Product Design Engineering School of Design
Jem Mitchell
I’m a graduating design engineering student with a keen interest in building immersive spaces. My work is typically rooted in sustainability and systemic design, often focusing on climate issues and always exploring relationships between people and their environment.
Connecting to the Climate Crisis
Post-industrial human activity has drastically altered climactic conditions across the planet, with disastrous consequences that continue to worsen and multiply. Despite concrete evidence of this climate crisis, we continue to accelerate towards planetary destruction. Although it is plain to see the damage we are causing as a species, it is far more difficult to connect this to our own lives and actions.
The outcome of this project is a mechanical installation that responds to this issue by communicating the crisis at personal scale, focusing on a single statistic: 1.15 metres/day.
This is the global average velocity of climate change, which means that in the northern hemisphere we have to move 1.15 metres north every day to experience the same temperature as yesterday.
The installation is formed by a series of household objects redesigned to move at this speed, reflecting the pace of climate change within the home. Relentless, disruptive, and slow enough to pretend that nothing is happening.
