Category: Design engagement

  • A swiss excursion in minimal design

    A swiss excursion in minimal design

      Visited a couple of Swiss buildings recently which motivated some thoughts on minimal Design.  Corbusier designed a lovely lakeside ‘Petite Maison’ for his parents near Vevey, Switzerland. It was built in 1923, to minimal principles (although its appearance is complexified by later cladding).  The architectural composition is linear along the lake shore with views to the […]

  • Fashion UK – sustainability and ethics

    Fashion UK – sustainability and ethics

    High profile leaders from the Fashion Industry meet with politicians and academics in Westminster on 20 November 2019 to discuss sustainability and ethics in fashion. This conference follows a report from the House of Commons  Environmental Audit Committee  in February 2019. Design is central to meeting industry sustainability goals. It is tremendous that these issues […]

  • Playmobil as a design and communication tool

    Playmobil as a design and communication tool

    PhD students at the OU are encouraged to engage in ‘research dissemination’, so that we can share our research with lots of different audiences with various knowledge levels. Every year in early June the graduate school holds a Postgraduate Research Poster Competition to give us an opportunity to share our research. As a first year […]

  • Designing the 2019 Design Qualification student exhibition

    Designing the 2019 Design Qualification student exhibition

    For the second year running, the Design and Innovation Qualification team organised an exhibition of students’ work across its 3 core design modules U101, T217/T218 and T317. The exhibition was designed by 3 student designers: Rukhsana Ali (U101), Patrice Belton (U101) and Kristina Valenkova (T317) and one professional exhibition designer: Dawn Correa (also tutoring U101 […]

  • Engaging communities in design decision-making

    Engaging communities in design decision-making

    We live in a time where the role of civil society in dealing with social, economic and environmental issues becomes more and more essential in the face of reduced resources by the local and national government to support and develop innovative solutions to such issues. In our research at the OU we have worked with […]

  • Faith buildings and local communities

    Faith buildings and local communities

    What is the role of faith buildings in today’s society and how can historic faith buildings be revitalised and re-energised by connecting with their local communities? This is a question we have been exploring for almost 5 years now as part of Empowering Design Practices and in this time we have found many examples of […]

  • Fostering Sustainable Practices in Fashion

    Fostering Sustainable Practices in Fashion

    Finally, sustainability in fashion is being noticed. The fast fashion of the last decades has given us cheap clothes of often doubtful quality, which is fast bought and fast disposed. The cheap clothes is often produced in low wage countries and shipped half across the world just to end up in landfill in Europe and […]

  • Engaging children in design

    Engaging children in design

    As part of a research project that aims to explore the processes of empowering people to design (www.empoweringdesign.net), the research team has occasionally explored different ways for engaging the children of participating families in the design of community spaces. This typically occurs in workshops and open day events where children of adult participants engage in […]

  • Co-designing a Makerspace with the La Campagna-Altamira Community in Mexico

    Co-designing a Makerspace with the La Campagna-Altamira Community in Mexico

    I am just back from Monterrey in the north of Mexico, and can’t wait to share what I have done there. I worked on co-creating a Makerspace with La Campana-Altamira, an impoverished and marginalised community in the otherwise comparably wealthy city of Monterrey. Since the former Mexican president Calderon declared the Drug War, this low-income […]

  • The U101 Welcome Pack Incredible Give Away Competition Event Thing

    The U101 Welcome Pack Incredible Give Away Competition Event Thing

    Lola herself has been in touch with the Design Group and asked that we spread the cheer of U101 at this time of year. She has donated a number of U101 Welcome packs to give away to at least 7 lucky recipients. Just look at the creative goodness on offer, each object a portal to […]