Waste Age: What can design do?

To mark its fifth year in Kensington, the museum partnered with Snapchat to create Adapt, an augmented reality experience that reimagines how our iconic building could adapt to extreme weather conditions. Download and open the app to focus on the building and see how it changes!

Get inspired by the Waste Age: What can design do? exhibition and find out some of the small actions that can help to make a big difference.

It's time to #EndTheWasteAge

The museum invites children of all ages to learn about the content of some of our most interesting and wonderful exhibitions.

Discover how the Design Museum is learning to cut the environmental cost of exhibitions.

Jane Withers is a leading design curator, consultant and writer. Her London-based studio works with cultural institutions and global brands on curation, programming and design-led strategies. Withers teaches and speaks internationally and has served on numerous juries and advisory boards. She has a long record working with sustainability and the role that design can play in tackling social, cultural and environmental challenges, particularly, the future of water.

As Circular Design Programme Lead at Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Joe's role is to inspire and empower designers to create products, services, and systems for the circular economy. Part of the team since 2011, Joe has helped shape the circular economy narrative, crafting stories and messages to reach new audiences and improve understanding of the topic. He has worked closely on Circulate, their news channel for events including the flagship Summit in London, and the digital festival of ideas Disruptive Innovation.

Founder of ClimateInColour, a platform dedicated to making climate science and environmental issues more accessible and diverse, Joycelyn is a PhD student currently researching the application of artificial intelligence to climate change at Cambridge University. As a diasporic woman of colour, Joycelyn cannot see climate justice without racial and social justice. Her work in the tech and science space also focuses on centring indigenous knowledge systems and marginalised voices in algorithms.

Marcos Cruz is an Architect and Professor of Innovative Environments at the Bartlett. He is the Director of Bio-ID, a cross-disciplinary research platform between architecture and biochemical engineering co-created with Dr Brenda Parker to develop new forms of bio-integrated design for the built environment. In addition to his practice and academic leadership, Cruz’s research focuses on the utilisation of living matter in buildings, from neoplasmatic design to bioreceptive materials and poikilohydric systems.

Founder and CEO at Faber Futures, Chieza is a leading thinker on the transformative role design can play in the equitable development of consumer biotechnology. A member of the Global Futures Council on Synthetic Biology, Chieza established novel design-driven processes and conceptual frameworks for bacteria textile colouration, which have been exhibited internationally. She leads a team that translates value and transforms systems across education, design, life science, and manufacturing industries.

Rebecca is an award-winning designer and Professor of Sustainable Fashion Textile Design at the UAL. She is based at Chelsea College of Arts where she is Co-Founder and Director of Centre for Circular Design (CCD). Rebecca's practice and research encompass making materials and prototypes, exhibition curation and writing. She particularly enjoys the challenge of educating and inspiring audiences into more sustainable choices and actions towards circular futures.

Sophie is a campaigner, designer and Chartered Waste Manager who investigates and promotes circular economy design principles. For over 20 years, she has been working in sustainable and ethical design, behavioural change and material processes through her London-based agency, Thomas.Matthews. Her work with the charity Common Seas and as a founder of The Great Recovery have shaped her as a leading consultant in sustainable product design.

Co-founder and Director of the Institute of Making at UCL, Zoe works at the interface of science, art, craft, design and engineering. Her work ranges from formal experiments with matter to large-scale public exhibitions and events. The first woman to receive the Gerald Frewer Memorial Trophy by the Institution of Engineering Designers in 2019 for her outstanding contributions to design engineering. In 2018, Zoe made the award-winning documentary The Secret Life of Landfill and is currently working on a follow-up.

A pioneer in computer-aided design founded in 1981, Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, is a catalyst for human progress providing businesses and individuals with collaborative 3D virtual environments to imagine sustainable innovations. By creating virtual experience twins of the real world with their 3DEXPERIENCE platform and applications, Dassault Systèmes' customers push the boundaries of innovation, learning and production.

Cockayne is a private arts foundation based in San Francisco. It supports diverse and ground-breaking arts projects in the performing, literary and visual arts in London through a donor-advised programme, ‘Cockayne Grants for the Arts’, held at The London Community Foundation. Cockayne is supporting a new art installation by leading contemporary artist, Ibrahim Mahama, created specifically for Waste Age.

The Design Museum is working in collaboration with Project Etopia, supported by the Reuben Foundation, to develop a number of talks as part of the Waste Age public programme. These talks will demonstrate the ways in which the built environment can address some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, as well as inspire meaningful change within the design industry and among the Museum’s audiences.

The Waste Age Family Trail and Podcast are supported by Kusuma Trust, a philanthropic family foundation that gives grants to causes, organisations and people that are making a positive difference to society. They choose partners based on shared values and mutual interests, such as creating access to opportunities, improving health and wellbeing, and investing in our communities and environment.

Launched in partnership with the Design Museum, method are delighted to be supporting the learning programme for their upcoming exhibition Waste Age. To celebrate the launch of their limited edition cut-glass hand soap bottle, made from 100% post-consumer recycled glass, the Design Museum spoke to Sean McGreevy, Senior Director Industrial Design for method.

The multi-award-winning, Zaha Hadid Architects-designed Roca London Gallery hosts a programme of exhibitions and events on the themes of architecture and design, alongside an inimitable flagship showroom of Roca’s most iconic products.

Waste Age features cutting-edge research funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). This exhibition is part of Future Observatory, a new national programme from the Design Museum and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UKRI.