SMALL TALKS
A series of 3, 1 hour long webinars that will be showcasing some of the work of Brighton University's Ma Sustainable Design students. Each week we will cover a broad range of topics all relating to Sustainability in an effort to highlight the breadth of the subject and diversity of possible implementations. Each week 3 Students will present their current position on Sustainability and how their work manifests in the plurality that is Sustainable design.
Cards Against Mobility
Chantal Spencer
How can we use radical modes of design to explore and add complexity to the discussion around isolation in our communities in the UK? Conventional design for disability and its propensity for othering and over-medicalising, has fallen short of creating sustainable resolutions. By employing radical modes of design within and ethnographic research methodology, we can produce a more rigorous understanding of the current issues around isolation and how they impact people's lives, both in the disabled and able bodied communities.
Naturalising Hospital Grounds
Gabriel Pol
Is a tree a tree? Or is it £5000? And what has this got to do with Health? The true value of trees is often ignored or mistaken in design projects, and therefore does applying monetary benefits to them assist in increasing how they might be valued and used? How might trees and other vegetation be valued at an NHS mental health hospital site, regarding sustainable design to reduce carbon footprint, other environmental impacts and improve patient and staff health outcomes?
The Vitruvian Man Is Shit
Matt Sanderson
Narratives, politics, and our environment are amongst the complex ontological web that shape us as humans. How can design engage with and explore these complexities? Design has contributed to the social and environmental problems of the world today by reinforcing neoliberal and Anglo European narratives. If we accept that the individual has been ontologically influenced by neoliberalism, can we use radical design to gain insights for design justice? By using a visual representation of the ontological structure of humans I attempts to demonstrate the contributing complexities that make the individual.
Noticing the Minutiae
Katie Cunningham
To some, the art of noticing is a radical act.
How can we care about things if we don’t notice them? Life exists on multiple scales and speeds, but we are tuned into interactions that occur on the human point on these scales. Moss and lichen are ‘pioneer species’ – through their cycles of birth, life, and death across deep time, they begin to create foundation soils in which other species can grow. Can we reconnect our sense of place by noticing them? What would it take to build empathy and connection with them?
Knowledges In The Streets
Fred Preston
Mapping shifting realities of immediate public space
This interdisciplinary work seeks to gain insights into societal relationships with streets. Working from a design perspective, the work engages with ideas present in social sciences and anthropology; the work develops interactive design research methods to support new sense making in the urban environment.
designed environments that can become sterilized by rules and regulations, created by and for the privileged and those of dominant age groups.
Consuming New Narratives
Anna Bertmark
Meeting problems through tangible artefacts
The current dominant narratives of endless economic growth are contributing to unsustainable conditions that prevent humans from living within planetary boundaries. Many current sustainable alternatives fall short of embodying regenerative and just principles, casting doubt on human capacity for mitigating climate change. This highlights the need for positive alternatives that can redirect the future of consumption.
Resonance and Reverence: Sounding the Everyday Sublime
Rachel Wilson
Sonic Reflections in an Ocular-Centric World
Multi-sensorial ways of knowing provide opportunity to shift perception through embodied understanding that can lead to agency. These ways of knowing are currently under-utilised, particularly sonic ways of thinking in an ocular-centric world. How then can sonic perspectives and practices be explored as design tools to cultivate care towards socio-ecologically sustainable futures? Through reflections on sound across time to the phenomenon of wonderment, this work is an enquiry into relations and ways of knowing beyond that which is seen whereby design may begin to consider vibrations of care.