Category: Making

Seats of Learning – A Template for Design Modelling

A paper presented at 4th Engineering and Product Design Education International Conference, Salzburg, Austria. Published in Educating Designers for a Global Context, Rothbucher, B., Kolar, M., Ion, B. and Clarke, A. (Eds.), Hadleys, UK 2006
ISBN 0955394201

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Play, Four Days and a 1/4 ton of Clay

This paper explores the use of play as a catalyst for creativity.
Presented at The 4th International Conference on Design and Emotion, 12th-14th June, 2004, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.

Co-Author: Alex Milton, Edinburgh College of Art

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Alehop!

Open Source Design and Remedies Down on the Farm.

This piece was written for the catalogue of a brilliant exhibition organised by the Institute de Cultura de Barcelona, designed by Emili Padros and Ana Mir in 2003. The exhibition focused on ingenuity in design and engineering. Part of it dealt with local, organic and free-range problem solving, which was one of my great interests. It was a chance to get in touch with Mike Donovan of Practical Farm Ideas to discuss how communities can empower themselves and others to accelerate problem-solving. There is some mention of the internet, but bear in mind that this is 2003; Instructables was still over two years away (launched August 2005) and the most up-to-date ‘lifestyle’ example I had was Make magazine. I am pleased to say that at the time of writing this intro (March, 2019), Practical Farm Ideas is still going www.farmideas.co.uk, and still produces 4 issues a year, but most sharing takes place online, allowing this culture of innovation to really mushroom.

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