James Wright

With increasing global population, key material resources are being rapidly exhausted, jeopardising crucial emerging technologies. While linear consumption models see resources wasted in landfill, circular economies ensure materials and products can be re-used multiple times. Subsequently, this means ownership as we know it is likely to be rare in the future.

This project explores industrial design in these future economies, and how this will affect products and their usage rituals. Instead of designing new access or sharing models with existing products retro-fitted, I am interested in products designed specifically for circular consumption, focusing on product experience and relationship, rather than possession and ownership.

Through the creation of a toolkit for designers, products suitable for circular consumption can be created, answering key questions: How can better bonds be created and broken between people and experiential products? How could products have multiple lives with different users?

The project enables designers to deliver products that meet the future needs of consumers, while enabling resources to be preserved and re-used, rather than wasted.