Future Observatory Annual Programme
Design Researchers in Residence 2024/25: Artificial
The 2024/2025 residents will respond to the theme of ‘Artificial’, questioning the limits of human-centred design in a more-than-human climate crisis.
Laura Lebeau, Christie Swallow, Hani Salih and Neba Sere: 2024–2025 Design Researchers in Residence cohort. Photo: Justine Trickett
2024/25 Theme: Artificial
Future Observatory and the Design Museum are excited to announce a new cohort of Design Researchers in Residence, who will spend the next year at the museum developing innovative projects that respond to the climate emergency. The history of design is often read through the lens of Anthropocentrism, where products and services are conceived and manufactured to support human flourishing without concern for other species. Yet today we know well that this approach is part of a broader set of planetary crises which find their root in the artificial separation of the 'human' from the 'natural'.
This year’s cohort of design researchers are using their skills to that end: developing research that re-contextualises contemporary issues through collaborative interdisciplinary and interspecies relationships. Studying archives, analysing political systems, waste streams, and co-creating within local communities and ecologies - each project looks to disrupt passive assumptions and imagine futures that de-centralise human needs and re-establish reciprocal narratives.
The 2024/25 Design Researchers in Residence are Christie Swallow, Hani Salih, Laura Lebeau, and Neba Sere, their projects will challenge the distinctions between the natural and the artificial by exploring topics that touch on our daily lives. Christie’s research delves into the urban myths surrounding parakeets, seeking to redefine our perceptions of ‘native’ species. Hani’s work focuses on mapping man-made frameworks for decision-making, to uncover the outdated logic that persists in national planning. Laura will examine the convenience of synthetic materials, prototyping harmless appliances from natural materials and Neba will explore the artificialisation of plants by tracing the routes of colonised ecologies, to reclaim lost knowledge.
This residency will create space for the hugely necessary practices of mutual learning and knowledge sharing by deepening material literacy and collaboration. Researching from the perspective of plants and parakeets, uncovering the impact of decision-making and mass- production, each project looks to question the artificial relationships that govern and underpin our existence.
'Design Researchers in Residence: Artificial' runs until June 2025.
2023/24 residents
Christie Swallow
Christie Swallow is an artist, researcher and maker who crafts new stories from old ideas. With a background in architecture, their practice engages with topics of ecology, technoscience and heterodoxy through textiles, collaborative drawing and archival research. Christie has previously undertaken residencies at the European Commission, The University of Birmingham and Hangar CIA. They were the 2020 recipient of the RIBA Boyd Auger Award and previously studied at The University of Cambridge and the Royal College of Art.
Hani Salih
Hani Salih is a researcher, writer and curator who connects the dots across disciplines, practices and ideas. Hani’s interests are informed by a foundation in critical spatial thinking, through his background in architecture, further refined by his studies at the London School of Economics. Before joining the Design Museum, Hani was a Senior Researcher at The Quality of Life Foundation and was an associate co-curator for the International Architecture Biennial in Rotterdam (2024). Currently, he is also a curator and moderator at DeDependance in Rotterdam.
Laura Lebeau
Laura Lebeau is an industrial designer working across objects, technology and speculative design. She has gained experience in product manufacturing and design strategies working as a senior designer for Map Project Office. She graduated with a master's in industrial design from the Strate, School of Design, Paris where she was selected as a James Dyson Award finalist with her diploma project Ecco, a study around the repairability of common house appliances.
Neba Sere
Neba Sere is a spatial practitioner advocating for diversity and inclusion in the architecture profession. She is an associate professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where her research focuses on decolonisation and decarbonisation and learns from indigenous and vernacular construction techniques. Neba is also the director of Black Females in Architecture, who exhibited at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, and she co-leads the decosm collective, which recently collaborated with Arup on the report 'Racial Equity and the City'.
The programme
Design Researchers in Residence is Future Observatory’s programme for design research into the climate crisis hosted at the Design Museum. The residency supports thinkers at the start of their careers to develop new research on environmental concerns and centred around a particular theme.
The residency has two main aims: to provide design researchers in the early stages of their careers time and space away from their regular environment to develop and produce new work, and to offer museum visitors an opportunity to engage with live design research projects.
Each year the residency accommodates four researchers, working in different design disciplines, to further develop their individual responses to the theme and brief. The programme culminates with a publication and final showcase at the Design Museum, due to open in June 2024. Each resident is provided with a commissioning budget, which goes directly towards producing the work in the display as well as a bursary to support the development of their career and to fund their practice.
The Design Researchers in Residence programme builds upon the Design Museum’s Designers in Residence programme, which ran from 2007–2020. The revised residency programme, now in its third year, continues to provide emerging designers and researchers with time and space away from their regular environment to develop impactful new projects that contribute to design research into the climate crisis taking place across the country.
Future Observatory
Future Observatory is a national programme for design research supporting the UK’s response to the climate crisis. The programme is coordinated by and based at the Design Museum in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), as part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Future Observatory aims to accelerate how we find solutions to the most pressing issues. It brings design researchers together with the networks that can help them have an impact on achieving the UK’s environmental goals.
Background image: Interwoven I4 by Diana Scherer. Residents portraits 2024 © Justine Trickett for the Design Museum.