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.

‘Connecting New Centres for Tradeston & Laurieston’

How might hierarchy of urban form introduced into Glasgow’s gridiron diversify pedestrian movement and experience? is the question to the design project in Tradeston & Laurieston located across river Clyde in south-side of Glasgow city centre.

The non-hierarchical system gird has the overall similarity of sizes and visuals on most streets, which makes harder for pedestrians to perceive a sense of hierarchy and difficulties pedestrian movement.

In Consequence, the author believed a city without the sense of hierarchy of urban form reduces the diversified pedestrian experience.

Recognised by the street user, the quality of varied diverse experience of pedestrians because people remembering the image of identity of different places. Glasgow’s gridiron which is essentially a non- hierarchical urban pattern, lack of the hierarchy of urban form. Missing of the secondary and tertiary street, the city loss the opportunity to introduce more diversity in the street network.

The hierarchy allows for the great decision by the pedestrian when travelling from their location to destination. The variety of street types have corresponding building typology that enclosed the space between buildings.

This design project aims to investigate how pedestrian movement between two neighbouring districts of Tradeston and Laurieston in Glasgow has been affected by an existing grid-iron morphology.

The project introduces a hierarchy of urban form including central square with primary public buildings; primary streets, mid-block lanes to plays as shared space and building variety at the scale of the block into the Glasgow grid-iron system.

Reflection on the success of the design project will allow conclusions on the applicability of a similar method to the understanding and transformation of other locations of under-performing gridiron morphologies.

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.

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.

Clutha is one of Glasgow’s first bars and has long witnessed the development of Glasgow. Over the years, the disrepair brought about by history has become an obstacle to the development of Clutha, and many problems have gradually surfaced. The project will start with an in-depth analysis of the historical context of the site from the historical culture of the area where Clutha is located, and find the uniqueness of Clutah. While analyzing the regional conditions, the unique network of Glasgow’s music development was analyzed, making the project have a good internal music network system architecture and become the core of the new Clutha. Next, the project reconstructed the function and form of the building from each floor in turn, incorporating a richer space and Clutha’s unique musical attributes into a limited space, thereby building the new Clutah into an emerging music and cultural center in Glasgow.

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 cities are looking to reuse their heritage buildings with new factions and purposes in order to give new life to these abandoned spaces. By using an area of the postgraduate diploma thesis that needed development this research aims to find methods and establish a better understanding about the use of interior spaces for the regeneration of heritage factory buildings by analyzing the work of Antony Gormley through his exhibitions Antony Gormley in Royal Academy of Art and Model in White Cube. The diploma thesis was located in the abandoned Can Ricart Factory in Poblenou, an old industrial area of Barcelona full of historic factories.

Using different mediums, this study analyses and determine knowledge from the work of Antony Gormley. Books, journals, lectures, videos, documentaries, research papers, diagrams, plans, and sections assisted this research with the appropriate knowledge. Structured in two sections, this research introduces the two shows of the artist, followed by their evaluation and comparison of the two with Can Ricart which assisted with strategies for the regeneration of the interior spaces of the factory.

Antony Gormley firstly studied archaeology, anthropology, and art history at trinity college, Cambridge. Then, he traveled to India which inspired his artistic theories. Afterward, he returned to England to continue his studies in art. In his studies, he focused on sculpture at the Central School of Art, Goldsmith’s College, and the Slate School of Art.

He is known for his artworks that explore the connection between the human body and its spatial surroundings. He wants to make you think about your position and the room you are in and in relation to his work. He says that ́art is no longer about power and privilege, but about participatioǹ. Most of his artworks are human figures, which he cast from his own body with various materials such as plaster, concrete, and iron. Some of Gormley’s works explore the relationship between old heritage sites or buildings, his contemporary artwork, and the viewers.  Few shows that explore this relationship are; Antony Gormley in Royal Academy of Art, London (2019), Sight in Delos Island, Greece (2019), Model in White Cube Bermondsey, London (2012-2013) and Still Standing at state Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2011-2012).

This study investigates the following two shows, Antony Gormley (2019) and Model (2012-2013). His Royal Academy show was the most recent work by the time of the research and was easy to visit and explore. The Royal Academy show was in the Burlington House building which was built in 1868 by Sydney Smirke. The visit to the show took place on the 26th of October where a further understanding, observing, and sensing of his artworks occurred. On the other hand, the white cube show was in an old industrial warehouse which was build in 1970 and transformed by Casper Mueller Kneer in 2011 into a contemporary art gallery. The medium that was used for the understanding of the show was mostly through videos due to the fact that was ended in 2013. The two exhibitions were similar in overall spatial size that I want to explore for Can Ricart and both are placed within buildings.

The Antony Gormley show was held in the Royal Academy of Art and included a non-chronological retrospective artwork from the 45 years of the artist’s work. According to the artist, one of the goals of the show was to exploit the entire volume of the Royal Academy in a way that made the viewer’s journey through it exciting. One of the characteristics of this show is that there is no story behind but only the story of the viewer that brings with him.  According to Martin Caiger Smith, the show binds together Gormley’s most recent and previous work, which emphasizing on his general and continuing concerns on how we experience the elemental natural world, with who we are, as bodies moving through space and time, and how we relate to the man-made environment we have to create in our environment.

The Model show that was held in White Cube, testing the physical possibilities of the gallery space. This ambitious show investigates our experience of the body through architecture, and of architecture through the body. In this show, a dialogue between extension, expansion, and the scale of the body is taken as a variable throughout the installation of objects. Unlikely, the Royal Academy show here the viewer can choose the pathway he wants to take. Additionally, in this show, the artist uses weathering steel and iron for his artworks. The use of these materials unites the various sculptures and gives the impression of one continuous artwork.

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.

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.

Manwei Ou is a womenswear designer who graduated from MDes Fashion and Textile of Glasgow School of Art. Inspired by the curtains blowing in the wind of Gabriel Lester’s installation , the designer decided to research the concept of frozen in time and space and experiment with capturing old clothing in the mid-air through photography.

These images selected from the impressive shape of thousands of pictures lead to a sensitive collection of twisted, flexible silhouettes dresses and hats. The shadow cast by the clothes on the wall in the photo also contributed a lot to this collection.

The work refers to revoke the warm memory and the unforgettable moment of urban people, as well as the concretization of personal abstract emotions, second-hand garments’ rebirth. Time is unstoppable, but we had this moment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Xiaoxin Wang is an illustrator and visual designer from China. She is currently working as a freelance illustrator. She explores the use of comics to tell stories about what happens around her. She uses irony and humor to take us into a surreal space. Her work aims to give the reader an emotional identity. She was shuttling back and forth between reality and the surreal.

Xiaoxin graduated from Hubei Institution of Fine Arts with a degree in Visual Communication Design before completing her GSA master’s degree.
“My works focus on the study of all kinds of emotions brought by the society. Through the observation of the people around me, I find that some of the pressures brought by the community are very subtle by looking at these stories and adding some emotional content. It is the most exciting thing to let the work wander between the real and the surreal. “

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ABOUT ME

Experienced Glasgow School of Art postgraduate majoring in Interior Design. Outstanding user-friendly design approaches, innovative concepts and techniques result the capability of engaging in creative work. My decision of learning interior design was inspired by Ilse Crawford’s design philosophy, which is about humanity and wellbeing. I completed my past projects with thinking not only in a designer’s way but also in a user’s direction. Photography and digital&watercolour painting are my interests. Photography contributed to the observation of shape, light, colour and emotion. Painting enlarged the imagination and represented these creative ideas effectively.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

This design is called “a cat and a human’s home”. By comparing cat and human’s “home”, it studies and discusses how under the current highly developed capitalist market system in China, young people are constrained by the phantom of capitalism. In this design, “human” and “cat” is a kind of both reality and representation: they are both human and cat, as well as insider and outsider under the capitalist system. Through the materialisation of the national machine, ideology, and constructed situations, showing the human “home” has become a shaped category.

The main scope of the research lies in the sociological category of Marxism. People buying things for distinguishing dissidents and solidifying divisions, forming the basis of self-esteem and self-worth. “Cat” is also one of the exquisite items. Some people buy cats because they can get much attention on social media and because they can show their “love” and “decent life”. For the cat itself, it does not constitute these nouns or adjectives as a factor that affects thinking. It possibly will only eat the food it likes to fill its stomach, and will not go to the Michelin 3-stars restaurant on purpose.

This design uses “the others” to explore the status quo of human society. There is no antagonism between human and these “others”, while a distinction allows people to understand the situation easier and better. The central significance of the research is to illustrate the status of the young people in the “situation” and demonstrate how the social alienation and consumerism invade personal space and impact personal autonomy.

The complete project can be seen on my website.

My name is Chrissie Jacquet, I am a Franco-Scottish designer interested in the conservation of period buildings, as well as slow and sustainable design. That is why I chose the Egyptian Halls as my theatre of experimentation for this project. The purpose was not only to design a space for sustainable makers and craftspeople but also to question the sustainability of my practice. The project therefore acts as a manifesto for sustainability.

The museum has always been a place for collection, exhibition and education which carries civilization and history of all humankind. The museums are the wealth of the world, but some of them have been stolen, particularly here in the UK who has stole from so many nations without their consent. We should have our own museum belongs to ourselves.

COP26, to be held in 2021, is an opportunity for people to reconsider the climate and our environment. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and its adverse impacts undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development. During this conference, the museum can be a place to show climate change strategies from all the world and a place for people to share their ideas. So I start thinking what the museums will look like in this profoundly altered world, what   new functions they will have, what role they might play in our society?

Starting from the first museum in the history, the exhibition is in a closed space, and limited by this space. Therefore, the reimagining museum is trying to break the boundaries between exterior and interior, make the public space into a truly “public space”, which means the site itself can be a part of the museum, and multiple places constitute the entire museum. A museum may not be a specific building. It may be an area or multiple areas and buildings distributed in a city. The whole area combined can record and display the exhibition more comprehensively which is a kind of speculative museum.

In this project, I select Festival Park, Govan Graving Dock and Finnieston Crane as the project sites which are around the conference location. These places recorded the history, witnessed the changing of a city, and will look forward to the future together with us. In addition, the sites themselves can be a part of the exhibition, instead of just a space hosting the exhibition. The speculative museum will be distributed in every corner of the city. When we are walking in a city, we are in the museum.

Reimagining the museum is not to overthrow the original form, but to radically make the museum as an institution exploring more possibilities, to help bring about more equitable and sustainable futures in the climate change era.

Rui Liu is a motivated interior designer who graduated from civil engineering and worked as a junior engineer for 2 years. During the year of studying interior design in GSA, I not only gained a new understanding of interior design but also came into contact with various ideas and concepts, which deepened my passion for exploring interior design.

Speculative design is the most important part of what I have learned here. It reminds me that design is not just a problem-solving tool, it can also ask questions to make people think. In my postgraduate study, I tried to incorporate this concept into my project.

‘The fear and worries about death is natural but not rational.’
——Epicurus

For the stage3 project, I chose death, a topic that people don’t want to discuss, as my theme. After research, I found that death in the city has many negative effects on us. For example, the environmental pollution and waste of resources caused by the disposal of the remains, the separation of the living and the deceased caused by traditional death-related activities, and the biases caused by our attitude towards death, etc. Based on these, I tried to conceive a new type of dead space that can solve these problems. It can not only meet the basic needs related to death but also provide people with a space to think about death and connect with the public.

The final site of this project is located in the park of each city, shortening the physical distance between the living and the dead. Focusing on underground space saves land resources, and changes the traditional funeral and commemoration methods while increasing the space for public service. In terms of the atmosphere, this space appropriately deprives people of the perception of space to provide people with more thinking space and possibilities. Everyone has their own different opinions on the final thinking of death, and this space provides such a place and opportunity for thinking.

Remember， we will die 🙂

(here is a PDF below which is a short story combined with renderings, hope you enjoy.)

Individual memory museum design based on emotional memory design

With the development of the information age, people are often in the environment of information explosion, and their ability to perceive their emotions is getting weaker and weaker. The convenience of consumption also makes people accumulate more and more debris. In the era of virtualization, the relevance and dependence between daily life items and people gradually decrease. People need to regain their emotional perceptions in a fast-paced life. Under such demand, nostalgic waves, ancient markets, and stalls still exist. This article takes emotional memory as the theoretical basis, extracts design ideas, finds the emotional connection between private objects and people, and converts to the application of space design, with the intention of awakening people’s deep consciousness of self emotion. Based on the theory of memory psychology, emotional experience design, and narrative space, this article looks for cases through three aspects: the sensory layer, the behavior layer, and the cognitive layer explores the conversion of the emotional connection between objects and people to space and draws the corresponding Conversion mode. Combine with this design. In this design, the author’s personal belongings, as well as those of friends and family, will be used to find the stories of people and objects and converted them into space experience.

The design is named “Memory Museum”. The design concept is that as long as the participants bring five related items with their memories and put them in our memory storage station, they can get their memory interactive museum. This design takes the author’s items as an example and selects the five works that have the deepest contact with the author during the lockdown period to present the formation process of Windy’s memory museum during the epidemic. After each item is placed in the memory storage station, it will be classified, and the design elements will be extracted according to “sensory memory”, “behavior memory”, and “scene story memory”. Emotional memories are awakened through sensory information, starting with multiple levels of sensory information experience such as sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, etc., to restore the initial feelings of participants, and evoke experience memories and related emotions in the most natural way And record it and convert it into poetry. Then, a small three-dimensional space is formed according to the dynamic lines. In this small space, situations are designed. These created situations enable participants to combine with certain situations that they have experienced in the past, generate connections, arouse certain memories, and Let participants re-experience the emotions and feelings they had at that moment in the past.

With the advent of the era of globalization, the use of objects by humans has largely caused national boundaries to gradually disappear. The regionality and differences of daily life objects are slowly shrinking, and life objects are changing with production methods and traffic conditions. And more and more lost the characteristics of regionalization. On the other hand, the advent of the immaterial society has brought about a huge change in the concept of human beings. The updating of objects is faster and more frequent than in any previous era, and people’s dependence and emotion on objects have gradually become indifferent. The memory museum connected with daily objects and space design can awaken people’s awareness and exploration of themselves, and deepen the importance and dependence on daily objects. This study shows that the storage of memory is not only limited to text, pictures, but also storage of space. Interdisciplinary integration and analysis of related theories such as memory psychology, cognitive psychology, design psychology, and emotional experience design, further define the concept of emotional memory, and extract and classify the corresponding experience elements from the constituent content of emotional memory After sorting, and then on the basis of the analysis of the emotional experience level, the spatial design method and related design value based on emotional memory are proposed hierarchically and systematically. The small spaces of different objects can have different combinations of connections. This also verifies that in a social society, individuals and individuals There is a connection. All small spaces will be assembled into a large space, similar to a collection station and collection hall. When the audience walks into this large space, they can feel different emotions, and they will also have the same emotional resonance. For example, walking into the reading space will also recall your reading time. Through the recollection of item stories, it can be transformed into a deeper understanding and reflection of oneself. Observers can find a lot of joy in design from their own lives and items.

Boyi Zhou comes from China. She has background and a Bachelor degree in Furniture and Product Design. Through her placement year working as a Visual and Merchandising designer in IKEA, she has gained an interest in spatial design. Therefore, she determined to conduct her master studies in Interior Design at The Glasgow School of Art.

“Virtual space design: an exploration of future living space” is her graduate project, which aims to investigate the future living environment under the influence of rapid development of internet and technologies. The final outcome constructed a future community in modular design. There are five main modules: Entrance, Information Center, Entertainment Center, Working Area and Living Area. Each part is important and indispensible. In this vertical structure, this community could extend upward continuously to adapt to the flexible populations. People could realize everything in this community without moving to anywhere, which means the reduction of fuel costs, pollution, time wasted, transport infrastructures and so on. Thus, this project also has a close link to green cities and smart cities.

Different people from various cultural backgrounds form rich and diverse cultures in the world. A unique place, country, or group of people is defined by their specific culture and thus it is very important to develop and cherish one’s own cultures in this special and ever-changing time. As a Chinese, I am keen to study and treasure some of the traditional Chinese values that I endorse.

One of the most important values in Chinese culture is filial piety. According to Confucius, “Respecting and supporting the family’s senior members and handling their funeral affairs” are duties of younger generations, and “caring for the old and nurturing the young” are fundamental family virtues. In the modern context, proper gatherings and communications are crucial to Chinese people to help them to know their parents better and care for them accordingly. However, compared with the traditional Chinese houses design, the modern Chinese flats provides smaller and defined shared space, which is not good for family communications and eldercare.

I am aiming to propose modular furniture design at shared spaces in Chinese houses to provide more opportunities for gathering and communications among family members to take care of the elders in the families. Meanwhile, I also developed a model to verify the effectiveness of communications for the final design and potentially related designs.

At the beginning of the year 2020, the majority of Chinese people were asked to stay strictly at home for more than one month to stop COVID-19 from spreading, which unexpectedly provided a great opportunity for a family gathering. People explored many family activities in a limited shared space. By sourcing stories that happened at home during COVID-19 through public reaction data collected by government or other related media and also by interviewing some people, I found how people communicate through specific family activities. The stories are categorized according to the relative position of the people and then I used the model to verify the effectiveness of communications of different categories for a better understanding of the stories.

Case studies of multifunctional furniture and spaces that could enhance communications were also analyzed and they were verified by the communication effectiveness model for inspirations.

Finally, I proposed modular furniture that can be changed according to different family activities to meet the needs of various gatherings and communications. The furniture was proved to be useful in enhancing communications by the verification using the model developed. The final design of the furniture also provides more potentials of usage that could be explored by the users.

Forgiveness space

Forgiveness Space is a natural space to promote the family relationship between children and fathers. Through interaction, immersive experience, and joint participation, promoting excellent communication between fathers and children and understanding each other better is achieved. The patriarchal system is a widespread problem in society since ancient times.  Although it is a matriarchal society in some areas and periods（For example, Minangkabau, an indigenous people located in the West Sumatra Plateau in Indonesia, is the world’s largest matriarchal society）, in most families, the father still occupies the central leadership position.  Long-term inequality between men and women has led to a series of problems, such as the mother’s weak presence in the family under the oppression of patriarchy, which leads to the lack of protection in the child’s growth.  This lack of the mother’s care and protection will lead to some personality defects, such as depression, sensitivity, irritability, paranoia, etc.  Although the status of father and mother in the family tends to be the same day by day, because patriarchy has dominated people’s thinking for too long, the shadow of patriarchy still exists in life.  The existence of patriarchy not only affects children but also puts pressure on fathers.  The standard definition of the father; they need to be the person who makes the most money in the family; they should always be rational and not emotional, and so on.  In order to satisfy the stereotype of fathers in these societies, fathers themselves are under pressure, which also causes a series of problems. For example, it is difficult for fathers to have enough time to care for their families and accompany their children’s growth.  This phenomenon is also why it is difficult for fathers and children to communicate and create barriers, and the problems that need to be solved.

Keywords: forgiveness; communication bridge; time machine; door; love; experience; understanding

Majida Khanfar is a Palestinian architect by practice. She completed an interior design master’s degree at the Glasgow School of Art. She finished her BA in Architectural Engineering at Birzeit University in Palestine. After graduating, Majida was exploring the fundamentals of a creative environment for designers and artist to breach conventional boundaries. Accordingly, indulged herself in several experiences with open environments to practice art and experimental design in order to perceive its limitless medium and challenge her imagination and creativity. Majida had the privilege to participate in various international workshops in Italy, France, UK and Jordan, which gave her exposure and in-depth knowledge of art and design in diverse contexts.

Majida has always been passionate in the formulation and manipulation of space without any constraints to highlight the profound power that architecture beholds and its capability to change people’s perception towards space. Her master thesis was inspired by a short film named ‘Split’ in which the main character, Henry, is hit by a meteorite that shifted his body 91 cm from his physical self (Clapin, 2008). In the shot film, Henry starts questioning his body relation with the surrounding space and objects. It was quite captivating how human body proportions ultimately rely on the space and the objects utilized regularly. The meteorite as an unforeseen event is similar to Covid-19 lockdown, therefore questioning the effects it will leave on the human body in relation to the surrounding environment.

For her thesis, Majida investigated the role of Middle Eastern residential guest space during this lockdown. The scope of her dissertation focuses on body-centred experiments to raise awareness for designers about the often neglected influence of the physical body on spaces.

The thesis seeks to rethink the conventional design process by challenging the traditional standards imposed upon the human body and its boundaries, and proposes new design methodology for adjusting, re-activating guest spaces.

‘A body occupies a place and, through movement, activates it’.
(Casey, 1990)

Below a link to GSA previous stages’ portfolios.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-EktRrqkZS1-Vusr8BjJKB1gV3vcLOAa?usp=sharing

With a bachelor’s degree from Kingston University, Hardy has continued to study MDes Interior Design at GSA. His design research at Glasgow has combined philosophy and interiors, involving artificial intelligence, post-anthropocentrism, and bio-politics. Hardy has worked professionally as an architectural design intern in both Japan and China. Along with five other students, he has won the school competition for the Mack Light in recent. Hardy is a multiple scholarships recipient, and his work is shared on various websites. Hardy is looking for a dynamic design studio in the UK, where he can employ his creativity and specialisation, with interests developed.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced us to rethink the politics of health in a broader sense. The design research has centred the biopolitical philosophy studied by both Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. The latter mentions ‘naked life’, in which survival becomes the only human raison d’ être, and the state of exception becomes the new normal. Taking the totalitarian society portrayed in the film 1984, the author has envisioned the four ministries, which embodied the post-pandemic landscape and its social ideology. By reinterpreting the COVID-19 signs, the author has produced a set of graphical patterns employed in the spatial design. Through the four ministries, the project has speculated an ‘alternative world’, in which people sacrifice individual freedom to public health, and consequently live in a permanent state of fear and insecurity.

is a British Product Design Engineer with a background in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, whose MSc final project is titled ‘Designing For The Homeless‘.

It was identified that the Glasgow housing crisis is particularly affected by two key problems; a poor perception of the homeless by the public and homeless sleep deprivation. The negative connotations surrounding the homeless population and a resulting lack of human contact makes it difficult for them to get the support they need. Sleep deprivation is an unrecognised concern for most homeless people. Rough sleeping is mentally, physically and emotionally draining, and the constant exposure to noise leads to ailments like insomnia that further impacts the homelessness stigma.

Introducing Caraid; a system that utlises RFID technology and white noise sleep therapy to address these issues. An associated service was designed which sought to change the way the public interacts with the homeless, by encouraging empathy and initiating contact.

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.

I used to have a bachelor degree in Material Science and Engineering from the University of Science and Technology Beijing. After graduating, I chosed to transfer my major to Product Design Engineering. In the past year, I learned a lot about product design in Glasgow. As the last project of my master’s study stage, I focused on the topic of “Future Food Supply”.

FUTURE FOOD SUPPLY
Shared Food Delivery Robot for Urban Balcony Farming

There is huge diversity in the way people usually get food today, such as meal deal from Tesco, takeout, cooking at home, fast food, etc. But what the food supply will be in the future？There may be more possibilities.

Analysing based on Speculative Design, both physical store disappearing and more direct contact with food producer are possible futures. But, No matter which one will be the future, Freshness is very likely to be still one of important requirements. From another angle, lots of food were wasted in past few months due to epidemic because some people over-purchased surplus food. However, residents live in my apartment shared their surplus food with neighbor, which reveals the huge potential benfits of social participation for dealing with food supply.

Accordingly, in order to provide food as fresh as possible and improve sense of social participation, I decided set Urban Farming as Main Context and Surplus food Sharing as Main Concept. Then I initially created such background: There is such kind of apartment with balcony farms and residents could share food with neighbor. Based on this scenario, lots of evidence support me to design a food delivery facility. And I developed my design concept from smart tracking cart to one-piece delivery robot and finally to modular delivery robot. More detailed Design Process Journal on the right illustrates entire concept development and design process.

Final product were designed to contain two parts: Sharing Box and Travelling Robot. There are 1 sharing box per household which is used to store surplus food and 2 travelling robots per 8 households which is used to transport box automatically. As for how it works, the project poster and video on the right shows a story which may be of great help for you to understand it.

Susan grows three species of vegetables on her balcony. One day, she harvests some and reserves what she need. Then she puts surplus food into sharing box and uploads sharing data with her phone. Few mintues later, travelling robot sends notification to her when it arrives. The sharing box is placed on robot and will be transported to the sharing room. Travelling Robot can find the path automatically, including taking lifts. In sharing room, zhang, as a volunteer, will take sharing box off and sort food inside. If sharing box away, travelling robot is free to execute the next command controlled by the cloud server. Go back to susan, her son fells not satisfied with only three types of vegetable. So she orders some food other grows. If informed a new order, zhang will pick this order into an empty sharing box and send them by travelling robot. Finally, although susan just grows three types vegetables, what she can get will not be limited in these three species.

In conclusion, this product will help to build a cooperative community in a building where residents can get various fresh food directly from balcony farms mainly in order to meet their requirement of freshness and social participation.

Thank you for watching. Any thoughts or suggestions are welcomed.

I came to the course from a mechanical engineering background since I wanted to make a difference to people’s lives and could not see much potential for that in my previous field. I enjoyed the course and being able to learn new design skills with classmates from all sorts of walks of life.

The FretFriend

Learning a new instrument can be difficult in the early stages when a student needs more feedback to keep them right. For this reason, I started working on a project which would later become the FretFriend.

The device gets fitted to the fretboard of a stringed instrument and connects to a screen to give the user real-time visuals of what they are doing. This means that they can check that they are holding the right chords without having to split their attention between a sheet of music and their fretboard. Using the screen in this manner allows the learner to get more confident in their fingering and build up their muscle memory playing the instrument.

Additional functionality has been considered which would allow the FretFriend to be used for fingering practice without the use of the instrument, meaning a user could take the device on public transport during a commute and practice chord transitions and handling using their phone for feedback.

The instrument used in developing the product was a four-stringed ukulele, but simple modifications can be made to the design to make it suitable for instruments with more strings, such as an acoustic guitar. Other considerations have been made for left-handed users as a change in orientation may be required for the device meaning that the inputs from the user would need to be inverted.

Hi everyone! I am Adarsh Vijay and I am a Product Design Engineer with a background in Biotechnology engineering. My ambition is to work in the medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics sector. Design for the medical industry is my aspiration. Designing equipment and devices interlaced with biological processes and human anatomy and morphology makes up for my redefinition of User-Centred design. If you would like to know more about how my services can help your company, please send me an email at adarshvijaykl@gmail.com

About the project:

Sharps are medical devices that are used to puncture or lacerate the skin. They include hypodermic needles, scalpels, contaminated glass, guidewires and other medical devices. The World Health Organization estimates that 16 billion injections are administered world wide every year.

The major problem with sharps waste is sharps injuries which causes transmission of Blood Borne Viruses such as HIV, Hepatitis, Epstein Barr virus among many others. Sharps injuries are responsible for 16,000 HBV; 6,600 HCV and 5,000 HIV infections worldwide annually.

From 2012 to 2017, NHS had 1,833 injury claims which cost the NHS £4,077,441. NHS estimates that 40,000 needle stick injuries occur within the workplace per year and recognizes that the true figure may be twice this due to under reporting of injuries.

The main causes of sharps injuries as listed by the NHS are:

Non-compliance with standard infection control precautions
Inadequate disposal of clinical waste
Overfull sharps bins
Not using safer sharps and
Not using Personal Protective Equipment.

My design is that of a sharps bin that uses a needle remover to immediately isolate the needle to prevent further injuries to Health care workers and sanitation workers. It also helps to segregate the wastes. The product itself can undergo steam sterilization for disinfection thereby making it reusable. At the end of life, the DSharps bin is recyclable.

This product can help the NHS to eliminate sharps injuries through a sharps bin and create a safer environment for the Health care workers. With the ever increasing mountain of plastic waste, this immediate segregation of wastes will provide more options for recycling thereby help saving the environment as well.

There is a need to adjust the physical layout of a standard video game controller for users with accessibility issues. I designed a controller that users can take apart and rearrange components so that they fit the user’s desired layout.

Additional faceplates can be purchased (or 3D printed) which would offer a wide range of input layouts for users. To accommodate all ranges of ability, the entire controller can be taken apart and re-assembled with one hand.

The idea behind this product is that it would become a new standard for video game controllers. New consoles would be bundled with the controller, and able-bodied gamers would be able to use it without any problems, as it features a regular layout and shape.

My Design Process Journal documents my journey from concept generation to the final product. The Technical Report provides an analysis on the feasibility of this project.

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.

My major project, RIPPLE, is a dynamic cushion with incremental haptic feedback for sedentary behaviour. It could trigger the user to get up from seat regularly through the gradually rising bumps from its surface. Compared to the current way of reminding (such as phone alarm), this kind of ambient feedback is likely to interrupt the workflow of the user.

To achieve this function, I developed a non-electrical structure with air cell, flow control valve and foam spring. When the user sits on it, the seat will drop with the air released slowly. After a certain time, the seat will contact the bumps, which provide an incremental stimulation to the user. After the user gets up, the air cell will rebound with the foam spring inside, inflating air and return to the original height.

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’m a first time art student from Perth who’s been living in Glasgow for the past seven years. During that time I studied Professional Writing Skills at Glasgow College, and English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Strathclyde. Throughout most of that time I was focused on screenwriting and examining bias in journalism, particularly from the far right. I took this masters as an opportunity to do some less structured and more experimental writing, within both formats I was familiar with and those that were completely new. Studying at GSA I found myself thinking a lot about Scottish culture, in particular our nationalism and our kitsch. That thinking led to Shortbread Tins.

Shortbread Tins is a dense twine game that seeks to replicate the feeling of falling into a research wormhole. It’s also a ghost story about Scotland trying to kill you. It can be played here: https://weemanjoe.itch.io/shortbread-tins

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
gsashowcase.net/louie-tyssen/
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.

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.

Hemp Rope 

https://hemp-ropes.com/

Curator’s biography

Kehan Liu is a curator based in Shandong (China). He graduated in Photography at Qilu University of Technology in 2019 and is currently pursuing a MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at Glasgow School of Art. Recent projects include:

Team project “Authority&Freedom: Testing the context”(Glasgow, 28th October 2019) curated by Beatriz Lobo Britto, Jiaying Cao, Kehan Liu, Marianne Vosloo, and Pui Ying Claudia Chan with artists Andrew Crane, Martha Panagiotopoulou.

Cross-cultural project “CROSS or NOT TO CROSS”(NGS East, Glasgow, March 2020) curated by Kehan Liu and Jiaying Cao with artists Qiushi Chen, Yuanjie Li, Xueling Wang and Yihang Hu.

Curatorial statement

My curatorial methodology is based on interactive dialogues, and gradually elicits my own thinking about the “local” art ecology and the development of curatorial practice. My curatorial methodology provides a solid theoretical foundation and practical skills for my next research. In the process of applying the curatorial language to the next curatorial practice, I try to obtain more resources by expanding the research themes and curatorial direction to improve the overall curatorial ability.

I actively participate in retrieval and theoretical work, hoping to balance practice and theory to determine a more suitable station method for me. The theme of my project is the development of local art ecology and curatorial practice. In the process of combing the theory, I found that this theme can be extended to the national or even world levels. Curation should be understood as art, it should be creative and creative, and convey the information of artistic elements through the curatorial language.

My curatorial projects and investigations revolve around the content of interviews with artists and curators. In the process of dialogue, I capture the core thesis and creative information. At the same time, the conversation with the artist can also enable me to reflect on the shortcomings of the project and investigation to improve the project planning further.

The textual interview content is displayed to the public, and the audience can intuitively see the impact of the curatorial practice process and interactive thinking. I display the project in two different languages so that audiences of different cultural backgrounds can obtain Different feelings, thereby increasing the diversity of the project. Using textual content as the form of the exhibition can also allow the audience to see the deficiencies of the exhibition more intuitively. Through the feedback in the later period, I have gained more significant improvement.

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).

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.

Kat Zavada (b. 1990, Poland) is an independent curator, researcher and spiritual technocrat based in Glasgow. She uses speculation as a method to investigate radical & fringe concepts. Her current research examines “humans as data beings”, dataveillance and post-work imaginaries.

After her first Master’s in Social Communication at the Pedagogical University of Cracow with a dissertation titled “The political image of the alt-right movement in Poland”, Kat went on to study MLitt Curatorial Practice Contemporary Art at The Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow.

Recent curatorial projects include: Data Beings – collaboration with artisit Letta Shtohryn (in progress), Works On Work – collaborative research platform (ongoing), Hyper Hyper podcast (ongoing). She conducted a research in support of the COP26 related programme during her internship at the CCA Glasgow (disrupted by COVID-19). Kat contributed to the organisation of several arts and culture projects such as Cracow Gallery Weekend (2018), she founded and organised the visual art & experimental music festival Nadmiar/Excess (2017 – ongoing).
Portfolio: www.katzavada.com

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Curatorial Statement ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Curation for me is a form of critical enquiry, knowledge creation and exchange.
I use speculation as a method to investigate fringe or radical topics – to question the present by constructing alternative realities. My process bounces between academic rigour and humour, as I tackle academic themes in a sometimes non-academic manner.

My curatorial process has a rhizomatic structure, an assemblage of the political, economics, sociology, philosophy and pop culture. My research spans neoliberal tech utopias, South China Post’s newsletter, Reddit memes, Reza Negarestani’s tweets and conspiracy theories. I’m intrigued by topics related to post-work, late capitalism, data colonialism and post-Anthropocene imaginaries.

Each new project has its beginnings in a ‘curatorial crush’ which is born out of excitement, uncertainty and true admiration for an artist’s practice. This, I believe, leads to a dynamic collaboration full of challenging discussions and intellectual stimulations. Through my curatorial practice, I strive for genuine relations built upon trust and mutual respect, but foremost, openness to honest feedback and constructive critique.

I don’t have just one curatorial methodology and I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all model. Instead, I approach projects by learning the process and needs of my collaborators. I listen, respond and adjust to find a comfortable and effective way of working for both sides. It is a flexible and empathetic way of working. This creates a solid base that allows for exciting explorations and the creation of new knowledge.

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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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

Grace Jackson is a curator and writer from Toronto, Canada, currently based in Glasgow, UK. Presently, Grace is completing her Master of Letters in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include queer theory; alternative and ephemeral forms of archiving; and curatorial practices based on hope, disappointment, and uncertainty.

Previously, Grace was the director of the Toronto gallery The Zwig Foundation Collection from 2017-2019, where she organised artist talks, community events, and alternative curatorial programs that intended to enliven a static collection with new perspectives and discursive forms of looking and learning. Additionally, she was editor-in-chief of discount magazine, an artist-run publication based out of Toronto from 2015-2018. With discount, Grace led the organising, fundraising, and publication of two successful issues that brought together international artists based on varying themes. Grace completed her BFA in Art History with distinction at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada in 2015.

PROJECT SUMMARY

VIDEO ~ From My Bedroom to Yours: Art History Lessons from an Absolute Nobody and EXTENDED ESSAY ~ Unruly forms of Care: Preserving Humility as a method of Curatorial Resistance

This curatorial project takes the form of both essay and video, using the work of artist Vaginal Davis to unpack traditional curatorial strategies of care.

Vaginal Crème Davis is an LA-born, Berlin-based artist whose artistic practice spans a vast and untameable array of media. Throughout her work, she has applied unpredictable styles, techniques, themes, and venues making her difficult to define or pin-down. Her lengthy career destabilizes notions of gender, race, sexuality, and linearity, as she fluidly moves between progressing forward and returning back to old habits and ideas. As Dominic Johnson explains, “Davis’s personas reject the internal counter-cultural mandate to refuse self-criticism, instead problematizing the functions and assumptions of normative trends within the margins,” (Johnson, 2001). Her conceptual lectures, zines, and drag performances not only move away from standards imposed by mainstream culture, they further seek to undermine standards more generally. Davis continues to challenge her viewers to look for alternatives to current circumstances and new possibilities that are not always evident elsewhere.

Famously described as employing a form of ‘terrorist drag’ by José Esteban Muñoz in 1999, Davis imposes unruly and eccentric concepts upon her audience, often even radicalising ideas that already appear unconventional (Muñoz, 2018, 93). In 2003 Davis explained to her interviewer:

“When it comes to performance art, I am more interested in the failures than the so-called successes. I have never cared for entertaining anyone. My performances may have elements that some may find entertaining, but that’s not my main purpose.” (Bregman, 2003)

Gaining a clear understanding of Davis’s goals is not necessarily possible, as her intentions with each project vary enormously. However, determining the purpose of her work, or trying to grasp it entirely is perhaps beside the point. Davis invites us into a space in which we are not necessarily privy to what is going on; however, we are together in collective discomfort, sharing an uncertainty about how we should feel or what we should think. Angry, messy, humorous, and unkempt, yet always intelligent and thoughtful, Davis’s work activates the politics of her own body, as well as the bodies, spaces, structures, and oppressions that surround her.

Further, Davis’s work offers a powerful avenue through which to explore practices of curating, and therefore caring for art. My video project seeks to both present the work of Vaginal Crème Davis, while also experimenting and exploring avenues of curation that are antithetical to traditional standards of white cubes and academia. Following from Jack Halberstam’s concept of the ‘queer public intellectual,’ the project seeks to undermine boundaries between academic and community-based forms of learning, blending them together and demonstrating their validity harmoniously (Halberstam, 2003, p. 363). The extended essay examines institutionalised curatorial methods that seek profit and cultural capital above the interests of the artists they work with and seeks to demonstrate how Davis’s work is inherently in opposition to such goals. Divergently, the art historical video diary intends to offer a unique counterpoint to institutionalised curating and writing about art. Inspired by Davis’s anarchic and nonlinear practice, curator Grace Jackson comes to us via webcam, taking us through three disparate works by the artist. From the confines of Jackson’s bedroom, we have the opportunity to engage with personal and sensory interpretations of Davis’s work that are indeed bound by fact, yet also by ephemera. The project seeks to demonstrate the fluidity necessary within authentic forms of care, asking us to consider how each artist can offer new ways to interrogate curatorial practices.

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.

“To discover the kinds of questions you should be asking, sometimes this can take an incredibly long time.” – Anna Tsing

My work is about memory, the past, and how they are intertwined. I’m fascinated with everyday objects, brief moments, and all the days that never get photographed and are forgotten, lost or thrown away­; how our memory can be awakened with the right keepsake.

I’m working on an archive of Isolation & Limitation, building on previous work that got interrupted by the pandemic. With the archive, I explore different ways of documenting transition to a new way of living. I’m photographing debris and creating charcoal rubbings of surfaces – observing the repetition of daily chores, joys and sorrows experienced when the future is uncertain.

During the process, I’ve explored if lost memories are missed opportunities or the process of letting go. What questions can be answered by revisiting the past? And what role should the past have when every day is unpredictable.

Most of my works mainly focus on oil paintings, a small part of installations and videos. I am very interested in the human body, no head. Based on Deleuze’s body without organs philosophy, I try to use oil paintings to show the body that has escaped from the state of being connected, standardized, symbolized and subjective by society, so it A body that has been dismantled, decomposed, and non-regionalized so that it can be rebuilt in a new way.” It also refers to a body that is alive, restless, free, full of positive desires, and generates appropriate strength. The state of preservation of the essence of freedom, in the way of shaping the human body group image to express the sense of partial lack of contemporary people and the relationship between people and people.

Bodies are always my desire at the bottom of my heart, maybe it just only sexual, maybe it has something else, I use to read lots of books, observe lots of body works, from ancient to modern, from sculpture to oil painting, those people’s body is beautiful in classical, they are single elegant and pure, but among full of wants. However the bodies in modern are real with unreal, they show outlook, they are changed. People like to show complicated emotions in unreal things, so I want to add bodies on bodies because bodies are part of human behaviors, they are the consequences of the decision, bodies need a brain to manipulate, but without a head, it’s free.

Taking found images, early renaissance paintings and personal memories as source material, this series of works attempts to disrupt the grand narratives of historic paintings by borrowing their compositions, figures and techniques but orienting them within the worlds of today’s young adults and older people. These are often points of painful life transition that are universally experienced. In un-magnificent, ordinary scenes I aim to convey the contrast of the grand narrative to the colloquial.

My main influence for this body of work has been the serene, pensive figures from early renaissance painters such as Piero Della Francesca and Giotto as well as later historical artworks, such as late paintings and etchings by Francisco Goya that thematically explore the folly of man, alongside references to 20th century artists such as Winifred Knights and Justine Kurland and the poem “Musee de Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden, particularly the first four lines which read:

“About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along”

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)

In my works, I explored the expression of texts/characters in visual art and expressed my thinking of history, memory, time, and stage of life.

My concept is from “Palimpsest” and Walter Benjamin’s viewpoint about the past, present, and future. Every moment of the past constitutes the present, and the present is the manifestation of every moment in the past. They are intertwined and inseparable. And the link between the past and present also indicates the image of the future.

“The future is precisely what Benjamin seeks in the past. Almost every place that his memory wishes to rediscover bears ‘the features of what is to come’……Benjamin listens for the first notes of a future which has meanwhile become the past……he is sent back into the past, a past, however, which is open, not completed, and which promises the future.”

Peter Szondi and Harvey Mendelsohn, Hope in the Past: On Walter Benjamin

“One moment is added onto the old ones, and thus, when the next moment occurs, it is added onto all the other old ones plus the one that came immediately before. In comparison, therefore to the past collection of moments, it cannot be the same as the one immediately before, because the past is ‘larger’ for the current moment than it was for the previous moment.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Henri Bergson

Hello! I’m Georgie Mac. A Glasgow-based artist working with drawing and performance. I invent and create my own drawing tools and test them in live drawing performances. My work is inspired by the cosmological, I’m seeking out my place in the universe one experimental drawing at a time. I’ve been using video to document my process, and I would love for you to visit me over on Youtube. Feel free to say hello, I like it when people say hello.

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.

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 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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 am a visual communication designer based in Seoul, South Korea. My current interests and practice are in socio-environmental design, especially focusing on the possibilities of collective changes that individuals’ behaviour can foster.

This project ‘Empathy-derived recycling model’ opens up the opportunities of personal connection between refuse collectors and the general public, for residents’ better understanding of what results their behavioural decision on waste disposal could cause. The research explores people’s cognitive and environmental behaviour change when no one intends to cause environmental harms but far too much waste that could easily be recycled is going to landfill. The system highlights the significant environmental impact of correct recycling and putting the stuff in the right bins, and the intrinsic drive for such waste disposal behaviour can be improved by building up the familiarity with refuse collectors.

“Please try your utmost to separate and wash. It’s not just us you are helping. It’s yourself in the future.” – Mr. C, Refuse collector

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

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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As a designer with a foundation in architecture, I am fascinated with how spaces can be well-utilized to improve the quality of life in society. I aim to understand how people use the space around them by applying user-oriented design research methods to everyday problems. As a graduate student in design innovation and environmental design, my goal is to uncover the layers to problems in food sourcing in crowded cities and arriving at creative solutions. I have explored possibilities for change and hope to continue learning and growing from the research done for this project.

INTRODUCTION

Fresh fruits and vegetables at your doorstep are what I consider to be a sign of progress. Getting your hands dirty and working towards ensuring that progress is how I envision the direction for society’s prosperity. Sourcing food in a sustainable way is something that a lot of designers and professionals have been trying to figure out. Farming locally can ensure not only a steady supply of groceries for yourself but also help resolve the shortage of resources in the world. I have always believed that together we can achieve more. The pandemic has shown us the importance of banding together as a civilization. The support and kindness we can offer each other collectively can prepare us for any unforeseen problems. This can be a broad concept and difficult to navigate where to begin with.

In this fast-paced and ever-changing world, the demand and need for basic amenities like food and water are increasing. There is tremendous pressure on the world’s resources, and we are not fully aware of the consequences that are yet to follow. I am interested in finding a way to live in a society where we can source our food ourselves. We are dependent on grocery stores and supermarkets for our daily fruit and vegetable needs. What if there is a way to find an alternate source of food that doesn’t rely solely on other systems. This idea of a sustainable way of living first came to me during my undergraduate studies. I visited a distant relative who was living in the countryside with a small farm in their backyard. They are an elderly couple who now use their retirement savings to live a clean holistic living by growing their own food. I was fascinated with this concept of sustainable living. But living in a city, I didn’t have enough resources to make this a reality yet. All my groceries have been store-bought. But amongst many reasons, not having the benefit of having your own plot of land to farm with all the right resources and time are some of the reasons I want to explore through this project.

The next experience showed me the importance of locally sourced produce in society. A few years ago, I was living in a community in the south of India called Auroville, outside of any Indian authority or laws and functions as an independent city. The philosophy of this town is to “a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity”. Here I was able to experience a holistic life where I ate locally sourced food. I witnessed a pretty different environment from where I grew up. In the city, slowly people were losing connection with their neighbors. When I was a kid it was a common practice to gather in common spaces and have a chat or share stories in the community. While living in Auroville, I witnessed the same feeling of togetherness with the quality of food we shared. Here, all the food was locally sourced, and the establishments were also privately owned. I witnessed a healthier lifestyle through food that was independent of any corporation or business. My mission to obtain a close-by supply of fresh fruits and vegetables was rooted more than ever with this experience of my life. I want to be able to use gardening as a tool to be the starting point to reach a sustainable way of life in the future. As a designer, I hope to use the tools and skills I have been equipped with to make a positive contribution to society, starting with the area of food and farming which is a topic I have always been intrigued with. Through various research methods, I have explored the various aspects and characteristics that are attached to growing your own food and the related services that are currently present.

PLANNING

INITIAL RESEARCH
Community gardens are a key part of urban cities that create a common space for growing your own produce. Such spaces help people who don’t have their own land because of space limitations in a city. They are an integral part of enhancing the beauty of a neighborhood. I came across a paper which explores the effects of a community garden in improving the collective development of an urban neighborhood. This paper informs the joined efforts of a diverse community is favorable for advancing future. The community gardens that were “multi-functional” and “met social needs” were most succeeding. (Yeager, 2020) I have tried to understand the connection between people and their community and how these existing resources can be enhanced to result in something beneficial for everyone. I am also interested in finding a way to live in a society where we can rely on each other when it comes to source food ourselves.

At the start of the project, I realized that I just had the bare minimum information on food sourcing or farming and had only the passion in the subject, to begin with. I started exploring different resources to broaden my knowledge to discover the possibilities I could go to. I found out about a webinar on Eventbrite organized by Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) called Food Sourcing Solutions which at once caught my eye. The topic that was discussed was a live project conducted by graduate students along with collaborators and stakeholders from their community in Chicago, Illinois. Attending this webinar proved to be instrumental in setting the ground running for me. I got a rough understanding of a design project similar to mine. Here, the students spoke about the multiple solutions they had arrived at by prototyping their ideas and concepts with the community they were designed for. Through desk research, I found various news articles, journals, and reports that were helping me further understand the different layers and scope for this project. As shown below, I sketched out a rough mind map of what aspects of food I wanted to address. This helped me gather my thoughts and focus on growing fruits and vegetables and how this could be achieved.

DESK RESEARCH
The relationship between sustainability and farming was my main concern to address. I began investigating the concept and value of sustainable farming. I came across one of Unilever’s initiatives that emphasize the positive effects and more importantly the urgency for sustainable farming practices. Reducing the effects of climate change and benefitting the farmer’s community were some of the topics they were hoping to be working towards to meet the demand for goods and services. They also mentioned how providing farmers with a better yield would not only improve their lives but also the surrounding communities. However, this highlighted the role of an organization with sustainable ways to source food which was not the direction I aimed for. Through this project, I was hoping to find a way to meet the world’s growing needs without destroying all of the earth’s resources through individual contributions. To better investigate the effects of food sourcing on a person and their community, I would have to study the different nuances of what sustainability means. All of the preliminary online search for buzz words like sustainability, community, farming, etc. swept up pages of information with relation to environmental or economic impact. I was curious to learn about the social connection to sustainability. According to this paper on placemaking, different factors are responsible for the outcome of urban community garden projects. Here the emphasize that a community garden’s success is not only measured on its scale or the yield of crops. By acknowledging the effects of community gardens, I want to explore a way to incorporate into a variation of “home gardens”.

The pandemic has taken its toll over the world and people over the globe have gone through similar experiences with the lockdown. Having to isolate from society is the sole connection experienced world-wide. But the importance of supporting each other is a core value we can learn from this catastrophic event. I had to enquire more about whether the attitudes of people were changing in a more positive light was accurate or just optimistic delusions. I came across an article published by Civil Eats, a news source sharing stories surrounding the American food system. Here, a group of commercial farmers who usually do not grow fruits and vegetables is now contributing to helping the nearby town in times of need. This showed the potential of battling a shortage of food as a collective effort.

But why choose to grow it ourselves? For starters, it is an opportunity to learn a new skill. To have the closest nutritious food source that can improve our physical and mental health is always a plus. It could be cost-effective if done using the right methods but more importantly making us more independent. This article supported that theory which speaks about a retiree in her 60s from Singapore who overcame a shortage of food at the local store by growing it herself. Previously, she was unable to find the time to garden more often. There were also several other examples and data collected highlighting people’s increasing interest in home farming. These stories substantiate my belief that farming at home is possible despite having no prior knowledge or space for it. Not only is it achievable but also has mental health benefits. An article from the Guardian demonstrated the health and socio-cultural benefits of growing your own food. This article was about a man renting out a small space and growing vegetables in the garden for himself and helping neighbors do the same. He was able to live a healthier lifestyle for an entire year without ever going to the store. This article supported my idea of bringing people together using farming specifically to become more self-sufficient.

The connection between urban community empowerment and the benefits of farming was the next area I was curious to get insights from. I read about a paper that examines the positive and negative reasons behind the development of a community garden in an urban context. This was necessary to contend my assumption that cities do not have enough space to farm individually. Hence community gardens could be a great alternate to not having a private plot of spare land to grow crops. The purpose and functionality of community gardens or allotments were the main focus on my desk research stage. I briefly researched organizations that contribute to gardening and urban development that came across 2 places that I was aiming to speak at a later stage of my project. ‘Urban Roots’ in Glasgow and ‘Urban Growth’ in London would have been a great source of information to understand the role they played in their communities. Unfortunately, this was the start of the lockdown, and all places were temporarily closed and proved to be a roadblock for me at this stage.

LIVED EXPERIENCES
I began combining my desk research with my personal experiences that could also contribute to my research planning. I had participated in a bamboo construction and organic farming workshop in June 2018. The workshop run by Ar. Richard Belho of Zynorique Initiatives at Nagaland, India. Here I got a better understanding of how farming can be conducted in a cost-effective and organic way that benefitted their community. The farm was in a small village where there were not a lot of amenities that we find easily in most cities. I got to be a part of every stage of the gardening process, from planting the seeds to plowing the land. Not only that but also every member of the staff was putting in their contribution towards the farm. They were able to save money; instead of buying tomatoes and chilies, they were growing it themselves. This is when I was able to see how a small community with limited resources was able to be self-sufficient by working together. Another experience I had was coincidently on my way to get groceries in Glasgow, where I came across Greyfriars Community Garden. I was amazed to see it thriving in the middle of a global pandemic unaffected. I went on to explore other community gardens to confirm my theory that these spaces were functioning successfully considering the current situation.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

FIELD OBSERVATIONS  
Assessing the current state of community gardens around me, I went through a report on Glasgow’s community gardens. The research conducted in this report was to expand on the connection between sustainability and the urban community. It also speaks about a grassroots organization called Just Food which engages in collaborative community projects to feed the local community. I stumbled upon ‘Stalled Spaces’, a Glasgow City Council project on the closed gate at Greyfriars community garden. Because the place was closed like every other establishment, I was unable to find anyone to talk to and I observed the surroundings to find any information. This project was started to support local community groups and organizations across the city to develop stalled, under-utilized spaces. These temporary spaces aimed to improve the health and well-being of the community by increasing community engagement. This space was meant to open up spaces for recreation and making them safer for the public. To my dismay, I was unable to find any proof that this city council project was a success. I visited 6 of the community gardens, based solely on their location to my cycling radius. The first 3 community gardens I visited were on the south side of Glasgow. These were located in the middle of residential spaces with abandoned plots. The current situation of these spaces was in bad shape. They were completely abandoned with no sign of greenery, and some were reduced to being unused spaces again. The next 3 community gardens were situated by the Scottish Canals. These were also located close to a residential neighborhood, but it was different from the other ones I visited. Spiers Wharf, for example, is inside a well-maintained residential area and is not easily available for everyone. Since it was temporarily closed for outside access, not much information about the garden was available.

After visiting these community gardens, I was able to gain some insights on what to explore next. I decided to look into a few other city council projects to see if there is a pattern forming there. This was meant to help me work towards a solution to design a more functioning community garden. I noticed some of these “stalled spaces” initiatives were in neighborhoods that were not maintained properly. I planned to explore the urban rejuvenation aspect of the project to see how to bring people together and make them feel safe and look for any opportunities to make these community gardens feasible and accessible for everyone. Based on this one particular city council project it was obvious that these spaces were not living up to the potential. My deduction by this stage was that community gardens are currently failing to be a good enough food source for a person. However, I had to be sure before making a snap judgment and dismissing community gardens altogether based on just a few visits. I created a rough stakeholder map that wasn’t based on a lot of data, but it was a base ground to look at broadly the end-user to my design idea.

ENGAGEMENT

INTERACTIONS AND LIVE CASE STUDY
My reasoning from the observations to know the exact direction I have to take to reach a long-term goal had to be explored further. Starting with interviewing people who are experts and non-experts in farming. I drafted emails inquiring for stakeholders to interview by branching out to my personal and professional networks. Not everyone got back to me, but I was able to get some interesting leads. But it wasn’t too much of an issue as I soon found out after connecting with my extended family and friends’ circles on social media platforms. I discovered an organic farm providing fresh produce in a locality in Mumbai. Through mutual friends, I asked to set up an interview, but it did not go as planned.

INTERVIEWS
My first interview was with my family’s longtime friend who shared the first experience I had that gave me the inspiration for this project. They were able to provide another perspective to mine. I asked them several questions by breaking it down to simple general questions to get them comfortable with the subject matter and then dug deeper to see the reasoning behind their responses. The first one was from the perspective of people who turned to become expert farmers without prior knowledge. They continue to rely on themselves to source their own food. They originally lived in a crowded city and were able to achieve this holistic living after moving to the countryside, where space was abundant. The second interview happened after I attempted other research methods because I wasn’t able to get people to agree to sit down and have a chat. The second interviewee was an amateur gardener from Woodlands Community Garden in Glasgow and has been using the community garden in their neighborhood for the past 10 years. They lived alone in the city, so the community garden activity was more of social activity for them rather than as a way to source food. I downloaded my notes and data collected into a “journey map” describing the key elements for each interview and the recurring themes from these separate worlds. The main element that started to inform the project’s main concern of successfully growing food was that the gardening plot was available in close proximity and it because it was a platform to socialize. Also, both were unaffected by any concerns with food sourcing in the lockdown.

ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE
I created a questionnaire through Google Forms to branch out and reach out to more people quickly. The response from the questionnaire was overwhelming because in a few days I managed to get a total of 150 responses. This itself was a positive sign that people were interested in this area of food sourcing. Here again, 3 key themes jumped out which I felt were interesting to explore later. I discovered that people were:

·       open to the idea of avoiding supermarkets completely.

·       they were willing to share a space with their neighbors.

·       would welcome help and resources to farm at home.

ANONYMOUS USER EXPERIENCES
The form sparked a conversation amongst people and they happily came forward with their personal stories with farming at home.

Following are anonymous experience-based personas I drew out that addressed some of the insights I made from the preliminary observations and assumptions.

·       Persona 1

She is a middle-aged doctor who finds time in her busy schedule in a crowded city to grow a few essential used daily in the kitchen. Returning home, she plucks a few herbs in the community courtyard to prepare dinner. If shad more space and time she would love to grow more fresh ingredients.

·       Persona 2

Working professional woman who has now found time in the lockdown to grow an abundant supply of micro-greens and pulses using plastic containers piling up at home. She has coped with space shortage with resources at home which would otherwise just land in a landfill somewhere.

·       Persona 3

Stay at home mother of 2 young children who has converted the rooftop of her house as a farm. Living in the countryside which has a more favorable climate she has utilized her skills to source all of the groceries at home. Diary products and other food groups are what is store-brought, and she would love to expand into gathering those at home too.

LIVE CASE STUDY
Equipped with all the data I collected from talking and interacting with experts and stakeholders, I revisited my initial analysis from my field observations. In passing conversations with friends here in Glasgow, I was recommended to visit a couple of community gardens that disputed my theory that community gardens are a failing concept to grow food in the city.

WOODLANDS COMMUNITY GARDEN
This one was a well-designed space that showed an engaging community of people. There were other amenities provided which made the community engagement more of a success. Although they were currently shut, it was a beautifully designed space that is thriving with people socializing and growing produce. Multi-level spaces to maintain social distancing rules and enjoy the space were well-designed. A community garden with pizza oven and barbeque grill were also available as per the weather permits. Office spaces with a deck for social events are usually open to the public were closed now yet there were people using the space because of its design.

MARYHILL COMMUNITY GARDEN
This community garden I came across while cycling through Glasgow. It is located right by the main road blending in perfectly with the surrounding giving it a welcoming look. I figured this was thriving because of its positioning giving access to passersby on foot or in a vehicle. It also provided a green buffer space living enough to drown out noises and distractions from any traffic on the main road.

GARNETHILL COMMUNITY GARDEN
This one was suggested by a friend who lives close to it. This was smaller compared to the other 2 I visited but definitely functioning. It was beautifully decked with inventive planters made from recycled furniture and household fixtures. Though the place was small it was well-maintained from the conditions of the growing plants. The personalization of the space showed the investment of the community.

DATA ANALYSIS

EARLY INSIGHTS
I referred to IDEO’s Human-Centred Guide among other such toolkits I found online. I attempted some of the exercises and activities to understand navigating the data to reach the desired results. I started by attempting another way to address my goal for this project since the start of it. Asking “5 whys” was a useful tool to understand the depth of all the information I acquired from interactions and observing spaces. Questioning the first “why” showcased the reason to start was from a desire to learn a new skill. After digging deeper with each “why”, I was able to decipher core themes emerging from them. I put them in the form of “how might we” questions.

·       How might we create a sustainable food source through a community: to achieve a sustainable and healthy lifestyle.

·       How might we become less dependent on supermarkets: to become more prepared for the future.

·       How might we reduce food waste using gardening: to avoid a shortage of food.

This process helped me arrive at the long-term goal which was to work towards living in a self-sufficient sustainable community. But before that, I would have to prioritize the problem to reach that goal. With the “frame your design challenge” exercise, I tried to define the possibilities of taking practical steps towards making a change. I decided to concentrate on gardening as a stepping stone to reach the goal of an alternate source of food. I studied the changes in existing issues in the context of the stakeholder’s environment, currently getting in the way of being independent.

SYNTHESIS AND OUTCOMES

OPPORTUNITIES
The last exercise helped me identify opportunities to arrive at possible solutions. Changes needed to happen to the current systems in place to explore opportunities and solutions. I began asking the following questions like how might we make accessible space for everyone and keep people interested in learning something to be more self-reliant? To make these solutions a reality I had to uncover the actions required to be done. Following the worksheet “Impact Ladder” from the IDEO toolkit handbook, I looked at the changes that are deliverable in the stakeholders’ actions. My field observations in the start revealed that community gardens were not living up to its potential. Therefore, I needed to focus on the reasons for the ones that are functioning and contradicted my assumption. My questionnaire regenerated responses that supported my reasoning from the desk research. The perception that people were enthusiastic in gardening at home but for reasons like not having space, time, or confidence in skills to develop it further. My next motive was to find a way to generate a way to get people excited about it as a hobby but not let it fade away when other priorities take over.

I had to understand the different characteristics in the user’s environment that factored in their behavior towards gardening at home. But layering in this activity into a person’s life without making it tedious. I don’t want it to be a process of imposing my idea on people just because I had faith in it.  I had to make sense of the users’ context to begin forming a solution. Creating an ecosystem map suggested in the IDEO handbook, revealed the scope for change in the user’s environment, community, services, and institutions that contribute to their behavior in society. For the user to be consistent, they would have to have more access to the resources and time to be an expert. They should be aware of what is already existing in their community by better ways of communicating with other like-minded people in the neighborhood. As for the services and institutions that inform the user should be made available through a precise medium. So that they can be better advised on how to use the resources that they might not be aware of.

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

IDEATION
I was hoping to start a ripple effect in inspiring and improving the overall lifestyle and well-being of society. The close possible outcomes that can be generated to begin having that effect is what I explored next in this stage of my research. After refining the insights, I stepped into ideating the opportunities for change in the different stakeholder groups. I mapped out the shifts that needed to happen to arrive at the final goal in the form of a service or a product. Loosely following the steps in this activity guide (theory of change), I created some rough concept ideas against each of the shifts. These shifts or changes were a cumulative result of all the analysis and insights from the users I interacted with. In the map below, I placed red post-its’ on the concepts I wrote down that could have the most impact with “addresses this well” and the pink post-its’ on the concepts that have the potential to have an impact with “addresses this somewhat”.

FINAL ANALYSIS AND SOLUTIONS
Mapping out the concepts with the areas I wanted to make a difference in was starting to make sense after this exercise. I was happy to find out that I was arriving at some concrete deliverable ideas. In this next step, I bunched up the concepts that had the most impact (the red post-its).