Heart and Lung Repair Shop

 

The Heart and Lung Repair Shop was a pop-up science shop in Hammersmith’s Kings Mall, open for two weeks in Summer 2014 from 7-20 July.

NHLI scientists collaborated with four designers to develop the content for the shop, including interactive exhibits, activities and installations.

We imagined what a repair shop for the heart and lungs might look like, and what products and services it would sell.

Products in The Heart and Lung Repair Shop included Canned Fresh Air, Oxygenated and Deoxygenated Blood, Vasculature on a Roll and Extracted Mucus!

The centre-piece of the shop was a Heart and Lung Machine, with handles to inflate the lungs.

…and a creeper board to roll underneath and discover fascinating facts about the heart and lungs.

The shop had a work bench where people could try out laboratory activities like pipetting and have a go looking down a microscope at lung tissue or beating heart cells.

Activities included the Lung Capacity Competition, where visitors had their lung capacity measured to try and make it onto our top ten leaderboard.

Lung Map - Final Data

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The audience were asked to vote on The Heart and Lung Repair Future Challenges. The winning challenge, receiving 699 votes, was ‘Repair Your Own Organs’ which was a challenge to develop drugs to stimulate the body’s own stem cells to heal itself. The other challenges were ‘Build a Heart’ receiving 184 votes, ‘Make Cigarettes Healthy’ receiving 278 votes and ‘Better Treatment for Lung Cancer’ receiving 408 votes.

18 NHLI scientists developed Shop Demos. You can watch some of the Shop Demos on our Heart and Lung Repair Shopping Channel playlist on YouTube.

We ran special events including debates about the future of heart and lung repair, facilitated by Y Touring Theatre Company.

And a debate workshop with students from Hammersmith Academy.

2750 people visited The Heart and Lung Repair Shop during the two weeks it was open.