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This week, a team of Art and Design students present their concepts The Living Sponge at the Biodesign Challenge Summit. The postgraduate students have worked with a range of experts including Lab4Living researchers to compete in the international Biodesign Challenge. They will join students from 20 countries in showcasing their biotech projects before an international audience and panel of 60 pioneers in art, design, and technology.

The Biodesign Challenge is an international education program and competition which challenges students to envision and develop applications in biotech. Students are challenged to develop ideas which bridge art, design, and biology to reimagine a more sustainable and equitable future.

It is grounded in the UN Sustainable Development Goal 13 (taking action to combat climate change) and provides an opportunity for Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) students, one of only three universities in the UK to take part in the competition, to engage in work which could have real world impact and make a positive contribution society globally.

Research informed teaching

Students from across the Art & Design MA courses worked in cross disciplinary teams to prepare projects in response to the BioDesign Challenge brief, with input from teaching staff, researchers from Lab4Living and invited external experts. Teaching staff from the Department of Art and Design, led by Dr Eve Stirling, have been supporting the teams of students with input from Lab4Living researchers Prof Peter Lloyd Jones, Noemie Soula and Marika Grasso.

Press release: Hallam students named as finalists for Biodesign Challenge

At an internal selection process in May, one team was picked to develop their project, The Living Sponge, and present it online at this year’s BioDesign Challenge Summit on 23rd June.

The Living Sponge

The Living Sponge is a dystopian futuristic fiction that uses living calcareous sponge properties to create an artificial living sponge that interacts with the external environment by collecting and purifying water. This concept was developed by a team of MA students from Interiors, Packaging, Illustration, and Jewellery and Metalwork.

Hannah Morley, one of the design students who will be presenting the project said:

“The Biodesign Challenge was such a potential and transformative opportunity for us, as a team; and a challenge in itself. We hope The Living Sponge can help address global issues or reverse biodiversity loss with newly minted design innovation, relating to the damaging effects climate change has had on the planet regarding water scarcity.

Developing the biotech ideas

The team had begun by thinking about cleaned water and contamination, and ideas of water absorption and metabolism, which led to the image of the sponge. They explored the narratives of sponges absorbing and collecting water, and discovered the sponge’s ability to ‘purify’. As they observed the sponge’s properties, they began to explore how sponges could be created and designed to filter water and prevent it from being filtered again.

The team speculated on the possibility of using calcareous sponge DNA (which is very capable of filtering water and prevent it from being filtered again) in order to create an artificial ‘living’ sponge that could interact with the external environment. They looked at the context of inhabited Karst regions and how sponge technology could improve citizens’ quality of life by collecting and purifying water.

Nanning: a Karst landscape in south China

Karst landscapes are made up of limestone which can be worn away from the top or dissolved from a weak point inside the rock, resulting in caves, sink holes, and underground rivers. The city of Nanning in south China is in such a landscape and has significant problems with waterlogging during rainy seasons. Building a “sponge city” is an attempt by Nanning to solve waterlogging. Sponge cities use permeable pavements, water storage and roof planting methods to make the overall urban structure like a sponge that can absorb and store rainfall to reduce the risk of waterlogging.

Inspiration

The team was inspired by a range of arts and science projects from around the world. Talking with Peter Lloyd Jones led them to look at ‘Ice Stupa‘, an artificial glacier in the desert of northern India. Rachel Armstrong ‘Future Venice’ is a project about creating artificial Coral reefs), and Lab4Living’s Playponics project, led by Heath Reed, provides a way for people to interact with their environment and allow them to participate in its improvement.

Final concepts

The final concepts explore wearable weather water sponges and imagine a future cityscape where the sponges adapt to weather changes. The sponge properties mean that they can not only absorb excess water but purify and filter it so that it can be stored until needed.

Preparing for the summit

Working as a cross disciplinary group, the team have used their different expertise and developed effective ways of working together; as Hannah Morley says, “We have leaders, organisers, and implementers in our group.”

The team is looking forward to sharing and discussing their designs with the expert team of biological design and other finalist teams from all over the world.

BioDesign Summit

At the livestreamed summit, viewers will be able to see the students showcase their biotech projects before an international audience and panel of 60 pioneers in art, design, and technology. There will also be live Q&As with judges, and talks by keynote speakers. While this year’s event will be held online, previous summits have taken place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Further info on The Living Sponge @ BDC Summit 2021

• Press release 21 June 2021: Hallam students named as finalists for Biodesign Challenge
• Radio Interview: BBC Radio Sheffield Howard Pressman show 22/06/2021 Listen again from 15:13 (available until 29 June 2021)
• Press contact: Greg Mattocks-Evans | g.mattocks-evans@shu.ac.uk
• Subject Group Leader for postgraduate Art and Design: Dr Eve Stirling 
• The Design Team: Hannah Morley | MA Design (Interior) @hannah_morley_designs ; Inés De Cueto Escobar | MA Design (Packaging) @agnesdecueto ; Xiaozhao Ban | MA Design (Illustration) @bannnxz ; Xiaoyue Ma | MA Design (Jewellery and Metalwork).
• Biodesign Challenge 2021

Following on from a recent online residency, Marika Grasso has been accepted to exhibit in CHI Interactive Experiences at CHItaly11^th – 13^th July 2021. Marika is currently studying for her PhD within Lab4Living. Her exhibit “Touch/Matter Beyond Touchscreens” asks the question “Have you ever really touched your touchscreen?”

The installation is a tool to reflect beyond the materiality of technology throughout the marks of touch. It focuses on the relationship between the hand and the computer and the special interaction with the screen. The small rectangular scale of the screen and its continuous presence in human life interlaces thinking and engagement in a very particular manner. The engagement with the layers composing the touchscreen is superficial, the glass layer is marked by human activity through time until the touchscreen is broken by human activity. The glass surface becomes part of the past and it is replaced, while actually, the other inside layers unbroken and soft are forgotten.

The installation is a provocation and discourse about the materiality of daily touched computers (smartphones), by decomposing and relayering and showing the untouched layers. 

The materials/layers of the smartphone are therefore organized according to the softness, elasticity, smoothness, stiffness, and thickness to expose the hidden layers of the daily touching of screens. The un-layering and exposition of all the layers such as glass film, isolation layer, ITO (transparent metal deposit), and LCD serve to look differently at the materiality of technology daily interactions.

The display of the components of the touchscreens aims to reveal more of the entanglement between the materials and the meaning they have beyond our touch and interaction. Those hidden layers also carry their own meanings, which are expressed in the size, thickness and colour, but also by the imaginary built around it, by contemporary technological culture.

CHItaly

CHItaly explores the “Frontiers of HCI” through connecting research and geographical areas, and takes place this year as a hybrid physical and digital event including workshops, presentations and Interactive Experiences.

About the artist

Marika Grasso is one of 8 PhD students who joined Lab4Living in October 2019 following the Research England award which focusses on the Future Home and 100 year life. Her research uses art practice to explore the relationship between the human condition, touch and conductive materials.

Personal website: grassomarika.academia.edu

A chapter by Lab4Living researchers in a new publication offers some alternatives to the supposed digital dominance for co-design during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter is published in a new two-volume set of Rapid Responses exploring the urgent need to put co-production and participatory approaches at the heart of responses to the pandemic.

The publication will be launched at an event hosted by the Centre for Public Engagement Tuesday 22^nd June.

“Challenging the digital default: in our chapter we offer a critique of an over-reliance on digital media for co-design, pointing out the exclusive nature of digital channels. We offer some alternatives that have arisen from our own practice as we explored different ways of reducing barriers to enable people to contribute to co-design.”

Dr Joe Langley, Lab4Living

“COVID co-design does not *have* to be digital” is co-written by a team of researchers from Lab4Living, the University of South Australia, and the University of York. The team have been sharing practice and building knowledge since the outbreak of the pandemic through their Co-design during COVID collaboration, exploring how to engage participants meaningfully through remote co-design. 

Background

Following an exasperated Twitter thread by researcher Joe Langley about critically challenging the “what platform should I use?” starting point for co-production during COVID, the team was invited by the editors to contribute to a new publication exploring co-production in health and social care during a pandemic. The two-volume set of Rapid Responses explores the urgent need to put co-production and participatory approaches at the heart of responses to the pandemic. It demonstrates how policymakers, health and social care practitioners, patients, service users, carers and public contributors can make this happen.

The chapter ‘COVID co-design does not *have* to be digital‘ is included in the second volume of Rapid Responses which focuses on methods and means of co-producing during a pandemic. It is available as an Open Access publication.

The editorial team has written a post for the Transforming Society blog about why the issues in the book are so important – it can be found via this link:

https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2021/05/24/co-production-working-together-towards-a-fairer-future/

Publication details

‘COVID co-design does not *HAVEA* to be digital’ by Joe Langley, Niki Wallace, Aaron Davis, Ian Gwilt, Sarah Knowles, Rebecca Partridge, Gemma Wheeler, and Ursual Ankeny

In: COVID-19 and Co-production in Health and Social Care Research, Policy, and Practice
Volume 2: Co-production Methods and Working Together at a Distance

Editors: Oli Williams, Doreen Tembo, Josephine Ocloo, Meerat Kaur, Gary Hickey, Michelle Farr and Peter Beresford

ISBN: 978-1447361794

Imprint: Policy Press

Page count: 160 pages

Paul Chamberlain (Lab4Living) is exhibiting a new collection of work at Venice Biennial Architecture exhibition “Time Space Existence” which opens 22 May 2021 and runs until 21 November 2021.

The traditional structures of our every-day life and the spaces we inhabit are being challenged. Increased life expectancy, a global pandemic and technology pervading every aspect of our lives is blurring the boundaries of domesticity and work life, while spaces within the home become less delineated.

Through this collection of work Paul challenges traditional furniture typologies and morphs archetypal forms to create hybrid ambiguous artefacts that reflect the domestic quotidian. The work is part of a broader Lab4Living research enquiry funded through Research England’s Expanding Excellence in England Programme that explores the role of Design in the reconceptualisation of the 100-year life.

Exhibition: “Time Space Existence” 
Location: Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora and Marinaressa Gardens, Venice, Italy
Organisers: European Cultural Centre – Italy
Dates: May 22nd – November 21st 2021
Website: https://ecc-italy.eu/exhibitions/upcoming

Paul Chamberlain will be presenting the work of the Lab4Living team on the NESTORE project alongside the 16 European project partners at an online event on the 27^th February to mark the end of the project.

Designers, developers, users, public authorities and businesses will come together at the final event to explore the lessons learnt in more than three years of activity on project called NESTORE (Novel Empowering Solutions and Technology for Older people to Retain Everyday life activities). They will exchange the knowledge built in relation to co-design, technology and user experience.

Paul Chamberlain, Claire Craig and Nick Dulake have been involved in the three year project, funded through the EU H2020 programme. Chamberlain et al. have been responsible for leading the co-design that has informed the development of an extensive system that supports health and wellbeing through the four domains of physical, nutritional, cognitive and social.

Co-design

The L4L team has engaged over 200 participants in co-design activities in the UK, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, and worked in close collaboration with technical partners in Switzerland.

The project has faced challenges engaging with older communities through recent restrictions imposed by COVID but recent events have highlighted the importance of role of technology in supporting wellbeing.

The outcomes of the project presents creative methods for co-design and highlight the value of engaging users in the process. Useful insights have emerged for the development of future systems.

During Dutch Design Week 2018, Creative Industries Fund NL and Waag are organising the Designing a Community of Care: From creative research to practice network meeting, in association with the Aedes-Actiz Knowledge Centre for Housing, Care and Welfare and the Who Cares team. Paul and Claire will give a keynote exploring the role of design and creative practice in understanding and tackling the challenges of an ageing population.

In the Netherlands a care reinvention is happening. An ageing population, decentralisation and technological advances are making new demands on the provision of care in communities. Creative Industries Fund NL and Waag believe in the power of design’s contribution to this process of transition within care in the community.

Designing a Community of Care
The reason for this meeting is the Open Call: Designing a Community of Care, which was issued by the Fund in the spring of 2018. Thirteen projects have been initiated, in which designers are tackling changes to care in the community in conjunction with municipal services, care providers and housing corporations. You can find further information via this link (Dutch only).

Keynote speakers 

Professor Paul Chamberlain – Design Director of Lab4Living at Sheffield Hallam University

Dr Claire Craig – Health Director of Lab4Living at Sheffield Hallam University

Good design can mean a lot for society, but how can design practices and processes help to tackle the challenges we are facing in the 21st century? Paul Chamberlain argues that design is as much about the definition of the question as it is about providing an answer, and that interdisciplinary collaboration is the starting point for new creative possibilities. In Claire Craig’s former role as an occupational therapist she gained experience in the advancement of the wellbeing of the elderly, and she believes that design plays a pivotal role in this field.

Designing a Community of Care: From creative research to practice
Monday 22 October 2018, 1PM – 5PM
Innovation Powerhouse (Strijp-T), Zwaanstraat 31a, Eindhoven

Chronic Health exhibition
The Embassy of Health is an initiative of Waag, VanBerlo, Philips, Máxima Medical Centre, U Create and the Dutch Design Foundation. The ‘Chronic Health’ exhibition reveals how these organisations are jointly shaping care and how care products or services are not autonomous, but interact within a complex care environment. The exhibition immerses visitors in an interactive environment and allows them to experience the current and prospective role of design for (health)care: now, as well as in the immediate and more distant future.

Professor Paul Chamberlain is a Professor of Design, Co-Director of C3RI at Sheffield Hallam University, Head of the Art & Design Research Centre and Co-Director of Lab4Living.

Claire Craig is Reader in Design and Creative Practice in Health in the Art & Design Research Centre (ADRC) and Co-Director of the interdisciplinary research group Lab4Living. Claire’s research focuses on the role of creative practices in improving quality of life and well-being for people living with dementia.

Photo above: Sander van Wettum.