I’ve been following the cycle-centric developments between the Department of Counter Culture and RMIT University’s School of Industrial and Interior Design in Melbourne with some interest. Together they’ve been exploring changes of retail exchange in the public space and challenges facing the fixed-store trading paradigm. (Image: Raphael Kilpatrick)
In pursuit of socially engaged endeavours they teamed up with The Social Studio – a local, community-facing fashion and textiles training initiative. Recycled and excess manufacturing materials are gathered from local industry and re-configured into original clothing with the style & skills of the young refugee community at the Social Studio. (Images: The Social Studio + Nicole Reed for The Vine)
(Images: No Fixed Address on Flickr + TSS Pedal Powered Pop-up by Raphael Kilpatrick)
In an approach that’s been cross-disciplinary, collaborative and focused on customisation – students devised twenty pedal-powered-retail concepts. From these they developed two transformable bicycle kiosks which used sliding and folding mechanisms respectively. The operational mobile enterprises were launched as The Social Studio | No Fixed Address at this month’s spirited State of Design festival. (And speaking of mobile – the festival came with it’s very own iPhone app.)
Check out the project video to hear more on the design process.
Related posts:
Mobile Enterprise
Astronomical Outreach (Mobile Education)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is really exciting! Some of the concepts look similar to some work my class did with a local immigrant teenager group in Malmö. We had some participatory design sessions about how to distribute music that they create.
Also, on another theme, have you heard of Mick Douglas and his work with trams?
Hey there Soo – certainly a big fan of Mick Douglas’ tram projects. Your project sounds great… I’m a big fan of participatory design and adding music distribution to the multi-cultural mix sounds brilliant!
Hi Soo, Hi Meena. Mick is a colleague of mine in the Industrial Design program at RMIT – we work pretty closely in the areas of community situated design and sustainability. Alongside his tram projects he does lots of bicycle based work.
The two Social Studio bikes are now in service – being used as retail platforms for selling garments + for training Social Studio students in retail management. The plan is to test them & grow the system as the public begin to accept this type of trade device as legitimate within a Melbourne context. Here is a newish video of one the TSS trikes in action.
Soo – It would be good to hear more about your project in Malmö.