atelier commuter.

a collaborative project within social digital, between interior environmental design, product and digital interaction design students. taking the previous year’s GIDE theme of flowing spaces | city in motion, this year’s atelier theme was that of commuting. firstly each individual was required to write an icon style article based on this theme, the topic of which would determine how the class was grouped for the second task of the semester. intrigued by the spaces that facilitate commuting, I began researching the history of travelling to and from work. somehow this lead me down a rabbit hole of fascination around the development of the car park…random, I know. below is the article I submitted for this first hand in, entered into the template provided for us by the lecturers.

the second task was to create either a product, interaction or interior intervention in groups based on the topics we had chosen to write about. I ended up choosing a group with others who had similarly been interested in the spaces used for commuting. through this shared interest, we decided upon building our own interior intervention based upon this shared interest of space. our final submission was a take on the waiting room, where usually people avoid eye contact and interaction with other commuters, places that are often outdated and unwelcoming spaces that merely provide. shelter from the outside weather conditions. our design was comprised of elements of different heights to allow flexibility to the user of how they want to interact with the space, to sit, perch or lean at a height that suits them. painted with thermocromic ink, your interaction with the space is apparent even after you leave, with the ink changing colour with contact with your body heat, leaving an imprint of where you have used the surface. this was added as a way to encourage the users to converse with each other and break the silence within these environments.