Team: Giada Han/ Maria Shuttleworth/ Sebastian Ervi/ Zhaolu Song
Brief: Design an experience that explores planetary soil dependence.
Research Methods: AEIOU & Speed Dating
Time: 27.11.2020-03.12.2020
Brainstorming
Firstly, we did a quick brainstorming about soil and discussed consequences in the future of over-exploitation, stages of rubbish degradation, and contamination of soil.
Quite brainstorming. Diagram by me.
Soil research. Image by me.
AEIOU Research
Sebastian and Maria went to Stave Hill Ecological Park to do AEIOU research about soil.
Soil and other things. Photos by Sebastian and Maria.
AEIOU research. Diagram by Sebastian and Maria.
From the AEIOU research, we found that many livings have complex connections between soil, for example, birds, mushrooms, earthworms, etc. Besides, human rubbish is the most consistent object which affects all other things.
Soil Research
After lots of reading, I recognized soil plays an essential role in our lives not only for humans but also for nonhumans, and even the whole planet. However, people’s awareness of protecting soil is insufficient and some even haven’t realized the importance of soil.
“Because soil organic matter contains around 60% carbon, it is the defining factor in soil’s influence on the global carbon cycle.” – European Commission
Team aim: raise people’s awareness
We discussed how to raise people's awareness of the importance of soil. There are three directions we decided to develop further:
1/ Displaying the consequences of human activities on the soil, which disturb other living beings and consequently, humans.
2/ Imagining a future without soil where only exists artificial soil.
3/ Externalising the function of soil, in an interactive and visual way.
My initial ideas
There are some of my initial ideas about our directions.
My initial ideas. Image by me.
Tutorial
After explaining our ideas to John, he suggested us to narrow down our scope and be more specific, like what consequences would be like at a level of a garden, park, or farm. Besides, he recommended us to do something with our hands, like gardening, to understand the real soil.
We decided to draw some storyboards to make ideas clearer and then do something with our hands.
Storyboard
Our team worked together and came up with three storyboards.
1/ future daily life without soil
2/ Soil-ecosystem cycle
3/ Personification of soil (sensing what it feels)
Storyboard 1 Experiencing a daily (future) life without soil.
Design by team. Sketch by Giada.
Storyboard 2 Experiencing the importance of the soil-ecosystem cycle.
Design by team. Sketch by me.
Soil Ecosystem Cycle.
Design by team. Sketch by Sebastian.
Storyboard 3 Experiencing the soil: the personification of soil, sensing what it feels.
Design by team. Sketch by Maria.
Early presentation
We showed our thinking process and our storyboards. Many classmates liked the one about a future life without soil and some said it’s very shocking even just imaging it. Our tutor Mor thought it could be a good speculative design and encouraged us to think of more scenarios in the future, even some crazy ones.
What I’ve learned
It’s good to think broadly at first but it’s very hard to design something very board. Design need to be practiced at the end so as designers, we need to find the design opportunities from the broad research.
Besides, never giving up crazy ideas is always useful to improve our creativity and to extend our design boundaries.
To be Continued...
References
Brevik, E. et al. (2015) ‘The interdisciplinary nature of SOIL’, SOIL, 1(1), pp. 117-129. doi: 10.5194/soil-1-117-2015.
Colozzo, F. (2019) Soil overexploitation. Available at: http://www.lteconomy.it/blog/2019/07/15/soil-overexploitation/ (Accessed: 1 December 2020).
European Commission. (2011) Soil: The Hidden Part of the Climate Cycle. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Li, G. et al. (2018) ‘Urban soil and human health: a review’, European Journal of Soil Science, 69(1), pp.196-215. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ejss.12518.
Sanderman, J. et al. (2017) Soil carbon debt of 12,000 years of human land use, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1706103114
WWF. (no date) SOIL EROSION AND DEGRADATION. Available at: https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/soil-erosion-and-degradation (Accessed: 28 November 2020).
Comments