Form&Seek London Design Fair2017
Form&Seek will be part of Dutch Pavilion at London Design Fair on 21-24 September 2017
Form&Seek exhibitions always show a consideration to new crafts, material and processes.
With this upcoming show Form&Seek explores the theme of "Openness" where we focus on what designers with a vision of across borders and cultures, make and design in order to shift attitudes and cultures for the a more inclusive future. Form&Seek explores the idea of Dutch design, not through a national lens but as an attitude and way of thinking.
For the first time ever Form&Seek launches its own collection during London Design Festival as well as a producing and selling platform, enabling consumers and retailers to purchase original and innovative crafted goods from a curated collection founded and run by designers.
The Form&Seek collection focuses on new developed processes and contemporary, globally local craft techniques. Interesting, innovative materials and processes play a key role in the pieces by Form&Seek. Each item tells a story through the way it has been made or the impact it has on our daily lives.
Our new collection expands on a wide range of crafted products from conventional products prototyped with new technologies to products that play with natural formations and uses of material. Each thought provoking, poetic design object has a strong character and personality with the personal mark of the maker.
Joining Bottles
‘Joining Bottles’ is an experimental joining technique using plastic bottles.
Plastic bottles hide an incredible property: under heat, they shrink. Around objects, they can join things together and create functional structures.
Tool of empowerment
Seen as a genuine tool for empowerment, the ambition of the project is to give an opportunity to people to engage in the making of their own furniture through a recycling and meaningful process. It aims to reveal the creative and empowering potential of plastic bottles in order to shift the way we perceive it.
Plastic bottles
Millions of plastic bottles are used and thrown away each day, which makes it such an available material. Everyone comes accross plastic bottles. It means that the ‘Joining Bottles’ technique can be applied everywhere in the world by anyone.
Process
Plastic bottles are made of PET (Polyethylene Terephtalate). It is a thermoplastic. By heating it (at 300°C), it shrinks. In order to achieve this, I use a heat-gun but it also works with a lighter or a fire.
Strength and possibilities
The strength of the joins depends on the grooves made in the wood. Deeper they are, stronger the join is. Such a join allows to build functional structure such as furniture, allows to increase the length of timbers, to join offcuts together, to repair a furniture broken leg and so on.
Sharing the technique
Because it is such an available and affordable technique, and has a strong potential of empowerment, I believe this technique is meant to be shared. To do so, I worked with the R-Urban Wick community, based in the vibrant area Hackney Wick of London. R-Urban is a bottom-up strategy that explores the possibilities of enhancing the capacity of urban resilience. Therefore the project embraces its democratic value and contribute to the do- it-yourself culture.
I will run more workshops in London and plan to make it open-source.
Designer:
Micaella Pedros
Material:
Recyled plastic,wood