Every year, DIFFA by Design showcases the latest in the design world, all while raising money in the fight to combat AIDS, homelessness, food scarcity, and mental health issues.
Through generous industry known sponsors and student installations from a few selected art schools, this event raises awareness on these topics by showcasing unique installments built by each company/school.
The theme this year was “Homelessness”. We were told to create an installment no larger than 10’x 10’ x 10’ and to make it an “instagrammable” moment for maximum exposure.
So we created a shelter, and named it “The Junk Mobile”.
We felt like if this project were to really symbolize homelessness, we would need to incorporate the materials that are most associated with homelessness; cardboard, newspapers and pennies.
Firstly, a metal frame was built to hold all the junk that we would later gather among our team mates and professor. We then attached all the objects through large zip ties to the frame and lastly attached a bike to the front and made our shelter on wheels.
For the inside of this “shelter on wheels” we created a cardboard patch, hand-sewn together on the edges, by copper wires. We went around the city collecting cardboards that were thrown out and cut tiles out of them and created a tile pattern.
Each tile, the shape of the newspaper scraps and notes were previously planned out. The writings were transferred on to the cardboard tiles by a thick white marker.
The base that the junk mobile stood on consisted of most commonly seen beggars notes, handwritten by me.
After the tiles were sewn together with copper wires, it was covered with 4 pieces of clear acrylic to hold the installation and avoid any damage.
