Reference visuals for Design for Need

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Design for Need

The images collected on this webpage are related to design and research activities culminating in a current initiative by Brian Marsh in London aimed at setting up a design research resource for emergency education and design for need for situations such as the earthquake in Bam, Iran, the displacement of populations in Darfur, Sudan and the Indian Ocean Rim countries particularly illustrated by Aceh, Sumatra and the low lying Andaman and Nicobar Island chains of India.

R Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao created this Dymaxion Air-Ocean World in 1954.

A similar map could be adapted to illustrate the undersea masses of the tectonic plates

While studying in Sweden and Finland I experimented with this modular structural form contemplating an emergency shelter

The thermal insulation, weight:strength and structural qualities of corrugated board were tested in Finland.

The research results were exhibited at The Design Center, Helsinki, Finland.

This plan shows the fluting direction in a single dome

This solution was subsequently displayed at the Design for Need Conference at the Royal College of Art in the 1970's

Other research conducted at the Textile Research Unit, Royal College of Art was a Photographic Anthropometric Study

This was to provide design data for a pre-shaped clothing project led by Victor Herbert

Extrapolated data was converted into garment forms

These garments were shaped from flat fabric

The process used temperatures and forms which imparted shape into the fabric

The resulting garments could be completed very rapidly and simply with an absolute minimum of cutting and sewing.

Papers were presented at the First International Symposium on Garment Moulding Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.

Students in the Department of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic were encouraged to think three-dimensionally investigating garment form

In a London secondary school a group of students were set the task of investigating a hand mill for maize suitable for use in disaster and famine relief such as Darfur.

A one hour lesson plan introduced Design for Need. This was produced as a PowerPoint module on CD-Rom.

Then the Maize Mill project was developed over four hours of further studies. It was also developed and documented as a PowerPoint module.

This project was developed as a Design & Technology project for an Open University PGCE placement.

It was complemented with wood-machining safety and metal-machining safety courses at Brunel University which were also documented as PowerPoint modules.

Some of these modules can be open from the website with the hyperlinks above.

In addition to these design activities the ICT educational resources of the BETT Show at Olympia have been documented and reported over the last decade.

initiative.cafe eMail

Design for Need