"Digital" is the keyword to decode our society: social networks, apps, texts, games and emails dictate indeed not just our lives, but the way we relate to each other. Yet all the focus on what's visually striking but immaterial has definitely numbed our senses.
The Design Academy Eindhoven is inviting visitors to Milan Design Week to reconnect with tactility through a project entitled "Touch Base" (until 17th April). Curated by Ilse Crawford and the academy's creative director Thomas Widdershoven, "Touch Base" is an introduction to a sort of counter-movement shaped by the Academy students.
Touching is not just a sensation, but a human need and the students' projects aim at recapturing through it the real essence of life, reacting in this way to the overwhelming presence of technology and digitalism in our everyday lives. To this purpose, the event also features "Petting Zoo 2.0" an area conceived by a team of students in collaboration with their tutors and supervisors in which visitors can touch two sheep, two goats and, well, the occasional human.
The actual "Touch Base" event features instead a wide range of projects going from interior design to conceptual and artistic ideas focused on rediscovering the female body or the space surrounding us. The best thing about the event is that quite a few pieces and projects included may be of interest to fashion and textile designers.
Moving from the meanings and symbolism attributed to hair throughout the centuries and linking with ideas of modern beauty, Alix-Marie Bizet did an in-depth research and created designs using this material.
No hairs are discarded, though, in Bizet's pieces, but all are needed and wanted: in this way the designer hints at the diversity of individuals, tackling democracy and equality in a society that is sadly becoming more and more racist.
There's horsehair rather than human hair in Charlotte Jonckheer's project: her special carpet made with black horsehair, wool, cotton and chenille in various lengths and patterns is designed to offer a tactile surface for people to pace up and down while they wait, make phone calls, think or worry.
As people move on the rug, the surface prickles their senses and they also get more relaxed, easying the tension and feeling better.
Sanne Muiser also developed a strongly tactile material, a "second skin" reminiscent of fur but made by needle-punching natural materials such as wool and sisal into a man-made latex base, creating in this way juxtapositions beween the natural and synthetic worlds.
Some students came up with surprisingly innovative projects to revitalise local communities or recover materials (and skills…) getting wasted or disappearing: Guilhem de Cazenove launched a mobile wool processing unit re-valueing a by-product of sheep farming, fleece.
The project turns shepherds into producers of washed wool, while people degreasing, washing, drying, carding and felting help preserve these age-old traditional skills.
Sarmīte Polakova was instead inspired by trees rather than animals: the designer explored the world of pine trees and found out that in Latvia they are extremely common.
Under their inner bark, pine trees hide a soft material with a leather-like quality and a lifespan of up to two years. The designer made a small collection of objects using the material from a single tree; the products can be returned to the soil and enrich it for the next growth after their lifespan is exhausted.
Pine trees are also behind the project by Tamara Orjola focused on researching the potential of pine tree needles. Once processed, crushed, soaked, steamed, and pressed the needles can indeed be transformed into textiles, composites and paper and the designer proved her theories by creating a series of stools and carpets made with pine needles.
Nina Gautier also found hidden properties in an unusual material – stinging nettles – combining nettle fibres into her fabrics and making dyes in multiple shades of green. The result was a collection of woven blankets that are surprisingly strong, soft and silky.
There are also further intriguing materials developed by Erez Nevi Pana and Ekaterina Semenova: the former came up with a solid black combination of soil, fungi and other natural materials such as sugar. Tthe materials are measured by volume/weight and mixed together creating a chemical reaction that allows the earth to rise like dough to double its original size; they are then shaped and baked, a process that makes them hard.
Ekaterina Semenova focused on reducing milk waste: inspired by an old Russian practice, she collected leftovers from neighbourhood households and applied them to ceramics, discovering that milk can provide a durable waterproof glaze, even when it's spoiled. By dipping earthenware into different dairy products – including yoghurt – various shades of silky brown appear after baking.
There is a lot of empty talk about recycling in fashion or producing "green" collections, but most of the groups, brands and designers involved in such projects quite often prove they never did any kind of genuine researches to develop really innovative and experimental materials.
The students at the Design Academy Eindhoven deserve instead to be praised for coming up with very intriguing experimentations and tactile products with great potential. Quite a few of the ideas developed for textiles could indeed be applied to the garment or accessories industry. But there are other techniques that may turn useful in a fashion collection: Adrianus Kundert van Nieuwkoop created for example a series of rugs that become more beautiful as the yarn or the weave become damaged, and the rug begins to reveal a different colour, texture, or pattern. This could be a great solution for clothes that may help us all giving more value to a garment and cherishing it for a longer time.
Some of these ideas may just remain at the experimental level or be developed only for the interior design sector, but it is great to see that younger generations of designers are reconnecting in a clever way to the world surrounding us all and to the needs of society through the physical and emotional sensations that touching may provide us.
"Touch Base", Laundry House, Via Cletto Arrighi 10, Milan, until 17th April.
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