Takram (Pt. 3) | Macro UX
Feb 3 - March 10 (6 Weeks)
Brief: Design a way for non-human creatures to get around the city
Group Members: Ella (Me), Ranga, Shuzhe (Amber) and Zhihan
Week 3 (14th Feb - 20th Feb)
As a collective, each of the groups with the Takram brief jointly listed their aspirations for their projects as well as any potential restraints that might come with the development of their designs. We also considered the ways in which our projects differed and how we would want to combat any of the things that we were concerned about. My group were specifically driven by the thought of creating something that could become a viable inclusion to the surrounding urban infrastructure.
Reviewing the research that we had competed up until this stage, we decided that our idea with the most potential and underlying foundation was that of creating walkways/bridges for multispecies creatures that could easily be added to pre-existing urban structures. We started considering how we could design something that could connect points across human dominated spaces such as large open pathways, plazas and bandstands as well as the materials we might need to do so. Relaying our ideas to John, he encouraged us to move forwards with the idea but to take into consideration the fact that we wouldn’t be able to get permissions to test or assemble any elevated segments of our project within London’s Parks due to health and safety. However, we shouldn’t discount the idea and focus on the ground level or safer alternative spaces to demonstrate our concept.
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Excited to move forwards with this idea, we began by confirming our potential non-human users and settled on three different design variations. As we were all in different places in the UK at this point, we determined that the best course of action would be to divide the design work and each come up with a bridge design for a designated non-human creature. I designed elevated walkways for squirrels and birds, Ranga designed cross water bridges for small mammals like hedgehogs, mice and rats and Amber and Zhihan designed elevated walkways/pathways for insects like moths, caterpillars and beetles.
By the time the initial interim presentations (to our tutors and classmates) occurred we had thought a lot more about the materials used for the project as well as the locality of them. By using more organic materials such as fibre rope, wood, moss and straw the bridges wouldn’t look out of place in nature and would also be sustainable. Alternatively, we also discussed using materials such as acrylic, wire and metal to construct the bridges as they would be materials that are reusable and could be assembled and disassembled in different locations over time. We also created a basic prototype of one of our insect bridges to demonstrate our outlook for the project.
Unfortunately, due to a close family members funeral I was unable to present alongside my group during this presentation. However, they were kind enough to share any feedback we had received as well as discuss our thoughts in order to progress further. Our feedback was wholly positive but insinuated that we would need to think more about the sustainability of the project with regards to adding food sources, reducing exposure for non-humans to predators and the viability of our design’s materials in different weather conditions. Alongside this, we also started discussing the potential for revised designs as well as the production of test models.
