Archifest 2016, Collaborative Design Challenge
Singapore
Completion: August 2016
As part of Archifest 2016, we participated in the Collaborative Design Challenge, where designers, students, clients and industry manufacturers collaborated to identify and address current social issues through design.
We wanted to design an apparatus to make life easier for the many local elderly cardboard collectors who comb the refuse dumps of Singapore streets daily. Through several workshops with our collaborators we designed a prototype cart that was lightweight, expandable, reflective and lockable. A combination of heavy-duty ropes, reflective tape and some locks created the desired cart. The prototype was displayed alongside a first-person perspective video to allow visitors to experience the process and journey of the collectors.
Graphite Studio collaborated with Bloomberg, Wilkhahn Singapore, Cosa International and students from Temasek Polytechnic and held regular meetings planned around curriculum and business hours across the span of a month.
1 October 2019 - Salam Kenal
Keeper’s Event 2018
Reflections
When Suhan first approached us with this challenge, I felt nervous as it meant working with actual industry professionals on a small student project like this. However, after the first meeting I felt more at ease, and in fact more confident as the challenge that we had chosen, “Designing for the Elderly Collector” was something that I felt strongly about and had already done research beforehand on it.
The whole experience of collaboration between us, suppliers, clients and Graphite was a great one. Being a student, we do not think that much about practicality or cost, as we are allowed to design without a budget nor a real client in school! I got to understand how materials worked and how parts were assembled through the factory visits and watch our idea come from paper to life!
