Since May RED have been thinking and developing concepts for our next 'pink' project. The pink projects are fast (8-10 weeks) and experimental. The big picture theme for the project was climate change. Working with the London Climate Change Agency and London Energy Partnership we have focussed the story on reducing the contribution of CO2 from the domestic owner-occupier and 'able-to-pay' sector in London. We hosted a design charette with some of the good heads in the industry which highlighted some of the opportunities. Today we have begun to add flesh to the bones and our project is given a bit of life.

Click on the link below to find out what's brewing.

So the first draft of our project statement might be 'Identifying opportunities for new energy services for London 'able to pay' owner occupiers to substantially reduce CO2 emissions.' We would need to put a time frame on this.

We think there are opportunities for:
 changing behaviour
 changing the fabric of houses and products and systems
 changing the nature of energy supply
It was also suggested in our session that this can be extended to include
 changing awareness and opportunity to act

So what's the case for design in this instance?
Design research can identify triggers and motivations for behavioural change for different people.
Design can make services compelling and desirable - 'able to pay → want to pay' or 'can pay → will pay'
Design can make energy use visible and tangible at a small scale level to afford individual or group action.
Design can create a holistic service that pulls together existing discrete offers.
Design can re-conceive energy.

And what will the project look like?
We are hoping to find a house that we can live and work in for the 10 week period. We will treat the house as a studio and it will provide an intensive, focussed and undisturbed working environment. It will give us access to neighbours for some rough and ready user research, and it will be a set and backdrop to visualise new solutions and stage some scenarios. Not least of all it will provide a domestic context and an identity for the project.

At this stage we have not identified a house we could use so please do let us know if you have any bright ideas or, better still, if you have a mate in real estate who could help us out - we are looking ideally for something central, average/typical, uninhabited, basically furnished, in a 'friendly' street, and at best, where we might be able to make minor adjustments (nails in walls etc) that we would of course have professionally rectified at the end of the project.

As is our way we will be working with an interdisciplinary team. We figure we'll need some key expertise:
 on energy/environmental policy
 on energy (micro-gen., insulation, renewables, intelligent systems etc)
 on technology (latest tech., new directions, limits to possibility etc)

We think our project outputs will be virtual - an interactive website showing 3-5 service scenarios. We want to get some form of hypothetical public sign-up - like what they did with Broadband. Married with this will be policy recommendations which we'll publish and present to all the key contacts.

So these are our initial ideas. We'd like our thinking to be as open as possible. If you have ideas or want to let us know of anything that might strengthen our project or influence it's development please do. Comment here or send an email to Jude

CATEGORY: ENERGY PROJECT