Now in its seventh year, the Design Museum’s annual Designers in Residence program, which provides a platform for new and emerging designers to gain exposure amongst a community of art and design patrons, has chosen four London-based designers to respond to the "disruptive" theme.

This year’s selected desginers—James Christian, Ilona Gaynor, Torsten Sherwood and Patrick Stevenson-Keating—will be a core part of musuem exhibitions throughout the year, and will also take place in various lecture series and events, all culminating in the "disruptive" exhibition this September.

2014 Designers in Residence

“More than most, ‘disruptive’ is a term whose meaning is dependent on the context,” said Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum. “Conventionally considered almost invariably a bad thing—difficult pupils, bad neighbors, ill-considered town planning—it is now the most sought after quality in a new product. It has completely overtaken the previously well-regarded term sustainable, and its slightly more current synonym, resilient. Disruptive technologies are what made Apple’s comeback a decade ago so successful. Disruptive innovation interrupts established ways of thinking, diverges from traditional practices and proposes new, unexpected ideas. This year we are asking the Designers in Residence to reflect on and explore the multiple possibilities expressed by the concept of disruption and the disruptive."

Below is more information about each of the designers:

James Christian is an architectural designer and educator based in London. His work spans interior design, urbanism, architecture, objects and interactions and can be characterized by the use of playful wit to challenge current social and political themes. Christian studied at the University of Liverpool and the Royal College of Art where his final masters project, Free[tr]aid, won the New London Architecture Prize. He has worked in architectural practices in London and Melbourne and currently divides his time between co-leading an interior architecture platform at Middlesex University and working as a designer for the architecture studio Softroom.

Ilona Gaynor is a designer and filmmaker. She is the founder and director of London based research studio The Department of No. Her work draws upon use of image, rhetoric and cinematic tropes to construct complexly precise plots, schemes and narrative texts. Since graduating from The Royal College of Art, Ilona's work has been recognized internationally through various awards, exhibitions, books, publications and conferences including D&AD, Resonate, Blueprint, WeMakeMoneyNotArt and Architectural Design Magazine. Upon graduating, Gaynor  was awarded the Ridley Scott Prize and residency and she is currently faculty in Digital + Media at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Torsten Sherwood is a designer based in London. Particularly interested in how functionalist and vernacular designers use constraints to inform their design process, much of his work is influenced by an understanding of and experimentation with materials, construction and making. Having worked and studied in Bath, Florence and Copenhagen, Sherwood completed his Architecture Part 1 at the University of Bath in the summer of 2013.

Patrick Stevenson-Keating is the founder of collaborative design studio Studio PSK. The studio works across multiple platforms, but specializes in ‘object driven speculative design’. The studio’s work explores tensions in society, science and emerging technologies and it has exhibited internationally in spaces including the TATE Modern, V&A Museum, Austin Convention Centre (Texas), Royal Albert Hall, Design For Death Convention Macau and the Mudam Museum amongst others. Stevenson-Keating is also Module Leader of final year Product Design at Middlesex University, and guest lectures at a number of other European universities.

The exhibition will be on view September 10 through February 1.