Design for Development: The Water Challenge
Workshop by Roy Ombatti
As a continuation of Age of Wonderland and the collaboration with Hivos and Dutch Design Week, innovator Roy Ombatti returns to Baltan Laboratories to lead "Design for Development: The Water Challenge".
The purpose of this workshop is to generate ideas for prototypes that could give sustainable solutions to some of the problems that arise from the challenging water situation in Osiligi and other parts of his home country, Kenya.
The arid conditions in southern Kenya prevent the growth and development of plant and animal life. The inhabitants of this area, the Maasai people, face the difficulty of fetching and storing the water; the quality of water is another other issue these rural communities encounter. This workshop is a unique opportunity for social designers, engineers, entrepreneurs and other creatives, to contribute to the development of solutions for water sanitation as well as coming up with feasible transportation and storage systems.
The participants will be guided through the design process, starting from the initial framing of the problem and the generation of ideas to the experimentation, sketch modeling, concept selection and prototyping fabrication.
The exchange of knowledge between creative, thinkers and doers is key to develop new insights, and the results and feedback collected in the workshop might hopefully be implemented in the future in these areas.
Roy Ombatti, Nairobi, Kenya, is an engineer connected to the artists’ collective Creative Garage in Nairobi. He is passionate about the use of technology as a way of realizing a sustainable impact on society. Ombatti has developed specially designed shoes for people with a foot disfigurement caused by disease.
For Age of Wonderland during Dutch Design Week 2014, Ombatti continued with his research and the project ‘Happy Feet’, dedicated to finding viable solutions for footwear and the jigger issue in Kenya.
For more information and purchase of tickets please visit the website.
