Designers in Residence 2015: Migration, Design Museum

This autumn sees the return of the Designers in Residence programme for the eighth time at the Design Museum. This year’s theme? Migration. Over the course of six months, four designers take over a gallery to present their responses to this theme, which could mean many different things to different people. The chosen designers also come from wildly different backgrounds. So we can expect to see widely varying installations!
Who are the designers?
It is no wonder that Chris Green, an architectural designer specialising in the relationships between people, cities and technology, has chosen to focus on drones. By thinking about their design, as well the potential use in future cities, Green considers how they could integrate into the urban infrastructure and the implications..
Taking a more domestic approach, product designer Stephanie Hornig questions the role of furniture in homes that are increasingly limited for space yet forced to become more versatile as areas for both living and working. She has designed alternatives to traditional furniture – specifically using light architectural materials – that can adapt to different contexts as the owner’s circumstances change over their lifetime.
Hefin Jones calls on his expertise in service-design as well as connections to ex-mining communities to re-conceptualise Welsh traditions and culture for a future space age. This re-modelling is manifested in a range of material, including documents, films and photographs as Jones considers migrating to the future.
Building on her previous design-fiction ‘Indivicracy,’ which imagines a new form of democracy in an age of social networking, Alexa Pollmann has created new pieces, this time for a national costume. It includes shoes and gloves, and brings an immersive dimension to the installation with a national dance that visitors can participate in. As a result, a new unsettled, non-territorial society emerges for the future. 
Fiercely inventive, this annual showcase of budding design talent provokes some fascinating discussion about the future of design and spotlights some rising stars to watch out for.