Makeshift roadblocks from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests won the People’s Choice category at the Designs of the Year awards because they could be made by anyone anywhere, says Design Museum curator Maria McLintock.
Dubbed Brick Arches, the roadblocks are ordinary bricks stacked ankle-high in clusters of three, set up on roads to stop vehicles moving forward.
When struck by a wheel, the top brick falls away and the remaining two bricks form a buttress that prevents the wheel from moving.
The design won the People’s Choice category at the Design Museum’s annual Designs of the Year awards.
“I think one of the reasons that the brick arches struck such a chord with the public was that their designed simplicity starkly contrasted with the complexity of the surrounding political moment,” said co-curator of Designs of the Year 2020 Maria McLintock
Despite their small size, the protesters’ makeshift roadblocks have also been visually compared to Paris’ Arc de Triomphe or England’s Stonehenge.
“For such little structures to conjure metaphors of grand architectural monuments, there must be a powerful message at play here,” continued McLintock.
The makeshift roadblocks gained global media attention for their simple but highly effective design as activists used them to shut down roads during demonstrations over the past two years
The Brick Arches’ originator is unknown, but the simplicity and efficiency of the design helped it to spread rapidly through the movement.
“The designer is anonymous, it is made of vernacular materials and anyone can replicate it,” said McLintock. “There is something quite fitting here in the notion that a project designed for the people was voted for by the people.”
Discussing these two projects, McLintock said: “We were interested in how the discipline of transport design could cover more poetic interventions: how can design connect, or sever, contact between people?”