Made in Brunel, the annual celebration of Brunel design students’ work, has wowed visitors in London for another year.
Inspired by the theme ‘Futures,’ the student-led show ran from June 13-16 and featured an eclectic and varied selection of crowd-pleasing projects, including cavity-detecting toothbrushes, urban bee-hives and smart mailboxes.
“Made in Brunel 2019 demonstrates yet again that our design graduands are both highly creative thinkers and greatly capable makers," said Vanja Garaj, Head of Design at Brunel University London.
"What is interesting this year is that we are now seeing an increasing number of projects taking the form of digital products, services and experiences and targeting the digital economy rather than the manufacturing sector. This change is a reflection of wider transformations in the design industry and an indication of new directions for Brunel Design.”
Made in Brunel Award Winners:
Best Environmental Project - AJHARUL CHOUDHURY
Best Social Change Project - OLIVIA CREANEY-BIRCH
Best Commercial Project - BENJAMIN HARVEY
Most Innovative Project - ELLIE MABBUTT
Most Manufacturable Project - THOMAS MORTIMER
Best Health and Well-being Project - RUTE PEREIRA CRESPO FIADEIRO
Most Disruptive Project - ELLIE SHEARMAN
Best Model - OLIVIER VERBIEST
Highest Overall Mark in the Year - AJHARUL CHOUDHURY
Below is just a small selection of the innovative projects on display
Empowering autistic adults in the workplace
Freddy Selby Bennett, Product Design BSc
Just 16% of autistic adults are in full-time paid work. Of those that aren’t, 77% said they’d like to be.
Freddie’s project aimed to highlight how virtual worlds such as Altspace and Second Life can be used foundation for autistic people to help each other find jobs and create virtual therapy content within a virtual community.
Bee-Comb: Encouraging beekeeping in urban environments
Nada Coles, Industrial Design and Technology BA
Since 2006, the UK has lost 45% of its honeybees. In order to help tackle this, Nada unveiled Bee-Comb, a modular beehive and planted designed to encourage those in urban areas to keep bees.
The hive features a viewing window, so the urban beekeeper can see inside to observe their colony’s behaviour (or beehaviour, perhaps.)
Potato not plastic
Max Shillam, Industrial Design and Technology BA
Potato not Plastic is a compostable and sustainable alternative to black polystyrene fruit trays.
Max’s new packaging material is produced from natural ingredients, and fully biodegrades in a domestic compost bin within six months.
POTLUCK
Kai Wang, Integrated Product Design MSc
POTLUCK aims to address the problem of food waste by giving home cooks a simple way to turn their trimmings and leftovers into stock cubes.
Kai’s novel approach to food waste was this year recognised with a prestigious .
SunUp: Articulating Solar Backpack
Bradley Brister, Product Design Engineering BSc
Completed in collaboration with North Face, Bradley’s solar-powered backpack aims to be more efficient that competing products by using articulated panels, rather than poor-efficiency flexible panels.
The modular design of the backpack means it’s easy to scale to different sizes.
For further information on Made in Brunel, please visit
Reported by:
Tim Pilgrim,
Media Relations
+44 (0)1895 268965
tim.pilgrim@brunel.ac.uk