Big green world

Studio Saol's Diarmuid Upton was a special guest this week. He is a PhD researcher at Design Factors and a designer / architect who led an interactive workshop.

He told us a fascinating story about design for the future. He knows some groups of people who are spending their time quietly transforming a city to make it better, more efficient and more environmentally friendly. Before assigning us a task, he spent some time talking about several ways we may design for the future.

Our task was to convert things in the city into products and systems that benefit everyone. There are many things in Limerick that can be made more sustainable and can be improved on with just a little help from the design community. We started by google for something related to the topic we got. As an example, I took a look at the Cloughjordan ecovillage with my group. The village is in Tipperary. They grow their own food, plants and trees. There are villages that are planned to be entirely self sufficient and sustainable.

Diarmuid then took us for a walk around UL city campus and Limerick city where we explored from Arthurs Quay to people`s park under a completely new perspective. Along the way we looked for inspiration and took photos of anything that could our minds could use as a starting point to build a more sustainable city.

We started with all group members developing their own concepts and finding examples of sustainable urban design. Next, we considered the strengths and weaknesses of each concept, as well as their responsibilities and potential flaws and consequences. Then we integrated all the concepts into one to create the future design, commune districts that are fully self sufficient in every aspect and are all eco friendly. It was another viry unique and interesting project in the studio.

ROL Designs