Objective
Curating and designing an exhibition on the year 2068 in celebration of the Futuro houses' 50th anniversary during Munich Creative Business Week 2018
Outcome
Futuro 50|50 - a two-week exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne (modern art and design museum in Munich) on the visionary product concept "Placell" in light of upcoming climate challenges in the year 2068
Contextual Research
Futuro 50|50 showcased several scenarios for the year 2068 along with the challenges the discipline of design might encounter. My team and I focused on the topic of climate change and rising sea levels. We started out with weeks of desk research, reading through articles, blogs and interviews in order to get a clear picture of what the actual challenges might look like. We used methods like Insights Sorting, ERAF Systems Diagram to structure our thoughts. Throughout the entire project we used Kanban to distribute tasks and visualize To-Dos.
Kanban
ERAF
Design through dialogue
Concept Generation
We used a scenario video to convey our vision of the year 2068. I worked on a user journey that described the rising sea levels leading to flooded cities and inhabitants becoming climate refugees. Providing a clear picture of the futuristic context allowed us to start with the product design. Since our team consisted of two architects and two industrial designers, we decided to work on a project at the intersection of our disciplines, a mobile housing solution. This concept called „Placell“ is a shelter for climate refugees made out of bio-degradable plastic.
Concept Evaluation
Since we developed this vision of a super-light, small-size, self-constructing and -dismantling plastic fabric, we had to go into another round of research. Apart from reading papers we organized expert feedback on our concept of a plastic fabric that is able to change form when under voltage. We talked to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lars Schiemann, an expert on membrane structures with further knowledge on electro-fluids and Eike Schling from the Chair of Structural Design at TUM, an expert on parametric structural design. Furthermore we attended a day-long workshop at the environmental federal agency in Dessau on the topic of EcoDesign, where we had the chance to get feedback from experts in the plastic recycling industry.
Exhibition and Product Design
Having evaluated our concept we were able to move ahead with the design. Since the tent should assemble itself we needed some kind of folding structure. We experimented with origami and kirigami patterns until we found the ideal pattern for our use case. The prototyping phase was accompanied with the task of designing the overall exhibition design. I was part of the communications team and responsible for designing icons, posters and printing banners. In my sub-group I continuously worked on the overall appearance of our exhibit and how we could make our vision accessible to all visitors. We finally decided to build half of our structure, while fixing it to a mirror, so when looking into the mirror a entire Placell would appear. The exhibit could also be entered from below so when standing in the middle of the exhibition island one would have the actual experience of the structure's interior, again enabled by the mirror.
Response
In spring 2018 the exhibition opening took place. We presented our concepts in front of 250 interested people in the Ernst-von-Siemens-Auditorium. Several articles on the exhibition were published, most of them specifically mentioning „Placell“. Overall the exhibition was a great success. The curators of the art and design museum were fascinated with the quality of exhibition design we had provided and offered a second collaboration the following year.
My Role
Research on upcoming design challenges in the year 2068
User Journey Map on the climate scenario in 2068 - Sketching, Adobe Photoshop
Product Design of the mobile housing concept "Placell" - Prototyping, Adobe Illustrator, 3D CAD Modeling
Exhibition Design (CI, icons, banners, posters, website, exhibits) - Folding Techniques, Adobe InDesign/ Illustrator, Wordpress, HTML
Research on upcoming design challenges in the year 2068
User Journey Map on the climate scenario in 2068 - Sketching, Adobe Photoshop
Product Design of the mobile housing concept "Placell" - Prototyping, Adobe Illustrator, 3D CAD Modeling
Exhibition Design (CI, icons, banners, posters, website, exhibits) - Folding Techniques, Adobe InDesign/ Illustrator, Wordpress, HTML
