A new generation of British and
international designers is taking a truly
inventive approach to design practice
and the work they are producing not only
has the power to capture our
imaginations but it has the potential to
transform our everyday lives
Invention in Design explores these new
modes of practice, cross-disciplinary
collaboration, risk-taking, research, and
experimentation and we're creating a
platform for debate through talks and workshops and events
Halley 6 sits on on a floating ice shelf
which every now and then breaks
off as a giant iceberg and I'm talking
about an iceberg the size of a county
and so the building needed to be mobile
so if ever there was that threat
it could move in land
We've sort of borrowed rather than invented from zero
and the whole effect is of a building
which in itself is an innovation
The idea of a building being able to lift itself
up out of the rising snow level is quite
innovative but actually the hydraulic
system is no different to the hydraulic
system that you get in a standard bulldozer
or something like that
I have to admit that there was no stage when we were
designing Halley that I didn't have the
Thunderbirds cross-section book sitting
next to my desk so there's a kind of
amalgamation of kind of cartoon sci-fi
sixties architecture and then just you
know sensible pragmatic solutions to
challenges that we have to face up to
I think this station in particular was
one of the first that placed the
occupants at centre stage
I think in the past a bit like kind of
spaceships probably the same thing you
know the engineering was the overriding
factor affecting the design you know the
human experience
is actually the thing that drives the
engineering solutions, which is of course
the way design should be conceived
So the 3D Weaver is a loom that allows you to
move in three dimensions and more than
that it actually allows you to program
certain behaviours and size of material you
can move just like a regular loom would move in the
2D planes but you can also build up
layers and create volumes
After the development of the 3D Weaver
I was able to exhibit it and it was a great
platform to then have these
conversations with professionals in
different areas from medical to aerospace and
they're all looking at the 3D Weaver not
as great innovation in textile but they're
looking at it as how can I apply this to my practise
In medical I got feedback of you
know maybe I can use this for creating
artificial ligaments and from the
aerospace guys they were thinking about
how we can use a support structure inside of the
turbines that are used for clean energy harvesting
I feel like we we seldom step back and look at who designed
the tool and why did we design it for
this application and is this the right
tool to be using or could I reinvent the
software the digital side of the tool to
allow me to enhance with the physical
output maybe
Well for me like if you think about
like solar cells and you think about
efficiency they're like on the roof you
can't really see them so much you
don't have really like a relationship with
them, and I can't say ugly, but
they're like not so well integrated and
these cells to me if I look at them they're
so beautiful so now for the first time you
have like technology solar cells that are
actually nice to look at that you want to live with
The current table is a table where the whole table top
has integrated solar cells and they are dye sensitised
solar cells and they work on the properties of
colour to generate a current
the nice thing about the design they're so
sensitive to light that they also work
indoors really important to think like
how do you want to live with solar
technology and how do you want to
integrate that into our daily lives
Kano is basically a computer
kit to teach kids to code
We were originally approached by Alex and Yonotan from
Kano to actually look at packaging
and that quite quickly turned into the
possibility of designing a new Raspberry
Pi case for them, their product is
based around the Raspberry Pi
Interestingly they had quite a nice experience that
they define they wanted it to be as easy
and fun to use Lego and that was a really
great starting point for the project to
build the design around
You know if you're talking about a force for good in the world I think
everybody is signed up to this idea of
teaching the next generation to
inherently to understand coding so if we
can design a product which does
that which helps facilitate the
understanding of a new skill in that way
and gives people the skills they
need for a new generation then
I think that's a really positive force for good