Eliza Collin is a designer and researcher with a Masters degree in Material Futures from Central Saint Martins
Her practice spans areas of ethnography, art, co-design and education. Eliza's work focuses on building sustainable systems, with future perspectives relating to material, resources and the environment. After completing her MA in Material Futures from Central Saint Martins in 2021, she has worked on water-related projects within the government design team Policy Lab, collaborated on a rainwater harvesting system for the BlueCity Rainwater Hackathon (Rotterdam, 2022) and co-developed urban planning and non-human lead policy recommendations for the Gemene Grond residency ‘Water is what we make it’ (Utrecht, 2022). Her most recent work WET ZONES (2023) –- developed with the support of Fondazione Studio Rizoma –- explored water usage and displacement in Sicily and proposed community-led design solutions which facilitate agency in local water futures.
As a Design Researcher in Residence, Eliza will explore how the scents emitted by plants are changing in response to climate breakdown. This work is a continuation of a project developed in collaboration with agroecologist Dr Coline Jaworski. Eliza will examine the domino effect of this phenomenon on surrounding ecosystems. For example, changes in smell are having adverse effects on wild bees and their pollination, resulting in disruptions to food systems and increasingly oily molecules in the air which contribute to the ferocity of wildfires. Her residency will also seek to explain humans’ inability to perceive these changes, and understand the implications of this disconnect for our relationship with the natural environment. Her next research stage will be to compare data on plant odour adaptions over the years and correlate this with climate data.
