Future Observatory Annual Programme – Free Display
Design Researchers in Residence: Artificial
A free display of new design research responding to the climate crisis. This year's Design Researchers in Residence responded to the theme of ‘Artificial’, questioning the limits of human-centred design in a more-than-human climate crisis.
What to expect
The free display is open from 17 June – 21 September 2025
Artificial brings together the work of the 2024/25 cohort of Design Researchers in Residence. The projects featured in the display examine the perceived boundaries separating what is ‘natural’ and what has been created by humans, finding that the two are in fact intricately intertwined.
Showcasing a range of research practices, the display begins to unravel the invisible relationships woven into everyday life – including urban ecosystems, manufactured materials, political infrastructures and institutional knowledge. Visitors are invited to follow the lines of enquiry and ask what is natural and what is artificial? What is a fact and what is a fiction?
The 2024/25 Design Researchers in Residence are Christie Swallow, Hani Salih, Laura Lebeau and Neba Sere.
Design Researchers in Residence is Future Observatory’s programme for design researchers, hosted at the Design Museum. The residency supports thinkers at the start of their careers to spend a year developing a new research project in response to a theme. Design Researchers in Residence builds upon the Design Museum’s distinguished Designers in Residence programme that ran from 2007 to 2020.
This programme is generously supported by UKRI Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Laura Lebeau, Christie Swallow, Hani Salih and Neba Sere: 2024–2025 Design Researchers in Residence cohort. Photo: Justine Trickett
2024/25 Theme: Artificial
Future Observatory and the Design Museum are excited to announce a new display by this year's cohort of Design Researchers in Residence, who spent a year at the museum developing innovative projects that respond to the climate emergency.
The history of design is often read through the lens of Anthropocentrism, where products and services are conceived 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 cohort of design researchers are using their skills to that end: developing research that re-contextualises contemporary issues through collaborative interdisciplinary and interspecies relationships. Studying archives, analysing political systems, waste streams, and co-creating within local communities and ecologies - each project looks to disrupt passive assumptions and imagine futures that de-centralise human needs and re-establish reciprocal narratives.
The 2024/25 Design Researchers in Residence are Christie Swallow, Hani Salih, Laura Lebeau, and Neba Sere, their projects will challenge the distinctions between the natural and the artificial by exploring topics that touch on our daily lives. Christie’s research delves into the urban myths surrounding parakeets, seeking to redefine our perceptions of ‘native’ species. Hani’s work focuses on mapping man-made frameworks for decision-making, to uncover the outdated logic that persists in national planning. Laura will examine the convenience of synthetic materials, prototyping harmless appliances from natural materials and Neba will explore the artificialisation of plants by tracing the routes of colonised ecologies, to reclaim lost knowledge.
This residency gives the researchers space for the hugely necessary practices of mutual learning and knowledge sharing by deepening material literacy and collaboration. Researching from the perspective of plants and parakeets, uncovering the impact of decision-making and mass- production, each project looks to question the artificial relationships that govern and underpin our existence.
2024/25 residents
Christie Swallow
Christie Swallow is an artist and designer who crafts new stories from old ideas. Their work engages with how the Anthropocene’s configuration of humans and non-humans produced our present planetary crisis. With a background in architecture, their practice engages with ecology, technoscience and heterodoxy through methods of counter-mapping. Christie has previously undertaken residencies at the European Commission, the University of Birmingham and Hanger CIA. They were the 2020 recipient of the RIBA Boyd Auger Award and previously studied at The University of Cambridge and the Royal College of Art.
Hani Salih
Hani Salih is a Researcher, Writer and Curator who works at the edge of a long list of disciplines, practices, and ideas, connecting the dots. Hani’s interests are informed by a foundation in critical spatial thinking and a background in architecture, further refined by studies at the London School of Economics that led to his interest in systems and the infrastructure that shapes our lives. Hani is a curator and moderator at DeDépendance in Rotterdam and was formerly Co-Curator of the International Architecture Biennial in Rotterdam (2024) and Senior Researcher at The Quality of Life Foundation.
Laura Lebeau
Laura Lebeau is an industrial designer working across objects, tech and speculative design. Her work focuses on imagining radical sustainability strategies to define the future of consumer electronics, as well as experimenting beyond the expected aesthetic codes of technology. Laura has a Master’s degree in Industrial Design from the Strate, School of Design. She spent five years at Map Project Office and is currently a Senior Designer at BLOND where she collaborates with some of the most innovative and well-known companies in the world.
Neba Sere
Neba Sere is a spatial practitioner advocating for diversity and inclusion in the architecture profession. She is an associate professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where her research focuses on decolonisation and decarbonisation. Neba co-leads decosm Collective with Umi Lovecraft and is the Director of Black Females in Architecture. Her previous roles include Senior Project Officer with the Greater London Authority's Regeneration Team and leading youth projects at Build Up Foundation, where she is now a Trustee.
The programme
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 on 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 with a publication and final showcase at the Design Museum, due to open in June 2024. 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 third 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.
Background image: Interwoven I4 by Diana Scherer. Residents portraits 2024 © Justine Trickett for the Design Museum.