Jack Murphy
Edinburgh Napier University
Product Design

Murphy's The Stand Table was designed to aid those who find it difficult to stand from sitting and provide an alternative to functional but uninspiring disability aids.

The round top of the three-legged wooden table features a handle that can be pushed up and down, with a hinge to add support and aid a person getting up. Says Murphy: 'The motive behind this product was to create an object that, in a small way, would improve the life of someone with a disability and that of their family.

This table aims to turn a piece of joyless and medical-feeling disability equipment into a desirable piece of household furniture built around the families of those in need.' CSH

Thomas Fairbrother
Cardiff University
Architecture

Fairbrother's site in Brynmawr is a postmining, post-industrial, post-Asda ground slab set in a community with enormous social problems including depression and isolation. The site had to create a social space and identity for the community without drawing retail away from the struggling high street.

Fairbrother's solution? A club topped with a hot floor, a salmon farm above that, and a giant golden fish on the very top. The underground club heats up the public space where revellers can languish in comfort, while the golden fish reigns blimp-like over the Valleys. Maria Smith

Christian Brailey
Royal College of Art
Architecture

Brailey's project confronted the contentious issue of building on England's green belt.It proposed the creation of New Wood, a new town with a population of 18,000 residents, located just outside the small village of Cuffley in south Hertfordshire, 'a privileged "island" of development [where] the highly politicised and lucrative surrounding farmland has become the quintessential example of a threatened landscape under NIMBY protection'. Beautifully illustrated with delicate, green-penned hand drawings, the new town acts as a 'silver bullet' that satisfies the housing target for the borough, but is also tactically discreet in its design, construction and visualisation. CSH

Yun-Ting Lin
Royal College of Art
Design Products

Nanocellulose Fibreboard, designed to replace materials such as MDF and moulded plastic, is a new sustainable material that is 100 per cent recyclable and 100 per cent biodegradable. Its non-toxicity is down to its composition of plant fibres, such as flax and naturally fermented Nanocellulose (a compound fermented from certain types of bacteria, it's 100 per cent natural and renewable).

The material can be created with different densities for use as construction material, for furniture or insulation. Says Lin: 'Nanocellulose Fibreboard is also a cost-saving material. The benefit of the material's surface pattern means less procedures as there is no need for laminating additional materials for decoration.' CSH

Paulina Lenoir
Central Saint Martins
Product Design

There is of course something naturally comic about long shoes, but Lenoir also created a deliberately subversive product intended to fight the modern urban environment and the 'efficiency that has taken over most of our daily interactions.

Their weight and length make it difficult to keep up with the pace of the city. 'Through imposing a rhythm on oneself with an object of the everyday one can transcend the ordered structure created by the urban environment.' JT