It has been almost a year since I first met Ellie & Emma - Hastudia girls. Meanwhile they followed their dream, opened their own place, a kind of workshop where you can come and make anything you want, if didn't have the tools to do it at home. In addition, they have a really busy schedule of all kind of workshops such as: making cutting boards from reclaimed wood, upcycled old pallets to shelves, sewing wallets from inner tubes and more.
Last week I dropped by somewhere between the kid's dinner time and a night's drink. It was a low-tech silk screening workshop, where I met Katya, Suzanne, Shane, Emma and Maayan Gutfeld - textile designer and the instructor. I heard a lot of "wow" that night in this workshop, the kind you hear when you see magic and finally discover how it has been done.
If you are in the neighborhood, you probably a permanent residency there, and if you are a tourist planning to come to Tel Aviv, join their face book page and stay tuned. (There is a lot of English being spoken there because the girls are both Canadian, so you can feel at home).
P.S.
The upcycled dryer is not finished yet, please be calm and stay tuned.
Coming up Christmas is a perfect timing to share with you "Lightly" - a charming project by Gal Bulka and Idan Noyberg. Colorful clothes-pegs that illuminates the streets at night.
I didn't figure yet what is more enchanting for me: the designer's involvement in the street look, their brave choice of dealing with the laundry issue (here in Israel the land of milk, honey and lots of sun, we still sin using drying machines), or mostly the clever choice of using the sun twice, once for drying the clothes, and the other for charging the clothes-pegs by solar energy.
The Lightly clothes-peg contain a simple electric part which includes - solar panel, led, night sensor and battery pack. At day time Lightly charges itself by the sun energy and when it gets dark, the night sensor will automatically turn on the light.
The view of clothes hanging in the streets is disappearing of modern cities. Thanks to Lightly it might have a come back, and we - might even hang our laundry in the sun.
גשם גשם משמיים, קול המון טיפות המים... מוי כיף שהגשם הגיע ולכבודו מצאתי פרוייקט גשום במיוחד. לא ממש טפטוף דקיק ואירופאי אלא מונסון של ממש. בשבילו, המציא הארכיטקט ההולנדי, נויל מרס את ספסל המים. ספסל בר-קיימא אשר קולט את מי הגשמים ובעיתות יבשות, ניתן לשחרר שסתום ולהשקות במים אלו את הגינה (סרטון הדגמה בסוף הפוסט).
בחרתי לפתוח דווקא עם פרוייקט זה את סדרת המעצבים הגלובלים שלי (אותם אכתוב בעברית), כי התאהבתי בו (בספסל). אולי כי האוירה מסביב מזכירה לי את ימי הודו העליזים (כשחילקו את האנשים בתור לאוהבי הודו ושונאיה עמדתי בתור הראשון. די בהתחלה). אולי, כי אי אפשר שלא להעלות חיוך "מונהליזי" למראה הספסל המזכיר ספת צ'סטרפילד (כבר שנים אני מחכה לרגע הנכון לרכוש אחת כזו, מצויידת במידות הרגש והשימוש המדוייקות). ואולי, כי נויל פיצח את הבאלנס הנכון בין חדשנות ובין קיימות, על ידי אסטרטגיה אורבאנית ארוכת טווח, אותה פיתח כחבר בקהילת bmw guggenheim lab. יכול להיות שהכי קסם לי כאן היא ההיברידיות הערכית, מעבר לערך הסביבתי של הספה יש לה גם ערך חברתי וקהילתי, בעודה מחברת בין אנשים שונים במרחב הציבורי.
כל התמונות נלקחו ממאגרו האישי של המעצב ומכרטיס הפייסבוק של הפרוייקט.
I have met Tal Mor and Tom Bendkovski at the Ecomania - an alternative sustainable event. Their lamps were shining at me from the end of the room. Maybe it was the their vital young energy, or the familiar feeling of something you recognize but you take a second to remember from where.
RE BIKE lamps are made from useless bike's chassis. Those two designers seems to be from the BMX generation. Loving those branded iron pipes, with the need to create a functional objects, led them to make this series of lamps, and by that, giving the honorable chassis a new life - a second chance with a new interpretation.
OGE /// גינת לילה העושה שימוש באנרגיה מתחדשת. שואבת אנרגיה סולרית ביום ומאירה את הפרחים בלילה
OGE Creative Group are going to exhibit this month, at the Fall-In events (Michigan’s Great Lakes Bay Region). Their project "Night Garden" is a magical Garden that offers a variety of flowers of different sizes and types of illumination, which come alive only at night. Powered entirely by solar energy, the flowers are charged by sunlight during the day; and illuminated through energy-saving LED lights, at night. The Garden demonstrates the
importance and beauty of alternative energy, in protecting the environment, thus, safeguarding our future.
The group's aim for this installation is to demonstrate that by using alternative energy and technology, not only are they safeguarding our environment, but they are also creating a poetic, magical experience – A visual showcase of how sustainable energy and installations can be beneficial for our cities and our lives.
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NightGarden / Fallin - Michigan’s Great Lakes Bay Region / 2013
NightGarden / Fallin - Michigan’s Great Lakes Bay Region / 2013
Solar Powered Night Garden /// Light in Jerusalem Festival /// 2009
Solar Powered Night Garden /// Light in Jerusalem Festival /// 2009
And another enchanting project of the OGE group, that I have fallen in love with:
Prima Ballerina by OGE at Lighting Festival Jerusalem 2013
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This installation breathes life into the classical music box. It offers a glimpse of shared childhood experiences of the excitement when you opened the box. Shrouded in bright colorful LED lights, the ballerina dances against the background of the massive old city walls; twinkling, sparkling and delicate.
Credits and special thanks to:
Music: music box version of Utada Hikaru's "First Love", published by EMI Japan/Universal
~ "The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions". Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le Cru et le cuit, 1964 ~ Why I admire her so much? Adital Ela doesn't go along on the usual path. As a second year-design-student at the H.I.T, she already had noticed that designers were asked to answer a brief. Designers were asked to prepare sketches for a toaster or for an iron in a time that earth was screaming HELP... She thinks that designers should know how to ask the right questions. As she asks today HER students: "What kind of an important valuable destiny we choose to give our creative quality? Who does it serve?"
~ What does she do?
For her final sustainable design project, she had spent 10 months in the rural areas of India. She observed their traditional inevitable sustainable life, and was hooked. One main ceremony was particularly capture her mind. The Chai. She mostly was fascinating by the chai craft cup. They make it from the soil and after drinking, they break it on the ground like it is the natural way to do. And it is.
That was the seed for starting her Terra project, and the beginning of her present exploration and research of production from soil. She believes in implementing old traditional methods in new technologies.
Adital: Can walking in the city feel charging as walking in the forest?
Adital asks in one of her talks
Can women think? A postcard in Adital's workshop
~ What is the Windy light project? (or How to upcycle wind?)
In a wider aspect Adital wants to use our local abundance (earth, wind, and water) to design our personal sustainable uses. like the windy light for example. It's a street light made of renewable wind energy. It is designed to utilize even a soft gust of wind and is created from a repetitive module which integrates wind collection and a LED light source into one element.
Windy Light is a collection of self-sufficient outdoor lights operated by wind energy
~ What is the Terra project? (or How to upcycle earth?)
Stools made of 100% natural material: renewable soil, upcycle and reuse of construction and agriculture waste, in a unique compression process, that was developed based on a long term study of materials and of ancient building methods. This work has been presented in the Ljubljana 23rd Biennial (and have been awarded there), in the Slow Design Exhibition in Budapest and in the Design Museum Holon.
Terra stools. Emotional capsule. Some of the land came from an archaeological site in Jerusalem.
The lovely Terra project's stop motion-making off-movie:
~Are you a design student? If you are, you can watch Adital's last talk on TEDxJerusalem and explore more of her inspiring questions in her You tube channel.
~If you ask me - I believe she is a pioneer, kind of scientist-designer, and her genuine search is representing a holistic approach which will eventually help finding the golden mean between sustainability and technology.
