Snoezelen Room

Originally developed in the Netherlands, the “snoezelen” is a therapy for people with autism or developmental disabilities. The Snoezelen Room has been designed in a form that provides one with stimuli to various senses through lighting effects, colour, sounds, music, scents etc… For example, the combination of different materials on a wall may be explored using tactile senses and the floor may be adjusted to stimulate the sense of balance.

*I heard about the Snoezelen Room when I visited Holland Bloorview Rehabilitation center, which is a children’s hospital for children who have had surgeries, or health related concerns that hospitalized them for an extended period of time. The center provides children with an array of resources and programs; the snoezelen room being one of them. I began my process by developing a form that could be found in this type of environment.

time

*these thoughts are not entirely thesis related, but they do speak truth to where my head has been throughout the development of my thesis work

time has always been such a strange idea to me.  we worry about not having enough time to finish tasks and we complain about its vast measures when we're faced with brick walls of boredom.  time was created to be simple; to be a system for determining the sequential relationship between two events.  and yet I so often struggle with understanding its simplicity... most of the time its staring me right in the face.

these past few months have taught me a lot about the importance of investing time in others.  perhaps not always in a form that requires great lengths of physical time, but might just entail initiating short but honest conversation, expressing a genuine smile to the daily stranger I pass every day, or offering a listening ear when I have piles of homework on my mind.  and I can not fail to mention the ways in which others have shown such great kindness...  like a friend who prepares me a brie/pear rye sandwich for no apparent reason, a sick friend who goes out of her way to offer me a listening ear,  and as noted below - the genuine words of a talented housemate...

these hearts of ours were made to love, strung with live wires of compassion and mercy, and yet this flesh and this will is so unwilling to yield. - m.hers

Susan Cutts

Fairy Tale by Susan Cutts [paper dress]

Christien Meindertsma

Felt Urchin Pouf by Christien Meindertsma

Kathryn Walter

The Art of Wallpaper by Kathryn Walter of Felt Studio

Hotel One, Seattle

The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto

Flor

Suit Yourself Raffia by Flor

Rake Me Over Lime by Flor

Modular Tessellations

experimenting with modular tessellation

Texture

Marion Delarue

Imprints, Marion Delarue, China, wool, 2010

Noquvy

Isabella (rope necklace) by Sarah Spiridou, 21cm x19cm ( 8,50inch x 7,50inch), 100% Cotton, 100% Viscose, Hand Painted

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty.  I think only how to solve the problem.  But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.  - Richard Buckminster Fuller

Jacques Monestier

golden prosthetic hand by Jacques Monestier alongside a conventional split hook

Sculptor and creator of automata Jacques Monestier has created a prosthetic hand that represents a provocative alternative to both hands and hooks; it is a design that simultaneously acknowledges its role yet also its artificiality.  THe back of his golden hand is cast in the likeness of a human hand, but from an alloy; the palm is upholstered in soft, luxuriant leather.  As Monestier explains, "Amputees often suffer a loss of self-image.  I wanted to transmute what might be considered a disfurement into something marvelous and exotic.  I wanted to create a hand that would no longer cause shame and repulsion.  I wanted the amputees themselves to be proud to have a prosthetic hand and pleased to look at it.  And for the people around them, I wanted the prosthetic hand to be an object of healthy curiosity, a work of art."

Pullin, Graham.  “Design Meets Disability.” Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2011, 35-37.

Aimee Mullins

"...the conversation with society has changed profoundly in this last decade.  It is no longer a conversation about overcoming deficiency.  It is a conversation about augmentation.  It is a conversation about potential.  A prosthetic limb does not represent the need to replace loss, anymore.  It can stand as a symbol that the wearer has the power to create what ever it is that they want to create in that space.  So people that society once considered to be disabled can now become the architects of their own identities and indeed, continue to change those identities by designing their bodies from a place of empowerment..." - Aimee Mullins   

Pablo Reinoso

 

What starts with an underlying functional form in the work of artist Pablo Reinoso often gets carried away as his furniture pieces begin to take on lives of their own. The crawling tendrils and stretched figures that emerge are rendered all the more exotic by his defiant use of hard wood with soft organic forms. This designer is perhaps most well known for his remarkable wooden spaghetti benches in which the normal ends of wood slats become the beginning of a seemingly living form that twists and turns away from the conventional shape of the bench itself – and just imagine what an outdoor version of this bench would look like against, for example, an ivy-covered brick wall.

Getting Dirty

I'm only four days into thesis, but hey, I actually don't feel too stressed out yet.. as a matter of fact, I am really liking this whole material exploration aspect of things.  I've had the opportunity to really get my hands dirty and experience the wonders of varying tactile materials.  Today, I joined the Throwing Club at our school.  The people in the ceramic studio are wonderful.  They were laid back, patient and shared a love for yummy home baked goods.

 Throwing clay is such a meditative process.  I think I might just go back tomorrow.

Elsita Mora

The Art of Papercutting - Elsita Mora

 

Project H Design

 Emily Pilloton: Teaching Design for Change

1.       Design through action.
2.       Design with, not for.
3.       Design systems, not stuff.
4.       Document, share, and measure.
5.       Start locally, and scale globally.
6.       Build

He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun - psalm 37:6