The exhibition Design without Borders – Creating Change

WHEELCHAIRS FOR CHILDREN: Design without Borders has collaborated with the Guatemalan foundation Transiciones on the development of a wheelchair for children in Guatemala. Photo: Norsk Form/Kjersti Gjems Vangberg

Location: DogA, Oslo

Thursday 20. September 2012 - Sunday 02. December 2012

Free admission

The exhibition Design without Borders – Creating Change shows how designers contribute to creating social change in developing countries. Mine clearing equipment, wheelchairs for children in Guatemala, ecological urinal for slum areas and computers for young people living in villages. Design without Borders has for more than ten years developed products for and with developing countries and connected designers from the South with Norwegian companies. The objective is to create good, inexpensive solutions that can be produced locally. The exhibition Design without borders – Creating Change presents the products and solutions in the local context for which they have been created. The ecological urinal has been placed in a slum setting, and the wheelchair can be tried out on a cobblestone street. You can try out the new mine-clearing equipment while actually searching for mines and inside an emergency shelter you will find an earthquake simulator. Just as important as the finished products is Design without Borders’ work method. Through text, photos, and videos the exhibition communicates the important design process that lies behind the products.

TOILET SOLUTION: The ecological urinal developed by Design without Borders and SuSan-Design is odor-free and hygienic. A family in the slums of Nairobi is testing the new urinal. Photo: Kjersti Gjems Vangberg

Keep on reading:

http://norskform.no/en/Calendar/Exhibits/2012/Design-without-Borders/

A proposed "greening" of Lower Manhattan to absorb storm surges, designed by Stephen 

Cassell, Adam Yarinski, and Susannah C. Drake for the exhibition Rising Currents, Museum 

of Modern Art, 2010. ARO/dlandstudio/Museum of Modern Art

" As we contemplate the horrific damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, the world of design may seem remote from our most immediate concerns. Yet the urgent needs that follow large-scale catastrophes—the need for shelter, clean water, alternative sources of power—can be particularly conducive to creative solutions. I recently observed that breakthroughs in architecture and industrial design have emerged during wartime; now a remarkable new exhibition in Oslo shows that the same can hold true for natural disasters as well.

Presented by Norsk Form, the Foundation for Design and Architecture in Norway, Design Without Borders (the title is an obvious nod to Médecins Sans Frontières) presents realistic mock-ups of fourteen problem-solving design initiatives—ranging from post-hurricane relief to land-mine removal—in Norsk Form’s DogA exhibition space, which occupies a cavernous turn-of-the-twentieth-century power station in Oslo. For example, a life-size replica of a post-disaster shelter features insulated walls made from empty plastic beverage bottles stacked and held in place with chicken wire within wooden frameworks.

According to Leif Verdu-Isachsen, who organized the exhibition and edited its engaging catalog with Truls Ramberg,

After a natural disaster, we have about a two-week window of opportunity in which to engage the global public before its attention shifts elsewhere, so what we do has to be implemented very quickly. Furthermore, we know that on average these shelters will need to be used for about three years before permanent housing can be built, so the combination of rapid assembly and relative durability is essential."

REFERENCE: Martin Filler. Design from Disasters
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/nov/05/design-from-natural-disasters/