I have a fondness for ‘sheds’ and am using this as an inspiration for one strand of my current work i.e. I’m trying to design the sort of textiles that would be appropriate for a space like this…soft, woolly and textured is what I came up with.

The building is constructed using charred cedar which is a traditional Japanese building technique.  Here’s the interior showing shards of charred cedar decorating the ceiling and the tea-making hearth:

And I believe this is his own personal sky high tea house in Japan:

The eight departments form all human activities in relationship to design.

Man and Living

Man and Communication

Man and Well-being

Man and Leisure

Man and Mobility

Man and Identity

Man and Activity

Man and Public Space

Ilse Crawford, Head of department of Man and Well-being

What connects us to our surroundings, gives meaning to the things, spaces and services we use? Man and Well-Being connects form with the way we experience the world around us, emotionally, physically, sensorially and subliminally. Students in the department of Man and Well-Being combine their ‘cool’ head with their ‘warm’ heart – “Form follows feeling,” is their mantra. Their quest is to refine design so that it brings out the best of us as humans. They apply their fine-tuned consciousness and their subtle understanding of human experience to different dimensions, from taste to tactility, from health care to self care, from poetry to technology, in short to daily life. Recent projects have covered: a new water consciousness; flooring – the surface we touch all the time; our sense of colour; and flowers. Product design here reflects social awareness and human relations in everyday life, as well as sustainability and the value of the resources we use. A graduate from the department of Man and Well-Being is fascinated by the emotional value of a product and the range in which the product is applied. He has come to grips with the emotional dimension of design playing a part in the experience of a product or a situation. He combines a keen susceptibility to atmosphere and detail with a competence for working with other disciplines.

I hope to visit the Academy to find out more about its ethos – until then – this book is a celebration of 60 years of great design that’s come out of the college.                                                                     

 I

   I had the good fortune of seeing the Reichstag, in Berlin, wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  It was awesome, a feat of engineering and persistence.  It took over 20 years to create.  The effect?  Very strange, like a beautiful protective cover.  As if something is about to revealed – for a ta-dah moment!  Packaging.

Notes from their website state:

‘After a struggle spanning through the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, the wrapping of the Reichstag was completed on June 24th, 1995 by a work force of 90 professional climbers and 120 installation workers. The Reichstag remained wrapped for 14 days and all materials were recycled.

100,000 square meters (1,076,000 square feet) of thick woven polypropylene fabric with an aluminum surface and 15,600 meters (51,181 feet) of blue polypropylene rope, diameter 3.2 cm. (1.25?), were used for the wrapping of the Reichstag. The façades, the towers and the roof were covered by 70 tailor-made fabric panels, twice as much fabric as the surface of the building.

The work of art was entirely financed by the artists, as have all their projects, through the sale of preparatory studies, drawings, collages, scale models as well as early works and original lithographs.

Throughout the history of art, the use of fabric has been a fascination for artists. From the most ancient times to the present, fabric, forming folds, pleats and draperies, is a significant part of paintings, frescoes, reliefs and sculptures made of wood, stone and bronze. The use of fabric on the Reichstag follows the classical tradition. Fabric, like clothing or skin, is fragile, it translates the unique quality of impermanence.

For a period of two weeks, the richness of the silvery fabric, shaped by the blue ropes,
created a sumptuous flow of vertical folds highlighting the features and proportions of the imposing structure, revealing the essence of the Reichstag.’

I discovered this artists’ work in the book Textiles Today.  Do-Ho Suh is a South Korean artist who created Perfect Home II as a reaction to his relocation from South Korea to New York.  The installation was exhibited at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in NYC and the notes state:

‘This experience motivates the artist’s exploration of the movability of space. Suh perceives space as displacement, defining space as “the experience of it’s own displacement.” Particularly interested in the area that surrounds him both physically and metaphorically, Suh defines space as transportable. Asking questions such as “What is the size of personal space?,” “How much space do I and can I carry with myself?” and “What is the space that defines a person or a group of persons?,” Suh examines the complexities of personal space.’

‘Using translucent nylon, Suh creates a full-scale replica of his New York apartment, the adjoining corridor, and the staircase of his building in the main gallery of Lehmann Maupin. This expanding project, The Perfect Home II, is an interactive installation in which the visitor must examine his or her own individualized space in relation to the piece. The stitched silverish pale blue apartment, pink corridor, and green stairs contain a detailed tactile surface. The translucent nylon used in the creation of the piece relates to the notion of permeable boundaries and space. Doorknobs, plumbing, light switches and other architecturally distinct features are recreated in the interior of the apartment and corridor.’

   I can’t locate a photograph, but he re-created every detail, even down to the door hinges and screws.

What’s missing from the sewn apartment is any of the artists’ personal posessions.  Speaks of impermanence.  You could fold this up and pop it in a suitcase?

Most of their garments feature a unique ‘Baacode’ [get it?] which can be entered on Icebreaker’s website to trace the wool in a garment to one of 120 sheep stations in New Zealand.  The customer can then view the living conditions of the animals that produced their wool, meet the farmers and find out about the production process.

I was fortunate enough to interview one of the Netherlands’ leading designers years ago for an arts television programme I was making for S4C – the Welsh language channel. Tejo Remy creates new designs out of discarded objects.  I will get a transcript I hope of the interview I made with him.  Here are some pics of his work.  These pieces were designed back in the 1990′s.

Chest of recycled drawers

Rag chair

designers have: “..shown ourselves to be revolutionary, we try to be evolutionary. Durability has always been key in my wor, and I believe that the ecological challenges that face us today are psychological. If people don’t like something, they throw it away becuase it doesn’t satisfy their need for newness any more., this is because we have made the new so important in our culture. We must start to make the old as valuable as the new in the popular imagination.”  [1000 Interior details for the home, ed by Ian and Geraldine Rudge]

How do we do this??

Carl Honore