Faculty of Design

Industrial Design

Connor Dudgeon

Bonsai Room

The Bonsai room was part of a group project for Service Design class, in which we were using a real world client, Let's Talk Science. It was a great opportunity to use real data collected by months and months of hard work from LTS employees and volunteers. The research question, "What are the needs of teens across Canada when it comes to participating in climate action?"I was the appointed leader of the group, where after weeks of diving into the data, looking for barriers, findings, and insights to help garner generative questions, which led to ideation and concept building. We decided to focus on 2 main pillars, Mental Health, and Dynamic Education. Which led us to want to create a space within high school that could act as a meditative, open, and informative space. Leaving the space open for students to use refurbished and eco-friendly materials to build the space, to have it connect to the natural world around outside the walls. An oasis inside the walls of the school, to use the powerful benefits of nature to reduce stress and relax. There would be calming music, nature sounds, atmospheric lighting, and comfortable seating. While the space would half act as an education centre on environment related issue. Natural dying clothing classes, vertical farming, climate chats, and movie nights. This connected to an app to attract community partners and we created a tool-kit for schools to adopt sustainable seating and furnishing options.

“This was a great exploration into a full credit course with a group project from start to end. As the team leader, it was my responsibility to guide the group, while listening to all inputs and ideas, but collect that and push for a way forward that met the brief as best as possible. As well, I used all the assets the team created and put together the presentations, doing graphic work, and speaking to the overall theme of our direction and concept. ”