In Time We Ice

While welcoming the summer heat, I got to discover something that seems now so obvious: why not freezing some thread?

And the textures I got were quite intriguing.

Then it came: why not putting them over my body? And the first iced wearable was born. 

When wearing this innocent frozen necklace, and ready to reflect on temperature and texture, I discovered that ice actually was a representation of time.

We cannot freeze time. But we can materialize our time frozen. 

Get my iced impression on this new video below (audio included!): 

Now I invite you to freeze and wear your own time block. And besides refreshing yourself, do share with me in the comments below: 

• How do you imagine your iced time block in form and size?
• How and where do you wear it on your body?

Much About Touch

It's very revealing to treat materials as people, finding physical ways of connecting to them.

Why touching materials? Is it that I don't like people enough? Am I socially crippled?

When I was little I had trouble to communicate with words, especially my feelings. I was highly sensitive to people, things and situations, but I was not able to communicate back using words. I sent telepathic messages (seriously :-) and touching. I thought touching would send my thoughts - physically - to the other person.

Now I touch materials as a way of expanding this extra language, one that doesn't need words to exist. A skin universal language, one that we can all understand. 

How can touching materials help me? You might ask. Will touching the walls open my eyes to a new world? Hell yes.

There is no lying in touching. The most beautiful poster will feel "dead" under your fingers when it is made out of toxic pvc. 

Touching brings us back to a primitive language, that of the cells, an older memory.

Touching belongs to our full body. Touching writes a map of our whole body. Touching is body complete.

Touching is real. Touching brings ourselves back into the moment. It makes us aware, it wakes us up.

Touching connects with our emotions first, before calling our intelligence to place that sensation into the right meaning. 

There are not touch-handicaps. Every body has skin. Every body feels, something, somewhere. Even when you don't allow yourself to do so, your skin stills feels. There are not touch-blind, deaf or crippled. We all have a skin. We can all touch. Touch is universal and makes us all able and capable.

Touching does not need words to be defined or compared. 

Touching is our ultimate connecting tool while being our sole proprietorship. 

Touching makes us human while keeping us animals.

Touching is the ultimate democratic sense, we all understand touching.

Touching is a cultural tool. Different cultures relate very differently to touching (each other, others, even themselves). You might not guess the cultural background of a person immediately by only looking at her/him. But you might very well guess by the way she is open or not to touch and being touched. 

Touching is sexy. Touching is intimate.

Touching honors our body. Touching is a honorable act. It poses gratitude and love for the body we touch.

Touching has no reason to exist. Even if you do not wish to touch anyone, you inevitably touch. Your skin does.

Touching can expand infinitely. Its intensity, its size, its meaning. Touching expands the other senses. 

Touching is timeless. Touching allows time to exist. You cannot make "touch-clips" like we do with music videos, with shorter and shorter attention spans. 

Perhaps our highly visual culture has lowered down our touching capacity and desire. Visual pleasure is overrated. Our eyes are a gift, but not the only gift.

Touch yourself, touch your neighbor, touch your walls, your subway tiles, your underwear.

Touch! 

What The Wear

Is what we wear showing or hiding our real selves?

I asked myself this question a few days ago, after I bought something new to wear. I was suddenly feeling confident and fresh. It kind of brought my ego out.

This reaction made me think: what does what we wear arise? what does it hide?

Jose Miguel Iribas, great sociologist I really appreciated personally as well, and whom unfortunately recently passed away, used to say: there are three main tools to socialize: sports, alcohol and the naked body. 

Some people imagine the audience naked to loose their fear on stage. Perhaps they become "real" in their eyes, free from their power, position or career skins.

I love cool clothes (always the ones I can't afford :-). But I've been (unconsciously) neglecting owning new stuff in the past years, perhaps and coincidentally at the same time that I had a major shift in my career. Since my work has increasingly become more personal, I had the need to be more naked. Not only emotionally, also literally. 

Possibly because when no clothes are present, there is only body to wear, only the real deal. And the ego-wear falls flat.

What the wear? Here's my humble hum to invite you out:

Now, throw me back some wearing love:

• which "you" reflects on what you wear?

Can't wait to hear your stories, blurbs and cuts in the comments below.

---

And on wearing, I just released a very limited collection of thread wraps: 

Purpose Me

They are summery, colorful, textile, flexible, warm and unique.

And now for sale!

Click on the image to see them:

Purpose Me are very personal pieces. Each one hand-made, body-made, and with her unique process story. 

From 19.06.2015, six wraps will be shown as well in Buen Gusto shop/gallery, Zurich Altstadt. 

[I also take custom orders]

contact me

contact me

Behind the Thins

[plug your headphones to get the "full monty"]

It's so interesting to work with materials like a Montessori teacher works with kids. Letting them express and develop their own personality. 

Come on, I can hear. Materials do not have a personality. 

They do not feel. but their nature very well expresses their "wish" to be or become something.

The materiality of thin string and the construction I made with it gave me some clues about life.

It's about networking. A hot issue in our lives!

But when I started this exercise, I wasn't planning to make a networking map. 

My starting point was: I am going to connect with a wall. I am going to use threads and sticky dots to connect myself with this wall, using as many lines as needed to feel that we are attached. It will be like growing roots, like planting myself to the wall.

Then, while doing it, the wall started to disappear. The "real" thing was happening in the threads, those individual almost-nothing things.

Instead of representing my attachment to the wall, they started to represent relationships to me. In a broader sense. 

What is it that this tactile experience unstrung?

I'd love to hear your line of thoughts on this:

• which of these lessons strapped stronger to you?
• how would your bundle look like?

Do come over to the comments below and let me know (or if you prefer, please email me back). Your words really make a difference.

My 10 "softmandments"

Softness is an attitude I see as necessary in our current environment. Softness as new strentgh: standing strong and with flexibility, empathy and connection.

How can softness become a design attitude?

While I search for it, find it in many designer's work and try to pursue it in my own, it seemed necessary to solidify a softness statement. Here is my first attempt:

* "product" to be replaced with space, interior, object, texture, building, neighborhood...

"Just" Decoration

While working in restaurant Fortissimo interior design concept, I proposed two material installations to be part of its spatial branding. One of them was a double "SS" (from the restaurant's name) made out of cutlery to appear on two of the entrance walls. 

While my client Paula Rosales is very open to creating an emotional design experience for our customers, I have heard a few times during our meetings - both with her team and our client - "yes it's nice, but what is that for? It's just decoration."

Our client didn't want to do it. "Just decoration" didn't speak to them. And, honestly, it seldom speaks to architects either. 

Why not? Why are we so reluctant to incorporate visual bliss? Isn't that enough "function"? 

Don't we put flowers on our table? Wear a necklace or ring? We don't really say we are "just decorating" our bodies. Because those things helps us express our personality, colorfulness (or lack of it) and a sense of being. Beyond what our body needs to "function". 

I choose to decorate. Decoration is just. It's just to have soulful information. Just to own identity. Just to experience visual and tactile information that my intelligence - physical and mental - justly needs to survive. 

Do you also get the chills thinking about "just" decoration? What kind of reactions does it arise for you? O perhaps have you been in a situation like mine, being yourself "just decoration" promoter - or antagonist?

I'd love to hear about it in the comments below. 

Hat the Wrap

Have you ever found yourself wrapped in too many things?

Even being the master of planning and organization, it's almost impossible that you've never been enshrouded in obligations, tasks, decisions, actions or responsibilities.

Though you manage your moves, sometimes overwhelm happens. So much that you cannot actually recognize yourself any more.

This is what I had in my head when acting today's video. The "easy" act of getting involved - sometimes not aware that is happening - grows slowly. And thickens till one day you cannot remember how the heck you got to that point of being trapped. But you are!

Visualize yourself entangled in a material mane to help you remember: you can always cut that strain (and wear it overhead).

If all this feels familiar to you, let me know in the comments below:

• Does visualizing your "overthread" help you deal with it? 
• How could you "materialize" your cut-through moment?

Purpose is the new Function

Function is over(rated). Not that we don't need to think about it or prepare to respond to needs, but, making (or consuming) design responding to function feels like such a lost opportunity. Defending that a design is only beautiful and meaningful when it follows function (a.k.a. smart, reasonable, content) results in forgettable objects and environments, susceptible to not last.

I propose that form follows purpose.

Our responsibility as designers is to create objects and environments which connect, create, enhance, stir, invite, shake, unveil, surprise, change lives. Beautiful, meaningful, purposeful objects. And, function? Function is a given, not a purpose. Of course it functions.

Design like you want to eat. Do you want to feed fuel? or feed surprise, sameness, sensuality, story?

Designing for function gave us an easy-ish escape to create from the mind. Sorry, not enough. Bring as much purpose into design (that you do, that you consume) as you possibly can. Then you will really change lives, starting with your own