What do a lamp that purifies the air, a sculpture for feeding bees and a gravestone made from discarded clothing have in common? They are all the result of a new exhibition ‘Hybrid: Objects for Future Homes’ that is currently on at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.
Multi-disciplinary ‘hybrid’ teams were commissioned by the museum to create new works for the future home, with a target date set for 2030. According to design writer Stephen Todd, who curated the exhibition with the Powerhouse Museum’s Keinton Butler, each team was given data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that said the critical 1.5% tipping point of global warming would be reached by 2030, as well as data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) that modelled dramatic population growth and an evolved cultural mix, especially in Western Sydney, by 2030. “By setting the focus ten years hence, we tasked the designers to envisage a very possible future,” says Todd.
The response from each team varies widely in form, material and purpose. One of the stand-outs in originality is Sydney designer Charles Wilson’s collaboration with US engineering researchers Giri Gaurav and Bala Mulloth, which resulted in HAVA, a series of household furniture items that tackle air pollution, particularly timely given the fires of Summer 2019/2020. The HAVA pendant lamp has an extractor fan at its base that pushes the air through a pleated ‘metal organic framework’ (MOF) fabric to traps impurities, while HAVA side table is a beautiful timber form that also functions to filter the air through vertical slots, with the MOF fabric designed to be wound on and then removed and washed for reuse.
Other designs also address the issue of materials – End Cycle is a gravestone and an urn made from discarded clothing. Sydney designers Sarah Gibson and Nick Karlovastitis, known for their furniture brand Design by Them, worked with Veena Sahajwalla, the Founding Director of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) at UNSW to develop these solid objects made from clothing. The idea is to recycle the deceased-person’s belongings providing a use for these materials that might otherwise go to landfill while embedded Near-Field Communication (NFC) chips tells the story of the departed.
And Tide table is another piece made from discarded waste. Sydney designer Adam Goodrum worked with Ella Williams and Tran Dang at the Advanced Fabrication Lab, UTS, who coded the KUKA robotic arm that 3D printed the Tide table using recycled ocean plastic. The table has a simple outline with a complex internal structure inspired by traditional basketry.
Other pieces are more whimsical. Elliat Rich worked with neuroscientist Joel Pearson and Canberra Glassworks to create an odd object – the Otherescope, a horizontal glass cylinder with a carved mirror at the end that presents a distorted vision of the viewer as other (I see an owl). The object is a sculptural piece, the result of numerous conversations between designer and scientist about cognition, imagination and perception, rendered in glass.
Sydney designer Henry Wilson, known for his cast brass objects for the home, worked with artist Stanislava Pinchuk to create Mostra. This sandstone object is part fountain, part public art, part monolith, a work that reflects Wilson’s interest in heavy permanent objects, as well as the repetitive mark-making that can be seen in Pinchuk’s mapping projects. Mostra has another function too – it is a multi-tiered water source for insects, birds, reptiles, and other native and domestic animals. Bees can drink from the top of the fountain where a grid creates a safe platform to prevent drowning.
The premise of this project is one of its most interesting features – hybrid design brings together designers with experts from other fields, most notably from engineering and science but also from visual art, to expand the field and break the mould. According to Stephen Todd, the responses were on a continuum: “from strict modernist methodologies (form following function) all the way to speculative strategies”. Collaborative projects like this give all parties the chance to expand their knowledge, and the works on display show what happens when brilliant minds come together.
The nine teams commissioned were: Adam Goodrum x Ella Williams, Elliat Rich x Professor Joel Pearson and Canberra Glassworks, Henry Wilson x Stanislava Pinchuk, GibsonKarlo x Veena Sahajwalla, Trent Jansen x Johnny Nargoodah, Rive Roshan x Emmaline Cox, Andrew Simpson x Professor Tracie Barber, Charles Wilson x Giri Gaurav and Bala Mulloth, and Tom Fereday x Dr Thea Brejzek.
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