Last week I took a trip to Kensington for a couple exhibitions that are part of London Design Festival. The main exhibit I was looking forward to was the Craft x Tech showcase at the V&A. Craft x Tech is an initiative that injects new ideas and technologies into traditional Japanese craft. It is striving to breathe new air into the Japanese crafts, which has been slowly declining in recent times. The piece that I found most inspiring was a collaboration between Sabine Marcelis a Dutch designer and Kawatsura Shikki, a Japanese Lacquerware craftsman. The wall mounted piece was most striking to me, “inspired by the interplay of light and materiality”, the piece has a single slice down the middle. This object inspired me to move around the room and look at it from different angles, the way the 30 layers of lacquer manipulated the light, made me acknowledge not only how the light was dancing on the art, but how it was behaving in the room itself. The simple shape of the piece put me in mind of a standard acoustic panel. How could I capture this curiosity with a wall mounted piece that is designed to play with sound? Not only affecting the sound of a space like a standard acoustic panel, but drawing attention to the sound of a space as the art itself.

For LDF, Kensington was the centre of the Brompton Design District, so there were a few very interesting exhibitions in the area. Another I found intriguing was RCA, MA DESIGN PRODUCTS: CURIOUS HABITS – DESIGN AS LEARNING. Here I seen a student who was using bio-materials to create watch straps and other products. Their display of material examples was striking as I wasn’t aware that such a variety of materials could be made from waste etc. This made me think about why I was using cork for previous projects, and if I could possibly use bio materials moving forward as a substitute for standard materials used for acoustic treatment.