Living Lamp

Acrylic Sandwich Lamps

A batch-production lighting study — translucent acrylic layered and lit from within, then re-made in Corian, wood and metal to see how each material looks, feels, and responds to the light.

Acrylic sandwich lamps were the result of a university project requiring 10 products to be made with optimisation for batch production with the aim of selling them at the Bovey Tracey Craft Fair.

The lamps were made from layers of 5mm clear acrylic as the “filling” of the sandwich, and then a variety of materials made up the “bread”. The materials in question were:

Larch
Ash
Stainless Steel (304)
Corian
Laserply

with varying aesthetics and success.

With the simple geometric forms, any inaccuracies were amplified, and so I decided to slightly round the corners to make any misalignment less obvious. The materials were laser cut or CNC milled to minimise variation.

Corian is a synthetic stone-like material that comes in a variety of colours. It has a subtle translucency that softens its edges to the eye. While usually used in countertops, Corian has been used here for its cool touch, unusual aesthetic, and weight.

I reclaimed some larch from a previous project and laser cut it into shape before using Danish oil on it to seal the burn marks, a technique I was not aware of before experimentation. The orange hues of the wood give the internal light warmer reflections.

The wooden (larch) lamp, lit from within

The metal was originally my favourite because it deviated so far from what the university resources shaped as “normal”, while still feeling premium and luxurious. The stainless steel gives a cold touch while feeling sturdy and expensive, reminiscent of high-end hi-fi equipment.

An initial prototype testing out the feasibility as well as the attractiveness of stainless steel. The strip was manually drilled with no jig hence any misalignment. All metals, woods, and acrylics used in this project were laser cut, allowing for high accuracy between layers and consistency among units.

A large part of this project was working around costings. For this, I learnt how to use Microsoft Excel, creating a large spreadsheet capable of taking word material inputs at “stainless steel” and outputting a calculated price using a lookup table. The spreadsheet also took into account the variations in labour costs for each combination of materials.

I created a press release, using dense text to convey an exact intention on the single A4 side, while colouring important words in red and blue, allowing people to scan through the document quickly. The press release was instrumental in understanding the identity of the lamps, and the context in which I envisioned they would reside. The warmer hues of the wooden lamp suited a night light, whereas the cooler lights from the metal and Corian lamps suited a desk, or kitchen, or bookshelf.

I made a series of posters and instagram posts for online presence. This was originally because I didn’t know what a press release is, and thought it meant just a kind of online presence. The Y2K poster for my metal lamp is inspired by the colour palette and artstyle from the videogame Marathon, which released in 2026 and has been my latest graphical obsession.

Porcelain Keycaps

Using the keycap as a medium to put materiality first — and casting a set in clear-glazed porcelain.

Moving into second year, I wanted to raise the standard of my work considerably — to stop coasting and find the real limits of what I could make. Keycaps became the vehicle for that: small, exacting objects with an enthusiast community that obsesses over feel, sound, ergonomics and look. Part of the motivation was selfish — I wanted beautiful keycaps myself, without paying the premium that the few makers in this space charge.

By using the keycap as a medium, I could put materiality in the foreground, treating the investigation of different materials as the whole point of the product rather than an afterthought. I drew up a set of material ambitions to chase: metal — brass, coated copper, steel, even gold; ceramic — glossy or matte, with a huge tactile range; Jesmonite — an inexpensive, eco-friendly entry point; wood — rarely seen, because of the intricate cutting a keycap demands; and glass — ambitious, but a keyboard like rows of tiny glass blocks could be one of a kind.

CAD render of the keycap — a rounded cube with a dished top

Before any casting, the keycap itself needed designing. I modelled it in Rhino as a rounded cube with a dished top for the finger — my own shape rather than a standard profile, while keeping the hollow underside a switch stem needs.

I gathered the research into a material taxonomy laid out as a magazine in InDesign — far less technical than my first attempt, much nicer to look at, and far more time-consuming to make.

A render of a whole set of the porcelain keycaps

The main build focused on ceramic, and specifically on the problems of casting porcelain, clear-glazed keycaps. I cut a two-part mould and worked through the casting process, drying the pieces in a hot cupboard before firing them in a kiln.

Wall thickness varied with how long the slip sat in the mould before pouring out — the longer it sat, the thicker the wall. That variation was deliberate: a search for the balance between interior space for the switch stem and the strength of the wall. In the end I favoured the thinnest walls that survived firing, since the thicker ones simply didn’t leave enough room inside.

They came out very pretty and feel wonderful to touch. The one surprise was scale: the shrinkage in the second firing — or maybe an illusion of the glaze — left them feeling suddenly smaller than I’d expected.

Table Tennis Bat

Breaking down the distance between users and tools

The aim of this project — my first at university — was to create a table tennis bat, with no concern for practicality or usefulness.

I took the vague brief as an opportunity to experiment with the link between the user and a tool. When a rake is used by a monkey to collect a reward from behind a barrier, the area associated with their hand lights up, as if it has become an extension of its body.

My desire for the Table Tennis Glove, apart from a great way to ease myself into 3D CAD and 3D printing, was for it to narrow the gap between the user and the object. To play into the idea that the tool becomes an extension of the body.

The Table Tennis Glove was a first project I can be proud of. While its build quality could be better, I believe I did well to use the 3D printers for the first time, and came up with a genuinely out there concept. Out of all of the table tennis bats, mine was the only one which didn’t have a clear handle-paddle distinction.

Scale drawing of the bat against the hand

A lamp that — just like its owner — moves, responds, and evolves.

For my first-year Product Design finale I picked an ambitious brief to stretch my skills — and of every project this year, the lamp is the one I learnt the most from. Before it I’d never touched an Arduino, had only ever built a circuit in a physics class, and had spent almost no time in the metal workshop.

I chose a lamp over another table-tennis bat or wooden catapult because I wanted something I’d actually use, week in, week out — and something in constant use pushes me to make it the best object I can. The brief put provenance — an object’s origin — front and centre, so I started in the library with books on cutting-edge materials like living leather and bioluminescent bacteria. The bigger influence was the then-unreleased game Marathon: its aesthetic of raw, just-out-of-the-factory functionality, and its theme of artificial life, shaped the project more than any single material. I wanted something with undeniable personality — not just another lamp.

Making it move

While discussing the design with Mike, it was suggested I give the lamp movement with an Arduino. I had very little understanding of electronics, but a lamp that moved of its own volition was too appealing to ignore — and my brother, Tim Murray-Browne, a computational artist who works with AI, embodiment and interactive systems, confirmed it was not only possible but doable. So I started small: with a borrowed Arduino and ChatGPT explaining the wiring, I flashed the onboard LED, then powered an external one, then — after mistaking a three-wire servo for a stepper motor — finally got the servo turning. We had movement.

Into the workshop

The lamp arm being shaped on a metal roller in the workshop

With the electronics proven, I moved on to building the lamp proper, spending most of my time in the metal workshop cutting the aluminium bar and steel pipe. My original plan was to weld the pipe to the bar, but their different melting points made that impossible — so I threaded the holes and simply screwed the pipes in instead.

The hinges were the real headache. After consulting one lecturer, two technicians, two books, a company, three different ChatGPT models and roughly ten websites — and after five pages of sketches — I settled on two cylinders rotating on a shared axle, with a bolt pressing a little rubber against the axle for friction, so the lamp holds its position while staying adjustable.

The finished hinge — two cylinders on a shared axle, running on a bearing

A tap snapped off deep inside the silver-steel axle

Then the bump in the road. The axle was silver steel — dense, and feeling indestructible — so I threaded it with a regular steel tap. The tap snapped off deep inside, with zero chance of recovery. With no choice but to work around it, I switched to aluminium pipe for the axle, which came with the bonus of a ready-made hole.

Five bases

A page of base-form ideas, from funky to plain

The brief asked for five products, and making five of these lamps was never realistic — so the five became five ways to mount one lamp. I sketched everything from the funky to the plain before narrowing it down.

A flat base would have to be impractically heavy; a wall clamp commits you to one position; the wearable base — for paramedics and the like — was a fun tangent; a rail base could run the length of a desk. In the end I went with the clamp: light, easy to set up, and small enough to actually carry around.

Five base concepts: flat, wall clamp, wearable, rail and clamp

What I learnt

I didn’t get everything I wanted. The plan had three phases — a lamp; then a lamp that makes the occasional pseudo-random movement; then a lamp that tracks and follows your hand — and at week 11 of 12, even phase one was looking optimistic. The lamp ended up on a fixed clamp rather than the rotating, gesture-following base I’d imagined.

Even so, it’s the project I’m proudest of. I broke the ice with coding, electronics, mechanical design and metalwork all at once, and came away with real, quantifiable experience in each. The Living Lamp is far from over — it’s become a passion project I’ll keep building well past the deadline, learning robotics and AI as I go, until each lamp can respond to and evolve with its owner.

Smart Jewellery

Designing 'something between a smartphone and a dumbphone' — a set of jewellery that each take on a single phone function, to make it easier to put the phone down.

I was tasked with designing “something between a smartphone and a dumbphone”. The lecture where we learnt of the task was heavily focussed on research and identifying user groups. This seemed like a chore, but only because I’m not yet used to research — and if I am to be a good product designer, then I must be able to identify the people I’m designing for.

I set out to interview a broad range of people — children, young adults, adults and older adults — across different generations and life stages. I wasn’t able to get hold of nearly as many as I originally wanted, but the interviewees — a software developer, an artist and writer, and a composer — were invaluable. The age range wasn’t what I wanted (I don’t have many contacts among the very young or very old), and the occupations were limited to the arts. Not ideal, but working in tandem with outside research, it gave me a pretty good idea of what the market, and consumers, want.

What I asked

The questions I asked were vital, so I worked on a script before any interviews took place. A few of them — and the answers that moved the brief most:

asked & answered

Are there any features of a phone you don't think you could live without? "Maps, some form of free international calling, and the phone itself. Those are the three things." — Dom
What things are holding you back from permanently ditching your phone? "Two-factor authentication — I forgot that as a reason to keep a phone. That's quite hard to ditch." — Tim
Would you prefer for the jewellery to have no interface, or a small interface for interacting with? "If I've got four pieces of jewellery I'd rather use a single interface on my wrist than have them all with their own tiny screens." — Tim
Do you want to be able to use these features, or is it more about being available to certain people? "I'd love to just go for a walk with a clear mind, but not want to be uncontactable or get lost — those are the situations." — Dom

I’ve learnt a lot through this interview process, possibly the most important of which is that I’m no longer just doing things for a school project, or to put it another way: the stakes are higher. I need to be serious and upfront about things like privacy, and making it clear to people what I’m using their image, voice, words, etc. for.

Another thing I’ve found is that it is very difficult to get hold of people outside of my age group, especially those younger than me. The only gen-alpha person I know is my niece, and she is often busy with school and homelife, so organising even a half an hour call with her proved too difficult.

The idea

Thorough online research showed surprisingly few studies about screentime and phone-related anxiety; a couple of the big ones were conducted by the UK Post Office, and another studying teens in India. The Post Office study in particular was the first to coin the term “nomophobia” — the fear or anxiety caused by not having one’s smartphone either on hand, or functioning.

What I had in mind was wearable technology that fills a specific function of a phone, to make it easier for people to part with theirs. I believe the market for this would be expansive, especially as time goes on and screen time continues to rise throughout generations.

Three pieces

The next step was to actually design the products. Three came out of it:

A communication ring — I wanted a subtle LED band going through the middle that could glow when receiving or sending a call. I based the dimensions off a ring I wear every day.
An AI wristband — the “brains” of the operation: audio in and out, accessing the internet on your behalf, showing map directions on a small 16×16 display (something minimal, such as an arrow and a number), and answering any questions or queries you have. Picture leaving your phone behind but still scanning a restaurant’s QR menu with the camera pendant, then discussing your order with the Large Language Model in the wristband.
A camera pendant — a camera necklace that could rival smartphone cameras, for people who consider constant access to a camera essential. No visual interface, operated by a button that connects to the chain, it sends photos via Bluetooth directly to someone’s smartphone once in range.

I rendered each piece in Blender — its UI for rendering and materials is unmatched by anything else I have available to me.

Posters

The last step was to present the set, with two posters: a system map showing who each piece is for, and a hero shot to show it off at its best.

System-map poster — who each piece is designed for

The system map was the harder one. I've not much experience with Adobe Illustrator, so this poster was very educational, and I struggled with how to map something like this — in the end I went with mapping out who each product is designed for.

The hero shot was more rushed, but I think it has just the impact it needs. I gave each of the pieces a fitting name, as well as a description of what it is and does.

Overall I’m happy with how this project turned out, although I do feel I could have stuck closer to the brief. I fear I tunnelled onto the dumbphone aspect, while sidelining the trans-generational requirement — I partially combated this by including a mother and her child as part of the target audience, as well as interviewing a range of generations.

Essays

These essays have all been written with different levels of experience, so take the earlier essays with a generous smattering of salt

Topography Table

A low table whose layered-wood top reads like a contour map, sealed flat under a clear top — a personal CAD-and-render study.

A personal furniture study. The tabletop is built up from stacked layers of wood, so the grain and the steps between layers read like the contour lines of a topographic map. A clear top then seals the landscape flat, turning a relief you’d normally only look at into a surface you can actually use.

I modelled the table in Rhino and rendered it in Blender, dropping it into a living-room scene to test how the piece sits in a real space — the layered top against a patterned rug, with soft daylight raking across the steps to catch the level changes.

Bird's-eye view of the table — the layered-wood top reading as topographic contours under a clear surface

CV

My two-page CV — a snapshot of my skills, achievements, and what I'm after. Download the PDF, or read it below.

Download CV (PDF) CV page one — introduction and personal statement

CV page two — skills, achievements, hobbies and contact

Can Giving Objects Life Reduce Electronic Waste?

Sep 2026 · 736 words

A Critical Analysis of the Potential for Sustainable Domestic Electronic Products as Behavioural Objects — Raphael Murray Browne

Introduction

In this essay, I have looked at three papers on agentic objects, and user interaction, to better understand whether giving lifelike behaviour to domestic electronic products (DEPs) could reduce electronic waste.

Paper 1

‘Morse Things: A Design Inquiry into the Gap Between Things and Us’ by Wakkary et al. (2017) describes an experiment in which six professional designers and design researchers each lived for several weeks with a set of networked ceramic bowls and cups. The “Morse Things” communicate solely with each other through audible Morse code at random intervals no longer than eight hours apart, each message additionally being sent automatically to Twitter (p. 505).

Apart from their autonomous messages to each other, the Morse Things were functionally a set of normal crockery, although neither dishwasher nor microwave safe (Wakkary et al., 2017, p. 505).

At the end of the experiment, Wakkary et al. (2017, p. 511) noted that nearly all of the participants made some kind of emotional connection to the crockery: “Lastly, at the end of the deployment, nearly all participants wanted to keep the Morse Things.”

Paper 2

‘Behavioral Objects: The Rise of the Evocative Machines’ by Levillain and Zibetti (2017) sets up a formal framework for better understanding human interaction with “robotics through the lens of unsophisticated, non-humanoid or zoomorphic robotic artifacts (which we will call behavioral objects)” (p. 5). Levillain and Zibetti (2017, p. 4) state that objects that are able to (and do) act on information they have sensed of their environment, “even in a very crude fashion”, tend to give an impression of aliveness, and “may create an affective bond that would not exist if these objects remained inert.”

Levillain and Zibetti’s (2017) examples point to two different ways behaviour can work. The first is legible intention. Discussing automatic doors that “gesture” toward passers-by, they write that “what matters here is the communicative intention, which is recognized by a human as such” (p. 5). This behaviour is designed to be read, and it adds to the functionality of the door, inviting users in. The second is an example of autonomy that can’t be read. Levillain and Zibetti cite Jeppe Hein’s 360° Presence (2002) for this. 360° Presence is a steel ball that starts rolling when a visitor enters the gallery and moves at random until they leave (Levillain and Zibetti, 2017, p. 6). The spectator “is denied a sense of mastery”, yet “the apparent autonomy of the ball forces them to consider its subjectivity” (p. 6). So even seemingly random movement can be attributed to subjectivity.

Morse Things belongs with the ball, not the door. Its messages are meaningless to anyone who doesn’t know Morse code, and its goal is not to improve the bowl or the cup but to explore the “gap between things and us” (Wakkary et al., 2017, p. 503). Yet nearly all participants wanted to keep them (p. 511).

Paper 3

‘Design for (Emotional) Durability’ by Jonathan Chapman (2009) states that most DEPs are thrown away while still completely functional (p. 35), and that “The sustainability crisis is a behavioral issue, and not one simply of technology, production, and volume” (p. 29). He proposes the following six-point experiential framework for designing objects that users will not want to discard – objects with “emotional durability” (p. 33):

Narrative
Detachment
Surface
Attachment
Curiosity*
Consciousness

*Chapman (2009, p. 32) calls this theme “fiction”; its label is missing from the printed list (p. 33). I refer to it as ‘curiosity’.

I believe that behavioural objects such as (but not specifically) Morse Things satisfy attachment, curiosity, and consciousness. These three points of intervention weave into one another; consciousness invites users to explore and attempt to understand said consciousness, while we know from Levillain and Zibetti (2017, p. 4) that that same consciousness, what they call an “impression of aliveness”, may create an “affective bond” between user and object (or rather from user, to object). Meanwhile Chapman (2009, p. 33) suggests that part of a product’s appeal lies in not yet being fully understood by its user – something that a seemingly autonomous object would excel at.

Conclusion

While issues pertaining to electronic obsolescence and the emotional toll of demanding objects (Chapman’s detachment) are outside the scope of this essay, there most definitely does seem to be an area, perhaps in DEPs (as opposed to crockery), that would benefit from including some form of behaviour, to better bond with a user, and therefore not become obsolete quite so fast.

AI Use

In this paper, I have used gen-AI to discover relevant papers on certain topics for reading, restructure paragraphs relating to Paper 2, and to check citations.

References

Chapman, J. (2009) ‘Design for (emotional) durability’, Design Issues, 25(4), pp. 29–35. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1162/desi.2009.25.4.29.

Levillain, F. and Zibetti, E. (2017) ‘Behavioral objects: the rise of the evocative machines’, Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, 6(1), pp. 4–24. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5898/JHRI.6.1.Levillain.

Wakkary, R., Oogjes, D., Hauser, S., Lin, H., Cao, C., Ma, L. and Duel, T. (2017) ‘Morse Things: a design inquiry into the gap between things and us’, in DIS ’17: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. Edinburgh, UK, 10–14 June. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 503–514. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3064663.3064734.

Reflection on Essays

Mar 2025 · 372 words

My 3 essays focus on Karl Marx, Solarpunk, and a beloved object I own. There is a clear common theme among my chosen topics, that of anti-consumerism.

The Karl Marx essay focuses on communist values and principles written in the original communist manifesto, and how these can be used as an influence in design.

The Solarpunk essay talks about the Solarpunk movement - an optimistic prospective cultural shift focussing on sustainability through the rejection of consumerism and manufactured scarcity.

The Pencil essay was about the Rotring 600, a full metal mechanical pencil that I happen to own. The essay focuses on the design of the pencil, as well as my relationship towards it and other objects.

By finding the common links between these points, I can find a way to create a manifesto of my own, encompassing the design ideologies I believe are most important and valuable.

Anti-consumerism - Anti-consumerism is an obvious part of my Karl Marx and Solarpunk essays; even being explicitly stated within the essays themselves. I don’t pretend to know much about intricate economic or moral viewpoints on the matter, however I have core beliefs and I must align my views to what I believe best fits those beliefs. I fundamentally believe that all people should be treated equally, with a society driven by passion rather than necessity (in the context of work). I believe that anti-consumerism aligns with this belief due to the fact that many of the cheap semi-disposable products that are flooding the market at time of writing are only able to be a competitive price due to the exploitation of low wage workers and poor working environments that are bred by the demand for the absolute cheapest items possible, with no regard for quality or longevity.

Longevity in Design - Objects that are well built typically have a long lifespan, as well as being a better experience for the user. By investing in high quality objects, while the initial cost may be higher, the user saves themselves from having to repurchase the same object later on, saving money over the long term. Throughout this long term, the user is (hopefully) finding joy in using the object that is better built, with more thought put into the design.

Analysing the design of, and my relationship to, the “rotring 600”

Jan 2025 · 499 words

Raphael Murray Browne, 2025

This essay used AI to help quickly come up with talking points; all writing, however, is my own.

As a believer in the importance of repairability and longevity in design, I try to surround myself with few, but beautiful objects.

One such object is my mechanical pencil, the rotring 600. This pencil is made almost entirely out of metal, with a painted steel main body, and brass inner workings and clip - all in black, in my case. The tip of the pencil thins in steps, until it is almost as thin as the 0.7mm lead it pushes out. The pencil is mostly hexagonal, becoming cylindrical with a fine criss-cross pattern for the grip.

The full metal body gives the mechanical a hefty, but balanced weight that is optimised for sketching, over writing.

The grip is comfortable while providing a secure and functional contact with the users hand, however it does have a habit of trapping dirt and dust. The constant contact with skin, while being a fine, abrasive metallic criss-cross causes eventually visible dirt which requires cleaning.

The pencil can hold up to around 5 pencil leads, which can be dropped in from the top. The top of the pencil is where my biggest gripe with this pencil occurs. The eraser located at the top of the pencil is only small, which is fine since it has clearly been designed with replaceability in mind. The issue I have is with the casing, which on countless occasions over the years has gotten lodged in the barrel, as there is nothing stopping it when you push on it. The casing is extremely difficult to grip, and now I just leave it where it is as a cap to stop lead from spilling out, without even acknowledging it’s erasing properties.

But for my largest gripe with the pencil, that’s pretty minor compared to the listless pros this product presents. Over the years I have been using this pencil, it has become special to me. It has been with me throughout my entire journey to improve my drawing skills. Many of the drawings that got me into university were drawn with this pencil. This pencil travelled with me over western europe, as I documented my travels through drawing whatever was around me at the time.

A huge benefit for products with longevity in mind, is that the user can have a relationship with the product over a much longer time, and forge a much deeper connection with the object. I could not have had the same experience with a regular pencil, since it would have fulfilled it’s function and been thrown away, once it had no graphite left over.

People often link memories to objects, and all the memories I have with this pencil are good ones. I hope that by surrounding myself with objects that last through the good and the bad, they can act as a sort of journal for my own life.

The rotring 600 mechanical pencil is an absolutely fantastic tool, and I hope to use it for the years, and even decades that are to come.

What would a chair designed by Karl Marx look like?

Jan 2025 · 601 words

Raphael Murray Browne, 2025

This essay has utilised AI in planning (although plan was not closely followed), summarising a lengthy quote (by Stephen West), finding specific topics within a large PDF (alienation of workers within Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts), and siting sources with correct syntax.

Karl Marx is one of the most famous philosophers to ever exist, with his most famous feat being his criticism of capitalism in the form of the communist manifesto. Marxism was, and still is, a response to, among other things, capitalisms tendency to prioritise the production of goods over all else. Adam Smith is generally seen as the man who came up with the idea of de-generalisation of work to increase production. Stephen West of the Philosophize This! podcast puts this in a very digestible way that I will summarise:

Instead of one person making a clock in 10 hours, Adam Smith suggests dividing tasks: one specializes in cogs, another in springs. By focusing on simpler, repetitive tasks, they refine their efficiency, producing thousands of cogs a day. Together, 10 workers could produce 1,000 clocks daily, compared to 10 if each made entire clocks alone.(1)

Marx’s criticism to this is that this is a fantastic way to make loads of clocks, but is the pursuit of making as many clocks as possible, as quickly as possible, going to make the population happy as a whole? Marx states in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: “All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object.”(2)

Marx believed that the de-generalisation of work (factories instead of artisans) detached the workers creativity, craftsmanship and took the “soul” from their work. He also mentioned that the workers in the factories may never see the end result of what they’re contributing towards, and garner no satisfaction, nor any sense of accomplishment, from their work.

With these basic principles in mind, we can start to consider how a designer who held these principles close to their heart may design an object, for instance a chair.

It’s clear that the chair would be at most, batch-production, but probably piece by piece, with the same craftsman, or team of craftsmen at each stage of the production process. As for materiels, a malleable materiel such as wood would provide an appropriate canvas for the craftsmen to make their mark, and express their wishes with their own two hands. A tougher materiel, such as a metal, would be much more difficult to manufacture, requiring heavier machinery to build, which would distance the craftsman to the process. There is a statement to be made that if the craftsman wishes for the chair to be metal, then that too, is a form of self expression.

Marx’s disagreed with the existence of different classes in society, believing that throughout history, the oppressed always seem work for the select few, until the oppressed inevitably overthrow the oppressors in a usually violent way. This was one of the things that he set out to change when creating his manifesto. To embody this concept in the lens of design, the chair would likely be devoid of any flourishing motifs, nor any excessive decoration since these usually cater to a specific class. Instead, I believe the chair would be simple yet functional, possibly in a modular design to improve repairability, and to reject consumerism and planned obsolescence.

Designing with such abstract concepts can be a fun way to take a deeper look into how the ideals of the designers can shape the world around us and how we interact with it. It can also enlighten us to how our own behaviours are affected by the design of objects in our everyday lives, such as the shape of a pencil, the dimensions and weight of a book, or the shape of a ketchup bottle.

Reference list

West, S., 2018. Episode 81: Marxism and the Frankfurt School - Part 1. Philosophize This!, [podcast] URL: https://philosophizethis.org/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2025].
Marx, K., 1844. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. [online] Translated from German by M. Milligan. URL: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Economic-Philosophic-Manuscripts-1844.pdf [Accessed 9 Jan. 2025].

Designing a Sustainable Future: The Role of Solarpunk in Shaping Culture and Society

Dec 2024 · 526 words

Raphael Murray Browne, 2025

This essay has used AI for planning (eg layout) and for discovering a large number of sources (which were then independently read and taken into consideration). The title was also written by AI, post-writing.

Due to the omnipresence of design throughout human history, design can act as a way to give context to cultures and societies. I believe this link between humans and design works both ways, however, and that by designing mindfully and with intention on a macro scale, designers of all areas can create an environment that encourages certain behaviours over others. This can be seen as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the level of optimism one has. The pessimist might see hostile architecture as a bad omen for the future. An optimist may look to a more hopeful possibility: the culture and design movement called “Solarpunk”.

A solarpunk manifesto (Re-des, n.d.) written from the works of Adam Flynn and Jay Springett describes solarpunk thus: “Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?””.

Solarpunk is a realisation that a better, brighter future does not necessarily oppose advancements in technology, but rather opposes capitalism, consumerism, false or “solvable” scarcity, and short-sited solutions to long term problems (ie fossil fuels).

Sustainability

Solarpunk puts sustainability as a major component of the movement, focussing on renewable energy, green architecture, and the rejection of consumerism. Kevin Richard eloquently states in his article (Richard, n.d.) about solarpunk: “[I do feel like] a good first step in this direction needs to challenge our over-prioritisation of human needs, especially short-term ones, as paramount in all circumstances. It is not to say these are not important, but, they cannot be the only metric of success.”.

By integrating these principles with the belief that humans disproportionately prioritise economic growth - often shortsightedly. One can design while being mindful of more than just the product’s immediate use, but rather it’s impact on people’s lives, and by extension, society as a whole.

Aesthetics

Solarpunk prioritises nature. Three words that could sum up the entire movement, not only concisely stating the movement’s philosophy, but also it’s aesthetics. In art, solarpunk is almost always humans interacting with nature, with technology supporting both in harmony - think wind turbines, while humans tend to fields. Due to the nature driven, technology supported, aesthetics, solarpunk is commonly attributed with greens, browns, blue (sky), and chrome.

Conclusion

Having researched deep into the solarpunk sub-culture, I believe it to be a fantastic concept, yet I struggle to look around me now, as I write this, and consider things I would be okay going without. Is my computer essential to me? How about the jumper I wear, or the mug of tea I drink from? Taking the first step to wanting less is difficult, a situation akin to the prisoner problem. If everybody mutually decided to live this way, I would gladly welcome it. This, however, is not the case - and such drastic changes take time and are best done step by step. This is where I believe design comes into play. By designing with the core principles of the solarpunk movement - or a different optimistic future - in mind, changing public perception becomes more realistic. Let’s hope we’re quick enough to avoid a cyberpunk dystopia.

Reference list

Re-des, n.d. A Solarpunk Manifesto. Re-des. [online] URL: https://www.re-des.org/es/a-solarpunk-manifesto/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2025].

Richard, K., n.d. Solarpunk-Inspired Design Principles. Design Critical Thinking. [online] URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/solarpunk-inspired-design-principles/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2025].