Design for the New Normal. Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government. Prix Émile Hermès 2011 | Exposition en ligne des lauréats du 2ème concours international de design. Home : gabriele diamanti | designer. A Declaration of Interdependence: a crowdsourced short film. Design student creates coat for homeless people. Kelvin Quinnine has shivered through more San Francisco nights than he can count, fog biting through whatever worn-out sleeping bag he pitched onto the sidewalk. He stood last week on Ellis Street with his latest bag wrapped around him.
When a young woman wearing a bizarrely baggy coat walked up to him, he cocked his gray-bearded head sideways. "It's a coat for the homeless that turns into a sleeping bag at night," 22-year-old Veronika Scott said brightly. She held an edge out to him. Quinnine pinched it. "Goes down to 17 degrees," Scott said. "Is that right? " That's just what Scott is hoping other homeless people will think when they see her invention over the coming year. A design student at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Scott conceived her coat-bag for a class project in 2010 - and now she's planning to go national with it.
"What I found, in working at shelters and getting to know homeless people, is that pride is one of their biggest needs," Scott said. Effective in snow. RHoK. “Conscious Designs” by Tim McKeough | The Walrus | December 2010. Just inside the entrance to the National Design Triennial, at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, sits the Solvatten, a shiny, black rectangular plastic container resembling an ordinary gasoline canister.
Your first reaction upon seeing it might be to wonder why it’s sitting inside a design museum; however, the nondescript package masks world-changing functionality. When the container is set out in the sun, it purifies water — no energy required. It’s not the only unlikely object in the exhibition. Climb the dark, intricately carved wooden staircase to the second floor (the museum is located in Andrew Carnegie’s former mansion, completed in 1902), and you’ll encounter the NeoNurture car parts incubator.
After past shows celebrating futuristic forms, translucent plastic, and high-tech gizmos, all designed largely to fuel consumer lust, this year’s triennial has decidedly different ambitions. But it’s not just the curators.