Brief

For this project we were tasked with exploring the idea that we as a society have become disconnected from nature, we were to explore ways in which nature could be brought back into the forefront of everyone’s minds, through buildings, products and interactions.

One Day Project

To kick start this project we were given one day to research 3 companies, businesses or organisations that not only promote being environmentally friendly but also stick by what they say. The companies I chose to research were IKEA, New Belgium Brewery and V8 Architecture. These are the boards I created on each company;

I found this first day of the project really useful later on into the project as having that small bit of knowledge on how real life companies make small changes to the making and running of their products can make them more environmentally friendly.

Tentsmuir Trip

The next part of this project involved a trip to Tentsmuir beach and forest where we were to collect objects that could be used for model building or could have an alternative use. We were also asked to scout out locations that would be best for a mobile building. After a day on the beach and surrounding forest I came back with a large amount of inspirational images as well as a bag full of found objects.

 

4 Boards

Before we went on our Tentsmuir trip we were given a brief which asked us to create 4 mood boards, one was to be a personal mood board and then one for each discipline of social digital (Product Design, Digital Interaction Design and Interior Environmental Design), this was to encourage us to spend time thinking solely as one discipline designer rather than a social digital designer.

Personal Mood Board

I chose to do my inspiration board first as it would allow me to research more widely and get some idea of what kind of things I should research further when it came to the individual disciplines.

I really enjoyed creating this board as it allowed me to research everything and anything. Some of my favourite things on this board are the CD animals, the Red trees and the honeycomb art. This board helped me a lot when it came to creating the next 3 boards as it gave me a rough idea of things I could do for them as well as showing me ways other people had interpreted “Nature Disconnect”.

Interior Mood Board

The first discipline board we were to approach was the interior board, for this we were to start making models out of paper. The aim was to get us making and to not think about the technical side of building a structure (we were to let loose and just make). I found this really enjoyable and freeing as it allowed me to explore shapes that I might never have thought of if I was trying to draw my ideas.

I chose to place my models into an image of Tentesmuir through Photoshop to get a idea of scale as well as how the model would look in location. This was by far my favourite board to make and research as I found it the most freeing and the easiest to get my head around.

Product Mood Board

For this board we were to create a product out of our found objects from Tentsmuir, I found this board quite hard initially as I had no idea what to make. However, I decided to go simple and create a seat that is made out of natural materials and would weather well in Tentsmuir, after this I found this board quite enjoyable.

I certainly found this Board a wee bit harder to annotate as I wasn’t really sure myself of the models, to me they weren’t finished enough and were too rough and shabby to be considered models. But I decided just to role with it and explore materials and functions through drawings. Considering I found this Board fairly difficult I think I did quite well in portraying my ideas despite the materials I used to create my models. I learnt through this board that models don’t have to be perfect to show your ideas.

Interaction Mood Board

This was the final board we were to create and for this one we were to explore how cameras could be used to reconnect us with nature. This board was by far the hardest for me, I really struggled to find any research on how cameras are already used in nature. The only projects I could really find to go off were the ones we were told about in our talk with Graham Pullin. I decided to create a sonar tracking camera to help with whale spotting, the aim of this was to allow people to watch the whales in their natural habitat without disturbing them.

As part of this board we were to create a story board to show how our product works, I found this quite fun as it was a way of showing how the product worked without writing screeds and screeds of text.  For this board I tried to focus on camera displays as well as underwater cameras, I really struggled with this and could only really find images, because of this i struggled with annotation as I had no projects other than “the nature watch” to go off of.

Conclusion

Overall I found this quite enjoyable, however, there were certainly points in which I felt more comfortable. I found being pushed out my design comfort zone quite daunting but I think I’ve learnt a lot about the way I work through it. I’ve realised that starting off by drawing means I’m less creative with my ideas, whilst its a good way to advance my designs and explore materials model making is definitely easier for playing around with form and shapes. One of the things I need to work on is my confidence in my designs, I found that the further away from interiors the boards got the less confident I was in myself and my work, I think this is quite clear in my boards as they start to have less and less information on them.