I Thought of You Last Week - Design Indaba 2020
I went to Design Indaba last week and thought about you so much, because you would have loved it. Yes you, person I’ve never met. And you, person who lives in a place where it’s snowing right now, or you, over there where the Corona virus has made travel a little tricky. You would have really enjoyed The Space Lady, and The Bird Architect, and especially The Foldable Microscope Guy.
Estonian Anna Talvi reminds me a bit of Bjork. Slight, shaven, ethereal. She’s a designer who creates microgravity-wear for interplanetary living. And she talked about some of the things she has to think about when she designs space suits.
Like the fact that in zero-gravity, you can’t lean against anything for balance when you put on your trousers. Or that sweat happens differently in space, and presents as a sort of aura. And of course there are no washing machines in space, so that’s its own design and fabric-choice challenge.
And this is the part that really blew my mind, she said astronauts can select one smell, maybe it’s their significant other’s fragrance, or jasmine, cut grass, the smell of their horse. And Anna and her team can capture it in a specially designed pair of gloves, so you can take a deep whiff when you’re feeling homesick.
““We humans were not really designed to be in the floating world [space] - we don’t want to just survive there we want to adapt and thrive there””
Designing for a place you’ve never been to and will likely never go to, that has zero gravity, now there’s a thing you need to be able to see around corners to do.
A few days ago, I had never thought about what one might wear in space, and now, as I casually sit down on the edge of my bed to put on my socks, I’m wondering how one might do that in zero gravity?
And what about The Bird Architect and The Foldable Microscope Guy? They were mind-changing too. Watch this space.
