Ilse Crawford on human emotion

[Music] thank you very much first told to say it's great to be here I was here a few years ago as a speaker but one of the most wonderful things about being invited back is to be here and be able to incredible conference to be here listening to people from around the world talking to be here with you seeing the world from a different perspective it's fantastic so it's worth coming it just for that so thank you very much I am here to talk about being human this is my obsession being human how to tie in our basic emotions with design that's what fascinates me how our psyches are affected by our environment how to make environments at resonate with our emotions how to make environments that have a strong energy but have a life every night has me environments that feel good or just feel don't know if you can see that well that images by a guy called Ben Frey and it's from exhibition that they mentioned before design of the elastic mind currently on at MoMA in New York and it's a visualization of the human DNA which as you can see is 98.7% she at one point two seven percent something different that makes us human I think it's a fantastic visualization because I think it shows how we haven't home at that far okay here we are only cities that we've built but it's you know five and a half thousand years or so since history began as a short time well the first waiting was discovered so we're not going to have evil that far from to so many of the things that make him feel happy strange do not make us feel happy and I think the world were in today we often forget bad survival for example appetite is interesting one we're hardwired with appetite which is a problem in our world because food for some is in Britain at the moment apparently one in three ten years ten year olds is considered obese and one in four five year olds and that's pretty frightening prognosis quite apart from all the other issues there but why is that obviously we know it's exercise and so on but diets just don't work we're hardwired to search for food food for most people in the world is extremely hard to come by and certainly was historically so you needed hunger the in trouble is that in our world we still have it and it's only the fridge Nietzsche said all evidence of truth only comes from a sensitive our bodies are telling us what we need to survive all the time the trouble is it's not adapted to the modern world protection again a fundamental Drive this is from as last hierarchy of needs we all feel uncomfortable if we sit with our backs turned to the door we all head straight for the comfortable chair that's an animal reaction and yet if you go to the lab and you look at the furniture there how much of it is really appealing to that primal side although I have to say keep that I would say is completely outside of that here's of course dude including monkey manta very well named love contact nurture we're meant to be together with pack animals historically many - about hundred years ago people used to sleep together it was sin that many more we last to be together we love to eat together ice waters in project means that as a cook children can learn everything from food they can learn how to grow how to nurture how to share how to relate to each other around the cycle of food and a lot of statistics show that for example child crime goes off in housing estates where it's clear but they do not need to go back it's a way of meeting and talking without it being functional there are some recent statistics that suggested that the divorce rate is dropping in parallel with people eating together more often of course sweet of sweet do not respect another one at the primal needs according to Maslow at least respect for our bodies and respectful respect to the fact that we live with it rather than on it again it heaters light showed how you can make beautiful things with nature with water using it properties rather than using vast quantities of water that goes into so much industrial production without us even knowing if we think about water obviously have been such incredible advances in hygiene and so on by having fresh water on tap but we don't valuate anymore now we're prepared to buy it in bottles we don't respect what comes out of a tap that relationship of respect needs to be redressed it's a very human relation and it creates limits natural limits finally the idea of self-realization that thing that makes us different that human thing to realize our creativity that we are both a part of the gang but also separate that there's something that makes us different it's time to come out as yourself because that is what makes you you and that's true here you have something very special here a very particular local DNA it's time to come out as yourself in cities now and increasingly the world is all about cities by 2010 50% of the world will be living in cities we're very very isolated in America apparently by 2010 we be seen situation where 30% of the population first percent of the population living a single person households and that's quite shocking really it's very very lonely within future no wonder we want more no wonder we want more contact well rather separated from each other even if we've got a million people and also and we think that we're finding out more we have this idea but you know more information we have the better decisions we make the better choices we'll make but all the evidence would suggest that's not what it takes there's a book blink which discusses the idea but actually we make many choices on the spur of the moment but in fact our instinct venya slices through all the necessary things we need to know very very quickly which is quite logical really if you think back to the times when we would have needed to make decisions rather quickly and not had time to Google at least different options the internet might have powerful muscles no personality a lot of modern goes back to the Bauhaus after all the founding father and then it was all about a new world of space and light and hiding because the world it was breaking away from the world destroyed by war was dirty poor and disease written but now the legacy of that of course is increasingly impoverished it's glass it's metal it's polished food especially in public spaces it can be very very inhuman offices no more than white-collar factories hospitals from all those we need to bring them together when you see those you can integrate them my probably I've been trying to mix the right and the left brain from a man who was absolutely against lazy complacency he was a radical economist and figured the world doesn't have to keep up with reality and was constantly amazed by how the world just didn't seem to be in sync with the way that people really live an artist quite the opposite extreme the kind of woman if she saw a great movie or the other Amba diamond even though we didn't have a car would insist all fire on hitch height laughter we have to make an effort when I was 12 she got cancer and that was probably a very primitive thing for me because in addition to being a hockey team and doing all the things that strongly teenagers do I had to hang out a lot in cancer wards and I learned quite a few things from that one was that at least it seemed to me that warm was a much better idea be cool the other was that basically when life is incredibly strong personalities far more interesting than in the outside world and the last was that you know basically you can't bet on it you better get a move on no time it's not necessarily on your side so in my mid-twenties I ended up doing L decoration young really it was an accident until they didn't mean they started giving it to me as a supplement and then the five of us art students laptop making it very enthusiastically and that's both very cheesy so they thought oh well let's stick with it and then before they knew it they had success on that house it was an amazing experience doing that my team and a huge learning curve for me too because I got to see literally hundreds of houses I think and not only see them but also examine them intimately on the mic box and do captions for every single detail so I learned quite quickly what worked and what I also saw was that many of the places that look good in too deep actually felt terrible in the flesh you know that beautiful big room that double spray no one used it you know they were in the bathroom having an argument in fact the houses that felt very few and far between and so I started my own research into architecture into space that felt good there was very different written about it individually neuroscience in architecture in history in poetry you come across things and I started to drawing the mark as a consequence of that I was asked by midnight to start well being and you expressed the basic premise of that is one eye sees the other feels cool head warm heart how to integrate the way things look with the way they feel a typical project which by a guy who type of a man who is a musician and basically design railings that were tuned it's such an obvious idea the two senses but certain support so basically when the kids run their stick along it's it's a musical refrain and then that's to do well we start the day with porridge because it keeps you going after me working for me different nationalities Indian Chinese Swiss different disciplines to architects designers and all sit around - funnily enough we used to sit at individual desks and then when I decided to go for it and get a bit bigger the only way we could squish into this rather tiny apartment was to take people a bit resistant at first but I can't tell you how much better it's amazing we all work together risk we sharply move along we help each other it's amazing how it's changed our way of working it's much easier than it ever was and then downstairs which is where we take tricky clients when they just don't seem to be getting the theory and we find that by sitting them in a nice velvet chair feeding them quite a lot they don't really come round so what we do is spaces and or smelt heard and felt spaces but whichever way you cut them and the same whichever sense you apply spaces that you feel as well as see but we always start with context but DNA the thing that makes it the thing is the unique thing you always start with that so for example but a might a project it's amazing it's something that I can see could travel the world but I'm not sure you can ever come to that solution as an abstract theory it has to have grown out of a real situation after the real budget really experience real conditions but I can see something that being globally relevant project what do I do ah I'm not a designer by training and I don't think I'm an interior designer although we do interiors a typical working process and I'll take you through a few projects involves us meeting the club when they have really no aesthetic direction and building the idea around who they are around what they do building the world if you like in some places it's been as Extreme as us choosing the architect choosing the gardener finding the coop finding the operation manager choosing-choosing their uniforms are getting enormous design doing the graphics even doing the photography afterwards to market the whole story because everything has to feel the same this project the Grand Hotel Stockholm is a restaurant project for a wrestler Paul Mattias norgren's Swedish and specializes in Swedish food but an open-minded Swedish food so it's Swedish but from the point of view of somebody who looks at the world the way of seeing the world rather than prescriptive it's not a style he liked and he wanted us to do an environment that was the tangible version of that this is the bar that links the two restaurants there are two restaurants as a fast restaurant and slow restaurant and I'm explained that as we go through and the bar in between has this rather amazing her Alva cream laser-cut by Studios Europe and it brings together Viking silhouettes with cooking utensils instead of it being the classical hot restaurant and diffusion we thought about it actually that's not what's going on here but there's a nice posh restaurant is not about status as far as the cooks are concerned it's about love for them it's about incredible ingredients hours of time and attention real thought they never make money on those restaurants even if they cost 300 euros a head they always lose money their total labor of love and the people who go to them but going because it's a really special occasion it's really meaningful so we turned the whole thing on its time put it behind a secret door so it's like a magic world and the twist on the dining room really a kind of sexy dining room in a way discreet charm of the bourgeoisie little velvet sofas the book areas we can sit together intimately because it's novice its family it's it's about emotional things it's not about status even if the quality is amazing and people are in there like hours only 3-4 hours it has to feel like somebody really relax for me materials are a language materials that people messages when we touch we feel we decide what they see I mean I'm pretty when you go through Heathrow Airport you know it's crappy because you know when you go through think Panhandle its wooden floor you get a message about what kind of country are going into every material you touch is giving you a message and materials are so so important in design there's a wonderful book it's quite hard to read but it's interesting really interesting and worth lying through will the inquiry by design by Jack Hodgins I saw and he has made the meet between neuroscience and design particularly to do without science patients because their visual memory and apparently for them spaces that have a very strong whisper element that have three dimensional qualities I have amazing materials of amazing smells that have music bring back their memories it's amazing and probably it means it's the same for us it means that we are like if they respond to those things more strongly even in the visual so the fast food not that fast but faster makes references to the Swedish materials the floor from the building which we did in a much bigger design it's got the click of the station bar its robust its rigorous it's not somewhere that you would hang about for hours and hours but it's got a lovely noisy energy to it and we mix 17th century tables with modern art but cuz I really love the idea that you can eat all the 17th century table to get back the soul of that but by putting them with modern you don't see them as being old as being traditional you just see them as old as being lost and somehow the combination just makes cooks are they - there's an amazing atmosphere in the kitchen and they're really happy in the restaurant so where people are back they are which is break this is another project that's about to come to fruition this summer although some of its it's working with horrible English pubs they were nice once but I'll show you the picture at the end to see what it was like before we started one finds one's best welcome at an inn that was what was written on the sign above the door this is the underneath it was the venn innkeeper 1900 mr. Rockler who sadly lost everything when there was a flood and his wine bottles lost their labels and this is some of the graphics that we're generating around the ends it's based on the idea of something which is called the creepy which is a little stool which some sorts of wood because that area is a furniture making area so we're trying to tell a modern story of the in you even if it's referring back to the Old West is the frame in many ways is one of the most ongoing ways the buildings exertion and on the ecological in the sense that it loses least heat and you reduce the amount of new building itself this community one of the things that happened to all those parts was that they turned their back on the world they were in particularly when they water by hotel groups and so they became irrelevant to the communities they were evasive and we have made huge efforts in the different places to integrate the people who live around whether it's to showcase the aerial photographs area or to bring in local suppliers to the kitchen whether it's to give the garden over to open their vents or allow people to pass funerals and funeral celebrations in some of the rooms trying to just get them into the life of the area again because that's what they were this was what it was for a very long time in theory and this is what it's beginning to be in practice there's two opening both relatively near each other and they're 11th century buildings the food is in a way a manifestation of the architecture so it's really English ingredients but it's separate it's they're not heavily like English traditional food used to be and the rooms are going to be affordable in English just over a hundred quid a night somewhere where people can go and stay during the week for business because there's a lot of corporate stuff around there cream teas all the things you want not pretentious just somewhere to be with your family somewhere that you can be with many generations and that was before so it's moved on a bit sarah has group this is a group of men I've been working with yes it's in fact a club it's a media club most of the people who belong to it either filmmakers or advertising the guys so it's essentially a creative gang they're pretty rowdy and drink a lot and got mental tell so it's the famous say the cross sinara so anyway this now but it's standard basic london bar what i have done with them is to build a identity for them in a way made a three-dimensional world first project with them were serving the country then the next project was his face in new york so her house translating an English pop to me or in any case seemed pretty far-fetched because you know in theory at least the Americans don't do clubs also they've got the thing about being very well groomed and you know a friend of mine said you couldn't possibly moving back to number because they're all like trucks you certainly couldn't have translated so her house direct to New York so we built an idea around it basically developed her English look that had gone to New York the buildings in the Meatpacking District so it took that as the context but made the place which was a world for the English visitor service sort of image eccentrics have some Neil it had to be robust because these guys destroy everything they touch Babbington off the furniture that started off the straight leg think about with curly links after years so hence we ended up with quite sturdy traditional furniture because it lasts but by juxtaposing it with the scale light or graphics we modernize this so as well you notice things more had to be rough hotels I think a mostly way to smooth you don't feel anything you know your Crescent winning feel it and this room was literally something that we did to test colors from building but it was so beautiful we laughed a bit and that's fine and the babies it had to work it had to be functional as well as these rooms they used more Nexus apartments by people who are they working for probably three or four days at a time mostly don't they sometimes they've got their kids with them sometimes they haven't sometimes they got the girlfriend in bed and the meeting on the sofa so we worked out ways of making it functional incredibly well as well as look through it I've got a thing about beds not only did we always used to see it together they were also hugely celebratory things the famous love nest they were places where apparently if do could fall him out with another Duke and he wanted to show that that's who they were on speakers again you would get into bed with the other people and it sort of showed off a bit so in fact I've got a huge a huge part player that's saying design where can I get my attention here they were huge as well as having a huge party and you could probably use them a lot and then the conference room is usually done in a really dreary way usually let me a bit like the office but not at the office which is Panthers are people leaving the office to get away from the office so we may look completely different the only thing that had to be true was that it had to be able to be cleaned in 15 minutes so you know if that's the brief there's a hell of a lot you can do which is amazing of course that's the thing that that's the finished result it wasn't quite like that in the doing these guys didn't have much money and it was a fairly harebrained scheme at least everybody thought so at the time it's been a very successful book we had so much press when it was being done st. Denis is also no one want to go so you know people were quite nervous tempers were frayed they said that contractor three months before it's finished and decided to do it themselves they ran out of money half the way through so three months designing their minds nearly all the way through trying to keep them from losing their minds nine months detailing of doing this well that's normal ten things very rough and rainy room sets to seduce the suits all these new investors we have to take ground to persuade that it was really going to be great when all the walls was a building site bringing furniture in running around the bin bags to stop it from destroying the furniture when it rained 12 months on site pretty quick so we had to come up with the design that wasn't you know detail and tricky to build three months shopping which I did as much as possible locally we had don't see some things that have to be altered in advance but I also did a lot with local suppliers I think it's quite important to embed local people into your project 10 days carry on flights of stairs picked I was on the 3rd to the 6th floor and the lifts weren't working as well and twelve months waiting to be paid that was really scary I used to dream of checks and because the thing about doing risky projects is that on the whole people who take risks usually have risky finances at that point my studio was wrong from my flat flat when everybody turned up I knew it's time to go my meetings of their kind were held in my bed because that was the only clear surface he was quite impressed I was quite embarrassed we've done a little bit since then but that was kind of what it took to be able to do interesting projects this is another project also has a mini spa in Notting Hill based on the idea of Kashyap back to mr. Kashyap which is where they start at the Spong this is now series of captions using materials that came from the English countryside that had the tactility of the English countryside and most importantly being sociable because I have a thing about spars I don't understand why it's seen as a good idea to lie in a 9 by 13 13 treatment room and I like the idea of manicures pedicures all of that but surely it should be something that should be sociable as it is in many parts of the world when you've got not much time surely it's a great idea to have a place where you can go with your friends and do that kind of stuff together rather than be locked away in tiny little treatment rooms with whale musical birds or something I mean you know it's too subtle make sense I know they're trying it's not to be mean about that but you know we don't really have time and packaging we did a whole range of product which has come out of the kasha it's needed to have a strong graphic identity because it's going out to retailers with lots of competitive merchandise it needed to look good together but it needed to talk about the nature about cash about the herbs from Paddington that go into the mix and they do and then the last project so has to Kony's it was a bizarre thing for them to buy but they did anyway failing Italian restaurant totally failing it had a sin interior which is bizarre for a North Italian restaurant and three guys drinking brandy in the bar in the afternoon which was kind of strange since it was sandwiched between Wall Street and both hats so it seemed pretty obvious to me that what you'll do is give it its wiggle in its walk maybe the place where your heels click and your could swing your hips when you walked in which is exactly what it is right now pick up from history if they cut from its roots from Venice to Verona use the materials that we used in those bars and in fact the floor was made by a marble company just outside Venice pick up the references from those cities but obviously take them on move them on this is kissing corner even the chairs came from Iran materials cool means don't go and in your 50s it's been mrs. Robinson go to the beach I'm looking forward to the exit we don't do many products although it's not intentional exactly but it's something that comes out of context to me I've had a hard time thinking about it in the abstract but context to me yes and we were asked by was amazing people must birth in Stockholm to do a low energy of his life because the guy who owns the company he's younger but the Middle East and he wants to do office lighting got all the technology that it needs to have uses sustainable light sources endings or low energy Hodgins with the view that you should be reducing may ambient lighting offices because that's what uses so much electricity it's just so wasteful and it makes you feel rubbish when you're working late at night you want your own task light you don't want to be sort of flooded with like that's interrogation so we looked at it as a friend we looked at it as a theme we wanted us to do when you're working mate a sturdy friend so we mix cast iron wood and a bone china it's a low energy halogen so it had to be with the material that it would glow through and there are these exact now and it's a real product it's incredible because the companies and prosper but just really brilliant at producing so the prices are already good we did them with three other designers James Irvin Arena John Murray Messer and they're all really interesting products and I think as far as I know it's the first company to do no energy but we don't just do stuff like hospitality and for people who can't afford it for me design it's not about the money no decisive designs a way of seeing and one of our projects which money it's for Notting Hill has an association which provides affordable housing they have a policy now of selling like half their houses to fund but it's a tricky one because it's all about the community as far as their how do you sell community investment how do you make them part of the community because you know it's a bit of a conflict so we tried to resolve that conflict for them and we furnished the show flat in Whitechapel all with local suppliers so we tried to build on that side community to show what great things could come from it and to make it more valuable as an idea and also after that project we're now working on the affordable site and taking over things that really can be used in affordable housing but just aren't for no real reason now why not have a really great full domain floor why not have sliding walls instead of just being shrunk and version of the normal flat and why spend on the kitchen why not just let people make that decision themselves all those price decisions count why have a sitting room nobody uses sitting rooms why not make it a kitchen diner and make it feel more spacious why had cupboards in the bedroom when so it's been an interesting project and I'm hoping but by making the affordable housing section flats are killing there may be those cheap not very cheap in London but cheapest in London apartments might slightly better quality at the moment they snapped up by develop this and they feel terrible and the finishes are really really dreadful and for no reason welcome again same places we did the clubroom so this is the guy who invented electricity Nikola Tesla and it was really just to show how science is set up and we did a lot of history it's set up as big you know the consequence of rational decisions you know all those carefully measured experiments so when we were asked to do the clubroom we based it on the idea the other heart of the brain so instead of it being the cool head we don't pay a bit to the warm heart to serendipity to nonconformity to the spaces in between when discoveries really happened when the cat knocks over that test tube and suddenly you've got something you didn't know actually about discovery of a spittoon when it currently was research for something quite different and the researcher sister was asked to test something and you thought to taste it and was born that's how things happen so we did a club room in this big building which houses their library as well as the collection and it's a place where they can go work doing the daily their lunch where they have get-togethers and bring together art in science left and right brain reboot so it nice comfy chairs and chairs just put the nonconformist fairly engraved one armchairs which in fact a lot more comfortable than too old we tried to do what we can just on a daily basis really not so much big ideas but just ideas we can do so for example there's a local Sports Center we made the connection between them and do the clients and do that so supplying the paint to redo the whole community center I think those daily deeds can sometimes achieve a lot more than big things that you won't get around to as a consequence we're now on their guest list to the oldies party you can see my rock dancing in the back it's completely fabulous so to sum up how do we bring it together well we think context is you know one of the most important ways that you can bring together the left and the right brain because it comes from experience we'll then design that it can be smelt heard and felt it must be this girl and it must be true through and through you can always tell when something's not quite right it's one thing there's suddenly jars in the end it's all about life at the end thank you very much so so much thanks for coming back to show us we have two questions for you the first question is how has the virtual world affected our demand for natural and handmade products in your opinion I think it really it has not because it's about rebalancing really we have access to them first of all which is amazing when that network of local producers could never have happened without the virtual so it's possible but we yearn for it we're hungry for it so it's a paradox but I think because of the virtual that reconnection with the natural is not possible but we also desire it second question is impossible for interior design to put us in touch with our humanity again and not just shelters from the human experience that's what we're trying to do you

Channel: Design Indaba

Views: 3,622

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Design Indaba, design, creativity, Ilse Crawford, English pubs, modern edge, interior design, creative director, lighting, homeware, furniture design, furniture

Id: A9ilzpiqmvM

Length: 44min 37sec (2677 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020