Through Aug. 31, the public can go to UofL’s Cressman Center for Visual Arts to see what GE Appliances’ industrial designers and engineers envision homes of the not-too-distant future to be like and leave their comments via social media or on a large tablet in the gallery for GE to mull over.
“Envisioning the Future: HOME > 2025” features the results of four months of work by cross-functional design and engineering teams to conceptualize “how we prepare food, wash clothes and interact with information,” said Lou Lenzi, director of GE Appliances industrial design operations, at the July 18 opening.
Team members whose work is displayed will present it to the public at the First Friday Trolley Hop from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Aug. 2.
The displays explore four future household types: tech-savvy millennials; condo-dwelling urban gardeners; a health-conscious, downsizing couple facing retirement; and a woman who lives with and cares for her elderly father.
Home features include medication dispensers, 3-D printers, meal delivery system, swing-out indoor-outdoor cooking center, rooftop beehive and garden-plant sensors, scrap compacting for compost, and a system that compresses clean, smart-tag clothes into pellets for storage and revives them wrinklefree for wearing.
“GE has done concept kitchens since the 1950s,” said Chris Bissig, manager of concept and brand development. “One size doesn’t fit all. I think we’re going to see more and more of that.”
“Industrial design is not that well-understood as a profession,” Lenzi said, adding that he hopes the display might inspire students to consider it as a career choice.
Regular gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 11a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The Cressman Center is at 100 E. Main St.