Future Observatory Residency Programme
Design Researchers in Residence: 2025/26 Mineral
Delivered by the Design Museum's Future Observatory in partnership with the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), this residency programme supports design researchers at the start of their careers to spend a year developing a new project in response to a theme.
This year's Design Researchers in Residence are responding to the theme of ‘Mineral’, questioning the limits of human-centred design in a more-than-human climate crisis.
The Design Researchers in Residency 'Mineral' display will open in the summer of 2026.
2025/26 Theme: Mineral
Minerals, concentrated in the Earth’s crust, are a finite resource. Yet, global demand for critical minerals is accelerating, particularly with the transition to renewable energy systems. The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2040, the demand for key minerals like lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements will be four times greater than today. These materials are integral to the manufacture of clean energy technologies, including wind turbines and electrical networks, and central to the UK’s net zero goals.
From kaolin pits in Cornwall to salt mines in North Yorkshire, the UK’s geological landscape is scarred by centuries of mineral extraction. These materials are not only held in geological strata. The mineral composition of soil and water plays a crucial role in supporting biodiversity and regulating ecological processes and mineral fertilisers are used to provide plants with nutrients to grow. These delicate dynamics, often overlooked, are integral to the health of both natural and agricultural landscapes.
Simultaneously, there is a second mineral landscape in our urban environments: veins of ore embedded in discarded consumer electronics. Post-use materials represent a critical untapped resource. Can net-zero goals be sustained through the continued extraction of finite mineral resources? How can design research better understand the UK’s dependence on these minerals?
The 2025/26 Design Researchers in Residence will critically interrogate the UK’s intersecting mineral landscapes through case studies, field research and by building human and non-human relationships.
2025/26 residents
Alfred Yatlong Yeung, Rosa Whiteley, Elise Limon, and Rafael El Baz are the Design Researchers in Residence 2025–26 cohort. Photo by Justine Trickett
Alfred Yatlong Yeung
Alfred is an architect and writer with a particular interest in the relationship between cultural identity and material extraction. He will be investigating the emerging landscape of Cornish lithium mining, exploring the tensions between the UK’s renewable energy ambitions and the environmental protection of its UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Rafael El Baz
Rafael is a designer and artist, working at the intersection of material research, traditional craft and contemporary fabrication. In collaboration with a local factory, Rafael will investigate the potential of silica slag as a raw material for designers, and waste streams as resources for regenerative futures.
Rosa Whiteley
Rosa is a designer, writer and researcher whose work spans food systems, critical ecology and atmospheric politics. Her residency project will explore the future of the UK’s chalkland landscapes, addressing urgent questions around water scarcity, resource management and climate adaptation.
The programme
Design Researchers in Residence
Design Researchers in Residence is Future Observatory’s programme for design research into the climate crisis hosted at the Design Museum. The residency supports thinkers at the start of their careers to develop new research relating to environmental concerns and centred around a particular theme.
The residency has two main aims: to provide design researchers in the early stages of their careers time and space away from their regular environment to develop and produce new work, and to offer museum visitors an opportunity to engage with live design research projects.
Each year the residency accommodates four researchers, working in different design disciplines, to further develop their individual responses to the theme and brief. The programme culminates in a publication and final showcase at the Design Museum, due to open in June 2026. Each resident is provided with a commissioning budget, which goes directly towards producing the work in the display as well as a bursary to support the development of their career and to fund their practice.
The Design Researchers in Residence programme builds upon the Design Museum’s Designers in Residence programme, which ran from 2007 – 2020. The revised residency programme, now in its fifth year, continues to provide emerging designers and researchers with time and space away from their regular environment to develop impactful new projects that contribute to design research into the climate crisis taking place across the country.
This programme is generously supported by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), ppart of UK Research and Innovation, funds internationally outstanding independent researchers across the whole range of the arts and humanities: history, archaeology, digital content, philosophy, languages and literature, design, heritage, area studies, the creative and performing arts, and much more. The quality and range of research supported by AHRC works for the good of UK society and culture and contributes both to UK economic success and to the culture and welfare of societies across the globe.
Future Observatory is a national programme for design research, supporting the UK’s response to the climate crisis. The programme is coordinated by and based at the Design Museum in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), as part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Future Observatory aims to accelerate how we find solutions to the most pressing issues. It brings design researchers together with the networks that can help them have an impact on achieving the UK’s environmental goals.
Read the Future Observatory Journal
Future Observatory Journal is a biannual online journal on design, ecology and futures. It's a space for rethinking the frameworks within which design operates. Published by Future Observatory, the Design Museum’s national research programme for the green transition, the journal aims to expand the often narrow scope in which design and ‘sustainability’ are discussed.
Background image: Brickfield Firing by Oliver Udy, courtesy of Rosanna Martin. Residents' portraits by Justine Trickett.