RCA students show innovative and sustainability-led designs at Milan Design Week 2018
A new building material created from discarded bin bags; furniture that makes upcycled limescale a design feature, and clothing inspired by the designer’s journey of self-discovery of her Iranian culture and Muslim faith. These are just three of the innovative and thought-provoking designs by Royal College of Art students and alumni to be shown at Milan Design Week, 17 - 22 April.
More than 20 students from Innovation Design Engineering, Design Products and Fashion programmes will show their work at the ‘Blend House’ exhibition in the Lambrate District.
Highlights from the exhibition includes:
- Carlo Scanferlato has created a new material from ‘bin bags’ which can be used for architectural coatings, roof tiles and construction bricks. He explores how to give new tangible value to what is currently defined as rubbish, saving it from being buried or incinerated.
- Martina Taranto’s project is inspired by a small Silician city where limescale grows in the pipes of the public hydraulic system like stalactites and stalagmites. She looks at extracting the limescale and recontextualising them within furniture design like tables and chairs.
- RCA students will show Oobly, a helmet designed for patients with epilepsy. The helmet aims to increase the comfort for the user and the aesthetic, without compromising the safety and efficacy of a protection system. It is made of oobleck - a material which is normally liquid but turns solid on impact.
- A group made up of students across three programmes will show filtration masks created for a world where there is no clean air and using material qualities of printed hydrogel filters. The masks address both the symptom (breathable air) through technical filtration, and the cause (societal consumption habits) by aesthetically exposing people’s consumption habits.
- Rob Farr’s ‘Real VR, Fake VR’ will use UV lights and fluorescent post-its and electrical tape to recreate the illusion of virtual reality space within a six-foot dome. The project looks at the use of analogue filmmaking techniques in emerging format of Virtual Reality and 360-degree experiences.
Head of Design Products, Professor Saeema Ahmed-Kristensen, said: “Milan Design week is a fantastic opportunity for Design Products students to stimulate a discourse on the future of design. In our course we shape the designers of the future, which are driven by their own visions and that are capable of tackling and redefining the industries of yesterday.”
The Royal College of Art will also be represented elsewhere at Milan Design Week with fashion alumna Zahra Hosseini one of nine young designers handpicked to show as part of the Emerging Talents Program, presented by Hay.
Zahra will be showing her performative presentation ‘B E K H O M O R E H E N A’ which centres on her journey of self-discovery through her Iranian culture and deeper meaning of her Muslim faith. Her mission is to reclaim the beauty of Islam, in particular the peacefulness of ‘Azan’, the Islamic call out pray, recited by the Muezzin.
Zahra’s presentation includes garments that young Muslim girls can wear to make themselves feel connected to modesty decreed by their faith and the opportunity clothes give to express our inner self.
‘B E K H O M O R E H E N A’ will be part of the Emerging Talents Program at Palazzo Clerici on Wednesday, April 18 from 11am - 6pm. The presentation will also be published in the Clerici TIMES - a live made publication for the Emerging Talents Program.
ENDS
Please see images attached. If you would like further information or more images please contact Kim Pham, RCA Press Office on t: +44 (0) 20 7590 4127, e: [email protected]
Notes to Editors
About the RCA
Engaging in teaching and research, the Royal College of Art was recently named the world’s leading university of art and design in the prestigious QS World University Subject Rankings 2018 for the fourth consecutive year. It offers the degrees of MA, MRes, MPhil and PhD across the disciplines of applied art, architecture, fine art, design, communications and humanities.
It offers 28 highly specialised programmes in Art & Design to over 2,000 Master’s and Doctoral students and more than 800 professionals interacting with them – including researchers, professors, art and design practitioners, along with advisers and distinguished visitors.
http://www.rca.ac.uk/