by This month’s news features all kinds of unusual crafting materials, from mycelium to gingerbread. There is also the opportunity for students to have their design projects 3D printed by London company Batch.Works. I hope there is something for everyone.
The bride carried mushrooms.
Choosing a wedding dress is a special moment. Some brides opt for a family heirloom, others dream of designer dresses. Dasha Tsapenko is probably one of the few who actually lets her own dress grow. The biotextile designer is fascinated by the shared connections and production issues of fashion and agriculture, and Atelier Dasha Tsapenko investigates ways to make material from agricultural by-products and plants. The workshop has made leather from bean pods, textile dyes from crop waste and felt from mushrooms. For her dress, Tsapenko was inspired by her Ukrainian homeland’s custom of women wearing hand-embroidered wedding blouses.
Tsapenko sourced vintage linen lace from Ukrainian flea markets and seeded them with fungal spores before placing them in a nutrient-rich growing environment. Over a fortnight, the mycelium fused the lace into fabric as it grew, which could then be made into a mushroom dress. She imagines a new wedding tradition in which the dress is buried after the wedding.
“It felt good to not treat the wedding dress with caution, worrying about getting it dirty, wet or dusty,” Tsapenko says. “Knowing that the dress would come back to earth after the wedding in the neighborhood woods made it easier to run, jump, and cartwheel. A wedding is an emotional moment that you want to experience deeply. When that moment is over, you want to keep it in your memory, not in your closet.”
For more information, contact Dasha Tsapenko via her website.
Written in black and white
In 2016, Washington DC-based graphic designer Tré Seals was searching the internet for inspiration. He felt that everything he looked at seemed monotonous and, after reading that more than 85% of practicing designers in the US were white, he began to think about how these two things are connected. As he says on his website: “You could argue it was due to our obsession with grids and perfection, but the truth is there was no culture or character.”
He decided to found his own diversity-driven type foundry and Vocal Type was launched. Seals draws inspiration from the culture and history of underrepresented communities to create custom typography. Examples include his VTC Garibaldi typeface, inspired by anti-fascist posters and pamphlets produced during World War II, and VTC Du Bois, which emerged from infographics produced by civil rights activist WEB Du Bois, showing how African Americans were affected. for racism.
This year, Seals has been shortlisted for the Emerging Designer award at the annual Dezeen Awards, the winner of which is announced this week. As he says: “Everyone needs a seat at the table. The world is becoming more diverse and our industry needs to catch up.”
To learn more about Seals, visit Voice Type. Dezeen Awards 2023 winners will be announced on November 28
Streets paved with sweets
The Museum of Architecture’s (MoA) Gingerbread City has become a tradition in London during the Christmas season, but this year the charity opened for the first time in New York. MoA aims to get the public to interact with the buildings around them and how they are used. Each year the charity asks leading architects to create gingerbread buildings to celebrate the festive season and also to get visitors thinking about the challenges of the built environment. New York’s Gingerbread City includes the work of more than 50 architects and shares the Water in Cities theme with its London twin. There are daily gingerbread-making workshops and New York restaurant Balthazar has prepared sweets to take home. Melissa Woolford, founder and director of MoA and creator of The Gingerbread City, says: “We use this to show design and the impact it can have on our cities and countryside, considering climate change and how we will live in the future. Creating a metropolis using sweet treats allows us to make complex ideas accessible in a cozy environment that smells delicious!
Visit New York’s Gingerbread City until January 7
Simpe. Useful. Built to last
Braun is one of those few brands that is omnipresent but also innovative. The electronics company was founded in 1921 by Max Braun in Frankfurt, just as the radio boom was taking off. First Braun and then his two sons, Artur and Erwin, kept the company at the forefront of technology and design for decades, thanks to a commitment to aesthetics and functional design. Now, a new monograph by Klaus Kemp, professor of design theory and history at HfG Offenbach, Germany, tells the story of the company that combined philosophy, technology and design to become part of history. Braun: Designed to Keep features more than 500 images and catalogs Braun’s defining moments. The Braun brand is known by satisfied customers for its stereos, kitchen appliances and electric shavers. But it is also admired in design circles for a Bauhaus-influenced work practice and for providing a launching pad for some of the world’s best product designers. Dieter Rams, Gerd A Müller and Roland Weigend are just some of the names associated with the company. Designer Virgil Abloh even helped commemorate Braun’s 100th birthday. The company motto, as expected, is spot on: Simple. Useful. Built to last.
Braun: Designed to maintain by Klaus Kemp (Phaidon, €59.95)
making the cut
“Without pattern cutting,” says designer and professor Monisola Omotoso, “no garment could make it to the runway.” As a creative who has worked in all areas of fashion, Omotoso certainly knows what she’s talking about. In the 1990s, her innovative Jac Sac design (a backpack and jacket combination) was emblematic of the creative streetwear styles in the UK at the time, and was sold at Paul Smith and Duffer of St George. Omotoso went on to produce collections of women’s clothing and accessories before growing tired of the constant turnover of the fashion industry and went on to work as a pattern maker (Alexander McQueen and David Koma are among her clients) and train as a teacher in order to pass her skills to a new generation of creators. She has also produced pattern kits for people to try at home. “Pattern cutting is a critical skill in the fashion industry that combines creativity with technical expertise,” says Omotoso. “It plays an important role in turning concepts into functional, wearable products.”
Omotoso’s iconic Jac Sac is currently on display in The Missing Thread, an exhibition about black creativity at London’s Somerset House. Pattern kits are also for sale in the pop-up shop.
Omotoso has upcoming sewing and pattern making courses at the V&A. Check out their website for more details www.patterncuttingdeconstructed.com
Next generation printing
Batch.Works is a British manufacturing company focused on local and circular production using recyclable materials. In collaboration with design consultants Seymourpowell and the Design Council, the company has launched a competition for design students, called Products for Planet. Batch.Works needs to train an AI-powered 3D printing machine. “To do this, we need to print approximately 10,000 parts on our pilot machines in Brighton,” says Milo Mcloughlin-Greening, partner and R&D director at Batch.Works. To turn this into a genuinely creative exercise, students are given the opportunity to suggest items that should be printed for their schools or communities. “This competition takes advantage of this incredible production opportunity to create objects designed to solve real problems,” says Mcloughlin-Greening.
Batch.Works is looking for a product idea with food, materials, mobility or energy themes and the item must obviously be suitable for manufacturing with a 3D printer.
“Many young people have fantastic ideas, so we are delighted to be able to help make some of them a reality through this competition,” added Cat Drew, design director at the Design Council. “By asking students to design products with communities, we can empower AI-based printing service in a truly inclusive way.”
Please send entries to Competition@batchworks.co.uk by December 15. For more information on how to submit your submission, go to Batch.Works
