Guru Day

Yesterday we had "Guru Day," it was inspiring and really helpful to speak to people in industry and find out what they thought of where my project was heading and taking on board they had to offer. The gurus were Richard Banks and Tim Reegan, who both work with Microsoft Research in Cambridge, as well as Martin Bontoft and Paul Greenhalgh who both work at Team Consulting. Below is my set up for my desk and what I showed the gurus.

All the gurus were extremely helpful and showed great interest in what I had to say about my project and it was very reassuring that people thought the outcome would be exciting. As well as speaking to the gurus individually there was also a panel section in which questions like what are your pet hates? and what skills do you need to be a good designer? Other questions included what do you look for when you are recruiting? and who are are your personal design heroes/heroines?

This brought to light a hero for one of the gurus who I have always been in awe and inspiration of and even though I knew of his inventions never thought of him as a design hero and I am not sure why. I am speaking about Leonardo da Vinci. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and a writer. His inventions were mind blowing, especially for his time below is one the I particularly like, the ornihopter; designed in 1493, it is explorative rather than working and this appeals to my own design values:  

Who are your design heroes and why? Who inspires you and gets you motivated?

Going More In Depth

After delving into the materials that are wasted on building sites and derelict sites and then narrowing it down into materials that are more likely to have been left, I have decided to focus my current research on concrete. I am going to look at the different materials that can be used in making concrete and the different finishes that result of these, how I can change the finish by trying different materials and how I can replace the materials to make concrete a more eco-friendly material.

I am also going to look into materials that can bond concrete that have an extremely low environmental impact or none at all what so ever. For a cultural probe I am going to look into making a series of objects out of concrete and see how people react to these items.

In the meantime here are some great items that have been made out of concrete.

Where am I?

So getting into discovering where I want to go as a designer and how to show this through my honours project is a lot more challenging than I originally thought but here is where I am at the moment.

After an inspiring talk last week by Colin Burns, who showed us how to find out where we are in our project and ways to figure out where we want to me using a process by Eddie Obeng "Walking in the Fog". It showed us different areas that we could be with our project and finding out which one would help us realise what we need to achieve and how.

Using this process I realised that I was a "movie." I know what materials I want to use and have ideas for what I want to create but I am not sure how to use the materials in an effective way. Back to the research for the time being. I have also decided that I can get valuable information from cultural probes and have some crafty ideas, so will keep you posted on that!

Here is another incredible bit of recycling design to keep you all going. It is a Buddhist temple in Thailand made out of recycled beer bottles and it has a very spiritual  feeling about it in my opinion, what do you think?