'Wear it'
'Suspend, balance and surround' are our key themes for this project. The brief alongside the presentation (on moodle) had provided us with a range of designers related to these themes and JFFA. I had also discovered and did my own further research on different sources of inspiration for this project.
Maiko Takeda is a Japanese milliner and jewellery designer well known for her 'prickly' designs which covers certain areas of the body. I find the way the headpieces surrounds the wearer fascinating and interesting as ideas of protection, separation and warning came into my mind. Ideas of auras and a reflection of emotions had also come into mind especially through the us of colours which I would like to adapt into my work.
I became interested in the idea of protection and creating a boundary between the wearer the outside world.Thus I had also decided to research conkers and armadillos because of the association surrounding oneself to protect what is inside.
http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/20747/1/maiko-takeda-out-of-this-world
Emmanuel Lacoste is contemporary jewellery and plastician designer based in Paris. What I find interesting and inspiring about Lacoste's jewellery designs is that some for example the design shown above are placed on unconventional areas of the body such inside the mouth. This allowed me to sketch ideas of accessories and jewellery around areas of the body that are unexpected thus experimenting with function.
Text box
For balance, I became interested in weight, density and equality. Thus I looked at elephants and scales as symbols of weight. In addition I also looked at duality as a single component requires another to form balance.
The repetition of the same patterns and shapes utilised for this particular collection of Atelier XJC had inspired me to do the same in order to build and construct a full piece. I was also drawn towards the fragile and delicate yet dense appearances of the designs. This allowed me to consider weight and density contrasting with a light appearance.
Surround
Inspired by Maiko Takeda's designs and the concept of surrounding and protecting the figure led me to discover things in the natural world that also do the same. As a result I had become interested in oysters, armadillos and conkers. These things had inspired me because of the rough and harsh exterior which is used as a form of preservation and protection. These images and ideas will be used as references for my design idea.
Both the Robin day and Air chairs are functional and simple designs. This had inspired and showed me to utilise simplicity for my ideas to create a modern and useful piece.
The favela chair was constructed out of natural materials and although the construction may look like it was simple, the armchair had been completed with great manual expertise over weeks. The armchair is know to have been created without an internal almost replicating the homes in he favelas as many are constructed with scavenged material. I admire the sturdy and solid appearance of the chair high has been emphasised through the use of wood. This has allowed me to understand the properties of materials in creating products as different associations and aspects are attached.
The chair project and the fresh fat char designs allowed me to become interested and open towards playing with functionality, materials and scale of the piece. In addition it had me to perceive chairs and different ordinary objects in a different artistic style.
Kim myeong beom is a Korean conceptual artist who utilises and works in the field of sculptures and three dimensional pieces. He combines surrealism with ordinary objects which contrast and clashes with each other usually. His chair piece hanging from a tree allowed me to begin thinking and perceiving objects in a surreal and conceptual fashion by completely removing its functional quality and making the piece into a piece of art.
For my main chair design ideas, I was drawn towards emotional and physical comfort such as embracing someone. With the use of the photographs I wanted to focus on the feral position as many sat in this position as they found it comforting. Thus I wanted to focus in creating a chair which enables comfort related to darkness.
For one of my chair design ideas, I wanted to reflect and create a piece which creates a comforting mood and feeling in a physical and mental way. This lead me to researching paintings and positions of bonding and intimate interactions.
After the research on different chair designs and different types of chairs, I began photographing people around the university and sketching how people use and position themselves on seats, the floor and how they use chairs.
During the process, I began to notice that many people sat on chairs in the fetal position and I associated this with the foetus and comfort, thus I decided to focus my design on this discovery.
'Build it'
The whole focus of today's project looking to geometric shapes to construct a three dimensional construction. The examples shown are all created by geometric graphical shapes which has a modern and computer graphic like appearance which I find interesting.
I had found many geometric shapes present in both fashion and architecture. The repetition of triangular and quadrilateral shapes which I had discovered in Gareth Pugh, BAO BAO Issey Miyake and Junya watanabe's spring/summer 2015 collection were all inspiring. I found this inspiring because of how the shapes cover the body in the form of garments and accessories as it can be represented also on the three dimensional architectural format.