Furniture Project.

For our next project working in teams we are to design and make a piece of furniture or object that reflects  contemporary culture and domestic life.
Materials are obviously going to play a big part in this project, so my group has decided to research initially, pre-existant materials that can be re-used or  re-cycled.

Pallets!
After seeing numerous unused pallets lying around the university campus, I looked further into how they could be re-used, as there structure is ideal for re-cycling.
A design company called  Studiomama have looked at re-cycling pallets, and have come up with some great simple solutions.

 

The simplicity of these designs allows them to be constructed fairly easily, this is something I will bear in mind when designing for our project.

Lighting is also another aspect to look at and incorporate into our design. Here are just a few of the designs I came accross.

During a trip to the local re-cycling center and dump, we came accross a large amount of tube lights still intact, these could be used to create some sort of mood lighting in our design, similar to the ' Re-cycled Tube Light' by Castor Canadensis.

I love these lights made from large quantities of  disused objects.

 

'Millenium Light'   by Lighting Designer Stuart Haygarth

The Lighting designs above play on the translucent quality of many everyday objects that can be easily collected.This is something I will look to incorporate in our design.

The Tipping Point- Case Study

The image below is using Mind Mapping again to analyse a section of The tipping Point in more depth.
I chose to look at a section on the Airwalk Shoe company's success in conquering the mainstream shoe market .

 Referencing for Mind Map.

Bruce Ryan and Neal Gross (1943). The Diffusion of Hybrid Seed Corn in Two Iowa Communities. New York: Free Press. 15-24.

Geoffrey Moore (1991). Crossing the Chasm. New York: HarperCollins.

Gordon Allport and Leo Postman (1947). The Psychology of Rumour. New York: Henry Holt. 135-158.

Thomas Valente Robert K. Foreman and Benjamin Junge,"Satellite Exchange in the Baltimore Needle Exchange Program",in press.

Donald H Rubinstein (1995). Love and Suffering: Adolescent Socialization and Suicide in Micronesia. .: Contemporary Pacific. 21-53.

David Phillips (1974). American Sociological Review. 340-354.

V. R Ashton and S. Donnan (1981). psychological Medicine, 735-739.

Norman Kreitman, Peter Smith, and Eng-Seong Tan (1970). British Journal of Psychiatry, 465-473.


What interested me in this section of the book was the tecniques that the advertising company Airwalk hired - Lambesis, used to 'tip' Airwalk and its image from a small boutique company into a 175 million a year business.
One of the campaigns Lambesis ran included a collection of striking images that were connected in some way to a current trend in youth culture.

 The image above, a monk cheating in an exam, reading notes of the side of his shoe was successful as it tied in with an interest that youth culture had with Tibet at the time it was designed.

The Tipping Point

Here I am trying out a new approach to receive and retain information- Mind Mapping
Below is an image of my first attempt at mapping out Malcom Gladwells 'The Tipping  Point'.

Using colour, thickness of line and 'branches' coming off a central hub, the chapters and keys points in the book can be ordered into sections and hierarchies. This makes the information easier to remember, and recall.

Initial Ideas

We wanted to divide the exhibition space up into 3 main areas, and in each area showcase a different aspect of the Jute mill workers lives.
Dividing  up the space usng the shape of a jute weave seemed to be a good solution.

Using the shape of the weave to create physical spacial dividers is what the presentation sheet above is looking at.The sketch models on the right hand side are my initial attempts, exploring dividing the space up at different heights, lengths and thicknesses.

Juteopolis

Interior and Environmental Design
Project 1

JUTEOPOLIS
For this project we have been asked to develop and design a  transportable contemporary exhibition exploring Dundee's jute industry.
We will be working for 2 Clients,  Brian Kelly, an Education and community outreach officer at Verdant Works Jute Museum and Louise Richie a member of the Scottish Arts Society.
We will be working in groups, collectivley researching, developing and presenting our design.
The hypothetical location for our exhibition will be one of the exhibition spaces in  the DCA.

As an initial response to the brief we have been asked to create a poster to advertise our exhibition.

The poster reflects the type of imagery I am looking to have in our exhibition design, using images and video