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Patterned 3D-printed hydrogel as a novel soilless substrate for plant cultivation
Full text linkPlant roots need water, micronutrients, and oxygen to maintain cellular metabolism and tissue growth, yet traditional hydroponic systems often lack sufficient oxygen delivery. While 3D printing artificial substrates has been explored to mimic the physical structure of soil, it remains unclear which design parameters are critical for supporting full plant development. Here, we present a synthetic, soilless substrate based on 3D-printed hydrogels incorporating triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) patterns to create internal air-filled channels. These channels remain in contact with the atmosphere, enabling passive gas exchange throughout the substrate. We tested five TPMS geometries (Lidinoid, Split-P, Schwarz-D, Schwarz-P, and Schoen), each with an identical hydrogel volume but with different surface-to-volume ratios. Arabidopsis thaliana seeds germinated directly on the substrates and were monitored for vegetative and reproductive growth over five weeks. Among the designs, the Lidinoid substrate consistently led to the highest number and size of leaves and the earliest and most complete flowering, outperforming both hydroponics and unpatterned hydrogel controls. Our results indicate that the surface-to-volume ratio is a key parameter influencing substrate performance, likely due to its impact on oxygen availability at the root interface. Plants grown on substrates with higher surface areas transitioned to flowering more reliably and rapidly, with flowering efficiency showing a strong positive correlation with surface area. These findings suggest that vascular-like internal architectures can overcome the oxygen limitations of traditional hydroponic systems without requiring active aeration. This work supports the use of additive manufacturing as a powerful tool for engineering soil analogues tailored for indoor agriculture. By combining passive aeration with hydration and nutrient delivery, patterned hydrogels offer a promising, scalable solution for sustainable soilless plant cultivation
Change has marked the face of all things: The problematic landscapes of Thomas Hardy
No full textAn argument is developed concerning the role of landscape in the writings of Thomas Hardy. Two themes are reviewed and developed. One is Hardy’s rural landscape as a place of loss both to time and to industrialisation. The other is landscape as a site of projection of subjective states, including landscape as cruelly indifferent or treacherous. From this emerges the idea of landscape as deceiver, aligned with Hardy’s wider concern with illusion and reality. The overriding importance of visual perception, its multiple subjectivities, and its relation to depiction, is used to draw attention to the previously under-researched importance of Hardy’s practical, working experience of drawing, as trainee architect and throughout his life, in enabling him to add a significant further level to the notion of the deceptive and untrustworthy landscape. The research for this invited chapter explored all of Hardy's fiction, a substantial body of Hardy criticism, and key sources in nineteenth century models of vision and perception. These were combined with Boyd Davis' practical and theoretical insights derived from the processes of drawing, picturing, diagramming and visualisation
Ecological Citizenship and the co-design of inclusive and resilient pathways for sustainable transitions
Full text linkAbstract: Achieving climate neutrality, and the provision of a route to reduce of greenhouse gas emissions to zero or below requires a significant shift from a focus on top-down technological solutions to a more holistic, people-centred approach [1]. The research presented here explores the role of ecological citizenship (EC) in this shift, and specifically how a socially innovative, co-designed approach to facilitating EC and the systemic changes needed for carbon neutrality, could or should take place. The paper presents EC as an evolving practice that emphasises the responsibility of individuals and communities towards ecological sustainability and social equity. The study examines how various stakeholders, such as industry practitioners, third-sector organisations, and community members, communicate, understand and implement EC practices, projects and solutions, using a mixed-methods approach that includes roundtable talks and workshops. As such, the study emphasises the value of user-centred, co-designed proposals that enable individuals to actively participate in positive climate action. It also looks at the opportunities and challenges of incorporating EC into wider societal and legislative norms. At the municipal, regional, and national levels, we feel the results offer useful insights into how design processes, environmental programs, and participatory governance approaches may promote more sustainable, inclusive transitions and support achieving carbon neutrality
Queering realities: Design workflows and interfaces for a more-than-human virtual fashion production
Full text linkThis paper discusses virtual fashion norms through the lens of queer ecology, a theoretical framework recognizing human diversity and proposing nuanced ways of being, loving, and expressing (Muir, 2022). As artists and designers currently explore expansions of the human body and meander the fine line between creature and avatar, they intentionally or unintentionally are moving beyond binary thought patterns, dissolving normative human representation in virtual realms. Through research-based practice, the paper situates professional methods and techniques of designing bodies and fashion for the experience age and highlights opportunities and challenges that arise from working in virtual realities through a comparison with the multimodal and tactile origins of fashion. As a set of parameters different from common fashion making workflows arises, the paper will in a first step convey observations, learnings and performance-studies from a workshop series titled ‘Queering Reality’, bringing together XR designers, staff and students. It then will go on to draw attention to the ‘tool- aesthetic’ (Surman, 2024) inherent to the use of certain software and platforms of virtual production and its homogenising characteristics. Although often classed fundamentally different to the traditional fashion experience, the bridging and knowledge of both worlds is demanded from practitioners in any fashion discipline today, bringing about the question of specialism and skilled production and the scrutiny needed to craft fashion experiences that consider the philosophical and technical context of both worlds. By giving insight into the production, development and planning of a fashion experience with focus on audience interaction and participation, the paper will contribute to the understanding and value of developing and exhibiting fashion in a digitally expanded and enhanced format and examine how cultural meaning is crafted through new technologies, shared with and made accessible to audiences
Little horror: At home with filial violence
No full textThe maternal experience of filial violence, in that it remains largely unutterable and unacknowledged, is the subject of this project. The home is the silent witness providing ‘objective’ descriptions of the violence and it is the uncanny expressing the mother’s changing perceptions of her everyday environment under siege. The home and the mother’s body are considered as maternal spaces, at times indistinguishable. This research is an attempt at representing in an art and writing practice the predicament of the mother who experiences violence from her child, a violence about which she must remain silent. How can she risk endangering her child by revealing how her child endangers her? How can she endanger herself, by revealing how her child endangers her? How can she endanger herself by not revealing how her child endangers her? Is the mother the monster or is it the child? As she is the progenitor of the monster, must she not be monstrous too? Although domestic violence between adults or from parent to child is widely acknowledged and the subject of many studies and representations, child to parent violence remains mainly unrecognised. Filial violence pitches a presumably innocent and helpless child against a mother presumably all loving and in charge of the care, well-being, and formation of her child. Filial violence undermines these dominant assumptions by literally and figuratively wreaking havoc in this untroubled scene of reciprocal and unconditional love. Taking my cue from Slavoj Žižek’s suggestion that we ‘look awry’ in order to glimpse at that which is not evident, I approach the topic of child-to-mother violence through the motif of ‘the home’ understood as the house of maternal benevolence and its familiar objects as well as the primary home of the child – the maternal body. The physical site of home is also apprehended through the mother’s changing perception of her familiar environment that becomes strange and menacing, I turn to the idea of the uncanny (unheimlich, unhomely) defined by Sigmund Freud as the familiar becoming unfamiliar and which he interprets as signalling the return of unconscious phantasies that had been repressed. Writing and artistic practices borrow the structure and tropes from the literary and cinematic horror genre (for instance, the haunted house and the double, both figures of the uncanny) in order to represent an experience that resists representation. According to Paul Wells horror ‘as a genre, remains subversive and challenging because it foregrounds, through the comparative safety of fiction, the very agendas humankind needs to address in “fact”’. Keeping with the idea of ‘the comparative safety of fiction’, I am creating a fictional mother and child whose interactions take place in a fictional home constructed out of other fictions (novels, films), memories and testimonies of actual filial violence
Who gets to end the world? Trans, abortion, and the possibility of natality
Full text linkIn this article the violence surrounding reproductive issues, by example of forced sterilisation of trans people and abortion access, is used to ask fundamental questions about the role of institutions. New right-wing laws that aim to block access to abortion and trans healthcare are reviewed to highlight the link between gender and the state. It is argued that the weaponisation of law is used to individualise people and hinder access to care, disrupt choice, and minimise agency. Instead of presenting liberalism as an alternative to protect an individualised choice-model that safeguards people’s needs, the case is made that the idea of autonomy enables violence by institutions to more marginalised members of democracies. By drawing on a wide range of insights, the argument is made that institutional functioning is the source of significant violence to those not empowered by institutions and interrupts people giving direction to their lives. Instead of institutional power, Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality is understood as a condition of life, indicating how social movements can birth new collective directions as a form of abolition
Circular materials design toolkit: A tool for designers and apparel industry to creatively differentiate themselves using bio-derived circular material and manufacturing technologies for material longevity in a circular textiles economy
Full text linkExtending the lifespan of materials, textiles and apparel is a main strategy to move towards a circular economy and one of the pathways to achieve the reduction of material carbon emissions. To date, materials circularity approaches for bio-derived circular materials mostly focus on recycling or biodegradability. Enabling new properties of circular materials to emerge would provide not only alternatives to renewable materials but a way to encourage material longevity through creative design-led approaches. This paper presents the Circular Materials Design Toolkit (CMDT), a tool for the textile and apparel industry to explore possibilities for material longevity by creatively differentiating their products using circular materials technologies and processes developed in the UKRI Interdisciplinary Textiles Circularity Centre (TCC). The Toolkit emerged from interdisciplinary collaboration in TCC materials circularity research and includes the Materials Library cards which communicate the known technical specification of materials and processes to investigate circular design possibilities. Three studies were conducted with apparel brands and material start-ups using the CMDT to understand, develop and apply circular materials and processes in the context of circular value chains and process flows. The studies uncovered how the Toolkit enables new material properties, practices, and process flows to achieve longevity in textiles circularity
MyCity: Mapping Socio-spatial experiences of teenage girls in urban public spaces
No full textUrban public spaces as play a crucial role in social transformation and identity formation of individuals and groups. However, teenage girls are significantly underrepresented in these spaces due to a combination of environmental, social, and structural barriers. Such factors not only deter girls from accessing public spaces but also impact their physical and mental well-being. Therefore, it is crucial to have girls’ perspectives and active participation in the socio-spatial environment for fostering inclusive and equitable cities. By using design-led methods, MyCity engages with teenage girls from London Borough of Wandsworth to map and understand their daily experiences of using urban public spaces to initiate a dialogue with relevant decision-makers in the design and planning processes. A set of participatory workshops were conducted two different groups of teenage girls; one from a school and the other through a local youth organisation in Battersea. Design-led creative methods were adopted to engage the participants to share their experiences about neighbourhood public spaces / streets. The outputs of the workshops were exhibited from 4th June - 30th June 2025 at Southside Shopping Centre in Wandsworth. This also involved one-day public engagement session to invite the local community's views on the issue
Virtual reality in history education: Instructional design considerations for designing authentic, deep, and meaningful learning
Full text linkToo many middle years and high school students remain disengaged from history education, often perceiving it as irrelevant to their everyday lives and futures. While teachers aspire to design engaging history lessons, achieving this goal is challenging amidst the complexities of contemporary classrooms. Differentiating instruction to meet diverse student needs while navigating outdated and rigid curriculum guides can overwhelm educators. Addressing these pedagogical concerns, we conducted a mixed-methods study with 98 participants from the University of Saskatchewan to explore how virtual reality (VR) technologies can support the training and development of pre-service teachers in history curriculum and instruction. Guided by Allen & Sites’ (2012) Successive Approximation Model (SAM), VR experiences were designed to immerse participants in two specific historical contexts: The Ottawa River Timber Slide and Agnes Deans-Cameron Magic Lantern Tour. Data collection methods included Likert scale surveys, open-ended questions, participant observations, and group debriefing sessions. The findings are synthesized within the context of the broader scholarly literature, bridging theoretical insights with practical applications. Based on the study results, we propose instructional design recommendations for integrating VR to support authentic, deep, and meaningful learning experiences in history education. Keywords: Authentic Learning, Instructional Design, History Education, History Teaching, Teacher Training, Immersive Learning Experiences, Virtual Reality Educatio
Close encounters in the health archive of an aunt, sister, and brother: A sick women letter exchange
No full textThis epistolary essay, which is part of the "Sick Women" collaborative research project on feminist methods of correspondence and care, comprises a six-month section of correspondence that desires the minor, marginalised objects of Edvard Munch’s and Munch’s female relatives’ health archives, seeking close encounters with them. Our letters begin with a pocket-sized blue sputum bottle used by patients with pulmonary tuberculosis to collect and conceal contagious phlegm. From there, we correspond on two closely observed studies by Munch of his sick sister and aunt, as well as epistolary objects they exchanged in kinship and care. In this way, our letters entwine with their letters, subject and object blurring as experiences across time are written, folded, enveloped, opened, read: a process which chronically repeats. Written to accompany the exhibition Lifeblood – Edvard Munch, our exchange considers the painters’ ailments, relations, attachments, and kinships through the transversal pieces of letter, postcard, a secret gift through the post. It is a health archive in letters that we have absorbed in our replies. Our correspondence also travels across time and space; spoken to and between bodies alive and dead. We risk seeking to imagine what we don’t know, but perhaps could know, or know differently, through the act of letter writing: the risky and speculative desire in the reply