This year's designers were encouraged to interpret the theme Cosmic as openly as possible.

The growing ambition to reach Mars – explored in the Design Museum's Moving to Mars exhibition - has opened a debate about the human colonisation of untouched planets. This cosmic scale of activity brings design into contact with science, ecology and the supernatural, and raises questions about what it means to be human.

Mále Uribe Forés

Marta Giralt

Robert Johnson

Stiliyana Minkovska

This year the Design Museum has invited designers and architects to respond to the theme ‘dwelling’.

More than ever before, our preconceptions of the home are being challenged. In the UK, the rising cost of housing has priced younger generations out of property markets and new technologies are expanding ideas of domesticity.

It’s clear that our understanding of dwelling, and the home, is shifting. It’s no longer about where we live, but about how we live. How can design respond to these challenges and how are our changing perceptions of the home influenced by design?

Hester Buck

Ella Bulley

Eva Jäger and Guillemette Legrand

Dr Helga Schmid

For Designers in Residence 2017 the Design Museum invited designers and architects to respond to the theme Support. The notion of support has underpinned the whole residency since its inception, however for the first time in the programme’s history, the museum provided four designers with a designated studio space

Soomi Park

Chris Hildrey

Studio Ayaskan

Yinka Danmole

This year the Design Museum opens the doors to its new home in Kensington. The Designers in Residence of 2016 will join the museum on this journey. Through a focussed and rigorous proposal, the museum asked designers to submit creative responses to this year’s theme OPEN.

Alix Bizet

Clementine Blakemore

Andrea de Chirico

Rain Wu

‘This year's Designers in Residence programme invites four designers to respond to the theme of ‘migration’. It can be a reflection of objects or processes that imply movement, or transition, of shifting and cross-fertilising cultures, or of mobility.’- Deyan Sudjic, Design Museum Director

Chris Green

Stephanie Hornig

Hefin Jones

Alexa Pollmann

‘Disruptive innovation interrupts established ways of thinking, diverges from traditional practices and proposes new, unexpected ideas.’ Deyan Sudjic, Design Museum Director

James Christian

Ilona Gaynor

Torsten Sherwood

Patrick Stevenson-Keating

This year’s Residence were selected via an open call in response to the brief ‘Identity’. The designers were invited to explore how design can be used to convey, create or reflect a sense of identity through an object or an experience.

Adam Nathaniel Furman

Eunhee Jo

Chloe Meineck

Thomas Thwaites

The finalists were asked to respond to the brief ‘Thrift’ and to explore the idea of economy and resourcefulness in an object, an environment or an experience.

Freyja Sewell

Harry Trimble and Oscar Medley-Whitfield

Lawrence Lek

Yuri Suzuki

Selected via an open-call, the finalists were asked to respond to a brief which considered the idea of imperfection either in an object, environment or experience.

Simon Hasan

Hye-Yeon Park

Will Shannon

Jade Folawiyo