Clare Brass

Clare’s research spans across a triangle with Design / Sustainability & Circular Economy / Entrepreneurship at its three points, and a central focus on the Future of Food & Farming. In other words: How can we use design to create revenue-generating sustainable and regenerative businesses around the theme of food?

During the pandemic, together with her team from Department 22, Clare began exploring entrepreneurial opportunities to reduce the amount of plastic used in food packaging. This led to the setting up of Moree, a reusable packaging system. The starting focus is the coffee business, which uses 700m units of single-use packaging every year in the UK alone. Moree supplies coffee roasteries with both packaging and a tracking platform. The packaging, for wholesale deliveries and retail sales, is robust, food-safe, airtight/waterproof and trackable, and can be individually tracked. Companies can reduce carbon impacts as well as up to 50% of their costs. Each unit of packaging is tracked through our own platform, ensuring returns.

The goal is to go beyond coffee to other dry food packaging.

FoodLoop 2009 – 2011 (Defra funded) exploring food waste reduction and food growing in dense urban environments.

Plug-It, 2012 – 2014 (Defra funded) looking at how intermediaries in the plumbing sector could support pro-environmental messaging to the public

DESIS UK (AHRC-funded) 2013 development and delivery of Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) networks within the UK HE Landscape.

SuslabNWE project (Interreg funded) exploring ways of reducing people’s everyday energy use by exploring how they understand it.

Circular Makespaces (EPSRC funded) exploring the role of makerspace managers/founders as gatekeepers to circular practices.

London 2026, exhibition, 2018

Cities will play a crucial role in the evolution of a new food system to feed a burgeoning world population and to reconnect people to the natural world. This exhibition at the Roca London Gallery is set in London in 2026, when the capital’s population will have passed the 10 million mark.  Showcasing how architects, designers and entrepreneurs are re-designing our relationship with food, it aims to stimulate debate around the impacts of our food systems, and demonstrate how circular systems can lead to positive social and environmental impact.
​Here, circular economy thinking (challenging our current Make, Use and Dispose system),  looks at how we might grow and distribute food differently, and repurpose anything left over for energy production and nutrients for healthier soils, to ensure long-term human survival while protecting and enhancing the natural systems upon which our food production depends.

Collaborators

Dejan Mitrovic, Director, Department 22

Clare Brass, Director, Department 22

Thomas Leech, Director, Department 22

Client: Roca London

The Future of Food, 2019

As part of its 150th Anniversary celebration, Sainsbury's asked Department 22 to think about what we will eat and how food will be produced in 2025, 2050 and 150 years in the future – 2169. With the support of a food historian and plant scientist, alongside other experts, The Future of Food Report explores these themes from social, technological and environmental perspectives. Each era is introduced with a description of what life is like, voiced by a persona of those times.

Collaborators

Dejan Mitrovic, Director, Department 22

Clare Brass, Director, Department 22

Thomas Leech, Director, Department 22

Gina Lovett, Consultant, Department 22

Dr Polly Russell, Food Historian and Curator

James Wong, Plant Scientist, Author and Broadcaster

Claire Hughes, Head of Quality and Innovation, Sainsbury’s

Alexa Masterson-Jones, Trends and Innovation Manager, Sainsbury’s

Client: Sainsbury’s

Mushrooming 2021

With our ubiquitous networks of mycelium and fungal fruiting bodies, we have lived on this planet for more than a billion years. We are older than the plants, older than the dinosaurs, and much, much older than you. We are nature’s engines of regeneration and renewal, the bridge between life, end of life and rebirth. We are food, medicine, friend and foe. And we are everywhere: in the soil, in the air, in the depths of the ocean and the frozen wastes of Antarctica. We also live on the surface of your body and inside you. In fact, you’re not really a ‘you’ at all; you’re an ‘us’. And when it comes to improving the health of the planet we all share, we can be one of your greatest allies: we play a key role in helping you live healthier lives, and boosting your immunity.

Clare Brass, Director

Thomas Leech, Director

Dejan Mitrovic, Director

Simon Brandon, Copywriter

Rachael Goude, Researcher and co-author Margarita Mitrovic, Graphics & design

Client: The Mushroom Bureau

Brass, C., (2018), Reflections on Waste. Book chapter, Freerange Press, New Zealand

Brass, C., Lohmann, J., (2016) Implementing Transition Design: it takes a village to raise a child. Co-published by Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex, Schumacher College, The Dartington Hall Trust, The School of Architecture, Design & the Environment at the University of Plymouth, Carnegie Mellon School of Design and the New Weather Institute

Brass, C., Bowden F., McGeevor, K., Plug-It, Report, DEFRA. In publication

Brass, C., Lovett, G., (2018) Perpsectives on Sustainability. Book chapter, Encyclopaedia of Asian Design.

Brass, C., (2017) Chicken Run – design for complexity in food systems. Journal article, She Ji, China

Prendeville, S., Hartung, G., Brass, C., Hall, A. (2017) Circular Makerspaces: the founder's view International Journal of Sustainable Engineering 

Terzioglu, N., Brass, C., Lockton, D. (2016) 3D Printing for Repair: A Paradigm Shift in Fixing Our Relationships with Things - Conference: Sustainable Innovation: Circular Economy Innovation & Design, At University for the Creative Arts, Epsom, Surrey

Bowden, F., Lockton, D., Gheerawo, R., Brass, C. (2016) - Chapter In book: Living Labs: Design and Assessment of Sustainable Living, Publisher: Springer

Prendeville, S., Hartung, G., Purvis, E., Brass, C., Hall, A.(2016) Makerspaces: From Redistributed Manufacturing to a Circular Economy - Chapter · April 2016 In book: Sustainable Design and Manufacturing

Terzioglu, N, Brass, C., Lockton, D. (2015) – Understanding User Motivations and Drawbacks Related to Product Repair. Conference paper. Nov 2015 Sustainable Innovation

Choi, Y., Lockton, D., Brass, C., Stevens, J., (2015) Opportunities for Sustainable Packaging Design. Conference paper, Nov 2015, Sustainable Innovation

Bowden, F., Lockton, D., Gheerawo, R., Brass, C. (2015) Drawing Energy: Exploring Perceptions of the Invisible. Book, June 2015, Royal College of Art

Brass, C., Chicken Run, A Chicken-Centred Design Research Project (2015)

Virtuous Circle, summer Cumulus Conference Politecnico di Milano, June 2015

Brass, C., Mazzarella, F., Are We Asking The Right Questions? Rethinking postgraduate design education towards sustainable visions for the future. International Conference on Engineering And Product Design Education, Loughborough University, September 2015

Brass, C. Cultivating the O-Shaped Engineer, Conference paper, 7th International Conference on Engineering Education for Sustainable Development, University of British Columbia, June 2015

Lockton, D., Bowden, F., Brass, C. & Gheerawo, R. (2014). ‘Powerchord: Towards ambient appliance-level electricity use feedback through real-time sonification’. UCAmI 2014: 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence.

2024 – present, Design Council Expert, Sustainability

2017 – 2020, Senior tutor, Contextual Design, Brunel University

2023, Lit Review Associate tutor, Bio-ID, UCL.

2008 – 2017, Leader, sustainability & entrepreneurship, IDE, Royal College of Art