London Design Biennale @ Somerset House

The London Design Biennale displays an array of artwork, represented by countries' ambitious designers and innovators, showing how design impacts every aspect of our lives.

Designers responded to the theme Emotional States, participants from six continents exhibited interactive design installations. International design is astonishingly mindblowing!

Full Spectrum- Flynn Talbot 

Australia

Talbot explores positive emotions and positive Australia after same-sex marriage became legal in December 2017. Talbot became inspired by the new notion of love that unleashed a freedom. This is a tactile and immersive light screen pavilion that aims to recreate the feeling of love through light.

Disobedience- Nassia Inglessis

Greece

This 17 metre long wall, constructed from a steel spring skeleton with flexing plastic, breathes around the human body as it walks through. People transgress through the mechanical boundaries, passing through the undulating walkway.

Sensorial Estates- Scratch n Sniff wallpaper

Hong Kong

The designer plays with scent as a tool to trigger memory, the wallpaper not only displays emblems of Hong Kong but the scents of Hong Kong too. This explores the nostalgic representations of the region.

housEmotion- Tabanlioglu Architects

Turkey

Power Plant

The Netherlands

Futuristic greenhouse that uses sunlight to generate food and electricity.

Rug made out of plastic bags (shaped into donuts)

Chair made out of jeans and old clothing

Pure Gold

Germany

Upcycled responses highlight the ecological damage we inflict with our waste, exploring the emotional response to transformed trash.

Tate Modern London

LED installation

Yarn/wool hanging up in various shades of blues and denims. I particularly enjoyed looking at the monstrosity of the scale and the intensity of the texture, vividly soft and comforting.

Futuristic Packaging

The majority of packaging is made of plastic these days and the atrocities of consumerism means that wildlife is at risk.

Think of all the turtles that could be saved if all that plastic packaging were to be replaced with an alternative material... perhaps a biodegradable recycled paper?

Here I created a new version of the fruit net by replicating the conventional one but making it out of paper instead. This mocks the way produce is unnecessarily over wrapped in synthetic materials, highlighting society's greed. But this also shows how there are better alternatives, if plastic packaging is replaced by a biodegradable paper it is not only healthier for the environment but it also means the package is easier to open too!

OXO Tower Wharf

Type: Songs Through Space (Gloria- Vivaldi)

Drawing attention to the traditional and religious connotations of the song using gothic fonts and music script like layout.

Double page spread, although the left hand side should be even simpler according to the brief.

Experimentation with contrasting pt size and the weight of the text, adding drama to the layout.

Simplicities of the left-hand side.

The right-hand side drawing an emphasis on spacing. 

Spacing used to represent duration of time, the larger the word/space taken up, that is proportionate  to the song.

(Dots symbolising the amount of seconds a break took.

Thick black text, longest duration/ large proportion of the song taken by those lyrics.)

Alternate typeface used. 

Words kept to the same size on right hand size so that the page solely focuses on spacing.

Fonts used:

• Cinzel/Decorative
• Neue Haas
• Rockwell
• Copperplate

Self Initiated 1- Development

Continuing from my Self Initiated on frustration, I focused more on the human behavior aspects,
particularly onychophagy (oral compulsive habits such as nail-biting.)

A large population bite their nails and it is usually a habit to do with occupying the mind when it is either stressed/flustered or inactive/bored. Sadly nail-biting can become a pretty addictive and dangerous habit as it is performed unconsciously. Also severe nail-biting can cause severe nail damage, the appearance will look unpleasant, they may get sore and nail-biting is unhygienic due to all the bacteria laying beneath the nails.

So then I thought, what if the nail-biter can bite/chew on nails that aren't theirs. Still having the pleasure of biting nails, soothing the mind when it is stressed and without the issue of having damaged nails or ingesting nasty bacteria.

Edible false nails...

The process involved heating sugar and glucose syrup to a boil to create a toffee that solidified when cool.

The mix was spooned into nail molds (into a false nail sat on its rounded side.)

The texture like a boiled sweet- something that can be in the mouth for a while/sucked, to occupy a stressed mind (a nail substitute.)

Sweet flavoured so that the nails can be thoroughly enjoyed. 

The feeling just as pleasurable as appreciating the sweetness of a lollipop, the youthful experience instantly generates happiness that forgets completely about frustration.

Aesthetic resembling the severity of damaged nails.

Made of sugar (brittle texture) that correlates to the texture of bitten nails.

Nails can be made in different thicknesses according to different levels of frustration as a thicker nail allows for more intense pleasure in nibbling the nails.

Self Initiated 1- Frustration: The little things

Within modern day life people experience frustration and anger, also people get stressed when tasks aren't completed the way they want them and in the time frame they need them to be completed.

Firstly I explored wrap rage and the fury behind not being able to open packaging and also the injuries people endure resulting the dangerous tools they have to use. This then got me thinking about the annoying experience of Ikea's flatpack furniture:

The idea behind this being that according to your degree of anger, there would be a specifically assembled flatpack. The more frustrated you are, the more difficult the flatpack would be, this may be due to the difficulty of the instructions or the fact that certain pieces are missing. As a result the end product of the flatpack would reflect on how frustated that person may have been.

But I thought this was too complex of an idea to physically construct. What would the point or purpose be in having 'already frustrated people' constructing 'frustrating furniture'? Other than highlighting and reiterating the fact that flatpacks are nightmares! Perhaps the level of difficulty corresponded to the levels of anger and flatpack furniture assembling has now become the visuals for anything to do with frustration.

....

FMP- Mother of All: Hostess of the Mostess

Inspired by the finest housekeeping in hotels, the finest dining in restaurants, the attentiveness of an air hostess, we wanted to be the finest in hospitality and be the mother of all hostesses within a crit.

Being 5-star means that one must contain the full package and so we went to the lengths and breadths to try and make the crit a 5-star experience.

The services we provided were:

• Preparing the crit spaces a whole week in advance. Ensuring floors and tables were cleaned, presentation boards and tables were positioned in the correct places, painting the presentation boards brilliant white and clearing clutter.
• Hosting the crit.
• Photography for each group.
• Refreshments.
• Writing crit diaries for everyone.

Guests enjoying refreshments

Crit preparation

Crit photography: The Highlights