This month’s news features all kinds of unusual production materials, from mycelium to gingerbread. There is also the option for students to have their design projects 3D printed by London company Batch.Works. Hopefully there is something for everyone.
The bride wore mold
Choosing a wedding dress is a special moment. Some brides go for a family heirloom, others dream of designer dresses. Dasha Tsapenko is probably one of the few who actually grows her own dress. The biotextile designer is fascinated by the shared connections and production issues of fashion and agriculture, and the Atelier Dasha Tsapenko explores ways to make material from agricultural by-products and plants. The studio has made fur from bean pods, textile dyes from harvest waste and fungal felt. For her dress, Tsapenko was inspired by the custom from her Ukrainian homeland of women wearing hand-embroidered bridal blouses.
Tsapenko purchased 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 a fabric as it grew, which could then be made into a fungal dress. She envisions a new wedding tradition where the dress is buried after the wedding.
“It felt good not to handle the wedding dress carefully and worry about it getting dirty, wet or dusty,” says Tsapenko. ‘Knowing that the dress would return to Earth after the wedding in the nearby forest made it easier to run, jump and do cartwheels. 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, please contact Dasha Tsapenko via her website
Written in black and white
In 2016, Washington DC-based graphic designer Tré Seals looked online for inspiration. He felt like everything he looked at seemed monotonous and after reading that more than 85% of practicing designers in the US were white, he started thinking about how these two things are connected. As he says on his website: “You could say this is because of our obsession with grids and perfection, but the truth is there was no culture and no character.”
He decided to start his own diversity-oriented type foundry and Vocal Type was launched. Seals uses inspiration from the culture and history of underrepresented communities to create custom typography. Examples include his VTC Garibaldi type, inspired by anti-fascist posters and pamphlets produced during World War II, and VTC Du Bois, taken from civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois’s infographics showing how African Americans were affected by racism.
This year, Seals has been shortlisted for the Emerging Designer award at the annual Dezeen Awards, with the winner to be announced this week. As he says: “Everyone needs to have a seat at the table. The world is becoming increasingly diverse and our industry must catch up.”
For more information about Seals, visit Vocal Type. The 2023 Dezeen Awards 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 over the Christmas period, but this year marks the first time the charity has opened in New York. MoA aims to engage the public with the buildings around them and how they are used. Every year the charity asks leading architects to create gingerbread buildings to celebrate the holidays – and also to get visitors thinking about the challenges of the built environment. The New York Gingerbread City includes the work of more than 50 architects and shares the Water in Cities theme with its London twin. There are gingerbread making workshops daily and NY restaurant Balthazar has created sweet treats to take home. Melissa Woolford, Founder and Director of MoA and creator of The Gingerbread City says: “We are using this to showcase design and the impact it can have on our cities and countryside, taking into account climate change and how we will live in the future. to live. By creating a metropolis of sweet treats, we can make complex ideas accessible in a welcoming environment that smells delicious!”
Visit New York Gingerbread City until January 7
Easy. Usable. Sustainable Built
Braun is one of the few brands that is ubiquitous yet groundbreaking. The electronic goods company was founded by Max Braun in Frankfurt in 1921, 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 contains more than 500 images and catalogs of Braun’s defining moments. The Braun brand is known among satisfied customers for its stereos, kitchen appliances and electric shavers. But it is also admired in design circles for working practices influenced by Bauhaus and for providing a launching pad for some of the world’s greatest 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 mark Braun’s 100th anniversary. The company motto is, unsurprisingly, apt: Simple. Usable. Sustainable Built.
Braun: Designed to preserve by Klaus Kemp (Phaidon, £59.95)
Making the cut
“Without pattern cutting,” says designer and teacher Monisola Omotoso, “no clothes would make it onto the catwalk.” As a creative who has worked in every area of fashion, Omotoso certainly knows what she’s talking about. In the 1990s, her innovative Jac Sac design – a combination backpack and jacket – was emblematic of the UK’s creative streetwear styles of the time, and was sold at St George’s Paul Smith and Duffer. Omotoso continued producing women’s clothing and accessories collections before growing tired of the constant turnover in the fashion industry and turning to working as a pattern cutter (Alexander McQueen and David Koma are among her clients) and training to become a teacher, so she could get her degree. skills to a new generation of makers. She has also created pattern kits for people to try at home. “Pattern cutting is a fundamental skill in the fashion industry that combines creativity with technical expertise,” says Omotoso. “It plays an important role in turning concepts into wearable, functional products.”
Omotoso’s iconic Jac Sac is currently on display in The Missing Thread, an exhibition about black creativity at London’s Somerset House. The pattern packs can also be purchased in the pop-up shop.
Omotoso has sewing and pattern making courses at the V&A. For more information see her website www.patterncuttingdeconstructed.com
Next generation printing
Batch.Works is a British manufacturing company that focuses on local and circular production using recyclable materials. Working 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 around 10,000 parts on our pilot machines in Brighton,” says Milo Mcloughlin-Greening, partner and head of R&D at Batch.Works. To make it a truly creative exercise, it offers students the opportunity to propose items to be printed for their schools or communities. “This competition takes advantage of this amazing manufacturing opportunity to create objects designed to solve real-world problems,” says Mcloughlin-Greening.
Batch.Works is looking for a product idea with the themes of food, materials, mobility or energy and the item must of course be suitable for being manufactured with a 3D printer.
“So many young people have fantastic ideas, so we’re thrilled to be able to help turn some of them into reality through this competition,” said Cat Drew, chief designer at the Design Council. “By asking students to co-design products with communities, we can train the AI-based printing service in a truly inclusive way.”
Send your entries to competition@batchworks.co.uk by December 15. Visit Batch.Works for more information on how to present your submission