A very busy Summer saw us showcasing our Designing for the Future competition at various events throughout the country culminating last weekend with a pop up gallery at Generation Expo at the Brighton Centre.
Generation Expo is a new lifestyle event aimed at the over 40s which combines an eclectic mix of music, motors, sports, arts and fashion.
Curated and organised by the very impressive Hanna Mawbey, our stand showcased several future-gazing projects from the University of Brighton’s Faculty of Arts.
Ashley Temudo showed his thought-provoking Super-able Table. This striking piece is designed to challenge people’s perception of weakness and disability. Though the table appears “weak”, the many holes in fact enhance the functionality of the piece, acting as holders for mugs and glasses.
Sophia Fong brought along her elegant Displacement Jug which explores how liquids can be measured by eye rather than by recourse to fiddly and often difficult to read calibrations. Chloe Meineck’s The Hub is a multi sensory device which stores the music soundtrack of a person’s life to create a shared and engaging reminiscence activity for a dementia sufferer and their family. Also on show were prototypes of Harry Trimble’s interactive play mat with accompanying storybook which encourages young and old to play and exercise together and Jessica Hung’s supermarket navigator which seeks to tackle the problems that elderly people face in supermarket shopping by helping them find products easily. Also prompting discussion was Craig Barrow’s bio-degradable Living Memorial Stone.
Visitors were able to try out Lucy MacDonald’s The Public Rocking Bench which aims to combat loneliness by encouraging people to sit and rock together.
Hanna Mawbey’s beautiful medical aids were much admired. Hanna’s work explores whether carefully designed, aesthetically pleasing medical equipment can make the devices desirable objects in themselves. Her attractive silver inhaler seemed to prove the point, earning her at least one commission!
And finally we showed the model and plans for Brighton’s very own Grand Design. Kevin McCloud’s famous eco house which was first erected in London’s Docklands live in six days in 2008 for Channel 4’s Grand Designs Live, is being reborn in the courtyard of the University of Brighton’s Faculty of Arts.
The House That Kevin Built model itself attracted a great deal of interest constructed as it is of recycled materials including what looks like mini Shredded Wheat, lolly sticks, Murray Mints and fish fingers!
We had a lot of fun at this, the inaugural, Generation Expo and were delighted with the response we received from our visitors of all ages to our gallery and to the thought-provoking ways the students had sought to address the many challenges of ageing.
Lots of hard work went into making this event possible and big thanks go to Rachel at GenExpo, Hanna Mawbey, Anne Boddington (Dean, Faculty of Arts), Andrew Scanlan, James Parsons and all our student designers and helpers (Ashley, Sophia, Lucy, Jes, Chloe, Camilla, Craig, Florence, Sam, Zosia, Elea) and supporters.