MA Design (Ceramics); MA Design (Furniture); MA Design (Jewellery) Central Saint Martins ’16
MA Design (Ceramics); MA Design (Furniture); MA Design (Jewellery) Welcome to our 2016 graduating year. I’d like to take the opportunity of this catalogue to explain about our values as a course as, following our revalidation this year, we look forward as a team. MA Design; a ‘by project MA’ is defined around three areas of discipline and practice; ceramics, furniture or jewellery. Each of these disciplines has a rich tradition in material-led creativity. Framed within one course, we explore the dialogue between these disciplines and the boundaries and definitions
of ceramics, furniture and jewellery. The aim is to embrace areas of practice far beyond traditional designations. The depth of disciplinary knowledge in the course allows a range of hybrid practices to emerge through this dialogue, that disrupt assumptions around craft and manufacture, that mesh outcomes with a full range of future forms of practice from the material to the virtual to the intangible. The effects of trans-disciplinarity, a key benefit of an immersion within an art & design university,
grows within the intimate environment of course debate and discourse enabling cross, trans and multi disciplinary practice to come into play. The three disciplines emerge from a deeply rooted understanding of materiality. Working in collaboration disrupts habitual assumptions around these traditional designations of, for example; ideas around scale, relationships to the body or contexts of use. Alternative perspectives create enhanced opportunities for exploration and innovation.
Students explore beyond the development of models into working prototypes through practical iteration and reiteration. This makes our graduates entrepreneurial and highly employable. As more than thirty five projects ebb and flow through the studio space each year, the entire course flexes and morphs as individual projects become enriched and enlivened. Knowledge of discourse and the application of design in global industry contexts is underscored by Central Saint Martins unrivalled networks in professional practice and research. As a result of this trans-disciplinary engagement over the years, MA Design Ceramics, Furniture,
Jewellery has long been involved in social, process, material, and technological innovations. Our broader view of ‘specialism’ inculcates frames of research and practice that engage actively with completely different fields. The course embraces multiple cultural perspectives, differing knowledge and world views. This wider view, driven by research by the students and the course team, attracts internationally recognised visiting speakers. Our creative diversity is driven by projects working with practice communities from both inside and outside of students countries of origin in communities that often have oral or practice traditions that may
not be recorded through traditional western models. The joint histories of the Central School of Art and Craft and the Saint Martins School of Art embeds the course in over 150 years of academic, economic and aesthetic understanding. Linking the course to generations of students and staff who have used skills and knowledge from historical practice to reshape and re-imagine the future. We have a history of making excellence: an understanding of the world populated with artefacts that are themselves understood through functionality and connoisseurship. We hope you enjoy this years graduating projects.
Simon Fraser Course Director London, June 2015
MA Design (Ceramics)
(01)
Maria Gasparian Colour Ceramic City
(02)
Xuezhi Liu Cheongcom
special thanks to Guan Yi Enterprise
(03)
Jie Yang Coexistence
Students Projects Sponsors
(01)
Maria Gasparian Colour Ceramic City mggasparian@gmail.com
Building on her architectural practice, Gasparian’s research and design work seeks to re-invigorate empty and under-used city spaces through the medium of large scale two and three dimensional ceramic elements. Gasparian believes that, through the use of dynamic colour, texture and form it is possible for ceramic sculptural pieces to influence people on a subliminal level, breaking the routine of everyday city life and choreographing space around them. The work explores the relationship between the materiality of objects and possible impact on space surrounding objects in architectural locations. The self-supporting sculptural ceramic surfaces and volumes, formed by extruded clay coils are created body deep, offering much as in damask fabric, an abstract plane with two valuable faces. The fluidity of lines recalls the complexity and ever-changing movement of urban life.
The lack of an aesthetic identity or stimulating design vocabulary in many newly built developments and existing neglected spaces was a driver for this project. A scalability of production will allow the application of elements to site-specific interventions creating vibrant and enduring spaces. Gasparian has been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to research global applications of Architectural Ceramics with a focus on Europe and the United States of America. I would like to thank Alexis Harrison and Peter Webb of ARUP Associates for their support. Photography by Vicente Mateu OrtolĂ at Mateu Gallery.
MA Design (Ceramics)
(02)
Xuezhi Liu Cheongcom liu.xzc@googlemail.com
Cheongcom is a collection of Ceramic pieces in terracotta and Paper clay for contemporary Fashion led interiors. The name ‘Cheongcom’ is from the 60s–80s Chinese garment. The approach has been to cross the vocabulary of tailoring and pattern cutting techniques with ceramics production. By applying the pattern cutting technique in unexpected ways to the flat clay pattern block, new three dimensional forms are created, details on these are highlighted with underglaze and enamel decoration. The response to the pattern cut based forms in ceramic during firing in the kilns means that each piece develops individual characteristics. As the Fashion industry increasing moves into home ware markets, Cheongcom is directed explicitly at these new design aware collectors, offering items from individual signature elements to entire tableware services. Each signature piece comes in a limited edition.
MA Design (Ceramics)
(03)
Jie Yang Coexistence yang.jie0160@hotmail.com
Coexistence is a limited collection of highly distinctive and individual decorative ceramics exploring the complicated relationship between human behaviour and the natural environment. Yang’s rhythmical forms and complex structures create a highly visible style within contemporary ceramics design. Inspired by the geometry form of contemporary architecture and natural elements, the work explores the intriguing use of a clay body integrated with natural combustible materials. Experimenting how to combine the sturdy and formal geometry form with extremely fragile, unpredictable and flexible natural materials, has offered Yang a wide range of opportunities to explore the emotions and perceptions behind products.
Using ceramics as statement pieces with these attractive, canny and perplexing forms helps evoke people’s curiosity and desire to touch and consider. By questioning how to deal with the intricate relationship between human and nature today, the work generates in the viewer a visual suggestion of how they respond to our world.
MA Design (Ceramics)
MA Design (Furniture)
(01)
Maria Bezzina Dendel
special thanks to GP Borg Group and St Anthony Woodworks
(02)
Chatupat Chantaudomlap Alumix
special thanks to Lianyungang Guoyi Quartz Products
(03)
Po-Wei Chen O collection
(04)
Madeleine de Wendel L'atelier du Maraîcher special thanks to Groupe Depestele
(05)
Rana Hazim Sukūn
special thanks to Textil Olius
(06)
Mark Laban Digital Daiku
(07)
Abhishek Matta 27°
special thanks to Dileep Industries
Students Projects Sponsors
(01)
Maria Bezzina Dendel bezzina.maria3@gmail.com
Designed and inspired for our overpopulated, consumerist society Dendel is a modular shelving system allowing the storage of ‘the small stuff’ yet it includes the storage of household furniture into it. Within the increasingly small floor plate of contemporary homes more floor space for your daily activities is a huge gain. Dendel allows you to still have enough furniture when you want to entertain guests, providing a dynamic yet subtle design allowing you to add to it’s structural format in ways that you choose.
With a ‘double’ shelf allows you to hang the extra furniture in between it is possible to still store things in the formal manner on top of the shelf. The modular design allows a fit with a variety of different spaces and prompts the exploitation of unused spaces around the house. The shelf hangs and locks with the base machined uprights, fixed first to the wall during installation. The materials and joints allow maximum strength and rigidity for a long, durable ‘shelf life’.
MA Design (Furniture)
(02)
Chatupat Chantaudomlap Alumix c.chatupat@gmail.com
As aluminium cans are amongst the most popular forms packaging in global food industries and despite their material value can usually be found as waste around urban environments. The root of this project is Chantaudomlap’s exploitation of the advantages of up-cycling using a design sense based on simplicity, creativity and meaningfulness. Alumix is a collection of glowing stacking tables for home and hospitality environments incorporating strands of waste aluminium from cans. Subtle colour and pattern from the overlooked material within the design create an elegant skin in cylindrical form generating simple yet unique objects for interior decorations. The subtle visual effect with its iridescence from a far distance, reveals its true identity close-up. A hidden value is exposed at nightfall with amazing light and shadow play emitting from the table. A special thanks to Lianyungang Guoyi Quartz Products for the borosilicate glass.
MA Design (Furniture)
(03)
Po-Wei Chen O collection pw.chen1025@gmail.com
The O collection showcases the first pieces in Chen’s creation of a Taiwanese furniture aesthetic, indicated by the elegant, low level, and generous seat, suitable for Asian or Western seating positions. Chen created the chair from three layers of bamboo filaments, exploiting traditional forming
techniques from Taiwan, reinventing a traditional craft into a contemporary furniture design and upholstered the final piece in breathable natural linen. The connecting the elements of the chair feature hidden bamboo pins within the structural frame of the chair, itself formed from 3 bonded layers.
A participant with the craftsmen in the production process, Chen challenged the boundaries of their knowledge to refine his design. This project expands the potential possibility of Bamboo which is strong, light, fast-growing and environmental-friendly.
MA Design (Furniture)
(04)
Madeleine de Wendel L’atelier du Maraîcher madeleine.dewendel@gmail.com L’atelier du Maraîcher is a focused display system designed for participants in Farmers’ markets to transport, showcase and sell their produce. It composes of a foldable table to display crates and a storage/trolley system to manage the supply of provisions during market opening hours. Specific attention has been paid to details and ergonomics. The
foldable and transportable mechanism of the table and the trolley allow the farmers to set up stands quickly and efficiently with a minimum of physical effort. To facilitate tilting crates to showcase produce, support elements slot in the tabletops. L’atelier du Maraîcher also offers the opportunity to customise the
visual identity of the stalls, creating unique and competitive stands. L’atelier du Maraîcher highlights, through the table and trolley tops, an innovative material linen polypropylene, offering cleanliness and durability and referencing the traditional woven potato bags used historically within market places.
A special thanks to Constance Guisset and her Studio for their help all along this project and to the Groupe Depestele for supporting the linen production of the collection.
MA Design (Furniture)
(05)
Rana Hazim SukĹŤn ranamhazim@gmail.com
SukĹŤn is a modular collection of spiral screens that help the user separate and disconnect themselves from the overcrowded spaces, movement and sounds of contemporary public spaces, aiming to give a sense of privacy and serenity within cityscapes. Acting as isolation booths for relaxation and increased privacy, the flexibility of the thick felt fabric acts as a membrane wrapping around the seat allowing user to control visual and sound pollution. A wooden structure functions as a spine, leaving the thick felt walls flexible and manipulative. The textile falls naturally into flowing spiral mazes, transforming a space into a place. Inspired by various meditational approaches, the transitional journey that one takes between the playful felt fabric walls focuses on slowing down time before arriving to the core of pausing and disconnection. A special thanks to Textil Olius; sponsors of the technical felt fabric.
MA Design (Furniture)
(06)
Mark Laban Digital Daiku mark.laban@hotmail.com
Obsessive precision and accuracy, attention to detail, a profound knowledge of material, anonymity and quality are some of the key hallmarks of traditional Japanese craft surprisingly now mirrored in digitally aided manufacture. Digital Daiku interprets traditional Japanese aesthetic principals, exploring their possibilities for making furniture using a range of contemporary digital manufacturing process. The collection developed through a process driven approach to design, drawing inspiration from the manufacturing technique itself: a 3-axis CNC machine. The resulting furniture objects are simultaneously inspired by and aiming to challenge traditional ways of making and our perceptions of craft in the digital age. The furniture is characterised by a sense of refined rusticity that is nuanced by the pre-programmed behavioural limitations of the machine, creating a dialogue with traditional ways of making.
MA Design (Furniture)
(07)
Abhishek Matta 27° abhishek3011@icloud.com
27° is a collection of outdoor furniture inspired by astronomical instruments, in particular the early 18th century Jantar Mantar, Jaipur, a collection of architectural scale astronomical forms. It questions the perception of these objects today, centuries after they were popularly used. In an age where technology seems to be taking over the world, and everyone has a personal schedule to adhere to; Matta encourages people to go back to ‘slow’ time. Using larger than life objects that were once landmarks for places, bestowing a communal sense of ownership, he encourages people to revisit a shared heritage of sun recording. The play of shadows, and reflections in the furniture create patterns that portray the principles behind the original working objects. The pieces are handcrafted in India using brass and of locally sourced mango wood and marble.
MA Design (Furniture)
MA Design (Jewellery)
(01)
Maria Sole Ferragamo Eppur si Muove
special thanks to Leo-France, Guardolificio Lucchese and Orsola De Castro
(02)
Giada Giachino PER INCISO
special thanks to Cameo Italiano and Lob Institute
(03)
Yu-Chi Wang Transforming Nature
Students Projects Sponsors
(01)
Maria Sole Ferragamo Eppur si Muove sole.ferragamo@gmail.com
Tackling a critical area of the massive impact that fashion and luxury systems have on the environment, Eppur si Muove is a collection of jewellery created from a fraction of the leather abandoned every year by the industry. The project aims to respect and protect the value of this intimate material by creating a luxury product that show signs of use,
tells a personal story and enhances the subtle connection that a wearer naturally establishes with a piece of jewellery. The collection focuses on exploring the potential of strips of leather, an element easily derived from different off-cuts and shapes. Ferragamo explores a soft architecture developing volume and forms.
Hidden elements within the pieces allow for strength and unexpected rigidity or flexibility. This allows the wearer to customize necklaces, for example, to their own form, so they embrace the body with lightness, in unexpected ways.
A special thanks to Leo-France and Guardolificio Lucchese for supporting the production of the collection, John Ribchester for his innovative Bendy Plastic, my mentor Orsola De Castro and Consorzio Vera Pelle Italiana Conciata al Vegetale for kindly lending my Craft the Leather winning collection for the Degree Show.
MA Design (Jewellery)
(02)
Giada Giachino PER INCISO giachino.g@gmail.com
The research for this collection investigated the traditional cameo and coral jewellery production industry processes, to understand whether sustainable approaches might be able to reframe them for a contemporary market place. Re-contextualizing materials both from food and jewellery industry— such as lobster, mussels and shell ‘lips’—PER INCISO reimagines the coral and cameo aesthetic language, offering a vision for change.
The result offers newly designed materials for the jewellery industry and beyond, derived from lobster fishing industry waste with an interesting and subtle colour palette. The collection also proposes new uses for engraving to utilize mussel shell waste and jewellery that features shell-lip waste from cameo production. The project does not conceal the origins of the shells, but highlights the future possibilities that these up-cycled materials reveal when applied to traditional jewellery techniques.
The project aims to re-establish the relationship between jewellery and the user by focusing on the holistic, innovatory yet sensual materiality within these objects. I express my deep sense of gratitude to my mentor, Ph. D. Robert C. Bayer, Executive Director of the Lobster Institute at University of Maine, and the whole Institute, for encouraging and guiding me in the evolution of this project.
I thank profusely Mr. Gino Di Luca and all the staff of Cameo Italiano, for their kind help and co-operation throughout my research period. Photography by Vicente Mateu Ortolà at Mateu Gallery.
MA Design (Jewellery)
(03)
Yu-Chi Wang Transforming Nature ycwang328@gmail.com
With the wide and universal presence of plants, stimulating to the designer’s vision, this project explores how particular proportions of natural components can be visually transformed into a framework for streamlined jewellery through the medium of hand-craftsmanship. Silhouette, fluidity and interaction are the core concepts use to define wearable objects in silver. Frame, and linearinspired structures are designed to show the energy of overlapping lines. Plain, but shiny surfaced silver wires expresses material authenticity and a particular visual effect. Working with metalsmithing scales, the collection aims to harmonise boundaries between personal insights with durability for everyday use.
MA Design (Jewellery)
A huge thank you Many thanks to our course director Simon Fraser, as well as our great tutors Dr. Elizabeth Wright, Kathyrn Hearn, Melanie Eddy, Ralph Ball, in addition to Margaret Pope and Lucy Ashdown A special thanks to Dr. Ulrike Oberlack for wonderfully curating the degree show A huge thanks to the amazing technicians in the workshops across Central Saint Martins for providing invaluable support and technical tuition to all of our students And huge thanks to Manuel Hazim and Farrow & Ball, Gide Loyrette Nouel, Guan Yi Enterprise, Noor Fares and Setraco Group for their support toward this catalogue and degree show.
Degree Show Sponsors
Individual Sponsors
Catalogue edited and complied by MA Design (Ceramics); MA Design (Furniture); MA Design (Jewellery) team Rana Hazim, Madeleine de Wendel, Chatupat Chantaudomlap, Po-Wei Chen and Abhishek Matta Content edited by MA Design (Ceramics); MA Design (Furniture); MA Design (Jewellery) Course Director Simon Fraser Designed by Elif GĂźrbĂźz (www.elif-gurbuz.com) Printed by PANOPUS (www.panopus.com)