Dezeen School Shows: an app that teaches human anatomy by visualising organs as baked goods and a musical elephant that helps teach children new languages are included in Dezeen's latest school show by students at Glasgow School of Art.

Also included is a housing strategy that promotes fair access to rental properties and a city proposal that promotes pedestrian spacial justice and walkability in Glasgow.

Glasgow School of Art

Institution: Glasgow School of Art (GSA)
Courses: MSc Medical Visualisation and Human Anatomy, MDes Design Innovation and Service Design, MSc Product Design Engineering, MDes Fashion and Textiles, MDes Sound for the Moving Image, MArch Architectural Studies, MDes Interior Design and MDes Photography, Illustration and Graphics

School statement:

"The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) was founded in 1845 as one of the first Government Schools of Design and 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 creative disciplines and is a diverse community of over 2,500 students studying across the schools of architecture, design, fine art, simulation and visualisation, and innovation."

Yummy Recipes for Learning Human Anatomy by Humayra Tabassum Bakar

"Certain anatomical relationships can be complex for lay people to visualise and understand the spatial relationships and orientation between anatomical structures.

"Creative interventions have proved to be successful in visualising small internal anatomical structures and surface anatomy while promoting knowledge retention and motivation.

"Creative learning interventions may foster public engagement and motivation in human anatomy and provide STEM active learning skills, including motor skills, observational skills, and visuospatial ability that is essential for any work environment.

"For this master's project, the student wanted to create a 3D augmented reality (AR) recipe book app to teach the public about specific human organs, such as the brain, lungs and intestines.

"3D visualisation techniques such as photogrammetry were used to generate 3D models of anatomical baking. A brain cake, lung cake and cinnamon roll intestines models were created and imported into a gaming engine to create the app."

Student: Humayra Tabassum Bakar
Course: School of Simulation and Visualisation, MSc Medical Visualisation and Human Anatomy

A Place To Call Home by Anushree Chokappa

"Discrimination in the form of landlord screening criteria, triggered by personal bias or surrounding imbalanced legislation, has resulted in certain tenants being routinely denied the right to adequate housing.

"It has driven our community's most vulnerable into the current housing emergency, with many struggling to access a home that supports their needs and nurtures their wellbeing.

"A Place To Call Home is a master's thesis project that explores fair access to housing in Scotland's privately rented sector. It follows a co-design approach to create systems-level proposals that transform renting for vulnerable tenants.

"Scotland's private rented sector is characterised by high competition and a lack of regulation. This proposal is an inclusive housing strategy that enables a fair opportunity for disadvantaged tenants to access an adequate rented home."

Student: Anushree Chokappa
Course: MDes Design Innovation and Service Design

Enzo the Elephant by Indraneil Ghosh

"To children who arrive in a new country without knowing the native language, starting a new school can be daunting. Music can be an effective way to teach a new language faster while being creative, collaborative and communicative.

"Enzo the Elephant generates music whilst engaging students in a fun activity. Enzo helps students learn new words by correlating them to specific melodies.

"By using generative audio programmes, the device can create endless possibilities associated with the tags on objects, which assist the teacher in fun collaborative learning.

"The finished product is made of MDF board and the structure is designed for repairability. Assembly of the elephant is made easy without the need for glue, and can be done as a classroom activity."

Student: Indraneil Ghosh
Course: School of Design, MSc Product Design Engineering

You Me by Dan Hou

"This project arose from the current indifferent state of society. In the design development, the student placed participants in groups of two, such as partners and friends.

"The focus was then on the connection between them, the changing relationship, and the interaction. Consequently, the design development began from the connection of two pieces of clothing.

"The garments that were originally worn by two people are now connected, coming to understand the effect of each other's movements.

"Certainly, as one wears for the other, the different holes in the garment give it a different way of wearing and thus a new silhouette, and one can also feel the changes in the other's silhouette on one's own body."

Student: Dan Hou
Course: School of Design, MDes Fashion and Textiles

Control My Bodiless Form by Sofia Mellander (AKA Salt)

"Control My Bodiless Form is a video triptych combining Swedish folk music with stories from cyberspace. Three audio-visual pieces offer a satirical and absurd look at the numbness, joy and horror that exists online.

"In July 2022, an anonymous survey was sent out via social media. Responses were often long paragraphs recounting experiences of grooming, doxxing, antisemitism, stalking, trolling, homophobia, racism, and self-harm. There were also stories of finding community, inspiration, creativity, and even romantic love.

"The responses were woven into lyrics and put to three pieces of music, creating three audio-visual pieces filled with the warmth of 20-layer harmonies. It became a strange amalgamation of the natural and digital, examining what on earth is happening to us in cyberspace."

Student: Sofia Mellander (AKA Salt)
Course: School of Simulation and Visualisation, MDes Sound for the Moving Image

First Responders for Mental Health by Marina Acosta Morales

"In Scotland, the police are often the first contact when a person is in crisis, but when someone calls 999 during mental health distress, the process is not designed around providing timely, comforting, expert support.

"This proposal – developed with Anushree Chokappa, Ximan Chen, Shanyi Xiong and Jia Qian – is a new first-response team that provides appropriate care for individuals in a mental health crisis.

"There are two parts to the intervention – a mobile care unit van for immediate crisis treatment and an integrated care network for continual community support.

"The objectives are to provide people direct access to receive care, delivered by the right people through a comfortable, respectful experience, and consider future support by creating a personal plan with follow-up."

Student: Marina Acosta Morales
Course: Innovation School, MDes Design Innovation and Service Design

The Walking Glasgow by Wattana Songpetchmongkol

"People walk in the city and utilise and appropriate the built form to serve the spatial requirement for their social activities.

"The urban narratives tell the stories of urban development and the socio-political fabric of life behind them. With an interest in pedestrian spatial justice and urban informality, the project investigates Glasgow's lanes' potential to improve urban walkability.

"The Blythswood gridiron has changed over time. While lanes in different cities are adapted to suit contemporary lifestyles, Glasgow's laneway remains a non-place associated with service functions.

"The contemporary Blythswood gridiron displays disappearing laneways, yet there are opportunities in the form of unbuilt, low buildings and constrained lanes in several Blythswood blocks.

"Through the typo-morphological lens of Lefebvre's appropriation concept, this research-led design project suggests an alternative of laneways for the pedestrian walking experience, promoting the festive ludic city."

Student: Wattana Songpetchmongkol
Course: Mackintosh School of Architecture, MArch Architectural Studies

Mapping Glasgow: Transforming Futures by Lena Wood

"Many vulnerable riders are time-poor and unable to attend community engagement meetings. Therefore, their needs are less likely to be met even though they are at the greatest risk of change.

"This project was developed in cooperation with communities using participatory methods and speculative design challenges to create transformational social change.

"The outcome is an empowerment-focused bus co-operative where community members and transit riders are offered the opportunity to take control of their public transportation and regain influence as citizens.

"This is achieved through the humanisation of de-regulation consequences on UK public transportation. A bus co-op could be the next step to seeing sustainable change.

"While private bus companies are hard to work with and limit collaboration opportunities, the co-operative would seek them out. If fares are affordable, communication is transparent, riders are respected, and routes are reliable, making the concept of a bus co-operative less speculative and more of a real possibility."

Student: Lena Wood
Course: Innovation School, MDes Design Innovation and Service Design

Hair by Meihui Zhang

"Hair is manipulated, shaped, collected and traded. It says a lot about us, but we rarely mention it when discussing art.

"Hair 'is never a straightforward biological fact because it is almost always groomed, prepared, cut, hidden and generally worked on,' claims Kobena Mercer in a widely quoted article.

"This practice socialises hair, making it the medium for important statements about self and society, and the code of values that bind them, or not.

"This project explores the possibilities of hair from a photographic perspective. Hair means care, race, culture, defiance and punishment. It is sacred and to be protected. It is private and intimate, but it is also public and political."

Student: Meihui Zhang
Course: School of Design, MDes Photography, Illustration and Graphics

Play With Me – A Journey to The Self by Joy (Jue He)

"Childhood is our beginning. Like growing a plant from a seed, adequate care is essential for making it survive in a world that is too harsh when it is not ready.

"Although the world is not always gentle, we can still play. Playing is a doing. Let the wild rumpus start!

"This project aims to study the cross-disciplinary area between interiors and psychology to explore how and what interactions might exist between the interiors and humans.

"Through a playful planting experiment involving five-to-eight-year-old children with their parents, several voice recordings were collected from the participants and used to generate 3D artefacts by the 3D-visualising language TouchDesigner. The artefacts were developed into interactive space forms used in the interior."

Student: Joy (Jue He)
Course: School of Design, MDes Interior Design

Partnership content

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