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      Biophilic design informs “otherworldly” moss-covered installation at luxury bag store

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      Creative studio Spacemen looked to biophilic design principles to construct a tree-like installation covered in moss, which forms the centrepiece of a flagship outlet for luxury leather brand Braun Büffel in Malaysia.

      Described by Shanghai-based Spacemen as a store that straddles an art gallery and a laboratory, the studio wanted to create an interior that would attract a younger audience and serve as “an abstract oasis” in Putrajaya’s IOI Mall.
      Spacemen designed the store interior for bag brand Braun BüffelCentral to this design is an oversized, organic-shaped sculpture clad in preserved flat moss, ball moss and lichen that is suspended from an illuminated disc in the middle of the shop.
      A rounded table clad in the same plants was positioned directly below to complete the installation. It also doubles as a plinth for Braun Büffel leather bags, which are displayed sparsely across the store like museum artefacts.
      It is characterised by a central moss-covered sculptureThe sculpture takes cues from biophilic design – a concept that encourages a closer connection between humans and nature when creating interior spaces.

      “The form was designed to seem as though it is sprouting from the ground towards the ceiling – towards the sun – hence why we integrated the membrane lighting ceiling above it, just like how it would grow out of a beaker in a mad scientist’s lab towards natural light,” explained Spacemen founder Edward Tan.
      “We envisioned an otherworldly concept akin to something out of a Hollywood sci-fi movie,” he told Dezeen.
      A green onyx feature wall was placed at the back of the storeTan said that Spacemen adopted a “maximal minimalism” approach when creating the store interiors, in an attempt to challenge the neutral shapes and colours often associated with luxury.
      Throughout the shop, lime plaster walls and bright white terrazzo floors are interrupted by various ornate display units and shelves magnified by floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

      Louis Vuitton overhauls stores with Yayoi Kusama polka-dots and life-like animatronics

      This cabinetry is made from decadent slabs of swirly orange onyx and jade marble, some of which are topped with glass vitrines that reveal small leather goods.
      Spacemen placed a green onyx feature wall at the back of the store, which sits behind furniture including a bespoke curved bench created from the same material as well as a custom oak armchair.
      Bespoke seating creates a waiting area for customersExplaining the decision to incorporate biophilic design into the Braun Büffel outlet, Tan said, “I think with the pandemic, people have taken to appreciating nature a lot more than before.”
      “This is especially true for people living in big cities where they live in apartments and are confined to office cubicles all the time, and do not have access to nature and greenery as much as they should.”
      “Therefore it has become a new form of luxury to be able to afford lush greenery and gardens indoors,” he concluded.
      Green and orange hues add colourful accents to the spaceOther retailers featuring similar designs include a store in Seattle for beauty brand Glossier with a mossy mushroom-covered mound and a Celine boutique in Paris that is characterised by large expanses of brass and marble.
      The photography is by David Yeow Photography.
      Project credits:
      Interior design: SpacemenMoss artist: Ohsum Mossum

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      Louis Vuitton overhauls stores with Yayoi Kusama polka-dots and life-like animatronics

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      Luxury brand Louis Vuitton has transformed its stores across the world for the launch of its anticipated capsule collection with Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama.

      The launch of the collaboration has seen a number of key stores across the world redecorated with Kusama’s signature polka-dots, life-like animatronics of Kusama painting in the windows of the stores and an inflatable replica of Kusama peering over the roof of Louis Vuitton’s Champs-Élysées store.

      Louis Vuitton’s Paris store is one of the numerous locations that have been decorated to mark the collaboration
      Louis Vuitton’s Champs-Élysées store, an art-deco building built in 1912, encompasses the largest of the Kusama activations. Large brush stroke polka dots were placed across the facade of the building and paired with an oversized, human-like replica of Kusama, which was tied to and peering over the roof of the building.
      In New York’s Meatpacking District, a Louis Vuitton pop-up location was transformed into a “canvas” for Kusama’s vision. The space was blanketed in yellow and covered in black polka dots of varying sizes across its walls, floors and ceiling.
      Pop-up stores were opened across the worldReflective chrome spheres were organised in the shape of Louis Vuitton’s logo and suspended throughout the interior of the pop-up space, endlessly reflecting the spotted motif and the capsule collection, which is exhibited throughout the space.
      “Louis Vuitton celebrates its latest collaboration with Yayoi Kusama in New York with a special pop-up space in the Meatpacking District which has been transformed into a canvas for her vision and iconic art which opens to the public on January 6th,” said the brand.
      The stores were decorated in polka-dots and mirrored spheresA pop-up located in Soho, New York, was similarly decorated in Kusama’s spotted motif, brush stroke spots in hues of red green, white and blue covering the white-painted storefront, interior walls, ceiling and floors.
      The collection is the second collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Kusama, returning a decade after the fashion house and artist first collaborated in 2012.

      Yayoi Kusama wraps New York Botanical Garden trees in polka dots

      In 2006, Louis Vuitton’s then creative director Marc Jacobs approached Kusama and met with her at her studio where she hand-painted a Louis Vuitton Ellipse bag with her famed polka dot motif – the beginning of what would be one of Vuitton’s most successful artist collaboration.
      Six years later, in 2012, Jacobs released a collection of Kusama-painted bags and ready-to-wear pieces to coincide with her 2012 retrospective at New York City’s Whitney Museum of Modern Art.
      A pop-up store in Tokyo included a life-like Kusama installationA pop-up space in Harajuku, Tokyo continues the yellow and black theme. The ground floor of the space was lined in yellow with black spotted motifs, while the colours were inverted for the first floor, which has a black base with yellow spots across its surface.
      Elsewhere across the world, select Louis Vuitton stores saw life-like and human-scale animatronics of Kusama placed in the window displays with the robotic replica of Kusama repeatedly painting polka-dots onto the surface of the glass.
      The pop-up spaces were used to display the limited edition collectionIn 2020, Kusama placed over 1,000 mirrored balls on the surface of a pond and wrapped trees in polka dots at the New York Botanical Garden as part of an outdoor exhibition.
      Louis Vuitton recently unveiled a collection of 200 trunks reimagined by 200 architects and designers, including Frank Gehry and Sou Fujimoto, to celebrate its founder’s 200th birthday.
      The photography is courtesy of Louis Vuitton.

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      Space Popular reinterprets Aldo Rossi's architectural theories for the metaverse

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      Architecture and design studio Space Popular has unveiled Search History, an exhibition at the MAXXI museum in Rome that applies the writings of Italian architect Aldo Rossi to virtual worlds.

      The installation features bold and colourful images envisioning a metaverse city, with doorways that appear to be gateways between different virtual spaces.
      Search History features a physical installation exploring virtual architectureThe aim of Space Popular founders Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg was to show how Rossi’s ideas about the experience of real-world cities can be reflected in the immersive spaces of the metaverse.
      “The project Search History began as part of our research on issues of the virtual city,” says Lesmes in a video about the project.
      The project draws parallels with the urbanism theories of Italian architect Aldo Rossi”We have been studying how we move between virtual environments, basically places on the internet that are three-dimensional,” Lesmes said.

      “We found a lot of connections to theories of Aldo Rossi,” she added. “Even though he didn’t develop them thinking about the virtual realm or virtual worlds, we feel they are extremely applicable.”
      Multilayered images of virtual environments are printed on overlapping curtainsSearch History is the fifth edition of MAXXI’s Studio Visit, a programme that invites contemporary designers to reinterpret the work of iconic architects from the museum’s collections.
      The starting point for the project was Rossi’s seminal text The Architecture of the City, which describes urban areas as a multilayered sequence of spatial experiences.
      The colourful imagery suggests gateways between different virtual spacesSpace Popular believes that virtual environments should be equally multilayered, and that special attention should be paid to the way people move from one space to another.
      “What does it mean to click on a hyperlink? Do we open a door or do we slide something up?” Hellberg says in the video.
      A lamp within the installation is reflected in the printed imageryThe exhibition comprises a doughnut-shaped pavilion formed of overlapping curtains, each printed with multilayered imagery.
      Inside, Space Popular created the feeling of standing in a city plaza by adding a circular bench topped by what looks like a street light.
      A similar lamp is depicted on one of the curtains, alongside other pieces of street furniture that include a litter bin and a drain cover.

      Space Popular sets out its vision for digital portals made of virtual textiles

      The curtains also depict architectural elements like roof profiles and columns, as well as references to computing such as a keyboard and a search window.
      “This piece is a sort of simulator, a representation of what it could be like, the experience of browsing through immersive, digital environments,” said Lesmes.
      The images also depict architectural elements like roof profiles and columnsThe project builds on the manifesto that Space Popular presented for the Dezeen 15 online festival, which proposed using portals made of digital textiles to navigate virtual worlds.
      The duo have also created other works that explore the design of the metaverse, which they call the immersive internet. These include Value in the Virtual at ArkDes and The Venn Room at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale.
      The images also show virtual interfaces like search windowsSpace Popular: Search History is curated by Domitilla Dardi, senior design curator at MAXXI, and is sponsored by textile manufacturer Alcantara, which provided the material for the curtains.
      Previous editions of Studio Visit have seen Neri&Hu explore the world of Carlo Scarpa and Formafantasma examine Pier Luigi Nervi.
      The exhibition photography is by Matthew Blunderfield.
      Space Popular: Search History is on show at MAXXI from 7 December 2022 to 15 January 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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      Mixed Seats aims to show “what a chair could be”

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      Designer Ali Shah Gallefoss invited 15 creatives to design their own interpretation of a chair that is suitable for a public space, all of which were presented as a recent exhibition in Oslo, Norway.

      Called Mixed Seats, the exhibition was curated by Shah Gallefoss and exhibition platform Pyton.
      Mixed Seats featured a series of concrete chairs including one by Henrik ØdegaardIt featured an installation of concrete chairs from Norwegian creatives including designers Henrik Ødegaard and Maja Pauline Bang Haugsgjerd, which were arranged in a cluster outside at a square next to Oslobukta shopping centre.
      The project stemmed from Pyton inviting the participants to a dinner party for which they were asked to design and bring their own chairs.
      Tron Meyer designed a blue chair while Jonas Løland made a stoolArchitect, designer and artist Tron Meyer created a textured blue seat with a chunky backrest while architect Jonas Løland offered a sandy-hued stool with three-pronged legs.

      “The chairs are individual suggestions for what a chair could be,” Shah Gallefoss told Dezeen.
      “They’re fun, bold, weird, serious, and playful, just like the group of individuals that made them.”
      Maja Pauline Bang Haugsgjerd created a swirling stoolWhile the creatives were free to add additional materials to their chairs, they were instructed to use concrete as their base material. The furniture was made at a collective workshop held in Drammen.
      Some of the offerings feature colour while others were kept simple, such as an ambiguous, rough concrete stool in the shape of a star or flower by designer Christoph Boulmer.
      Spindly wooden legs make up Kevin Kurang’s abstract stool”The variation in shapes and sizes made an appealing composition,” reflected Shah Gallefoss.
      “When they arrived at the square at Oslobukta they looked like small ants, with the huge Munch museum in the background.”
      Christoph Boulmer designed a flower-shaped chairShah Gallefoss himself contributed a chair design to the exhibition with a squat concrete seat attached to a sculptural metal backrest.
      After the exhibition was dismantled, the curator explained that each of the chairs has travelled to a new location to be repurposed in various ways.
      Shah Gallefoss contributed his own design to the exhibitionIndustrial designer Falke Svatun created seating made from two abstract cylindrical concrete components that has now been placed in Oslo’s Sentralen restaurant while product designer Bjørn van de Berg’s stool featured at Stockholm Design Week.
      “It is [often said] that Norwegians don’t like to sit next to another person on the bus,” joked Shah Gallefoss.
      “But the majority of outdoor furniture [created] is benches that invite people to sit down and disturb your peace and quiet. That made me think about personal space in a public setting.”

      Primary school children design wooden seats in Grade Three Chairs project

      As well as exploring suitable seating for public spaces, another key objective of Mixed Seats was to showcase and encourage multidisciplinary creativity across Norway, according to Shah Gallefoss.
      “I hope that by introducing fifteen creatives [to each other], the exhibition will plant a seed that will grow and strengthen collaborative efforts between the different disciplines, and in the end, build a stronger design industry,” he concluded.
      Two cylindrical components make up Falke Svatun’s chairOther recent chair designs include a chubby furniture collection by Holloway Li and Uma Objects that was presented at London Design Festival and a chair made of plastic rubbish by design studio Space Available and DJ Peggy Gou.
      Mixed Seats was on display as part of Oslo Runway in Norway, which took place from 23 to 28 August in Oslo, Norway. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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      Formafantasma and Artek's Cambio exhibition explores Finnish design's link to forestry

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      Design duo Formafantasma has collaborated with furniture brand Artek to explore the relationship between the timber and design industries in Finland through an exhibition at Helsinki Design Museum.

      Called Cambio: On Finnish Forestry, the exhibition is part of Formafantasma’s wider Cambio project – an ongoing investigation into the global impact of the extraction, production and distribution of wood.
      The exhibition takes place at Helsinki Design MuseumThe duo teamed up with Finnish company Artek to create the show, which features a mixture of work shown in previous Cambio exhibitions in the UK, Italy and Switzerland, as well as new works specific to Finland.
      Featuring original films and installations as well as supporting archival material, On Finnish Forestry examines how the country’s timber industry has evolved over time, with a focus on design.
      Formafantasma created an installation of interlocked Stool 60s”This exhibition clearly links furniture design to a specific biome: forests,” Formafantasma founders Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin told Dezeen.

      “At the end of the day, it isn’t about products but about ideas.”
      An installation made up of stacked 1933 Stool 60 models by the late Artek co-founder Alvar Aalto intends to communicate the iconic product’s lasting legacy by mixing both vintage and recently produced pieces.
      One installation features aerial images capturing tree canopy density over OrivesiThe stools are crafted from silver birch, a tree species commonly found in Finland. Trimarchi and Farresin explained that Artek’s local production habits influenced their desire to collaborate with the furniture brand.
      “The majority of trees used in the production of Artek furniture are from Finnish forests, specifically from an area within a 200-kilometre radius from a sawmill close to Jyväskylä,” explained the designers.
      “We don’t see Artek just as a design company producing beautiful furniture, but as a case study on how to relate production to a specific ecosystem.”
      Under the Yoke includes a postcard of artwork by Eero JärnefeltAnother installation presents wooden boards featuring infrared aerial images of Finland’s Orivesi municipality, which document recent tree canopy cover in its peatlands area.
      Formafantasma overlaid the large-scale images with smaller, historical black-and-white snapshots comparing the habitat in previous years.
      A contemporary model of Aalto’s Screen 100 is also on showUnder the Yoke is an installation comprising a postcard of an 1893 artwork of the same name by Finnish painter Eero Järnefelt that depicts a traditional scene of slash-and-burn agriculture, which is framed by chunky pinewood sourced from contemporary clearcutting.
      Among the work presented in the exhibition, other pieces by Aalto include a 2022 version of his 1936 flexible room divider Screen 100 and deconstructed chair legs featured in an investigation into the designer’s renowned L-leg design for furniture.
      The specific qualities of birch wood was a significant influence on Aalto’s desire to create an alternative to the then-popular metal tubular legs, according to Helsinki Design Museum.

      “It’s not enough to ask designers to be sustainable” says Formafantasma

      Trimarchi and Farresin explained that the exhibition attempts to use different media to unite audiences over the same ideas about the impact of the timber industry.
      “It might sound banal, but what we want is to shift the focus from ‘things’ to ‘context’,” concluded the designers.
      “We would like people to see chairs like pieces of forests and design as the outcome of political decision-making and not exclusively as the fruit of the creativity of a designer.”
      The exhibition also explores Aalto’s renowned L-leg designKnown for an interest in climate change, Formafantasma has completed a number of other projects that explore the environmental impact of design.
      These include the first Cambio show in London, which was commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery. Last year, the duo also redesigned its website to try and reduce “pollution connected to the internet”.
      The photography is by Paavo Lehtonen Photography.

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      Enter Projects Asia enlivens Belgian office with “fluid” rattan sculptures

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      A rattan sculpture winds its way across the ceilings of this office and factory building in Waregem, Belgium, which has been overhauled by Thai architecture studio Enter Projects Asia.

      Named A Factory Facelift, the installation was commissioned by the owners of an ice-making factory to bring “balance and calm” to the interior of their small concrete office block in West Flanders.
      Enter Projects Asia has overhauled an office interior in BelgiumEnter Projects Asia’s (EPA) design includes sculptures, planters, light fittings and seating across two storeys, which are constructed from rattan – a flexible plant with a woody stem.
      Beginning with an eight-metre-high sculpture in the glazed lobby, many of these elements take the form of curved sections that are suspended from the ceilings by metal wires and appear to flow through the building.
      Curved rattan sculptures have been introduced into different rooms”[We] were given what felt like a ‘wellness’ brief for the space, inviting nature and creativity into an industrial setting,” said EPA.

      “The site was an ice-making factory, so the design was to be fluid and liquid, like the properties of pure spring water crystallising, incorporating raw and sustainable materials wherever possible,” it continued.
      Some elements are suspended from the ceilingsBeneath the ceiling sculptures and continuing the same design language, EPA has also designed rattan seating areas that help to divide the office spaces.
      Planters have been built into these curved seating structures, complemented by trailing plants that hang from the rattan ceiling sculptures.

      Enter Projects Asia weaves rattan sculptures through Spice & Barley restaurant in Bangkok

      The project was commissioned early on during the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning the relationship between the studio and the client was entirely remote.
      This led to the rattan works being digitally designed and then split into segments that could be built and transported as efficiently as possible to the site, and assembled “like a 3D jigsaw”.
      There is also rattan furniture including office chairsEPA believes that it is important to give the craft of working with rattan new applications, as many rattan factories became threatened with closure during the pandemic.
      “As a byproduct of this project, rattan factories were able to stay afloat during the darkest days,” said EPA Director Patrick Keane.
      “This project became a lifeline for many craftsmen who otherwise would have been without work. Maintaining these factories ensure local, sustainable arts & crafts production could continue,” he added.
      Some seating incoporates plantersEPA has made extensive use of rattan in its previous projects, including another large-scale rattan sculpture for the interiors of the Spice & Barley restaurant in Bangkok.
      Elsewhere in Thailand’s capital, it used the material to create a series of rattan pods with dynamic forms for the yoga brand Vikasa.
      The photography is by Edmund Sumner.

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      MK&G Hamburg presents optimistic visions for an uncertain future

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      Inflatable “teahouses” and futuristic foods feature in Ask Me if I Believe in the Future, a conceptual exhibition at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.

      Curated by Maria Cristina Didero, Ask Me if I Believe in the Future comprises a series of objects and installations based around topics that could shape the future of humanity.
      The exhibition features the work of New York-based Objects of Common Interest, Dutch designer Carolien Niebling, Italian duo Zaven and Israeli designer Erez Nevi Pana.
      Ask Me if I Believe in the Future features four design visions for the futureEach has used the thematic question as a starting point to explore their hopes and fears for a changing world, in the light of recent events that include climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war.
      “Ask Me if I Believe in the Future is a project about optimism,” said Didero.

      “While the title of this exhibition might sound simple, we have probably all thought about it at least once in our lives without finding a precise answer,” she continued.
      “This exhibition contains a seed of hope, just like the word future itself; it is as much about the future as it is about us.”
      Objects of Common Interest highlights the changing nature of human interactionsThe show is staged across a series of rooms within MK&G Hamburg, with exhibition design by Okolo.
      Objects of Common Interest, led by Greek designers Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis, has created three inflatable sculptures that invite visitors to clamber inside.
      Called Teahouses of Domesticity, these tunnel-like spaces reflect on the changing nature of human interactions in the age of digital media.
      The installation consists of three large inflatables with different properties”The walk-in works were conceived in analogy to Japanese teahouses, where the traditional tea ceremony provides a moment of deceleration and meditation,” said Didero.
      Each inflatable has its own properties: one is wrapped in silver foil to shield the occupant from the outside world, one uses memory foam to briefly map movements, and the third creates space for two people to come together.
      Carolien Niebling proposes algae and seaweed as a future source of foodSwitzerland-based Carolien Niebling, who is best known for her Future Sausage research project, offers a look at food consumption in the future.
      On the grounds that mass-produced food has been a significant contributor to climate change, Niebling proposes a future where algae and seaweed become important sources of nutrition.
      The installation invites visitors to imagine these crops on their dinner platesHer installation, Future-Proof Plating, celebrates these high-yield but largely under-utilised crops through large-scale close-up imagery.
      The designer also suggests how they might one day end up on our dinner plates.

      Erez Nevi Pana designs banana-plant “cocoons” for humans to shelter from climate change

      “This project magnifies the beauty of edible (water) plants such as seaweed and wild leaves and reintroduces them back onto our plates,” said Niebling.
      “Taking food out of its original context allows us to look at it with new eyes and an open mind.”
      Zaven looks at objects that can transcend time, including a coat and vessels for foodZaven founders Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno have taken a more survivalist approach with their contribution, titled Why Not? Their aim was to pinpoint the “bare necessities” that will transcend time.
      Imagining a time of limited resources, the Venice-based duo have worked with local makers to craft a series of essential objects using only natural and locally available materials.
      The objects, which also include a chair, were made from locally sourced, natural materialsThese objects include a lamp, vessels for holding drinks and food, a coat and a chair.
      “The objects they created, including ceramics, lamps, clothing and chairs, may indeed prove to be essential even in a distant future,” said Didero.
      “The message: when it comes to essentials, our environment gives us everything we need to produce the bare necessities ourselves.”
      Erez Nevi Pana explores a future of multi-planetary lifestylesIn the final room, Nevi Pana – a vegan and passionate animal rights activist – imagines a future where humans are able to travel between different planets.
      His Homecoming installation includes a water basin that represents Earth as seen from above and a flag representing world unity. Pana hopes that a multi-planetary lifestyle would encourage us to take better care of our home planet.
      Ask Me if I Believe in the Future is on show at MK&G Hamburg”A multi-planet species sounds exciting to me, but this doesn’t mean that we should ignore the problems we face here,” he said.
      “I imagine our future on other planets, not as refugees, but as species that chose to cross boundaries and still have the ability to return home.”
      The photography is by Henning Rogge.
      Ask Me if I Believe in the Future is on show at MK&G Hamburg from 1 July to 23 October. See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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      Artist Anouska Samms crafts “dysfunctional” pots from human hair

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      Artist Anouska Samms created pots from clay and donated human hair to playfully explore her family’s matrilineal relationship, which were recently on show as part of an exhibition in London.

      Called This Myth We Make, the exhibition by Samms included a collection of pots displayed on rugged wood and plaster plinths as well as an accompanying film and a large hanging tapestry.
      Samms created lopsided pots with human hairThe various pots are formed from lopsided shapes made out of coloured clay but are defined by the many strands of human hair that decorate them.
      Samms received the hair from a range of strangers from around the world including Mexico, Australia and Japan after inviting volunteers to offer up their hair through a call-out on her Instagram.
      She sourced the hair from strangers on InstagramThis was achieved during national lockdowns when people were cutting their hair at home as they could not access salons, according to the artist.

      “The combination of hair and clay and the different varieties of each that are used merge in an unusual way,” she told Dezeen.
      “This subverts the more traditional pots – particularly the hand-thrown ones – into what I think of as unstable vessels or dysfunctional containers. Using hair is also just a bit cheeky at times,” she added.
      The pots were presented as part of a London exhibitionAs well as hair from strangers, Samms used hair donated by her mother and grandmother, which she explained links to the meaning behind her work.
      This Myth We Make intends to playfully explore the matrilineal relationship between five generations of women in Samms’ family who all dyed their hair red as an intimate family tradition.

      10 designs made from the human body that will make you squirm

      As a natural redhead herself, the artist described how she poetically continues the tradition without needing to dye her hair.
      “This body of work reflects a deeper unconscious – I would even call it an obsessive illustration of matrilineal connection – and the familial ‘myths’ we consciously or unconsciously adopt to communicate our love for others,” said Samms.
      This Myth We Make explored a hair-dyeing tradition in the artist’s familyIn line with this theme, the artist bleached and dyed the donated hair different shades of auburn, which was also used to form Big Mother – a large tapestry presented in the exhibition.
      Her design process involved tying the hair into bunches before it was coloured, after which she washed it in her own bathtub and eventually sewed or shaped it onto pots or into the tapestry.
      “Sometimes just preparing the hair alone took a couple of days,” reflected Samms.
      A tapestry and an accompanying film were also included in the showWhile the artist chose to incorporate hair into her pots in reference to her family’s unique tradition, she explained how she crafted the vessels from clay due to the material’s similar malleability and organicness.
      “There is also potential for disgust and bodily horror in the use of disembodied human hair – another humorous nod at the purity and absurdity of mother and daughter exchange,” concluded Samms.
      Clay was used for its malleabilityThe exhibition was curated by the V&A museum’s curator of digital design Natalie Kane while the show’s technical producer Greg Bradlaugh created the plinths from abandoned wood that he found and covered in white plaster.
      Other designs that are made from human hair include a textile by research studio Pareid that was created to measure urban pollution and a biodegradable stool by Oksana Bondar called Wiggly.
      The photography is by Benjamin Swanson.
      This Myth We Make took place at SET Studios in Lewisham, London, from 20 May to 1 June 2022. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
      Project credits:
      Artist: Anouska SammsCurator: Natalie KaneTechnical Producer: Greg Bradlaugh

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