In this environmentally and
demographically complex start to a
post-industrial millennium, it is urgent
to reflect on the transformations that occur from the interaction between
individuals, the city they inhabit, its surroundings and protection conditions.
STORM SYSTEM, developed by Miguel Rios Design, responds to the question of a
first individual nomad clothing protection against weather adversities. Today’s population growth forces a
reorganisation of space, in a variety of contexts that individuals face on
large urban surfaces, as well as an interiorisation of the impacts resulting
from behavioural changes. An unbearable logistic and environmental excess is
therefore propagated (and vice versa), favouring unlikely scenarios of human
coexistence. Pollution and adverse weather conditions hamper natural and urban
ecosystems, resulting in a greater immediate instability of individuals per se
and the collectives they form. Thus new logistic, habitation and protection
needs arise, which require the evaluation of a new living context for the human
being. These needs catalyse crucial
contextual design thinking regarding its ability to respond appropriately to
the new global habitat. The
territory and the context establish the parameters for the combined
intervention of design and technology. Similar to a prosthetic exoskeleton,
STORM SYSTEM not only comprises the
necessary formal characteristics, but also the symbolic essence we crave today.
In its relationship with the human form, STORM SYSTEM is yet another prelude to
the era of the redesigned man, a kind of hybrid between the organic and
technology, and consequently, with its identity necessarily altered.
Nordic Design Research Conference 2013
