Eve Lerouge

Tomorrow’s energy will be renewable, intermittent, and limited. Today, our homes account for 26% of national energy consumption. Therefore, how might we adapt our everyday life to variable energy supplies? 

It’s a fact: we already possess the technologies to reduce our carbon emissions. However, our individual behaviors, as well as current policies, are difficult to transform quickly enough. As individuals, we have an important role to play in framing the future of the energy sector. Indeed, the choices we make and practices we adopt in our homes have the power to influence the energy market and affect the spread of renewable energy production across the UK. In order to reach this goal, we need to reduce and shift our use of energy by bringing more flexibility into our everyday lives. 

‘Everyday Echo’ is a transition design study, highlighting the potential of a collective approach to energy consumption in order to engage people with sustainable energy use. This research looked at potential interventions to help individuals reconnect with the natural environment, the energy it produces, and the people who use it. Through the use of a future narrative, a product was developed. ‘eCo’ is an in-home product facilitating the management of energy supply among a community of neighbors.

‘eCo’ is an in-home product facilitating the management of energy supply among a community of neighbors.

The product is linked to an online platform, and provides information on a single household’s energy consumption, its local community's consumption, and energy supply status. ‘eCo’ is designed for the near future, in a scenario where households in the same neighborhood share a certain energy allowance monthly.

Find out more about eCo here

With the pandemic, our need for outdoor dining space has considerably increased. Restaurants that want to keep their clients warm have to adopt highly inefficient heating strategies that have a considerable negative impact on the environment. Our current solutions are limited and are: to make the outside inside with enclosed space, multiplying radiant heaters to reach a maximum of people, or blowing hot air outdoors. We are wasting energy by heating outdoor spaces rather than heating the human body directly.

“Heat in Hands” is a solution for restaurants to keep their outdoor clientele warm while reducing their environmental impact and saving money.

Targeting upmarket restaurants, heated bricks (as well as their heater) could be designed according to the restaurant’s aesthetic. Using “Heat in Hands” would help restaurants to reduce their energy consumption as well as the additional cost of outdoor heaters while preserving the clientele’s comfort.

During the pandemic, New York was one of the first cities to create public space regulations, alongside offering solutions for restaurants to facilitate the creation of outdoor spaces. Living in New York at that time, I decided to conduct research on the effects of public space’s transformation on the environment. Therefore I started ethnographic research in the city’s restaurants as well as historical and cultural investigation.

Beyond the environmental impact, interviews with restaurateurs demonstrated that keeping clients warm outside requires large investments in facilities, increased labor costs, and can triple their energy bills. Current heaters can have the same emissions as a speeding truck, yet unlike the truck, the heater has nothing to filter the polluted gas it emits.

‘Heat in Hand’ is inspired by ancient sustainable practices and was developed to fit within the existing choreography of waiters and clients during the day.

How can conviviality and design help us act for the sustainable future of our cities?

This research aims to present how conviviality and design can help us transform our cities into more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable places. Indeed, the evolution of the urban environments has led us to the reduction of social interaction by constraining us, turning a public common into unfamiliar places. Trapped in a global system that we cannot control anymore, our only spectrum of intervention is through regulations which is a slow process (administrative and political structures). Through the exploration of contemporary cases and personal experiences (both as a citizen and designer), this research presents how prolific urban communities can be built. Furthermore, it shows how the use of conviviality and design methods, can empower individuals to participate in the collective making of their city.

Dissertation awarded Distinction.