Earth Day

Sustainability.
Recycling.
Respect for animals.

Love Mother Earth, today and everyday.

Number 2584

Day trip to the Giants Causeway and the Titanic museum in Belfast.

Great day up north to discover the Antrim's coast and the Giants causeway.
The site is composed of 40,000 regular shaped basalt columns packed closely together as if to form a "stepping stone" pathway stretching out to sea.the columns were formed by the cooling and shrinking of molten lava from an ancient volcanic eruption over 60 million years ago.
Local legend tells how it was actually the giant Finn MacCool who created the Giants' Causeway to challenge his Scottish rival Benandonner.

We then headed to Belfast to go visit the newly opened Titanic Museum.

It is a very impressive building and the angled cladding gives it a very interesting texture and a playful light and shadow combination. There a couple of cafes on the ground floor, together with the reception and the gift shop. The void in the atrium goes all the way up to the roof and there are different staircases and escalators in the middle of it which make the building appear very large. the combination of materials was very interesting, especially the metal finish on the main wall which had been treated with fire to give it a special "wreck" look, just like the Titanic at the bottom of the sea. On the upper floors there were galleries and interactive exhibition telling about Belfast at the time, the company who build the Titanic and all the people involved. There was also a ride to see how it was to work in a shipyard at the time. It was very emotional to see the part of the exhibition regarding the impact with the insidious iceberg and the sank of the mighty Titanic. Examples of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class cabins were reconstructed to the finest details and it was very interesting to see how big the class difference was then.  The exhibition ends in an "underwater" theatre showing clips of modern cameras exploring the shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean, complete with a glass floor where we could walk and look down to videos of the actual Titanic as it is today.

The museum looks very good and it is going to be a major tourist attraction in the future, thus bringing more money to the city of Belfast and contributing to fight recession with the creation of numerous new job positions, which is great. A couple of weeks from the opening though and it already shows signs of bad maintenance in some parts, like wallpaper coming off in the corners and some chipped mdf boards. Also I was not very keen on the choice of fonts they had used in some areas, as it looked childish and not continuous with the rest of the exhibition. Circulation was also very tight in some areas and not very well organised (long Qs that could have been easily avoided would have they provided a separate path).

Food in the ground floor bistro was to die for!

Number 1597

Good design truly is all about the simplest solutions....

Number 987

Architects of portugese office Cerejeira Fontes executed a project of a chapel for a clergy school in the historical town of Braga in northern Portugal. The main idea was to connect the chapel with spaces of the St. Jacob’s centre. The volume of the chapel was integrated into the vestibule of the centre, whose neutral concrete walls allowed the new element to stand out. The mass of the chapel is made of wooden beams stacked onto each other, creating gaps that may also serve as storage compartments.

Transparency of the mass optically expands the interior of the chapel and allows bypassers to peer inside. Entrance to the chapel is found in one of its corners, where it opens up a complex shaped inner space. The wooden construction necks down with rising height and the top is left unsealed. This allows the visitors in the mezzanine above, to see into the chapel.

It is a great inspiration to see how a simple sequence of wood boards can be assembled at an angle to give the impression of a terraced mountain side!

http://www.architecturelover.com/2012/04/tree-of-life-chapel-by-cerejeira-fontes/?ref=nf

Number 610

Sweet, beautiful, brave, colourful everyday plants hanging upside down in my interior: goodbye gravity!

http://www.boskke.com/products/skyplanter/

Number 377

Terraces rising out from a sloping mountain= chair rising from wooden sticks.

The Rising Chair was created by Dutch designer Robert Van Embricqs. Its sculptural shape rises from a simple wooden plank to form a unique and versatile chair design. This chair looks nothing like the other chairs designed throughout the years. The idea behind this chair’s conceptual construction was created starting with the flat surface used for sitting. The designer started cutting beam-like strands that would eventually shape the chair as an organic seating unit.

http://www.decoist.com/2011-05-26/exceptionally-creative-seating-unit-rising-chair-by-robert-van-embricqs/

Number 233

 Visit at the Malthouse Design Centre, Dublin.

Today we went to visit the Malthouse Design Centre in Dublin. http://www.themalthousedesigncentre.com/

It was a great inspiration to see how a creative collective of designers work together in a shared space.
Co-working spaces is the way to go for the future, they're starting to appear everywhere in the world and I believe it's a great encouragement for young designers who want to start their own business to know that there are places like the Malthouse where you can share your knowledge and creativity in the most beautiful and motivating brainstorming environment! Their focus is to get you started with your design and prototype of your product and they will then help you branding yourself and sell your products, get your name on the market by organising events and advertisements. There are a number of rooms availabale, including "clean" studios where to develop your sketches and design, then there are a couple of manufacturing labs where to cut wood, fabrics and work with actual tools; also, there is a meeting room for clients meetings and an exhibition space. We were challenged today to produce a packaging for cutlery under 30 mins. We all came up with very different designs and intents. This is what my friends and I designed:

We were inspired by the hand that holds the cutlery and we decided to go with an oven mitten to reinforce the concept of cooking: from a selling point of view, the mitten would be included in the cutlery package to add value to the product. For the aesthetics we went for "grandma's cutlery" with a very retro/vintage/50's/feminine design that would bring on the concept of slow cooking as opposed to fast food.

It was a very interesting exercise and all  "prototypes" were great! We worked in the exhibition room which showcased a lot of products by new Irish designers who worked in collaboration with the Malthouse.

I particularly liked this lamp: "Hex Lamp" by Kooyong design.