Hal Watts/ Audrey Gaulard, Emile de Visscher, Christophe Machet and Nicholas Paget/ Marjan van Aubel
The Royal College of Art degree show never fails to disappoint. This year, an exceptionally high calibre of creatives presented their work to the public in a show sprawling across the school’s Battersea and Kensington campuses. ARTS THREAD presents some of the year’s strongest designers to emerge from the Royal College of Art’s Innovation Design Engineering course:
Hal Watts presented Esource, a bicycle powered cable shredder and sorter. The shredder was created as a solution to the tonnes of electrical wiring burned in Ghana by people trying to extract the copper wire. Watt’s bicycle powered solution eradicates the toxic fumes created by the burning plastic, making it safer for the people of Ghana to earn a living.
Polyfloss, by Audrey Gaulard, Emile de Visscher, Christophe Machet and Nicholas Paget, is a micro-recycling unit that lets users shred their own plastic waste and re-use in any way they see fit.
‘We were inspired by candyfloss machines as a very low-tech and inexpensive way to produce a foam-like material,’ says the Polyfloss team. ‘Because of its low density, it can be easily remelted to achieve a wide range of properties.’
We were also really impressed with Marjan van Aubel’s The Energy Collection. The RCA graduate created a series of glass vessels that absorb daylight to generate electricity.
Ben Alun-Jones
Benjamin Alun-Jones created a program that enables users to digitally remix existing objects and produce them using a 3D printer. Alun-Jones’ Remix program traces the shape of an object using a webcam and turns this information into a mesh frame. Users can then slice and combine the frames of other objects together to create their own unique hybrid furniture.
Mimi Zou’s IRIS is an incredible camera that can be controlled with your eye. Users can blink to take photographs or squint to zoom in and out.
‘Iris derived from a personal interest in photography and the observation that photo-taking is a ritual that celebrates the photographer’s unique point of view,’ explains Zou. ‘By recognizing who we are, Iris is able to characterize itself to fit the user. And by having experienced multiple users, it is able to learn about behavior and make intelligent functional decisions over time.’
