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EmBEDded Space: A Speculative Investigation into the Histories, Theories and Futures of Bed Design and Human Sleep

Part 2 Dissertation 2019
Isobel Eaton
University of Greenwich | UK
The bed is a designed object, a furnitecture, a micro-architecture, an entirely human environment and the space where we consistently spend hours of our lives in an unconscious wonderland processing our memories and understanding our emotions.

Arising from Beatriz Colomina’s work, where the evolving role of the bed as a multi-functional domestic zone is exposed and critiqued, the contemporary bed is found to be developing into an overly functioned space, both unsuited to its new-found requirements and in turn, negatively impacting on its primary function of sleep. These findings promote a new future brief for the bed, which rejects all factors that are not entirely essential to the sleep-inducing process and the unconscious state that follows.

This project unpicks sleep-inducing, detailed design elements through analysing an array of beds, sleep environments and the relationships we form with these spaces, leading to the conclusion that the ultimate physical comfort may lie beyond the horizontal standards of contemporary beds. In a future plagued by an obsession with ultimate productivity and the quantified self, we find that it is seemingly emotional comfort that is key to the future of the bed and human sleep.

Isobel Eaton

Tutor(s)
Mark Garcia
2019
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