Safe and sound

The design to protect the body and the mind

Abstract

At the end of 2005, an extraordinary exhibition entitled SAFE: Design Takes On Risk opened at the MoMA in New York, bringing together 300 products and prototypes conceived and designed in response to the threats, both physical and psychological, that can beset the individual. The answer to one of the obsessions of the contemporary western world, the quest for safety, is thus expressed through the most diverse objects: from inflatable emergency shelters to jackets with 44 pockets in which to store everything needed for survival, from polyurethane riot shields to solar systems for filtering polluted or salty water, from portable defibrillators to a new concept of drug packaging.