British Design Museum

For our blog class outing last week, we went to the British Design Museum to check out the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition. Walking into the room where the exhibition was held was a bit startling as it seemed to lack any semblance of conscious arrangement but as I made my way through I began to understand the project a bit more. The designs were divided into seven different categories: Architecture, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Interactive, Product and Transport. The competition was already completed so the designs being shown were the winners and three or four other finalists.

As I said before, as first the whole thing is a bit disconcerting as some of the designs looked positively plain and ordinary while others were outrageous. As time passed and I read more about the individual designs, I was able to see their functionality in addition to their form and while some were designed to be unique, others were designed to be innovative and useful. An example of this contrast is not too far away from each other were two pieces that at their core were simply a bench and an oven. However, the bench, named Extrusions, was a unique, albeit slightly abstract, design that was created by an artist who wanted to make a bench with the seat, legs and back all from one piece. On the other hand, the oven, called the Kyoto Box, looked simply like a cardboard box with a metal plate inside of it but it used solar energy to power the oven so that people without electricity still can have the ability to cook meals and boil water.

One of the more interesting categories was the interactive category, for the obvious reason that you could see what the design actually entailed. One of the nominees, and probably the funniest/creepiest part of the exhibit, was a design by the World Wildlife Foundation called Panda Eyes. It was a case with 100 panda figurines that were activated with motion sensor technology so they followed any external human movement. The pandas had red eyes and gave off a very discomforting vibe as they followed me around the room, which is what the WWF wanted to happen so people would question their impact on the environment. The winner of the interactive category was a design called the Eyewriter.

It was designed for ALS patients who have lost their ability to create art with their hands by tracking the movement of their eyes and displaying it on a wall monitor. The design was a pretty clear choice for winner of the category as it combined a very unique design while also helping empower the creativity of those suffering from paralysis.

The exhibition helped to give me a look into the future and see where some of these designs are taking us in various fields. From folding plugs that allow three plugs to fit where previously one or a power strip was needed to a BMW with steel fabric instead of an alloy body, some these designs are only a hint at what the future can hold and it looks pretty damn cool.