CUSP is an Australian project looking at design in the 21st century. CUSP: Designing into the Next Decade is a two-year Australia-wide conversation about how design can positively shape the future.
Developed by Object: Australian Design Centre. Australia’s leading centre for contemporary design. The projects presents a creative programme exploring design as a human-centred approach that can enrich the experience of life for individuals, organisations and communities.
A group of 12 designers have been selected to bring the project to life: Chris Bosse (LAVA), George Khut, Anupama Kundoo, Healthabitat, Leah Heiss, MATERIALBYPRODUCT, Greg More, Florian Mueller, Stephen Mushin, Alison Page, Super Critical Mass, and Mari Velonaki.
Using their installations and exhibitions, the designers will present a selection of ideas that “could change the way we inhabit the world”.
One example of this is the ‘Cloud City: An urban ecosystem’ project by LAVA director Chris Bosse.
The sculptural rendition of Bosse’s vision of a future city ‐ a soaring, stretched membrane‐cloud anchored to the ‘city’ on the gallery floor by highrise towers that have been re‐skinned and revitalised.
“The future is not about what buildings look like, but how they perform, interact and how they connect with each other. Think of a coral reef, where thousands of species thrive in coexistence of each other and the elements, air, water and sun. The reef is like
the city of the future,” says Bosse.
The installation asks – can cities of the future be organisms that respond and adapt to their environment?
The networked city is a connected, inter‐dependent organism where buildings are not singular structural entities (designed, serviced and accessed as isolated units), but part of large networked system.
A distributed cloud communicates, shares smart building technology and joint infrastructure, connectivity and data transfer allowing transport, housing and urban infrastructure to adapt in response.
Bosse replaces outdated passive building facades of the skyscraper with high performance smart translucent cocoons that create their own microclimate, generate energy, collect rainwater and improve the distribution of natural daylight. By reskinning these inefficient buildings the past is transformed into ‘super‐abled’ buildings.
Following the Casula show the CUSP exhibition visits Launceston, Adelaide, Dubbo, Port Macquarie, Brisbane and Mornington Peninsula from 2013 to 2015.
CUSP: Designing into the Next Decade is on at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, from now until September 2013 and then travelling Australiawide. For more information, visit cusp-design.com
Images courtesy of Brett Boardman
