Be-Long: locker for the city

The main goal of my project is to address homelessness. I thought homelessness showed a flaw in socioeconomic sustainability. So, I planned to design a product that addressed homelessness with environmentally friendly materials to tackle all three pillars of sustainability.

Early on, I realized that homelessness couldn’t be fully addressed with product design. Instead, it also needed the help of social policy. However, research on government support revealed many flaws. The solutions were mostly temporary and increased reliance on the government. I concluded that the better method would be to help the homeless find financial independence through education and jobs. So, I wanted to involve the homeless in the manufacturing of my product. This would provide them with income and transferable skills.

I came up with a manufacturing cycle with the key concepts of education, production and involvement. The main idea was to prove that a product addressing homelessness has potential to be profitable in order to incentivize other companies to support the initiative. This meant that my product could address an inconvenience in homelessness, while the cycle addressed the problem itself.

I didn’t want to redesign a product that already had an alternative. So, I had to find an inconvenience experienced by the homeless that wasn’t solved yet. I took this chance to have a conversation with two homeless people near my school. Through the interaction, I realized that it was hard for them to leave their belongings unattended. Since this inconvenience wasn’t only limited to the homeless, I thought that it could reach a wider range of users. This led me to design a portable locker with additional features such as seating.

I took inspiration from Issey Miyake’s 132.5 and the book Super Surfaces to implement origami in my design because of its lightweight and folding properties. So, after experimenting with various folds, I came up with a pattern that compressed vertically while remaining sturdy horizontally. I developed this by adding a taller, unfoldable part on the top that created a seat when compressed.

As for the other aspects of the design, I had to consider the wheel base and the handle. The base design is angular because the top layer has unbalanced sides. The angled base corrects this in order to achieve visual balance. I also made the wheels retractable to prevent unwanted movement. For the handle, I designed a diagonal bar that connects the base and the top. This allows the locker to be locked onto surplus spaces between bicycle stands, street lamps, guard rails and benches.

I replicated my origami experiments made from paper by attaching a stiff outer shell onto fabric. Specifically, I used PVC tarp fabric, and PLA plastic for the outer shell. The wheel base and handle were made from PLA and aluminum. All three of these materials are relatively easy to recycle and provide necessary properties such as durability, waterproofing, and lightness.

Through this project, I was able approach the issue of homelessness on various levels. I had mainly used written sources of research before, so having a conversation with the homeless added a layer of human connection. This gave me a clearer understanding of homelessness thus, helping me create the portable locker. Going forward, I will engage in more first-hand experiences related to my project.