Design + Making and Materials
RESEARCH THEME
Design + Making and Materials is one of three strategic research themes in Northumbria School of Design, which cuts across all of our core areas of design expertise.
Our design research on making and materials concerns materialities, the cultural value and benefits of making in society, and the effects emerging technologies and materials may have on design, making and craft practices.
Research in this theme cuts across the whole range of design disciplines – product, industrial, interaction, service, textile, interior, and fashion – using their disciplinary knowledge and maker expertise to explore the application of new and advanced material technologies and entrepreneurial design making. Our activities brings the act of making to centre-stage of design research, focusing on its artefacts, processes, and practices and recording and reflecting research through design projects. The outcomes of our projects include descriptions of technical applications, methods, processes and insights emerging from designing, as well as the actual products and artefacts. These descriptions help us to better understand the opportunity of design making research to address particular problems and contexts of concern.
Please see the projects below for examples of our Design + Making and Materials research.
Art/Science Hybrids
Bauhaus Open Studio
Bespoke
Breaking the Binary Oppositions of the Interior
China’s Creative Communities
Chronotopic Cartographies
Colour Trans:Form:Ation the Application of Knit as Knowledge
Community Conversational
Connected High Street
Crafted Futures
Critical Theory and Interaction Design
Cutters Context
Deep Discoveries UX/UI Design
Design Beyond Traditional, Contemporary and Digital Craftsmanship
Digital Originals
Drawing a Line
Emotional Objects
Enabling Ongoingess
Enhancing Product Design Quality through Crowdsourcing
Envisioning Fashion’s Invisible Woman
Ephemera
Establishing Trust through Storytelling
Experience Centered Security
Fashion Journalism Practices
Funology
Hand Thought
Heritage in Contemporary African Fashion
Hybrid Digital-Physical Objects
Immersive Technology Applications
Inflection
Interactive Newsprint
Interioractive
Izzy Gizmo
Jordanian T-shirt
Legacy of the Lost (Textiles)
Let’s Start
Localised Spatial Experiences
Love After Death
Makamap
Making Things Up
Mapping Wordsworth
Mediating Trust: Co-creative Making Workshop Resources
New Saint Cuthbert’s Banner
A Design-Led Enquiry into Parametric Product Design for Dementia Care
Placing in Age
Playing Out with IoT
Policymaking and HCI
Probing into Research through Design
Wearable Technology from an Apparel Designer’s Perspective
Research and Design Fiction
Research Through Design conference
RTD Comics
Spatial Diorama
Speculative Enactments
Suits and Subcultures
Sun, Sex, and Style in Smart Cinema
The Design of Poetic Things
The Glass Electric
The Lens, the Mirror and the Frame
The MIT Museum Glassware Prototype: Visitor Experience Exploration for Designing Smart Glasses
The para-disciplinary role of Design
The Speculative Gaze
The Trust Map
Tools for Everyday Life
Transforming the sequential process of fashion production: Where zero-waste pattern cutting takes the lead in creative design
Transnational Fashion Storytelling
Unblocking the Circular Economy
User Experience, Design Innovation and AI
What Do We Know Through Making And Wearing Clothes
Women Climbers and Their Clothing
Worn