Design Researchers in Residence

DESIGN RESEARCHERS IN RESIDENCE was established to support emerging design thinkers whose research responds to the climate emergency, building upon the museum’s Designers in Residence programme that ran from 2007 to 2020. The residency forms part of the Design Museum’s Future Observatory, delivered in partnership with the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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.

The residency studio, located at the Design Museum, provides a place for the residents to work as well as a space to exhibit their finished projects. During the programme, the selected researchers receive mentorship and a stipend, and their research is displayed through public events, an exhibition and a publication curated and edited by the Design Museum. The residency supports thinkers at the start of their careers to develop new research on environmental concerns and centred around a particular theme.

The residency accommodates four researchers working in different design disciplines each year to develop their individual responses to the year's theme and brief.

What are the limits of human-centric design in a more-than-human world?

The history of design is often read through the lens of anthropocentrism, where objects are imagined and manufactured to support human flourishing without concern for other species. Yet today we know well that this approach is part of a broader set of planetary crises which find their root in the artificial separation of the 'human' from the 'natural'.

This year's submission called for design research that questions assumptions around what is natural and what is unnatural; that designs collaboratively with the behaviour of plant species; that entangles itself with the architecture of animal habitats; that dresses itself in biosynthetic textiles; that models natural systems as computational ones; and which centres different forms of non-human agency in the past, present and future of design.

This year's projects will span urban parakeets, national planning, domestic appliances and the colonialisation of plants. Selected researchers are: Hani Salih, Laura Lebeau, Neba Sere and Christie Swallow.

'Design Researchers in Residence: Artificial' will run from September 2024 – June 2025.

How can design influence our rapidly changing relationship with the heat and light of the sun? The residents explored a broad range of topics such as the retrofit agenda, the scent of plants under environmental stress, peatland restoration, and waste heat produced by data centres.

2023/24 Design Researchers in Residence: April Barrett, Eliza Collin, Jamie Gatty Irving and Freya Spencer-Wood.

The display closed on 22 September 2024.

Islands are defined by the connections formed at their edges: to seas and oceans, and the ecosystems that inhabit them, as well as to other islands, both nearby and further afield. This year's theme explored the continuum of isolation and interconnectedness that is implied in the island, as an environmental, geographical and social construct.

2022/23 Design Researchers in Residence: Rhiarna Dhaliwal, Marianna Janowicz, Isabel Lea and James Peplow Powell.

The display closed on 1 October 2023.

As we confront the climate crisis, we cannot necessarily rely on a new invention to solve all of our problems. This year’s residency theme asks: rather than making something new, how can design respond to what’s already there?

2021/22 Design Researchers in Residence: Thomas Aquilina, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Samuel Iliffe and Sanne Visser.

The display closed on 25 September 2022.

Design researchers portrait: Justine Trickett for the Design Museum.