pollution is also essential to create welcoming and pleasant spaces for people. Increasing the amount of open green spaces which also work as connectors between neighbourhoods could transform the city boundaries and shadows from hard & dead, to soft & vibrant places.

Could the activation of the M8 Motorway corridor in Glasgow resolve its unjust, segregated and car-dominated city fabric? This is the current thesis aim when activating the West M8 motorway corridor in Glasgow.

‘Edges’, through the knowledge from Kevin Lynch (1960), this author understands the M8 corridor as the fragmented edge of Glasgow, segregating and isolating neighbourhoods and uses. Therefore, when ‘activating edges’, new purposes and uses are introduced to the M8 corridor, ‘stitching’ the urban fabric and aiming to transform it into a uniting seam.
‘Shadows’, in this context, being the forgotten undercroft spaces from the M8 corridor, having the understanding of the great spatial qualities inherent to these spaces with the intention of also integrating them back to the urban fabric.

The research for this design project includes three main methods: expanding knowledge through key literature; analysing case studies; and utilising methods of engagement with citizens from the areas adjacent to the M8 corridor.

Important concepts from Henri Lefebvre (1971), Edward Soja (2010), David Harvey (2012), Richard Sennett (2006), Christopher Alexander (1977), Jane Jacobs (1961), Jan Gehl (2010) and Kevin Lynch (1960) have been noted. The case studies selected have similar physical settings to the current proposed site, which means, case studies of car-dominated barriers between neighbourhoods or between city and river. Lastly, a community engagement study gathering public opinion over urban settings was undertaken in Anderston, one of the neighbourhoods next to the M8 corridor. This study was made in partnership with the community centre ‘The Pyramid’ based in the same neighbourhood. This study utilised of an online map of the neighbourhood, where citizens could add comments at locations which they felt needed improvement. The project created by the Glasgow City Council called ‘Connecting Woodside’ was used as a key reference.

As a result of this investigation, this research found how important open spaces are to deliver greater justice within urban environments and how the human dimension should be a priority when coming to urban design. It also found how adaptability, flexibility in program, relationship to its surroundings and placing essential amenities are important to deliver density, and therefore diversity to the chosen site. Lastly, this design proposal has answered successfully, within its own means, the research question: yes, it is possible to achieve better justice, integration and pedestrian-friendly city fabric through the activation of the M8 Corridor in Glasgow.

However, there are points in which this proposal could be further developed. This author understands the need for deeper community involvement. The current research, due to COVID-19, could not deliver the full picture through its current methodology. This author also understands the degree of importance of topics such as gentrification and policies in order to truly deliver justice within cityscapes, therefore, further studies are necessary in order to implement this proposal to Glasgow’s urban fabric.

The rapid development of the global civil aviation industry has led to a surge in the number of airports. Airport departure hall consumes a lot of energy throughout the year due to their large size, complex function, busy business and long operation time. Among other functions the energy consumption for artificial lighting and air conditioning is one of the main factors leading to high energy consumption in the terminal. Skylight lighting, as a common way of lighting, is also different from ordinary buildings when it is applied to departure halls. At the same time, there is a special relationship between the energy consumption of air conditioning and the energy consumption of daylighting due to environmental conditions in low latitudes, and skylight lighting has a better energy saving potential in low latitudes. In view of this, this paper studies and analyzes options of skylight design for a typical airport departure hall form and layout. Based on the study of the design of departure halls and the theory of natural lighting design, the elements of daylighting design of skylights of the departure hall are summarized, and the natural lighting effect of the three skylights are discussed.

Sa Cheng, also called Selah, is consider fashion is an art. It is a concept that can be interpreted in various ways for each individual, which, for her makes it fascinating – everyone has a different style. For some people, self-expression is difficult, having an individual style gives these people the ability to show their personality and beliefs and this intrigues her. Her interest in fashion has grown year after year through her development of expressing herself with different styles.

She always consider that beauty is not static and it can be displayed with different forms. What our designs convey most is our value. She is aiming to overthrow the traditional definition on fashion and provoke thinking of the real world in others’ mind through her designs. Structure is an important design element in her design, and different silhouettes are created through different permutations and combinations.

Her interest in fashion fuels her creativity and determination and she is excited to improve the technical skills she already has and to combine her love for fashion with knowledge of marketing and merchandising. She wants to delve deeply into the fashion world, increasing her growing curiosity and knowledge. The skills she has built on her own through her profound interest in the area and her skills.

By studying politics, she has a deeper understanding of the economy and its impact on fashion. For example, she found that due to a year of protests and demonstrations that led to a decline in Hong Kong’s economy, the overall profit of the fashion industry declined. This is very insightful because it reveals how the economic uncertainty of Hong Kong affects the fashion industry, and the fashion industry depends on consumer confidence and material demands. In addition, her research on philosophy helps she to understand human nature, so we are naturally eager to create art forms and make our ideas practical.

As a member of a generation who criticizes the indifferent and lack of inspiration, studying fashion is now more important than ever, because her determination to create timeless and influential things has become stronger and stronger. She thrive in a dynamic environment where she can reach her full potential, and she believes that the vision of becoming a major contributor to fashion will be realized by studying at university. Here, she will be able to fully cultivate her creative passion and finally realize herself.

Shanxu Cong, also called Vivien.

As a women’s wear designer, she is concerned about women’s freedom and protection, and she also explores the development of underwear style structure to convey women’s pursuit of free life attitude.

In her opinion, the sexiest moment of a woman is the moment when she comes home, takes off her clothes one by one and lies lazily in her delicate bedroom. With this in mind, she conducted an in-depth visual photographic investigation of the process of undressing.

This is the moment to show the beauty of the female body line, but it is not limited to age and figure. The structural change of folds is a good way to express these body lines. She loved the wrinkles, whether they were in the fabric of clothing or on human skin, and she didn’t see anything bad with them. Just like she loves everything about herself.

I created a new Collection with the interests and the feelings of mine which inspired by sound and silence and focused on the whole process of design through the studies at GSA. I became a surface led student and focused more on textiles in the whole year. I did much more textiles works than before and got much more than my expectation after the whole year studying in GSA. I explored the working method of fashion design and created my personal aesthetic.

I was inspired by the Artist, Film and Muse research project a lot. The muse in this project of mine is Brian Eno who works as a musician. Music gives me a fascinating world in my life, and I would like to create a relationship between music and clothes for a long time. So I was really excited to start this project. The project I was working on is to translate music and sound into garments. It was a pretty exciting project but with many difficulties, and I created a relationship among the sense of hearing and seeing by my own understanding of music and garments.

My project consists of three parts, sound part, visual part and the part of “sound” and “silence”. Throughout this project I undertaken  an in-depth research. In my previous project I took little time on research，so the outcomes were limited by my limited views. In this project I did research by the whole time in stage 1 and got much more than my expectation. So my work in stage 2 was making a selection of stage 1’s works to further my project, instead of continuing working difficultly with the limited ideas. I explored the sound materials and silent materials in stage 2, and I found flexible foam which is interesting to work with it on garments. It was my first time using an untraditional material on fabrics and it was an exiting start for my future projects.

Yasmine Amani is a textile artist and expert embroiderer, specialising in hand embroidery and embellishments. In her work, she combines traditional hand intensive embroidery methods with contemporary and current concepts, aiming to entertain and captivate the viewer. She has previously worked on commissions for the BBC, including embellishing a jacket which was worn by Susan Calman on BBC Scotlands’ Hogmanay.

Inspired by iconography and the decorative opulence of Faberge eggs, Yasmine Amani’s Master’s project looks to turn the chicken into the icon of the 21st Century. Inspired by films such as ‘Chicken Run’ and ‘Marie Antoinette’, she aims to reimagine the chicken with a new found sense of sophistication, glamour and grandeur.

Through a limited palette and material choice, subtle changes in the differing tones, weights, textures and transparencies of ribbon can be detected, echoing the beautiful plumage found in chickens. Influenced by designers such as Simone Rocha and Valentino, her fashion visualisations aim to manifest a sense of importance in its wearer.  With an emphasis on volume, her textiles are integral to mirroring the voluptuous qualities and plumage of the chicken, adding to the overall impact of the garment. Additionally, with the exclusive use of hand embroidery methods, she creates the look and feel of a sumptuous body of feathers throughout her collection, elevating the once humble chicken to a level beyond its popularity as meat.

Yasmine practices responsible methods in her work by using second-hand materials wherever possible, sourcing these through Ebay, charity, thrift and vintage shops. Additionally, by exclusively using hand embroidery methods in the making of her textiles, this excludes the need and use of machinery for the whole textile process. Furthermore, due to her style of embroidery, it would be hoped that the longevity of the item would span out many years and cherished by whoever it remains with.

At the heart of Kieran’s studio practice is a design ethos that is driven by combining traditional textile techniques with contemporary production methodologies. His design collections explore the synergy between creative process and production, enabling him to push design boundaries and deliver fashion and textile outcomes that have an innovative, futurist aesthetic, whilst maintaining a relationship with craftmanship and traditional artistry. These values place Kieran’s collections amongst contemporary fashion designers who are utilising fashion as a method of progression – whether that be of the body, inspiration or the use of unconventional or non-traditional materials.

Drawing inspiration from a range of cultural, natural and architectural sources, Kieran has applied a research and development process that undertakes multiple stages to interrogate initial research within a 2D and 3D context. Photography work is used as initial inspiration, which is then reinterpreted digitally via CAD programs, or by hand through various drawing and manipulation techniques. This process allows Kieran to identify areas which could be developed further and apply hierarchical value to his work based on which has more potential to be successfully developed.

Translating drawing into material prototypes continues to inspire and innovate Kieran’s design process. This is highly influenced by designers such as Iris Van Herpen, Alexander McQueen and Issey Miyake, all of which inspire Kieran with their application of contemporary technology and unconventional materials within their collections. From this point, a lot of Kieran’s inspiration is derived from the creative process and the exploration of materials. He is encouraged to push the limits of the materials at his disposal, creating hybrids which combine the attributes he feels necessary to effectively translate ideas and perform in the required manner. This exploration develops into a cycle of production and self-reflection, with each step being influenced by the previous and informing the next until the process and material are perfected within the context of the garment and how he wants them to look and behave.

Kieran’s current collection, titled ‘Transient Bodies’, has been inspired by the theme of transience – the temporary transitionary phase between one state and another. Initial inspiration came from researching the online model Imma.Gram – a virtual being who is a combination of a physical person and digital superimposition, the graphic work of Bridget Riley and kinetic sculptures developed by Nick Cave. The combination of the optical phenomena found within both bodies of work when combined with fashion, and the concept provided by Imma.Gram, was an avenue Kieran was keen to develop and explore. Inhabiting the space between fantasy and reality, physical and digital, natural and synthetic is something that has only just began to be explored within the realms of fashion. Kieran wants to continue development of the continuous dialogue between fashion and technology as more methods of creation and materials are created and the way in which fashion is presented and consumed continues to change.

The resulting collection is an exploration of pattern and illusory artistic techniques to inform textile and silhouette forms. Working specifically with polyester based materials and plastics, techniques such as sublimation printing and mediums such a bemis, provided colour and bonding opportunities that created complimentary materials to Kieran’s design concepts. This process of working has resulted in the development of the ‘living hinge’ method of fabric manipulation. Where Kieran has used laser cutting techniques to apply a complex series of pattern explorations, adjusting variables such as line distance, length and shape, to create flexible materials that distort the figure and mislead the eye as they are worn, adapting to the wearers movement.

Innovation, material research and application drive Kieran’s design process.  His undergraduate research focused on the application of varying smart materials, such as thermochromic dyes, and the application of 3D printing and laser technology within the textile and fashion industries. His master’s study has enabled him to continue this research and explore the application of relevant synthetic materials, combined with contemporary design and fabrication processes to be explored and enhanced within a fashion context. This interest has extended to how these processes can be applied at a haute couture and high street level and Kieran has constructed archival catalogues of his material development, investigations, fabric prototyping, manipulation techniques and printing specifications to accompany his design outcomes. Kieran’s long-term goal is to continue his research into material development, challenging the ways in which the industry views and expands upon the ideas of conventional materials within contemporary fashion design. Fashion, as an industry, must become more sustainable and Kieran has attempted throughout the generation of his collection to make choices which have the least detrimental effects to our environment. Further work still needs to be done in this regard and this dialogue will be a permanent feature of his design process as he progresses throughout his career, gaining experience working for like-minded fashion houses before launching his own brand which sees his own visions brought to life on the runway, whatever that may look like in the future.

There are some moments you can’t distinguish between reality and illusion. There are some blur and distant memories you are not sure they really happened or just imagination. Xiang Yu’s inspiration came from a sentence of French “Déjà vu”, it is the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before.

She explored her personal childhood memory photos and family photos, obfuscated and blurred them. Then she took a set of photos through long time exposure photography and partial lighting and extracted the blurred silhouette in these photos. She tried to twist and deform the loose and oversize garment inside by adding a slim and tied transparent vest outside to express the sense of blur. Meanwhile, she used a lot of hand sewing methods in this project. Such as running stitch and embroidery stitches, which are designed for decorated and seamed.

Gaultier asked a famous question: “What is masculinity and what is feminization? Why shouldn’t men show their vulnerability and sensitivity, and women shouldn’t show their own intelligence and strength?”

This is a fashion series about gender fluidity, the designer hopes to finds a balance between the hard characteristics of masculinity and the soft characteristics of femininity, combining the two and displaying them in clothing.

In her development process, she used the basic suits bought from charity shops to transform the human body, combining two different color suits to produce deformation, to create new silhouettes and structure. She added to these suits by creating some extra features such as historical sleeves, ruff collars draped sections to the front, side, back, to combine with other structures and enhance the sense of design. She explored the characteristics of masculinity and femininity on a body through dress up exercises to investigate the blending of these two characteristics, from this she extracted the most successful elements to generate collage work and initial design ideas about cut, shape, color, fabric and silhouette.

Her design allows people in the current society who are afraid to express their true selves to express their bravery in the public with more confidence through dressing.This designer hope she can break through the public’s traditional solidified thinking about gender, through rejecting gender labels, and moving towards a wardrobe of gender freedom.

The designer graduated from Master of fashion and textile in Glasgow school of art. With the main direction of silhouette design, her design is focusing on the relationship between human body and clothings and balancing traditional tailoring elements with dramatic design ideas to achieve the purpose of both wearable and conceptual design.

The name of the project is “Body in desire”, which came from the story of lustful people transformed into monsters in the anime “Devilman Crybaby”. Therefore, the designer used the change of human bodies in desire to combine with the elements from traditional tailoring jackets to present the influence from desire to human bodies by the hyperbole and abnormal silhouettes of the design work.

The designer thinks that everyone is equal in front of desire, there is no difference of gender, age, nationality and body shape, thus, she wanted to do gender less design with not only oversized clothings, but the garments structure that independent from human body, so the visual effect won’t be influenced by human body shapes. Therefore, all the datas came from different body shapes with various sized, height and genders, so the prototypes were also tried on various bodies to achieve the most balanced result.

Rafaelle Fillastre is an illustrator and graphic designer. Collecting and reusing material, has been an ongoing theme in her works. It translated into her creative practice, which consist of playing around with different mediums and material to create striking visuals. Her main focus has been on printed narrative works, mixing editorial design and illustration. She has been interested in associating different technics and mediums to create hybrid projects such as augmented reality and animation on printed works.

During her studies at The Glasgow School of Art, her studio works are linked with the concept “hidden”, “lost” and “erased”. Working on abandoned buildings around Glasgow, overlooked women artists in history and various form of censorships. She is interested in historical and social led themes. For her projects, she’s focused on visual storytelling, to create an interaction and reaction from the user to the object.

For her next steps, she wants to expand her practice into a more digital practice, such as coding and interactive design.

Prior to joining the Glasgow School of Art, she graduated in 2019 from Estienne (ESAIG), with a Bachelor in Design and Packaging as well as printing technician course. During her studies, she completed several internships as a graphic designer at Extreme Agency and Netgem.

Yingjie is a graphic designer. He usually uses illustrations and typography to reflect the concept of his work. Sometimes he will use almost crazy methods to achieve his goals. Some of the concepts of his works may seem naughty or even lazy, but he hopes that the audience can find something deeper behind these.

After coming to GSA, he focused on exploring more interesting things and concepts that people usually don’t notice easily, and try to use crazy ways to transform these concepts into his works. ‘Films in 1994 ’ is a good example.

As a Chinese, he understand the environment and current situation of Chinese art. He especially admire the artists from the 1970s to the 1990s. They worked hard to find their own artistic value and dared to fight for their purpose under the circumstances that the social environment changed very quickly. The spirit of confrontation is very worthy of the current artists to learn. Yingjie is also attracted by this spirit and hopes to make a work to commemorate it.

email: yingjiezhou1220@gmail.com

I am a multidisciplinary artist utilising skills in Film Making, Photography and Visual language as my primary method of storytelling. Adhering to an underlying ethical code within my practise is a required part of acting responsibly as an artist, designer and a consumer, something I needed to be keenly aware of, given the sensitive nature of my work. This is no longer a choice or privilege, but a commitment everyone carries with their actions and Communication Design challenges me to ensure these values are upheld.

For the film “Mektub” I followed the animal welfare organisation “Ims’one Project” based in Morocco who seek to vaccinate, sterilize, tag and release street dogs as well as house the most vulnerable in the region. The documentary highlights the general situation facing street dogs in Imsouane, Morocco, and the attempts by local animal welfare organisations to introduce legislation combating the inhumane mass culling by authorities as an attempt to control their population. Woven alongside the issues facing dogs is also the personal portrait of Fran Belle, founder of “Ims’one Project”. Fran has to care for them as humanely as possible with limited resources, relying often on little more than her own relentless determination and immense self sacrifice.

Pauline Levy is a French multidisciplinary Graphic Designer, currently based in Paris. Keen on experimentation, she explores different mediums such as sculpture, drawing, and photography, and plays with materials and colours, as part of the research process. Publications are often the outcome of her projects, because of her high interest in Editorial and Type design, discovered during her bachelor degree in Art Direction at Penninghen (Paris). Meanwhile, her passion for Dance, and more widely performing arts, led her to focus on movements, space, and body. Feet were her main interest of studies during this year, bringing her to a developed and various reflection presented through two different supports: a publication and a dance performance. At the moment, the dance performance is presented as a score, and will evolve into a video, in collaboration with some dancers. Next steps for her are to increase collaborative and interactive projects, in the dance field in particular, and to discover more in Type and Set Design.

Compared with the undergraduate study of visual communication in a comprehensive university, the postgraduate study of graphics in Glasgow School of Art has brought Renyu Tian a greater space to explore and professional perspective.

The exit of graphics is not limited. Renyu believes that the information conveyed by graphics is diversified and can be very personal. When expressing views on some social phenomena, such as the infodemic and the conceptual change of marriage to modern people, she is more inclined to start from her senses and feelings.

Yu Xie is a photographer from China. His works focus on how do we look at the current social situation and its impact on individuals? We re-examine our way of life from the perspectives of individuals, habits, groups, urban structures, international news, etc. Explain, embody, analyze and criticize what is applicable to the individual’s emotions, the connection with the group, and how the individual can explore and respond to the next potential crisis in the context of the individual or the relationship between the individual and the urban development.

INNER CITY

In this project, he initially focused on an exploration of the ubiquity of architecture and urban objects within the city. Through constructed image making his project has morphed into a wider critique of how we see cities and the symbols within them. The images explore liminal or transitional spaces and their meanings are interpreted through his subjective perspective. His hope is that the viewer looks at the world he have constructed, and sees a world of absurdity, fiction, reality and fantasy. Something that is both familiar and unfamiliar, unnerving and uncanny. An inner city born of my observations and imagination.

Normal

After the covid 19 outbreak and subsequent pandemic, the whole world seemed to stop, but in the wider expanse of history, what has felt like forever, has in reality been just a few short months. Time did not stand still. His life and the world changed quietly. His room effectively became his world as he gradually crepts towards his new normal. This normal was uncertain but not unfamiliar. The objects and space were effectively the same, but how he viewed them had changed. Through his camera he sought to try and make sense of his surroundings and state of mind. Using primarily still life, his photographs look for clues and explore metaphor through the daily narration of his new normal life.

Giorgia Tonolo is an Italian Graphic Designer mainly interested in editorial design. She graduated at IUAV University in Venice in 2018. She has also experimented professional life for a year in Italy, where she learnt to deal with clients.

She is organised and determined, she offers refined and minimalistic design projects, based on a clear structure. During her master at the Glasgow School of Art, she experimented more, trying to break the mold. She changed her way of thinking, by starting designing and thinking through the making. As a matter of fact, this year helped her experiment with new printing and binding techniques. She experimented even more in her last project. Starting from a science experiment she made, she made some mould grow and then she decided to recreate their texture and shapes through the embroidery, learning it by making. This experimentation lead to the realisation of a fabric poster and a small publication.

She worked on different topics, from daily psychological obsessions to moulds and science to common and anonymous objects. She changed her approach to the graphic design field, by focusing more on conceptual works, based on a strong visual language. In the future, she would like to deepen the type design field, as part of her passion for book design.

I have a deep passion for trying to tackle the climate crisis. I consider it my way of contributing to that, by acting as a communicator and advocate for the greatness of change and alternatives that lie ahead of us. As an Illustrator, I want to utilise the ability of art to tap into people’s emotions and reach their guts – to influence a decision-making process and to motivate people to fight apathy and to find perspective. What I personally like so much about art, as a tool, is that it can easily be used to show a way of growing out of, instead of fighting against, whatever has to be changed. This follows the principle that whatever you give your attention to will expand. It is the perfect possibility to generate a new reality by feeding people‘s imagination – making something that might be yet invisible visible. “Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money, and human rights.”, says Noah Yuval Harari in his book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”; hence, all systems on our planet earth (except for the ecosystem) once were just ideas in someone‘s mind who then acted upon them, convinced others of the ideas‘ strength, and therefore created a new reality. With all of my projects, I aim to contribute to creating such a new reality; one that is not based on exploiting people and planet, but one that is built on social, sustainable, and equitable values.

If this made you curious about more: Chrysopoeia is my recently launched caboodle of work where I will showcase all of my future projects.

THE AMAZON IS ON FIRE. SAVE AMAZON.

In recent years, Coronavirus, Australia fire, dramatic temperature change and amazon rainforest destruction rate have returned to their peak. The frequent occurrence of disasters on earth made me start to think about human beings and the environment. How to balance the relationship between human and nature? How can the situation of the “future” not be worse than that of the present?

My topic is about the deforestation of Amazon rainforest. The number of fires in the Amazon rainforest increased 30.5% in 2019 from the previous year, while deforestation rose 85%, according to recent data released by Brazil’s space research agency INPE. The Amazon rainforest is far away from our lives, but its roles the lungs of the earth. Where would we be without it? My project is to make a publication–THE AMAZON IS ON FIRE( bilingual edition in Chinese and English)–to make more people aware of Amazon rainforest.

“The Fire” does not only fire in the Amazon rainforest but more importantly, the amazon is in a state of emergency and need of rescue right now.

Chaeeun Lim has studied environmental design in undergraduate and now graduating as an interior designer. Her research is directed towards the quality and value of the interior in urban contexts, with a particular focus on a social problem. In this context, the project is about flexible housing based on expanded using space during the pandemic.

Indoor life sustained by the massive widespread COVID-19 reminded us of the problems in the space we live in. Changes in life due to pandemics have seen various residential patterns emerge, and the demand for residential space to cope with these situations is increasing. On the other hand, space has been relatively static, so it has faced limitations in accommodating the diverse and changing lives of residents.

There are various interpretations and theorems on spatial flexibility. Among them, the theory of William Pena is one, being able to accommodate spatial growth through expansion; two, being able to accept the aspect of utilization through space conversion; and three, economically utilizing space through diversification of functions. It can be divided into three aspects (Pena, Parshall and Kelly, 1987). Flexibility can be explained by the individual characteristics of each component classified here, but a flexible space is more flexible when each state encompasses the organic correlations that complement and connect to each other rather than being used independently. Accordingly, the above concepts were comprehensively judged, and the meaning of flexible in this study can be applied to various living spaces and situations, and it is defined as realizing a flexible space by expanding the space as needed. This is because the expansion of space opens up the possibility of a limited space, and the meaning of the transformation and diversity of space is created together with the expanded space, so that they have organic connectivity. The analyses about this are described in the following images.

This project wants to study the changes and trends in the design of entertainment under the continuous prosperity of the single economy. Because of the continuous changes in work styles and online communities and the awakening of people’s self-awareness, part of the development of the online community has eased people’s feelings of being alone, and large-scale social activities are no longer a necessity.

These phenomena also caused some social problems. During Covid-19, people who cannot go out and focus more time on social media, become more extreme and paranoid than before. People can easily judge some people or things by misleading information on the internet. Many people are surrounded by social media group emotions and lose their ability to think independently. When we use social software, we easily repost the opinion from some KOL. Have we seriously thought about it? Every extreme point of consensus has a strong potential for violence, and people unconsciously become the perpetrators of cyber violence. In the public opinion argument environment of the “post-truth” era, in the era of smart media that has long been housed in an “echo chamber” built from similar information, people lacks the ability to think independently and make rational judgments.

People need solitude. When people are just thinking alone, their thinking belongs to themselves; when we are surrounded by ideas with group emotion or secondary processing, we will instinctively imitate the opinions and ideas of others. So how can we keep our thinking independently? Single-player games, especially text adventure games, used to be the completely self-thinking and self-selected experience. It is a very ego and undisturbed field. However, the current trend is a variety of puzzle-solving strategies, spoiler barrage appears randomly in the game. More players are no longer willing to play games by themselves, and more choose to watch youtuber videos online, losing the process of solving puzzles and choosing in person.

With the continuous development of AR and VR technology, the real game space has increasingly become a space that can bring people entertainment, inspiration, and thinking. Today, when the single economy is constantly being mentioned, reducing inertial thinking, keep independent thinking, and forming a logical cognitive structure to make rational judgments are still things people continue to pursue but it is difficult to achieve. This project relies on the way of realizing single-player text adventure games, hoping to make some excellent stories full of reversals through a multi-layer narrative method to enable players to optimize their way of thinking, independent thinking, and rational analysis in the game experience. I hope that players by challenging the game, know how easy it is to cheat people by playing with text trap, and understand that the angle of a thing is complex and multi-faceted, not black and white. In a group environment, you can follow the consensus less but think more.

Lucy McInally received a BA in Art History from the University of East Anglia in 2017 and moved to Southeast Asia until 2019, working in property development and start-ups in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Her experiences working for inclusive growth deal projects at the Stirling and Clackmannanshire City Region Deal at the University of Stirling last year have enabled Lucy to focus her interior design work towards intergenerational living and the sustainability of cities. During her year studying a Masters in Interior Design at the Glasgow School of Art, Lucy has explored co-design practice.

Co-design methods engages with stakeholders and listens to the needs of communities to ensure that the results are usable. Involving a facilitator and groups of active participants, the social activities include discussion of ideas and experiences, collaborative experimentation and envisaging conceptual proposals. Due to the egalitarian nature of co-design, each members’ input is valued equally. The success of co-design processes leads the collective group to recognise their contribution in its outputs.

This research project applies co-design methods to interrupt the restrictive conditions at parks, as urban spaces within the interior of cities. Parks have been historically associated with hegemony; typologies of Britain’s parks are “owned” by governing bodies who implement the rules towards how people navigate these “public” spaces. When the Coronavirus pandemic led to a period of national lockdown, many people frequently visited their local park. Meanwhile, some councils in Britain’s impoverished neighbourhoods closed their local park. These systems of control are inequitable towards certain social groups.

Under the conditions of the pandemic, Lucy has developed her own co-design processes by exploring digital tools and physical collaboration with household members using play methods, whilst maintaining a strong personal role for the facilitator. A feminist methodology was applied to this project through a micro investigation of one marginalised group – women – who have been historically excluded from “public” sites and city planning. There is also scope for future workshops to occur with additional intersectional marginalised groups and urban spaces. Lucy hopes to continue developing co-design processes under an enterprise model.

AN ARTISTIC RESPONSE TO THE CURRENT SCENARIO OF PANDEMIC-INDUCED,  ISOLATION & INTROSPECTION.

A new design methodology based on pure elements which re-imagines the domestic interior as a santuary which is sensually and spiritually uplifting. 

Julia Sagias is a Scottish interior designer and artist from Glasgow. In 2020 she completed the Masters of Design in interior design. She has a first class degree in history of art from the University of Glasgow and is a practising artist based in the Southside of the city. Julia is a determined individual, having left a career in the cultural sector to study at the GSA and set up her creative business, Julia Clare Interiors. With a background in art and design theory, she has a strong conceptual approach combined with the artistic skills to apply her research, implementing a variety of artistic techniques including drawing, sketching and painting. She takes a concientous approach to the environment through the use of upcycling and natural materials.

Through her time at GSA Julia addressed issues such as emotional wellbeing experienced through the phenomenology of ambience, materials, spatial composition and colour of the interior space. This project, entitled  CONCEPTUAL AMBIENCE is a direct reponse to the current experience of perpetual, pandemic-induced isolation and introspection.  She was inspired to imagine the poetic ambience, form and materiality of the domestic interior which culminated in the redesign of the site of her own lock-down, her home.

Detailed through an in-depth exploration of form, colour, texture and space, and with a theoretical background based on the Classical and Modernist concept of Purism, this project demonstrates a way to create order and wellbeing through the layering of elemental form and colour and the careful arrangement of mass and surface. CONCEPTUAL AMBIENCE is a manifesto and methodology; an applied design language consisting of pure, geometric elements and a colour book of 30 earth-based colours and pure metals. The outcome is the creation of an interior programme inspired by Greek architecture and Le Corbusier’s Modernist interpretation of this typology.

Julia’s creative experiments include 3D digital modelling as well as sketching, and sculpting textural surface and form with gypsum and clay,  painting and gilding. This warm, serene aesthetic is a space which prioritises the private realm and interprets it as a sanctuary, with free-flowing movement between bedroom, bathroom and changing room and a continuous visual sequence throughout the house in an open-plan layout and atrium. As per the concept of the Total Work of Art, the layering of a unifying colour design, texture and form throughout creates a sense of balance, order and harmony. The result is a poetically ambient and emotionally therapeutic space which makes domestic isolation a calming and enriching experience.

Urban and Rural Communication Space

The Tide phenomenon is the periodic motion of seawater under the action of the moon and the sun. The same phenomenon can be observed in Chinese society, which has a similar periodicity. In each cycle, the house is built, decorated, and demolished, then the next cycle starts. It is an endless process. The buildings have very short life spans. If there is an interrupt in the whole process. The buildings are easy to be unfinished ruins. It happens because people make the wrong decisions, and it happens in an unpleasant way. And in a modern city, It’s not in harmony with its surroundings.

The unfinished ruins are also a kind of barrier for people. Different buildings have different languages and functions which can give people different feelings. People will have different subjective assessments of these buildings and know the functions of these buildings. However, unfinished ruins can be confusing for people because people even don’t know the functions of them. A barrier can block two objects, in this case, the confusing function is the barrier between the people and buildings. But from another point of view, the barrier is not only an obstacle but also a connection. The question is how to strengthen the connection and reduce the obstacle simultaneously. There is another barrier between people near the unfinished ruin site. It emerged because of the expansion of the city; the rural people had to enter the city life, the urban people also had to accept the rural people into their lives. There are many barriers to the formation of a new life circle between the two groups. Therefore, I hope to weaken the barrier between rural people and urban people and strengthen their connection by using the barrier of unfinished ruins as a bridge between urban and rural areas.

There are two ways to weaken barriers and strengthen connections. One is to be a field experience, where countrymen can still grow crops in cities. So that those countrymen whose main skill is farming can retain their original way of life after entering the city, rather than feeling confused and blocked by entering the city life. The other material is a lens. Although it is transparent, its image changes depending on the distance. It will bring people different visual feelings, such as a convex lens. Viewing from a distance will be a blurred and magnified inverted image, which is a kind of barrier from the perspective of vision. But when you get very close to a convex lens, what you can see is an enlarged image. However, you and the image are separated by a lens as if it were in front of you. This phenomenon can be regarded as a reinforced connection from the perspective of vision.

A FRICTIONLESS SOUND THEATRE

In countries with Covid-19 outbreaks, retails are being impacted with decreasing footfall, supply chain disruption, and a noisy digital landscape in which to communicate brand messages. The challenge that retailers now face is how to stimulate meaningful consumption as people self-isolate at home. So, they are developing new products and services that engage consumers from the comfort of their own homes. Business researchers from Frame Magazine argue that If retailers are to recover after lockdown lifts, it will only be through creating their premises not just as experiential play areas, but also as reliable and clear safe ports. Thus, this research’s aim is exploration of different scenarios of future retails that includes the experience-seeking and hyper-hygiene-conscious as key elements in the configuration of retail spaces.

Several methods using film and reading materials will be explored in order to analyze historical context which associate the retail spaces and understand how people have arrived at today’s pivotal point of retail. For framing future scenarios, Nike, H&M and other brand stores will be considered as case studies. Because they act as models for rising new trends. For example, H&M are redesigning stores to double as logistics hubs for online shopping and strengthen the role that supply chains, logistics and fulfilment play in their brand identities.

Understood in these manners, Brands need remodeling the customer experience to fit new online formats, as interactions increasingly bolster transactions, digital experiences, emotive technology and new definitions of loyalty will continue to transform the way brands and consumers connect.

Finally, the research concludes that as Covid-19 amplifies the role of digital commerce and accelerates sustainable consumption, retail’s focus is shifting from transactions to service. Now, consumers will demand more meaningful engagement and emotional interactions. Above all, it must be a chance to underscore those sustainability strategies and respond to consumers’ re-ignited interest in sustainable living as Covid-19 positively affects how much we are doing and on what.

Based on the current situation of COVID-19, my project analyzes the reasons why people do not want to stay at home,  explores an  alternative ways of being with flexible and mobile interior. As interior spaces are regarded as people’s second skin, this thesis examines how to get closer to space, and create a skin-friendly space which is totally for our body, which can meet more needs and eliminate bored.

From the perspective of the Heterotopia (Foucault, M, 1967), the parasite architecture act as a long-term intervener of the city. The pandemic is a warning which tells that the town we live in today is large enough. What we need when an epidemic occurs is not making any more high-rise buildings, but converting as much space as possible. The outbreak has brought a ‘new normal’ to our society which triggered people to think about the changes in living areas, lifestyles and relationships between each other.

The implementation of the quarantine policy has pressed a ‘pause button’ on people’s lives, which has forced people in isolation and re-examined their surroundings. The lockdown policy has enforced for nearly half a year. It has imposed an impact on people’s psychological state of social interaction. According to the questionnaire, the most common mental activities during the quarantine have two categories: one is the urgent need to interact with others to release one’s loneliness; another is the fear of social interaction after being quarantined, which leads to the autistic state.

In this project, the spatial connection explored with the window is a metaphor for the relationship between people. The existence of the window is embodied in both public and private sense when two hidden spaces behind the window are connected. It has formed a spatial intimacy, which has reduced the boundary of the space and encouraged people to get across the loneliness and the state of the autistic state.

CITRUS
Turning Citrus Peel Waste into Valuable Kitchen Cleaning Products.

Inspired by a juice bar throwing a lot of orange peels every day, a thought was triggered. How can those peels, the material gifted by nature, be thrown into the trash can without thinking about it? This kind of natural material, called ‘waste’, deserves to be treated more appropriately.

In terms of chemical properties, orange peel essential oil have excellent antibacterial properties that can be used as natural substitutes for chemical detergent. In terms of physical properties, the treated orange peel can be transformed into biological materials.

So this project will take advantage of the chemical and physical properties of orange peels. Firstly, extract the essential oil from the orange peel which has antimicrobial property as a natural dishwashing detergent to replace the chemical dishwashing liquid. Then, convert the remaining orange peel after extracting essential oil into a dishwashing tool to replace the non-degradable polyester sponge.

This project presents a peel waste recycling system that is neglected in daily life to users in the form of products. It hopes users can more truly experience the process of giving peel waste a second life.At the same time, hopefully, the peel recycling process will get people thinking about: how can we redefine the use of this so-called waste? And how can we collaborate with beneficial natural systems to create more sustainable material prototypes?

According to the data from CIPA, the global camera sales drops 87% from 2010 to 2019. With the huge improvement of smartphone camera sensor. The traditional camera market has been compressed a lot. The main reason is that the portability, usability and travel experience of smartphones are much better than DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. However, the image quality of traditional cameras still has an absolute advantage over smart phones. Some travel photography enthusiasts and photographers must carry heavy equipment to shoot in order to pursue the ultimate image quality when traveling which greatly reduces their travel experience. Besides, the camera is difficult to access while the user is moving. In addition, the structure of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras lacking ergonomic design in some aspect. For instance, insufficient adaptability for different shooting positions, the selfie holding experience are not considered. The last but not least, in order to get clear images in low light conditions, travel photographers usually use a tripod to stabilize the camera body, but the tripod is inconvenient to carry and setup. This product is designed to improve the travel experience and better ergonomic design of traditional cameras. To let travel photography enthusiasts and photographers use the camera more conveniently during journey. The portability and usability of the camera are enhanced through redesigning of the camera’s shape, structure and holding gesture. The solution is designing the camera body as a cylindrical shape so that users can put the camera in the side pocket of the backpack and use a rotatable quick-release grip to achieve multi-angle shooting capability. The grip can be easily setup as a tripod as well.

The rapid development of smart phone photography has brought great threats to the camera field. Now more and more people are using mobile phones to take pictures and share them with friends. It seems that cameras have been making slow progress. I try to think about the existing forms of cameras from a new angle, hoping to bring new thoughts to the development of the camera field.

Current prices of prosthetic legs cost between £3,000 to £50,000. For adults, a new prosthetic leg is needed every 2-5 years. Furthermore, lower limb amputees normally have several legs for different purposes. Amputees spend an average of £100,000 extra in their lifetime compared to non-amputees due to their limb loss and adaptations to their lifestyle.

Prosthetic feet are mass manufactured products, which are usually still expensive. Patients don’t usually get feet which are optimal for their biomechanics due to lack of analysis and budget constraints on clinics.

3D printing has been at the forefront of prototyping for many years now, but it has seldom been used in final production. For my final project, I explored opportunities where 3D printing could be used as an actual manufacturing solution. 3D printing is a solution that can lower the cost of prosthetic feet, whilst also tailoring each foot to the patient, leading to better walking mechanics and rehabilitation. This project explores a workflow that can be conducted to quickly adjust a foot framework for each patient to suit their individual needs.

Product design engineering has allowed me to apply my technical skills from my traditional mechanical engineering degree to solve problems through design. Moving forward, I am excited to continue developing my skills in design engineering and I’m actively seeking roles or research opportunities in mechanical design.

Final Project: AM-I is a wearable that continuously tracks the user’s blood glucose & heart rate variability. Designed for users with diabetes, AM-I helps people understand how stress impacts their blood sugar by providing biofeedback. The device uses the latest developments in continuous glucose monitoring and optical heart rate sensing to track the user’s biometrics. AM-I checks blood glucose and heart rate every 5 minutes throughout the day for 24/7 tracking synced directly to the user’s smartphone. 10-page Summary

I’m a product designer and mechanical engineer with work experience in the consumer electronics industry. Before attending GSA I received my Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2015 and then worked for Apple in the haptics product engineering team for 4 years. I am currently looking for work in product design engineering, R&D, and new product development fields. For additional information and previous projects please see my website and LinkedIn profile.

As the second biggest cause of sick leave in the UK, arthritis can severely affect a person’s life. More than 10 million people in the UK are living with the daily pain and fatigue of arthritis. It is not just about the almost constant pain, it is about losing independence and confidence, and not being able to live people’s life the way they want to. Enduring this type of ongoing, daily pain impacts every aspect of a person’s life, including in their jobs, relationships, finances, and their self-esteem and health. Living with arthritis isn’t easy and carrying out simple, everyday tasks like cooking, bathing, doing laundry and moving around the house can be challenging and often painful. Kitchen tasks are commonplace in everyday life and can therefore be prohibitively difficult for those living with arthritis.

The project proposes to enable people with arthritis to open jars that are essential to living an independent life. The project exhibits an innovative lid design which can be fitted to any jar and enables those with arthritis to open and re-seal a jar without experiencing the pain they commonly encounter at present.

The specific objectives of this project are:
Lightweight and easy to use design; Good airtightness performance; Significantly small force exertion (reduce torque to less than 2 Nm) required, thus decreasing impact on joints; Fit to any size of jar; A decent price product for household use.

The full design process journal file at google drive link below.

After graduating from the University of Dundee in 2019, with a BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering, I am extremely proud to have completed my masters in Product Design Engineering at Glasgow School of Art. Having worked within a range of companies over the past 4 summers, including Camlin Technologies and Bell Architects, I am excited to further use the skills I have developed to widen and grow my knowledge of the field of design.

I have always had a natural urge to find and attempt to solve problems. I have this desire to just try and make things a wee bit better, which can be frustrating, but I believe it’s healthy.

I completed my undergraduate course in Production Engineering and Management at Strathclyde University. After giving a strong foundation in engineering and design, this course then focused on optimising manufacturing systems, and process improvement. I have worked with various manufacturing companies, from the automotive industry to the drink industry.
However, I was always an extremely creative child – constantly drawing and painting. I started to realise that I was missing something, as I wasn’t able to find many ways to be creative in manufacturing. I began to recognise there may be a way to remedy this, as well as advancing my prior education. This Product Design Engineering course has, I believe, come at just the right time. It has allowed me to further develop skills I already possessed, as well as open my eyes to aspects of design I could never have imagined.

This course has given me the confidence to say that, if you put any situation at all in front of me, I can come up with some kind of improvement. From using empathy, being able to make connections, find a root cause, problem solve, co-create with users, ideate and rapidly create concepts, and build, test and iterate, I now have this box of tools that I will carry with me.

All I hope is that I keep moving forward. As it is the process of identifying problems and finding creative solutions that I enjoy, I am not fussy about a particular company, industry, or direction – so long as the ethos of the space I end up working in aligns roughly with my own.

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university (last words)’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

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hang on can’t hear back in a sec 
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :

www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online
gsashowcase.net/louie-tyssen/
gsamfa.net/

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university: Last words’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

hang on can’t hear back in a sec
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way

///

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :
www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university: last words’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

///
     hang on can’t hear back in a sec
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way
///

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :
www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online
gsamfa.net/

I, as a graduating student at the Glasgow School of Art, wish to express support of Pause or Pay and G$A MFA campaigns. Pause or Pay demand Visa extensions, pastoral support and financial compensation for the loss of teaching and access to facilities due to 2019 and 2020 UCU strikes and Covid-19.

I call upon you, practitioners of the art industry, to join the fight against universities and governments that are perpetuating inequality and a lack of diversity. When you look at our work, throw your usual assessment criteria out the window and instead look with real empathy and care. Remember that an online grad show is not appropriate for everyone. Please use your platform to boost those who are disadvantaged. Do everything you can to strengthen the future of our art world.

EMERGING COMMONS

www.emergingcommons.com

emergingcommons@gmail.com

https://www.instagram.com/emergingcommons

Emerging Commons, initiated by myself in 2020, is an ongoing independent project that facilitates community empowerment through multidisciplinary curatorial methodologies intersecting with social policy, urban planning and land reform. The project works primarily outside of traditional art venues and favours [semi-]public outdoor spaces.

My interest in curatorial practices comes from a wholehearted belief in the potential of art to transform toxicity and inequality in our societies if only art was better incorporated in all our policies, politics, industries, businesses… In many ways I align with the Artist Placement Group, but replacing the “incidental person” with a caring, politically engaged and self-reflexive curator who facilitates the strengthening of the relationship between art and life.

The scale of societal issues can be overwhelming, but it was adrienne maree brown’s book emergent strategy (2017) in combination with studying through the peak of the Covid-19 lockdown that shone a light on the power of bringing activism closer to home. brown describes an emergent strategy as a “self-help, society-help, world-help” set of principles focusing on simple interactions to create complex systems, in which strong relationships are everything. Therefore, during my studies I focused on relationality within the curatorial by examining how the curator may navigate the social dimensions of facilitator, participant and place, by situating my research within the spaces I inhabit in my day-to-day life in Glasgow.

The core of Emerging Commons aligns with brown’s conception of an ’emergent strategy’ through empowering ground-up processes that focus on decision-making and movement-building through curatorial methodologies of decentralisation and interdependence to create more possibilities for inclusion, diversity and transformative democracy. The project offers a non-hierarchical framework to mobilise participants in becoming the authors of their own empowerment. The project will constantly grow and change, and resources and knowledge will be shared for communal benefits following open source models.

POLLOKSHIELDS EAST COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY

Since the end of 2020 the focus has been on developing a proposal for a community empowerment strategy for Pollokshields East, a borough in the southside of Glasgow where I live. The strategy has been spurred by two devastating fires in 2019 and 2020, destroying residential flats and shops on Albert Drive and Kenmure Street (colloquially known as Albert Cross). A community empowerment strategy will help to not only recover from the fires but to tackle issues in the wider area.

A community empowerment strategy for Pollokshields East proposes 3 curatorial methods:

1) community hub and exhibition space;

2) online community map;

3) walking exercises in the Pollokshields East area.

For a community empowerment strategy for Pollokshields East there has been research undertaken on the social dimensions of curatorial practices. The way in which the curator navigates the socio-political nexus of facilitator, participants and place becomes key. Theories of ‘community assemblages’ examines the politics and processes of grouping elements together to form or create a “community” within the curatorial encounter. Theories of ‘the commons’ describe an extension of the historical definition – the communal sharing of resources and knowledge for mutual benefits – whereby the commons is a process of giving voice and creating space in the curatorial.

I completed my Masters of Curatorial Practices in Contemporary Art in January 2021 through the extended study option, and will be pursuing the realisation of a Pollokshields East community empowerment strategy henceforth.

CURATOR BIOGRAPHY

emergingcommons@gmail.com

Grace Thomson (they/them) is a curator, artist and personal development coach originating from Melbourne, Australia, residing in Glasgow, UK (with Australian/British dual citizenship). In 2015, Grace completed their BA of Fine Art at Monash University, Australia. In January 2021 Grace graduated from the Masters of Curatorial Practices (Contemporary Art) at the Glasgow School of Art. Grace is passionate about grassroots endeavours through co-founding Artmeet Artist Run Initiative and co-directing RuntLink Artist Run Gallery. Grace is committed to equality and diversity through working in the Fair Access department at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Selected education and training: Masters of Literature in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art), Glasgow School of Art and University of Glasgow, UK; Bachelor of Fine Art, Monash University, Australia; Double Diploma of Marketing and Management, Open Training & Education Network, Australia;  Sparqs Student Representative Training; Scottish Mental Health First Aid Training; Grade 8 Saxophone, Australian Music Examinations Board, Australia.

Selected experience: Transitions Coach, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK; Class Representative of Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art), Glasgow School of Art, UK; Founding Member, Artmeet ARI, Australia; Chairperson, Runt/Link Gallery, Australia; Work Experience, WaveParticle, UK; Transitions Mentor & Guidance Administrator, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK; Gallery Assistant, Libby Edwards Galleries, Australia;  Curator, Looking at people looking or not looking at art more or less 1 mile from here, Glasgow UK; Workshop Facilitator, Dreams and Aspirations, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, UK; Artist, The Maker, Space Tank Studio, Melbourne Australia; Artist, 2014 MADA Now, Monash University, Melbourne Australia; Curator and Artist, Recreational Aesthetics, Artmeet ARI, Melbourne Australia; Artist, Open for Inspections, Artmeet ARI, Melbourne Australia; Artist, Link Wall, Runt/Link Gallery, Melbourne Australia.

Claude Chan

Bio: Claude is a curator and researcher from Hong Kong. Her practice is concerned with queer histories, performance, technology and posthumanism, particularly the relationship between human body and technology as a framework for challenging the issues of ontology and anthropocentrism. Her research is centred around interview and conversation, with a focus on the role of the curator within an artist’s practice when facing ethical issues of display.

Recent exhibitions and research include: In/Invisibility: Presence In Performance, co-curated with Carol Dunn, Hannah Braithwaite and Shalmali Shetty (Kelvin Hall, March 2020); Authority & Freedom: Testing the Context, co-curated with Beatriz Lobo Britto, Marianne Vosloo, Dia Cao and Luke Liu (Under M8 Motorway and A804 Phoenix Road, Oct 2019). She has worked for CCA Glasgow through its Art Internship since 2019, assisting the curatorial team on the Cooking Pot Programme (May/June 2020).

Curatorial & Research Statement:

With a strong interest in posthuman art and curatorial practice, my curatorial methodology uses creative discourse as a strategy by conducting interviews with artists and curators as specialists key case studies, from which a layered exploration of experience, theories and narrative may develop.

My Master’s dissertation aims to discuss the concept of posthumanism in terms of exploring changing relationships between technology and the human body as a framework for challenging issues of ontology and anthropocentrism; observing that, the discussion of this topic in contemporary art and curatorial practice remains to be fully charted, and the theoretical research on it is worthy of which to pay attention. By reviewing historical exhibitions concerning the post-human, this research aims to examine the conditions of curating that frame the existence and further development of posthuman art, as well as presenting the desire for body enhancement as a response to expand the imagination and discussion.

My curatorial concerns centre around the moral impact of artistic practice on curatorial practice, seeking to develop a deeper understanding of the attitudes that curators should hold when facing these challenges through my research. By analyzing key case studies in my dissertation, I hope to present a wider view of posthumanism in curatorial practice, which will advance and support my own curation of projects in the future.

Hu Yihang is a “silent” pseudo curator and radical post-idealist in a sense. His practice investigates “redundant events” arising from the ontological contradiction of ideological intervention in communities; His recent research centres on the reconstruction of the body caused by epistemological and aesthetic conflicts, the ontology of organic bodies and digital simulacra and the dialectic of texts as visual and phonetic act in the exhibitions.

He is also a co-founder of curatorial community /nfornonsense/ & founder of /Stray Dogs’ Garden (野犬花园)/ & 1/3 of curatorial collective /the_bricolage/.

Recent produced exhibitions include: /My Truth is Your Story/ (Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, November 2019), co-curated with Hannah Benassi and Shalmali Shetty; (online project, March 2020); /Phenakite are Forever/ (online project, August 2020); /Bon Voyage/ (Wooton Gallery, January 2021).

yihang.hu29@gmail.com
Instagram: @yihanginthewild

Bio

Cecelia Graham (b.1994, Belfast) is a curator and researcher working in Glasgow. Her practice applies science fiction and feminist theories of physics to curatorial methodologies. Cecelia’s research looks at the material processes of speculative objects in science fiction to create a framework through which to look at the local spaces they inhabit.

Recent curatorial projects include Slow Glass Edition One: Some Triangular Thoughts by Lauren Gault (2020), Over or Under (2019) with Molly O’Leary and Dominique Rivard, co-curated with Ali O’Shea and Joe Henry, Mythic Processing (2018) and the facilitation of exhibitions with the Student Led Gallery at Camberwell College of Arts where Cecelia worked as Exhibition and Event coordinator (2016-2019). This includes Collectives at Camberwell with Working Class Artist Network and Alter Us (2019) and New Camberwell Art (2018-2019). Cecelia recently worked with LUX Scotland looking at artist moving image practices in Scotland.

//

Slow Glass

In 2020 Cecelia founded Slow Glass, a publication series named after the same material that appears in Northern Irish writer Bob Shaw’s science fiction story Light of Other Days. The publication aims to provide a space for artists and writers to explore shifting boundaries of time and place. In doing so, Slow Glass acts as a lens through which to orientate memories and look at a place anew. The first iterations of the publication look towards Northern Ireland, beginning with Some Triangular Thoughts by Glasgow based artist Lauren Gault.

Slow Glass also forms a separate ongoing body of research that proposes the glass as a curatorial method. This will accumulate in a piece of writing that looks at the materiality of the glass and the movement of light through and around the material to shape an ethical mode of curating.

This research is informed by Karen Barad’s writings on diffraction, as well as the writing of Donna Haraway and Ursula Le Guin. Cecelia continues a science-fiction tradition of re-writing to consider slow glass as a material that focuses on care and responsible interactions with the non-linear entanglements of time.

//

Slow Glass: Edition One
Some Triangular Thoughts by Lauren Gault

Slow Glass publication series begins with Some Triangular Thoughts by Glasgow based artist Lauren Gault. Some Triangular Thoughts draws on Lauren’s ongoing research surrounding Martha Craig – an explorer, scientist and sci-fi author as well as Lauren’s great, great, great aunt. Lauren’s writing transports the reader through a vortex of refracting and interacting narratives that oscillate between the writings and lectures of Martha Craig, memory, materialist philosophy and scientific findings on bio-electricity. It is a journey through the micro and macro, told between layers of lanthorn, an ancient material that predates glass.

Some Triangular Thoughts by Lauren Gault will be released on 31 August 2020.

Updates will be posted @slowglass_

Enquires email slowglasspublication@gmail.com

Publication design by Bianca Winberg

//

Lauren Gault bio

Lauren Gault (b. 1986, Belfast, N. Ireland) is an artist who lives and works in Glasgow and frequently in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Gault works in installation, writing and live works. Solo exhibitions include: C I T H R A, Gasworks, London 2020; drye eyes, Grand Union, Birmingham, 2019; O-n, curated by David Dale Gallery, Glasgow at The Workbench, Milan 2019; present cOmpany, CCA Derry-Londonderry, Derry, 2018; sequins, (with Sarah Rose), Glasgow International. Group exhibitions include: Risky Attachments, Like A Little Disaster, Foothold, Polignano a Mare, Italy, 2018, STEM, (with Sarah Rose), Baltic39 (2017); A Pattern Withdrawn, American Medium, New York (2016); The Health Benefits of Eating Silica (event), TRAMWAY, Glasgow International (2016); January Blues, Frutta, Rome, (2016); read the room, you’ve got to, curated by Quinn Latimer, SALTS, Basel (2014); Portraits, Still Life and Landscapes, Usher Gallery, Lincoln, (2014); Gault has an upcoming exhibition C I T H R A, The Tetley, Leeds in 2021.

BIO

Kate Holford is an artist and writer based in Glasgow, UK. She is Founding Art Director at Stillpoint Magazine (2018-ongoing), an international, digital publication that inhabits digital spaces to build public knowledge rooted in psychoanalysis. In December 2019 she co-organised the symposium Racism and Ecology in Berlin as part of Stillpoint Magazine’s Issue 003: FALLOW, and currently facilitates an Antiracism Reading Group for psychiatrists with Editor-in-Chief of Stillpoint Magazine Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon. She was curator of Imagine the Future, a performance event and exhibition of moving image installations by Jessica Holdengarde, Glasgow (2020).

As an interdisciplinary artist, she utilises curatorial strategies of connection-making and practice-led research methodologies to develop projects which often manifest as multimodal publications across print and digital formats. Much of her work appears in the written form, merging critical reflections and poetical forms. Recent research has been concerned with modes of correspondence and autotheory, in relation to intimacy, surveillance, extraction, and vulnerability, manifesting in the project Dear Lithium,. 

She was previously the Deputy Director of Stillpoint Spaces London, a psychotherapy, coworking, and events space, where she was Curator of the in-house exhibitions programme. In 2018 she held a solo exhibition of her work In The Stories There Is An Abundance; and produced Offerings, an accompanying pamphlet of poetry. She has exhibited in group exhibitions in London, Bristol, and Falmouth, UK. Previously she has been a Bookshop Manager. She completed a Master of Letters in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art), co-convened by the Glasgow School of Art and University of Glasgow in 2020, and received her BA(Hons) Fine Art from Falmouth University in 2013.

DEAR LITHIUM,

I: Publication: a collection of texts and analogue images that form a single ‘object’, brought together in the shape of a envelope. This object can be found in a public book exchange near the site of the UK’s first pilot lithium extraction plant, United Downs, Cornwall. This is the only edition in circulation.

II: dear-lithum.exposed: a website interrogating the effects of the digital/non-digital divide on experience of place, intimacy, and togetherness, in an age of increasing reliance on technological interfaces for creating and maintaining relationships with others.

Alison O’Shea is currently based in Cork city, Ireland, currently pursuing the MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) programme through extended study. Her curatorial and artistic practices’ primary concerns include alternative methodologies of productivity, and creating sustainable practice models through speculative fiction. Recent curatorial projects include; relaxation*, Siuán Ní Dhochartaigh, Glasgow, UK; Over or Under, Molly O’Leary and Dominique Rivard, co-curated with Joe Henry and Cecelia Graham, Glasgow, UK; and Burning Down the House, Cork, Ireland. Her upcoming project a passive house is a collaborative publication and event with her sibling Lily O’Shea and will launch in late November 2020 in Cork city, Ireland.

Lily O’Shea is a visual artist based in Ireland and current artist-in-residence at The Guesthouse Project as part of the INHOUSE initiative, Cork. Her practice is concerned with political questions surrounding the contemporary labourer. This practice involves sculpture, performance, and film, as well as different forms of writing and publishing in varied contexts. Recent group exhibitions include: Rhetoric, Crawford College of Art and Design Online Degree Showcase, Cork, 2020, Villa the End, Berlin Gallery Weekend, Charlottenburg, Berlin 2019, and Art(ist) Film, The Gate Cinema, Indie Film Festival, Cork, 2019.

a passive house takes the last months of lockdown as a satirical artist residency interrogating ideas surrounding creative pursuit, productivity and down-time. A passive house is a house which is truly energy efficient[1], a sustainable and comfortable structure. This publication will comprise of a series of archival material from within the house – a house which is striving to become a passive house – the goal of energy efficiency is still present but for the occupants rather than the structure. The occupants of the space return to share a room for an extended retreat into the house.

The production of this text has simultaneously been a search for a sustainable practice but also an ever-present pressure to create an output to validate the pursuit of a practice. The methodology utilised to create this piece might be considered to be procrastination – in an attempt to understand what this work is, methods such as extended periods of reality TV watching, can drinking and sleeping have been utilised. These methods have now become the material of this object as procrastination has allowed us the time of having very little time whilst simultaneously having this opening up of time due to the blurry boundaries of when this work must be done. The attempt to describe what this labour is, removes some of the irony of calling it labour in that there is now an attempt to co-opt these everyday activities as artistic pursuit. Once the observation of the residents by the residents has begun; the excavation of the everyday, the labour which was being avoided begins.

[1] https://passivehouse.com/02_informations/01_whatisapassivehouse/01_whatisapassivehouse.htm

Hannah Braithwaite is a curator and writer working on a Master’s in Curatorial Practice at the Glasgow School of Art. She is currently based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her previous exhibitions include Looking at People Looking (Or Not Looking) At Art More or Less 1 Mile from Here (2019), (Dis)CONNECT (2018) and an unrealized project with the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow. She holds a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Art History from Concordia University. She is interested in queer archival practices and storytelling, domestic spaces, craft and their political importance.

Her most recent project, having been touched on the surface, is a zine and online appendix for queer women to reflect upon the spaces they inhabit and create. Initiated by Hannah Braithwaite in collaboration with and featuring new writing from Hannah Karpinski and Isabelle Joy-Stephen, the project explores queer friendships, ephemera, and domestic space, inspired in part by José Esteban Muñoz’s text “Ephemera as Evidence”. Ephemera, defined by Muñoz, accounts for the residues of queer life. In having been touched on the surface, ephemera takes the form of sewing patterns, shared clothing, and familiar routines. The zine will be published in a limited run in September of 2020 and will not be available online, rather distributed locally by the collaborators.

The accompanying online appendix shows fragments of the many works that inspired and innfluenced this project. It can be found at surfacezine.tumblr.com.

Expanded Attitudes is a publication developed collaboratively between curator Hannah Benassi and artists Sean Ellcombe, Naomi McClure, and Masaki Ishikawa. Reflecting on the isolation of lockdown and the restrictions imposed by Covid-19, this publication provides a space for three contemporary painters to reflect on previously completed projects and share new experimental developments of their practices. Focusing on the expanded field of painting and its different working processes, Expanded Attitudes presents a variety of work from linear drawings to three-dimensional models. This publication chronicles the artists’ creative processes during the pandemic while considering changing identities in contemporary painting.

Hannah Benassi is an artist and curator based in Edinburgh. Receiving her BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Benassi has exhibited her work in Dundee, Edinburgh, Kelso, and London. Continuing her studies in Curatorial Practice at The Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow, Benassi’s practice is concerned with contemporary painting in the expanded field, where she focuses on providing curatorial contributions to the development of the artists’ practice. Recently curated exhibitions include: My Truth is your story, co-curated with Shalmali Shetty and Yihang Hu, The Britannia Panopticon (2019), Beyond the Conventions of Painting, Salt Space Gallery (2020); and the digital publication Expanded Attitudes (2020). Working independently and collaboratively with artists and curators, she has also worked for Patricia Fleming Projects in Glasgow assisting the curatorial team with Anne Colvin’s interconnective residency When does a second become a moment? (2020).

Creating communicative spaces through collaborative methods of practice, my curatorial projects perform a levelled working dynamic between artist and curator. My curatorial research stems from my practice as an artist where I explore the changes in contemporary painting to examine how curators are responding to the expansive developments of the artform. Shifting between artist and curator, my curatorial methodology engages in prioritising the working process of the artists and to contribute to the development of their painting practice. Providing a loose framework at the beginning of every collaboration allows me to support interdisciplinary approaches to painting where my aim is to connect with the explorative practice of the artist and their unique identities of contemporary painting.

Instagram: @hannahbenassi

Joe Henry is an independent artist and curator based in Glasgow, Scotland. Joe’s work centres around music and art, developing more recently work that emerges as an interwoven meditation on healing through art and music.

His research investigates collaborations between, musicians, composers, poets, writers and photographers, curating and producing artwork that interweaves film and sculpture, music and video. Recent exhibitions and film work include:

Amy Winehouse by Charles Moriarty,(Dublin CHQ Building, May 2018);
The Lost Warhols by Karen Bystedt (Brown Thomas, Dublin, Oct 2018);
LCD Soundsystem by Ruvan Wijesooriya & Joe Henry (Guinness Storeshouse, Dublin, June 2019, and SWG3 Glasgow, October 2019);
Basquiat by Roland Hagenberg (Dublin Art Source, RDS, November 2019 and Sal Fine Art, Dublin);
Healing in a broken world, short film (Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow, Postgraduate Degree Show, August 2020).

Shalmali Shetty (b. 1992) is pursuing an M.Litt in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow supported by the Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship. She completed her Bachelor’s in Painting and Printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat (2015) and a Master’s in Arts and Aesthetics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2017). She has previously worked as an editor, writer and researcher for various art magazines and platforms based in India and has recently curated exhibitions within Glasgow. She intends to coalesce her background in art practice and theory in the production of the curatorial.

Her recent curatorial projects as part of M.Litt CPCA include the Hunterian Project 2020: In/Visibility: Presence in Performance co-curated with Carol Dunn, Claude Chan and Hannah Braithwaite in collaboration with the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow (March 2020, cancelled due to Covid-19) and My Truth is Your Story co-curated with Hannah Benassi and Yihang Hu under the collective titled the_bricolage, Glasgow (November 2019).

For her degree project, she has been working on putting together a publication titled this cloud may burst (December 2020) with visual and textual contributions from Debi Banerjee, Jenny Brownrigg, Sean Patrick Campbell and Katri Heinämäki around the themes of archives, hauntology, material cultures and memories.

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

this cloud may burst: thoughts on the loss and preservation of memory

It was May 2020 – I had already spent two months of the lockdown living alone in my room. Much of my thoughts were centred around a future I had anticipated and the sudden disruption of that very sense of a future. Accompanying this was the event of my hard disk crashing, erasing data and a sense of a past that I had digitally accumulated over a period of time. This only added to my experience of moments of slowness, stagnancy, blankness and despair. I was unable to remember what either the future or the past contained.⁣⁣⁣

What if one day, hypothetically speaking, we wake up to a world that experiences a digital blackout – as unprecedented as this pandemic that fractured familiar processes? Would this digital obsolescence disrupt our personal memories? What will it take to perform a collective remembrance in the shadow of capitalist and political structures? ⁣⁣⁣

Meanwhile, I think of artists and cultural practitioners who tend to make references to personal, historical and political archives and collective memories for their creative productions, adding their own interpretations and expressions, making way for intended or unintended appropriations, new and fictional narratives, parallel histories, analogous archives and alternate timelines. While recontextualizing the past within the contemporary, they are inadvertently building a layered, multi-narrative history for other possible futures.

The publication comprises thoughts on the loss and preservation of memory through text and visuals contributed by Debi Banerjee, Jenny Brownrigg, Sean Patrick Campbell and Katri Heinämäki (refer to accompanying images).

The sustainable and organic approach in my contemporary practice allows me to create work that speaks of nature and our connection to it. Constantly looking for ways to bring the human form closer to the natural world I experiment with textures and materials. My background in Printmaking reflects in my continuous search for ways to imprint nature in my works. Therefore often I execute my project ideas in techniques like casting and natural dyeing.

The ‘Curcuma longa’  series was created from naturally dyed textiles using compost dye method, allowing fermentation and decomposition to be in charge of extractions of dyes and imprinting them on pieces of fabrics.

Using the wax sculpture that’s part of my textiles series I created a digital installation that can be accessed on my website. Each day I upload a video of a five hour long time-lapse of my plants growing in the sculptural piece.

For the full ‘Birds of Paradise’ photographic series please see my website.

I have spent much of this year lost and I quite like where I have found myself.

My practice seeks to explore the surreality and magic found in travel and in the disorientation that the pandemic has brought to all of our lives. Visiting Pakistan and farming saline crops in the remote Glenshiel area during the pandemic were the source of my own discombobulation. It is from these experiences that this body of work was created and informed.

I have spent this year tip-toeing between reality and absurdity, between familiarity and the foreign, between myself and others. I have never fully committed myself to any side, instead finding compassion in the space between polarities. Through  the painting of vivid, complex and uncanny compositions, I engage others in moments of reverie and compassion. I welcome them into unreal places and help them “vault the mere blue air” that Toni Morrison suggests to be between ourselves and others.

Please find a link below to my 3D virtual gallery space.

A Chinese artist, engaged in sculpture, public art and digital art. From the perspective of speculative realism, her recent research and creation tried to transform the concepts of being and illusion, reality and falsehood, organic life and inorganic objects; to explore the stickiness between the real world and the virtual world and enable the audience to sense the potential relationship between fact and fiction. Through these elements, people may experience the dynamic co-existence, interconnection and tension of things in space, listen to the sound of things to sense the life and existence of substances.

I work through abstracting paradigms of observation and duration to emphasise the associated imperfections of translation. My practice aims to bring to light the relationship between language, painting and drawing.

Chiefly it is from isolated and nuanced aspects of the everyday, past and present that form a dynamic between the viewer and the author. In both a realised and insular method, a systematic approach through the first-hand engagement of the author, the everyday can be exploited by use of colour and shape. This language is equipped to highlight tensions within time which becomes the main informants of the second-hand experience of the viewer.

I present two virtual spaces : mind map and lockdown

projects 

They retrace and archive my mental mapping process.

It involves a rhizomatic dynamic where images, concepts

and objects are woven into each other.

Mind map originally ran parallel to my sculptural research.

Throughout the lockdown, I decided to give it a

proper space to exist and evolve independently.

Lockdown projects is a new creation that zooms in on my

lastest projects.

In this program, My project started with the topic “who is create”. As we all know, The process of an artist making a work is called creation. We are used to calling artists as creators. But, Does this behaviour really happen in the process of artistic creation?

most of time the outcome created is very different from creator’s thoughts during the creative process. The audience’s thoughts when they see the work may also be different from the Introduction of the artwork given by the creator. The results presented in the end will always be affected by many uncontrollable factors in the creative process. The creative thinking of the creator will also change due to personal experience. So, although the artwork was indeed created by someone. was it created by what we call the author? In other words, what is the creator in the whole process of creating works of art?

cv-lipengcheng(roc)

Since 1880, we’ve lost two thirds of our ocean’s fish biomass and if nothing changes we could lose 60% of our ocean species by 2100. Coronavirus led to a collapse in fish exports and many people’s livelihood is being used as a bargaining chip in Brexit negotations.

Within this context, I sought to ask: what is the future of our ocean industries and how might we take a more regenerative approach to harvesting our oceans?

To divine this knowledge I asked experts who work in sustainable fishing advocacy, seaweed harvesting and government bodies. I learned about Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaculture(IMTA): a means of growing edible seaweeds next to shellfish in a way that cultivates biodiversity by drawing new fish and plantlife to areas where it’s cultivated.

I then worked with budding crofters and people who fantasised about escaping from the city to navigate what they wanted and how they might take steps to reify their fantasies. There wasn’t an awareness of the possibilities that were available.

I propose an informational campaign that would help those who want to work closer to nature to take clear steps to starting an IMTA farm.

I am Mugdha Patil, a graduate of the Master of Design in Design Innovation and Citizenship course at the Glasgow School of Art. I completed my undergraduate studies with a Bachelor of Design degree in Furniture Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID). I am a designer who believes in making social change through people-centered and people-led actions and policies. I design services, products, product-services, and experiences that promote social, ecological transformation by applying research that focuses on people and the ecosystems (social, cultural, economic, psychological as well as physical) they occupy.

Citizenship for me means having a sense of belonging to a society. Design can help bring that about. I believe that taking into consideration the needs of an ecosystem as a whole gives us an opportunity for creating lasting change that is not just environmentally sustainable but also economically feasible and socially equitable. I believe that the design process has a thousand endings; it simply doesn’t end with a product and I continue to absorb its messages and meanings beyond that.

About the project.

My project, The Design of Dissent, combines public pedagogy and participatory design to create a Museum of Dissent. The final proposal made is that of a co-curated and co-created space where citizens can educate themselves about the various ways of critically participating in government, engage in the causes they believe in, and commemorate people’s power and struggles from the past.

The overall aim of this project is to identify how citizens perceive their duty of participation in government, especially in terms of dissent and our civic education on this particular topic. My focus is especially on the process of collective legacy-making, trust in institutions, and different approaches to critical civic participation, in times of protest and social change.

Following a qualitative case study + participatory design approach, this research intends to build a rich in-depth investigation focusing on how civic education is realized in our political lives and how critical sentiments are expressed by the citizenry, through the use of interviews, workshops, surveys, and document analysis. The results of this project are intended to bring more clarity to the ‘design’ of dissent, legacy of people’s movements, people’s trust in institutions (or lack thereof), and the viability of leaderless social movements.

I originally graduated from a Graphic Design Masters orientated towards social matters. I developed a background in print and editorial design. My practice is now focusing on research, social design and community-based projects. I am interested in looking at how design can support emancipation but also how design relates to politics and democracy.

My Master’s research project looks at political representation and democratic processes. It challenges the concept of representation and majority as effective forms of democracy and proposes different frameworks for democracy and civic engagements.

Because politics is often pictured as a complex topic only accessible for experts to discuss, instead, I tried to look at it with a didactic approach.

The research presents two complementary approaches “From the System to the People” and “From the People to the System”. Ultimately, what I am asking is how to represent multiplicity? What are the obstacles and problems of representation? Why do they exist and how to go around them?

I first attempted to define the French political system of representation in principle and in practice as a case study. I looked at its history, philosophy, practices and the roles played by experts and public institutions hoping this will enable me to identify entry points or short-circuit for change and civic engagement.

As my research perspective shifted I realised people were affecting the system themselves. I researched around the problematics of participation and how, why, when and by whom they are currently fostered. I identified different discourses around participation relating to different ideologies.

To get perspective, I searched for analogies. I compared network theories, animal and vegetal philosophies with the different discourses and ideologies around participation and with the way our social and political systems function. This allowed me to anchor my topic in a wider ecosystem and to compare current interactions and modes of assembling, of co-existence, and see what can be improved or challenged.

If you would like to know more about my work, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

After finishing my BA in Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, I pursued a Masters in Design Innovation & Citizenship at The Glasgow School of Art. Together with my partner Kat Zavada, we organise Nadmiar/Excess – contemporary art and experimental music festival. I was part of the editorial board of Formy.xyz – Poland’s first peer-reviewed design journal (2018–2019). I held design roles at Ergo Design and Comarch. Together with Tillman Kratzer and Kat Zavada, we are preparing to launch Works On Work – a collaboration space for people pursuing projects related to the topic work.

For me, Design isn’t necessarily about finding a solution nor about solving problems. It is about creating space or situations where conflicting views and power relations can be discussed and renegotiated. I oppose the idea of the designer as a facilitator who seeks consensus between different actants, for it blurs authorship and what follows – responsibility. My practice is not about creating consensus or pleasing all parties. On the contrary, I see great value in conflict and dissensus as vehicles for liberation.

My master’s thesis looks at the idea of wellbeing appropriated by the contemporary mainstream managerial discourse, where employees’ happiness is perceived as something to be quantified, managed, and used as a productivity-enhancement strategy.

In opposition to the dogmatic aesthetic representations happiness related to a neoliberal moral fantasy imposed by those in the position of power, I propose taking a step back to anticipate and celebrate the spontaneous, unmanageable sources of joy and satisfaction resulting from autonomy.

The project aims to document minor everyday activities, techniques and coping strategies that go against the managerial regime – micro-disobediences that give one a sense of autonomy. Some examples may include: binge-watching Netflix during work time, taking unnecessarily long breaks, choosing different routes than the algorithm decides, being intentionally mean to your customer, acting grumpy when everybody is overenthusiastic or perhaps not participating in socials. And through these ‘coming-outs’ create a space free of slack-shaming and overstepping guilt.

With this project, I want to provoke a further conversation about work dogma and the spiritual violence of positivity at work. Unguilty Pleasures is an (auto)therapeutic tool for many working people, including myself.

My name is Imanina. I’m a designer interested in designing for a post-capitalist society.

My most recent work explored media and democracy in the UK and looked at how alternative, citizen-owned media might provide a voice for the mis- and under-represented groups in society.

I’m keen to further explore how design might be used as a catalyst for social good, that is accessible for all and not just an elite few.

Dialect heritage aims to protect and promote dialect heritage. It focuses on remote communities in Scotland for their decline number of dialect speakers. Also, the research concentrate on Doric language as research example and the final outcome is related on it. The final outcome visualizes the idea of ‘dialect heritage make up a part of cultural heritage in the community’.In addition, this board game can be used as a catalyst, with youngsters meeting up with older native Scots speakers. During this process, youngsters have the opportunity to discover and begin to use new words, and the speakers found their inheritors and pass on their dialect knowledge. It could solve the problem of fewer dialect inheritors in remote communities.

This project used design as a medium to explore the significance of ordinary furniture to residents’ daily life and the feasibility of sustainable development of furniture.

As a necessity of residents’ daily life, furniture hides many unknown stories and secrets and also carries emotions of different users. Every piece of furniture has a special meaning for everyone. However, the fast-paced life of modern society makes the circulation of products faster, and the replacement rate of furniture is increased so waste is inevitable. It is regretted that many furniture worthies of being preserved are therefore neglected and then abandoned. The reason for its waste is not only because of damaged furniture, style changes, and residents’ relocation but also ignore daily furniture and the lack of environmental awareness. Although there are endless related education projects, how to implement residents’ behaviours into daily life is the pinpoint of this project.

This project traced the circulation process of furniture, explored and redefined the meaning of furniture to residents, and finally designed a solution to extend the service life of furniture accordingly.

A Fashion and Textiles Educator currently working at BPS Secondary College in Mauritius. As a fashion and textiles teacher she has always promoted the Green concept in students project work.

With a Bachelor degree in textile and fashion, she is always interested into studying the properties of fabric, basics of colour and texture.

This project began as an exploration of fabric construction methods.

It involves engaging stakeholders and collaborators in the processes of designing, making and testing of textiles. The strategy used is upcycling of fabric remnants sourced from the local textile mill in Elgin. The approach to upcycling, with which this practice is aligned, treats the textile source as laden with information that guides the form of new fabrics out the textile waste. Subsequently, the fabrics were sent for testing in Portugal for the creation of Almalaguês- Spanish sneakers.

Awarded as a Highly Commendable project in September 2020 for the SIE Fresh Idea Competition.

A multidisciplinary designer with a socially engaged practice. Her practice-led research looks at creating accessible and democratic engagement processes and toolkits for public space and land research to mobilize alternative voices and experiences of the landscape. From sensory and sound mapping to spatial imaginaries, she is exploring ways in which notions such as ‘having a voice’ can go beyond the metaphorical, and sensory engagement can create accessible consultation processes.

Having delivered a diverse body of collaborative work internationally she has worked with experts across art, design, architecture and science to create work that is socially and environmentally driven. This includes public installations and engagement projects for TATE Britain, London Design Week, Hello Wood International Architecture Summer University, KÉK – Center of Contemporary Architecture and Istanbul Biennale.

She received I-Portunus European Union artist mobility grant to work with CCA: Center of Contemporary Art in Glasgow – as part of their ‘School for Civic Imagination’ public engagement programme and was awarded IDENSITAT ‘Sound of our Cities’, a Creative Europe Cultural Collaboration grant to deliver an urban sound mapping project in Barcelona this year.

A graduating Design Innovation and Environmental Design master student. After completing an undergraduate course in Industrial Design at the School of Design in Zagreb, Croatia, I wanted to expand my work into broader social contexts. In the future, I wish to explore how spaces and environments could be used as transformational tools for society. In my final MDes project, I researched death and dying in order to develop ideas for new environmentally and socially sustainable alternatives.

Grief and Growth is a speculative design for a holistic new death practice lead by the principles of nature, equality, and healing.

The outcome imagines a new death service ran by nature preservation charities. It includes requirements for memorial and ceremonial grounds installed at protected nature sites around the UK, as well as a model for use and service outline which provides accessible funerary options while aiding nature conservation efforts. Those remembering their loved ones in this context intrinsically think of nature, the circle of life, and their place in it. As the charities’ reach expands through this service, caring about and protecting nature become part of a shared heritage.

Upon further development, Grief and Growth hopes to introduce something that’s missing from contemporary death practices: perspective and options.

My name is Francesca.

I graduated in Industrial and Graphic Design in Venice, where I understood how good products and multimedia projects should be planned. I learnt that the formal aspect of a product depends on its function and the user experience. In my opinion, the most important thing is that the designer role is to produce something that is durable even if the time passes by.

During the final undergraduate year, I started to work for a year in an Italian company, that produces glass objects and technical lamps. This job made me realize that I would like to do something more helpful for people.

The link between urban spaces and wellbeing has always been interesting for me, so I decided to move to Glasgow and attend the Environmental Design Master. Here I focused on the way a city or space can affect our behaviour in a positive or negative way. I learnt the importance of exploring and understanding a specific context through qualitative research to find solutions that can solve real issues and truly improve people’s lives.

Actually I am based in Italy and I would like to find a job in the Architecture and Urbanistic field. To be honest I do not know where I would like to live or do in the future. However, I know for sure that I would like to travel and live in different places to do as many experiences as possible, to enrich not only my career but also my life.

With a curious mindset to unpick and discover hidden opportunities for design intervention, Fanechka seeks to understand behavioural insights from psychologists and scientists to nudge people towards a more sustainable form of living. Can Design play this role when assessing behaviours of communities collectively? She has a previous background in the interior design and architecture sector with her focus now shifted on projects that aim to understand the social and cultural complexity directly influenced by various biases, social norms and spaces.

Fanechka’s Final Project:  How might we promote pro-environmental behaviours to create sustainable neighbourhoods?

Communities and Climate Change are complex challenges that force us to act in a certain way due to various systemic issues. Based on the COMB model tool provided by the behavioural insights team in London, I directed my research to find motivators and opportunities that drove people to act a certain way.
Understanding and analysing these behavioural insights to drive social change has moulded this project.
Making the language of climate action and environmental sustainability more inclusive and accessible to groups of people from various class structures had built the foundation of this project. Can we multiply and amplify certain behaviours to create a new and pronounced sense of identity to those communities that are tied with complexities? This project does not intend to focus on one specific behaviour, as sustainability is a journey with one success action resulting in us taking the next action – this was uncovered through various forms of research.

Visualizing the whole community as a complex system within which a collection of design interventions take place would help in the shift towards adopting sustainable lifestyles. Collective behaviours could then influence individuals due to social norms or perceived values.
As the local council carefully creates change to its infrastructures it needs to also ingrain behaviours within this system simultaneously to have the community working as an ecosystem.

Proposal:   WHITE CITY CARES
The design outcome considers behaviours projected by citizens of a social housing estate in London. Based on these behaviours, there are 3 different parts that work in cohesion to instil certain values among residents i.e pro-environmental.

‘White City Cares’ inspires and empowers people from different backgrounds, cultural values and upbringings to inspire, learn and take action individually or collectively to help live as a part of the ecosystem.

Brief detail on the design process is mentioned under each slide.

Natural Light in Learning Environments

Learning environments and especially schools have always been of great interest to architects mainly because through design those spaces can influence a child’s education and future. A school is not just a building to accommodate students and teachers, and it must not be seen as such. A learning environment can play an important and significant role in students learning and academic performance.

The importance of natural light in a learning environment is what this research will focus on. While dealing with natural light in a learning environment, the architect will come across many other aspects like natural ventilation, views, the relation- ship of the classroom to the outdoor spaces, the orientation of building and classrooms, the colours and materials in the space that will have to be chosen to improve the quality of the natural light without causing discomfort or other negative effects.

In my research I have tried to determine the positive effects of taking advantage of natural light in the architectural design of learning environments. More specifically, the positive effects that are connected with student’s performance, health, the aesthetic and efficient quality of space and the possibilities that arise from the implementation of natural light in a learning environment.These positive effects are connected with a better quality of learning which is human-centred and sensitive towards the environment. In effect will lead to conscientious individuals and stronger societies able to confront today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.

Instagram : @sonyalizbeth

Linkedin : http://www.linkedin.com/in/sonyalizbeth

Email : sonyalizbeth@gmail.com

The Exploding School: The Potential for Outdoor Learning and Play Space in Dublin’s North East Inner City along the Royal Canal

Please find a short image diary of my process and outcomes at the bottom of this text.

Background and overview of project:

Note on Language: NEIC refers to the North East Inner City of Dublin, a geographical area with a population of over 18,000 people.

Covid-19 has exposed the quality and accessibility of our public spaces in Dublin. When schools in the Republic of Ireland closed on March 12th to prevent the spread of Covid-19,  the availability of outdoor space was thrown into stark relief. It was my assumption coming into the research that the NEIC was already suffering from a lack of public spaces and invitations to spend time in the area outside of commercial spaces. It was also my belief that this lack of possibility to freely gather outside without spending money disproportionately impacts young people.

I chose to focus my research on the needs of schools in the NEIC as major stakeholders who would benefit from an increase in outdoor playspace, interviewing teachers in the local community and young people who live and go to school in the area.  Through engaging with schools I found that space for schools in the NEIC is critical not just to facilitate play and engagement during Covid-19, but also to provide space to play for pupils, many of whom do not have gardens or are living in temporary emergency accommodation due to the acute rental and public housing crisis in Ireland.

Space to play and the possibility of learning through play is a vital aspect of a young person’s wellbeing and development. However research also shows its relationship to the wellbeing of the broader community. In particular, play in public space, either on pavement, the street, the immediate public realm has been shown to have a vital role in breaking down social isolation.

In the existing literature written on improving a young person’s experience in the NEIC, we often see a heavy focus on preventing “anti-social” behaviour and increased police presence. However the effect of this fear of people gathering outside has been to remove many places to rest or gather outdoors, leaving more vulnerable street users such as older people, children, people with specific mobility needs at a loss for space in the city.

When it comes to a young person’s experience of the city at street level in the NEIC, we do not find many playful touchpoints in the immediate public realm. Through speaking to teachers and young people themselves, I found many young people who live and go to school in the NEIC carry negative associations with the urban environment, often associating it with rising levels homelessness due to the ongoing housing crisis in Ireland. Many also associate it with negative interactions with police, experiencing or witnessing racism, or being hit by traffic.

A lack of public space which invites play and is accessible to young people leaves us with the self perpetuating narrative of anti social behaviour – if the urban environment is solely to be used for commerce or travel, we face the problem that anyone spending time in it who is not performing these roles is at risk of being seen as acting in an “anti social” manner.

To address this, I am proposing built interventions into the Royal Canal to create new opportunities for play and pedagogical engagement with the city.

As Ward and Fyson write in Streetwork: The Exploding School:

“Just as the school should be open to the community, so should the community be open to the school. All resources of the community are educational resources.” [Fyson, Ward, 1975]

I chose to visualise this possibility through the introduction of mooring points along a specific stretch of the Royal Canal. The site was picked after a process of mapping the schools and distribution on young people in the area. The Royal Canal was built in the 1700’s as a motorway of its’ time, to link Dublin port with North western counties, however it is now largely used for foot and bike travel. Focusing on the water of the canal based on young people’s observations around it, I chose to imagine mooring points for activities like boat racing and raft building, and as spaces that could add focus to the huge biodiversity of the canal beds.  Collecting and building objects is a tradition in the inner city particularly around October and halloween when bonfires are lit. These skills could be brought to raft building, or attention could be brought to the huge amount of native plants which grow along the canal as pedagogical activities and embodied learning.

I went through several stages of research from critical inquiry and interviews, to quantitative mapping of the area, to ethnographic observation and workshops with young people who live and go to school in the area.

It is the hope of my project that I will use the work and insights gained to build a proposal for a community build project in partnership with a youth project in the area. I am currently working on the proposal for this, and would be interested to hear of any similar community based building projects happening in the UK or Ireland.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to my project in particular the young people who took part in the workshops and teachers who gave their time to talk to me. For any further information or to read more about my process, please feel free to email me at rosi.j.leonard@gmail.com

Coming from a Product Design background in Politecnico di Torino I am now finishing a MA in Innovation Design and Environmental Design.

The following study explores what the digital support for mental health is, and the relationship that people have with it. The research is based on interactions with people connected with mental health support. Different methods were used to get information from the people, such as digital interactive workshops and video interviews.

Stage1. Observation. The first step in the research came from the analysis of the current online support for mental health. This observation was intended to be a starting point in the understanding of the topic, and at the same time it has turned out to be the beginning point for the understanding of the problems connected to this service.

Stage2. DeskResearch. The literature was done to better understand the potential of the digital tools in the mental health sector, following the citations and the references from other articles in the same field. The study of the literature concluded in the analysis of different therapies ( CBT, ACT ) used in the digital online services, and of the digital tools used by therapists as extra tools for their sessions.

Stage3. Interviews. The interviews were done to experts of the field to receive their viewpoint of the digital mental health support compared with the more traditional face to face therapy. During the lockdown therapists were obliged to use digital media to get in touch with their patients and conduct their sessions. The feedback from the therapists interviewed were absolutely positive and encouraging for the future of the sector. A therapist though underlined the problems about the accessibility of digital mental health, especially for the lack of safe places where to do online sessions, as reported by some of his patients.

Stage4. Workshop. The workshop was meant to get information and experiences from the users of the mental health support and digital mental health support. It was a fully online and interactive workshop designed to help people to speak about their personal experiences in an open way, ensuring the maximum privacy. The results were, again, focused on the problems of accessibility of different online services, above young adults leaving with family, not feeling at ease to have online sessions with the possibility of someone hearing from another room.

Stage5. Modelling. The designing of the intervention came exactly from the problem found in the previous research: the accessibility of digital mental health. This idea consists in a net of SafeRooms to be located in cities and urban areas. A SafeRoom is simply a room in which your privacy is guaranteed, where it is possible to access the digital support systems that already exist online. Inside these rooms you can find all the tools you might need during a complete digital session. To be free and open this net of rooms will be placed in public and open spaces. Libraries, schools and universities are the best locations, but there could be many others. The important thing is to give people a safe place where they can feel comfortable while having mental health support.

The renderings of the intervention were given to the participants of the workshop to get feedback, that were positive and people were giving interesting stimuli for future possibilities of this service.

Conclusion. This journey brought to the definition of a problem that some people are facing now and probably more people will in the future. The intervention is just the first step to try to resolve this situation, but is a good base for further research.
The next steps for this design project are to keep organizing workshops with users to codesign the layout of the SafeRooms and their more suitable locations. Another extremely important perspective is that the initial concept was based on the idea “to make mental health support in step with the times of technology”.This project has to be fluid and able to change as fast as technology evolves.

‏More information in the attached document

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Hi, I’m Maja! In a previous life I was a physics grad but I realized I was more passionate about studying and helping people through design. My main interests are in public space as an arena for tactile democracy, encounters, and explorations. I aim to examine this through an analytical yet playful approach.

My master’s project, Serendipity in the City, looked at the city through the lens of “designing for serendipity”. I saw serendipity as a possible antidote to physical filter bubbles, routine, and strictly functionalist uses of space.

Through a series of discussions and walks, I explored the meanings of serendipity, community, connection and strangership with a range of people. The project identified 4 key areas to consider when building for serendipity, and proposed a freely accessible publication to inspire and empower citizens to form new relationships with their surroundings.

The full report can be viewed here.

I have a background in Architecture and have always been interested in exploring lived experiences. I am inspired by how narratives can play a part in shaping culture, influencing change in systems and attributing new meanings to spaces.

My graduate project was focussed on exploring the gap between the representational aspects and the built material reality of cities. My effort was to mediate an experience through a dialogue between the city and its people by challenging everyday conditions in urban streets. The result was an audio experience that could serve to dismantle the built, objective perceptions of the city and re-orient human perspectives. It is rooted in the idea that people form dynamic, iterative relationships with the spaces around them and this can be used to transform the urban experience.