Conscious Design at WantedDesign Brooklyn

We have reached a point where all design must become conscious. ‘Conscious Design’ is design created from a space of interconnected awareness with a mission to help the natural world and our communities flourish. At WantedDesign Brooklyn at Industry City – the Conscious Design Exhibition will showcase innovative design projects and products from around the world that not only push the boundaries of our creativity but also embody our shared responsibility. This responsibility embraces both environment and society as a shared cohesive unit. Presenting projects from international and local design organizations and institutions, ‘Conscious Design’ aspires to enlighten and engage visitors with the hope of persistent humanity.

BioDesign Challenge

The Biodesign Challenge is a university competition that pairs art and design students with scientists to envision future applications of biotechnology. Students focus on a range of sustainable theme areas including biomaterials, energy, food, water, medicine, transportation, and more. Four projects will be exhibited.

Students from Appalachian State University are embarking on a project called “Conscious Furniture Design” working with sustainable development students to thoughtfully harvest and cut lumber from a 350 acre farm. Using this lumber, they’ll create prototypes using the Japanese philosophy Ma. Within the context of Ma the role of the designer is to empty out or create a nothingness – a bounded space of interpretation which allows the user to reflect upon the introspective unions of space and purpose as well as the correlation of sustainability over time.

Daily Connection

As part of the “Bamboo for Paris” project, 10 students from EnsAD participated in a workshop on the valorisation of bamboo as a material of the future, at the Domaine de Boisbuchet, a research center in design on environmental issues. In the exceptional architectural and landscape setting of the Domaine de Boisbuchet, the students worked on the realization of bamboo pieces in the idea of ​​an implementation on an industrial scale. This workshop outside the walls, was imagined and designed by the studio VIE (plant / imagination / economy) of EnsAD. Part of the Conscious Design exhibition on the Factory Floor.

How Do We Clean Up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

Plastic bottle floating in the sea in the Firth of Forth, Scotland. Up to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic waste enters the oceans every year.

It is estimated that by 2025 250 million metric tons of plastic could end up in the ocean. Our waste is unmanaged. Water, wildlife, food supply, health, climate and air quality are all affected by this growing and grave problem. As designers, what can be done? A group of eight designers in a prototypes class in the Industrial Design Department at Pratt Institute with professor Rebecca Welz have teamed up with Algalita Marine Research and Education Foundation www.Algalita.org to address this challenge. They are using the methodology of Biomimicry as their problem solving inspiration and system as well as concrete research and discussion with Captain Charles Moore, who sailed into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997, bringing to light what most of us did not know. 

RIT Hope for Honduras

The RIT Hope for Honduras initiative, directed by Assistant Professor Mary Golden highlights the partnership between Herman Miller and RIT’s interior design program to outfit a 12,000 square foot expansion for Hospital Escuela’s NICU, the largest public hospital in Honduras. The exhibition curates work from a multidisciplinary effort aimed at providing an accessible model of medical care for critically ill newborns with the goal of reducing infant mortality. STEAM projects include designs for mobile education units, preemie examination tables, emergency incubator kits, intra-hospital transportation of critically ill newborns and soft good devices that support skin to skin incubation practice.

SAVE OUR SOULS

Save our Souls is a response to the current global refugee crisis that the world is facing. It proposes the re-use of a by-product of this crisis which is the common life jacket to provide low-cost temporary shelters to help refugees: Protection in Water – Tectum (Shelter) on Land. In the past few months alone more than 450,000 discarded life jackets have accumulated on the Greek island of Lesbos, providing an abundance of building material for the project. For Achilleas, who is a 16 year old student, it all started with his toys, especially Lego. He soon outgrew the instruction sheets and would let his imagination run wild, building structures that would re-appropriate much of his parents house.

The Antigua Project

In May 2015, a group of 12 New York based designers and artists led by Rebecca Welz arrived in the city of Antigua, Guatemala, to collaborate with artisans in diverse crafts and create a line of products. An exhibition of the resulting diverse set of products and designs ranging from clothing to home goods that utilized traditional techniques of the region.