Dezeen's latest school show by students at the Glasgow School of Art includes a space aiming to improve lives affected by addiction and a project designed to enhance people's relationship with their houseplants.

Other projects include a jewellery collection that becomes animated once positioned on the body and a residential performance hall designed to transform young people's lives through music education.

Glasgow School of Art

School: Glasgow School of Art
School: Architecture, Design and Innovation

School statement:

"The Glasgow School of Art (the GSA) was founded in 1845 as one of the first Government Schools of Design, as a centre of creativity promoting good design for the manufacturing industries of Glasgow.

"Today, as one of the UK's last independent schools of art, it is internationally recognised as one of the world's leading university-level institutions for the visual and creative disciplines. It is a diverse community of over 2,500 students studying across the schools of Architecture; Design; Fine Art; Simulation and Visualisation; and Innovation."

Encounter your plant by Pauline Barbier

"This experiment is about enhancing your relationship with one of your houseplants. It is about slowing down and paying attention to your plant.

"I have developed three hybrid pots. Lazzy-Pot proposes a new way of observing plants from underneath while maintaining comfort. Stool-Pot brings you face-to-face with the plant and invites you into a conversation through observation. As plants emit ultrasounds and their frequencies increase when under stress in drought, the Phono-Pot becomes the tool to respond to plant's water needs by listening to them."

Student: Pauline Barbier
Course: Innovation School – MEDes: Product Design

Television Snacks and Tiaras by Poppy Brooks

"Created during the trying circumstances of the global pandemic, the collection is inspired by the collective experience and shared emotions of the British public isolated during a national lockdown. It aims to bring comfort and offer an antidote through fashion.

"My research focused on British heritage, the nation pulling together, both in the past and present, seeking reassurance from national figures such as the Queen, NHS, and romanticising ideas of comfort in the home. Designs juxtapose oversized clothing and generous silhouettes, suggestive of the social parties we once enjoyed and look forward to."

Student: Poppy Brooks
Course: School of Design – BA (Hons) Fashion Design

Harvesting Light, sheep shelter camera and bird hide camera by Tara Drummie

"Harvesting Light is an ongoing body of work motivated by a symbiotic relationship between humans and the land, inspired by the crofters who encourage the rare and bio-diverse machair ecosystem prevalent on the Isle of North Uist to thrive. Sheep shelter camera, bird hide camera, and horsebox camera reflect a collaboration between the more-than-human assemblages of the machair and the maker.

"The works are time-based and site-specific to North Uist, exclusively using matter found within a given environment to create a camera obscura, appropriately disposing of any harmful debris found on site upon a work's completion."

Student: Tara Drummie
Course: School of Design – BA (Hons) Communication Design (Photography)

Safe Consumption and Addiction Support Centre by Kirsty Gaunt

"In 2018, the number of drug-related deaths in Scotland was 1,187 – higher than any other European country. This awful statistic made me determined to use my creativity to help improve people's lives affected by addiction.

"My design is focused on providing a supportive environment to reduce overdose deaths, blood-borne virus transmission and ultimately encourage people to lead healthier lives.

"I wanted to design a space that was loving and made people who inhabit the space feel valued. All the different details and considerations show visitors that people do care about them."

Student: Kirsty Gaunt
Course: School of Design – BA (Hons) Interior Design

Assembling Communities by Disassembly by Rebecca Hodalova

"This is a speculative design for disassembly infrastructure. It aims to reactive the disused sites around Glasgow by designing a prefabricated kit of parts, which will be used where communities are not being catered for by any of the existing free cultural institutions, public libraries and community centres.

"Situated at the old Bellgrove Meat Market, sitting on top of a railway line, is the new Headquarters factory – a place of prefabrication, education, workshops, and community collaboration. The architecture of this factory reminisces the historical industrial sheds that used to dominate this area."

Student: Rebecca Hodalova
Course: Mackintosh School of Architecture – Dip Arch (ARB/RIBA Part 2), year 5

Proposal for a music centre on the shores of Loch Lomond by Abby Hopes

"Sistema Scotland's Big Noise programme transforms young people's lives through music education while 'making do' in the constraints of their built environment. The creation of a residential retreat/performance hall in my proposal facilitates the culture of Sistema, driven by the variety of scales in which they gather.

"Ownership over space is central to my concept, allowing the young people to feel a sense of belonging in the public and private realm of Balloch. To 'make do' assumes to settle for lesser, but with the climate emergency, we must use what we already have to our advantage."

Student: Abby Hopes
Course: Mackintosh School of Architecture – BArch (ARB/RIBA part 1), Year 3

Digital behaviours Co by Maria Marinescu-Duca

"Digital pollution is responsible for 4 per cent of global CO2 emissions, more than the entire civil aviation sector. People should have the tools and awareness to make more ecological digital decisions in how they store their data, engage with streaming and behave digitally.

"As a speculative design, Digital behaviours Co provides a holistic and mindful digital experience – a one-stop-shop to digital environmentalism. The idea is to create less digital pollution and bring more awareness to the issue. Collectively spreading this knowledge and taking the problem into our own hands, we can prevent the projected and ongoing escalation of digital waste."

Student: Maria Marinescu-Duca
Course: Innovation School – BDes: Product Design

Kinetic Nature by Cara Smith

"Kinetic Nature is a collection of jewellery pieces that heighten the presence of nature in the wider landscape and its relationship to the human body, through texture, form, repetition, transformation and movement.

"The jewellery pieces are sculptures intended to become animated once positioned on the body – to become bodily extensions. As nature changes, it gifts us with fleeting phenomena. These moments are captured in these activated body adornments, such as the life cycle of the dandelion head changing from yellow to translucent, and then as motion, like a bird in flight."

Student: Cara Smith
Course: School of Design - BA (Hons) Silversmithing and Jewellery

Alka by Ben Sammut

"The need for clean air in the home is important but often disregarded by people due to a lack of awareness on the topic. Alka is a companion that cleans and cultivates air while working from home. It is designed to live and work alongside house plants to maintain a healthy environment indoors.

"Aside from cleaning the air from pollutants using certified natural filters such as hemp and activated carbon (something typical air purifiers do), Alka uses algae called spirulina to capture CO2 – an indoor air pollutant linked to a loss of concentration."

Student: Ben Sammut
Course: School of Design – MEng Product Design Engineering

Useless Machines by Kialy Tihngang

"The unexpected combinations of colours, textures and shapes within electronic waste have informed Useless Machines. I was inspired by the garish and ugly innards of discarded laptops and phones, which greatly contrast with the sleek designs of their outer shells.

"As a comment on the increasing disposability of consumer electronics, which are often dumped in the global south, I have created a collection of objects that mimic the aesthetics of e-waste and mock the movements of machinery.

"The machines are wrapped in materials – found fabrics and industry donations – to differentiate them from the mass-produced, impersonal products that currently litter landfill."

Student: Kialy Tihngang
Course: School of Design – BA (Hons) Textile Design

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and the Glasgow School of Art. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.