Dezeen School Shows: from a "library of blood" to a meat-growing lab, we've picked five of the weirdest student projects featured on Dezeen School Shows.
Students are encouraged to push the boundaries of their imagination, and the results can be even more outlandish than anything found in the professional design industry.
This roundup includes a project focused on hair, a "library of blood" and a 3D augmented reality recipe book app that can be used to generate 3D models of anatomical baked goods.
The projects come from students enrolled on architecture, photography and fashion courses at international institutions including Glasgow School of Art, University of Art and Design Linz, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and UCLA.
Read on for five of the weirdest student projects featured on Dezeen:
This project by photography, illustration and graphic design student Meihui Zhang's explores how hair is an object that can be "shaped, traded and even collected".
Focusing on race and culture, it examines the significance of hair while also exploring the possibilities of hair from a photographic perspective.
"Hair means care, race, culture, defiance and punishment," said Zhang. "It is sacred and to be protected. It is private and intimate, but it is also public and political."
Student:Â Meihui Zhang
School: Glasgow School of Art
Course: School of Design, MDes Photography, Illustration and Graphics
Invert by Tania Pérez Hérnandez
Fashion and technology student Tania Pérez Hérnandez created a digital project that explores and distorts human and non-human bodies, depicting images that merge to create a range of abstract forms.
"Peeling off these new body surfaces creates abstract patterns that are transferred back into textile surfaces and three-dimensional, wearable objects," said Hérnandez. "Invert dissolves our ideas of the body to create new analogue and digital physiques."
Student: Tania Pérez Hérnandez
School:Â University of Art and Design Linz
Course:Â Fashion and Technology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student Dylan Rundle designed a "library of blood" called Hemotheque that explores society's relationship with knowledge and the media as an "instrument of theoretical, cultural and physical war".
The project also examines how emerging forms of biotechnical interfaces can redefine disciplinary relationships.
"This thesis project revisits the monolithicity and centralised authority of civic institutions by proposing new typologies of civic architecture that consider the built environment as both a tectonic assemblage of materials and an ecosystem of technologies – interweaving people, information and ecologies through networks, the cloud, analytics and artificial intelligence," said Rundle.
Student: Dylan Rundle
School:Â Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Course: Architecture
Yummy Recipes for Learning Human Anatomy by Humayra Tabassum Bakar
Medical visualisation and human anatomy student Humayra Tabassum Bakar created a 3D augmented reality recipe app that can be used to generate 3D models of anatomical baked goods.
According to Bakar, anatomy can be complex for people to visualise. The recipe book enables people to learn about the anatomy of specific organs, such as the brain, and enhance their STEM learning skills.
"Certain anatomical relationships can be complex for lay people to visualise and understand the spatial relationships and orientation between anatomical structures," said Bakar. "I wanted to create a 3D augmented reality recipe book app to teach the public about specific human organs, such as the brain, lungs and intestines."
Student: Humayra Tabassum Bakar
University: Glasgow School of Art
Course: MSc Medical Visualisation and Human Anatomy
Meat Culture: From Lab to Table by Akana Jayewardene and Sunay Rajbhandari
UCLA students Akana Jayewardene and Sunay Rajbhandari imagined a lab in Los Angeles that cultures meat and insect-based protein. The project explores the challenges in moving away from the reliance on conventional meat sources.
"We imagine a future in which Los Angeles has moved away from its reliance on conventional meat sources and toward a diet of cultured meat and insect-based protein," said Jayewardene and Rajbhandari.
"As old habits and desires linger, the graphic and grotesque character of meat culture's troubled past encounters the clinical sensibilities of scientific research and the culinary arts to establish new aesthetic qualities."
Students: Akana Jayewardene and Sunay Rajbhandari
University: UCLA
Course: Future (Hi)Stories
Partnership content
These projects are presented in school shows from institutions that partner with Dezeen. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.