Hasta La Ideas

In this final movie in the series filmed by Dezeen for the Stepney Green Design Collection, London design brand Hulger’s creative director Nicolas Roope talks about the “thriving community of creative people” in east London.

Hulger‘s office is in Shoreditch, east London, and Roope explains that the creative community in the area ”creates a nice atmosphere and tends to bring with it great places to eat, drink coffee and beer.”

Hulger and designer Sam Wilkinson created the energy saving Plumen 001 light bulb, which won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year award last year, and released the smaller Baby Plumen version earlier this year.

“We present [Plumen bulbs] in lots of different ways, but this year we thought we’d step it up and use the light bulbs in a series of chandelier arrangements,” says Roope.

Hulger collaborated with visual consultants Haptic Thought to create the Hollywood Chandelier, made from 40 Baby Plumen bulbs suspended in rows from copper fixings on a mirrored plate.

“Regimented, geometric relationships between the bulbs create an interesting effect with the echoed forms running throughout the structure,” Roope notes.

The Stepney Green Design Collection consists of 10 products selected by Marcus Fairs of Dezeen from creatives who live near to VIVO, a new housing development in the east London district. The project also includes objects chosen by east London bloggers Pete Stean of Londoneer and Kate Antoniou of Run Riot.

The collection is on show at the Genesis Cinema, 93-95 Mile End Road, Whitechapel, London E1 4UJ, from 10am to 10pm every day until January. After this, the objects will be given to VIVO residents.

See all the items in the Stepney Green Design Collection here and watch the movies we’ve featured so far here. The music featured in the movies is by American designer and musician Glen Lib. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

The post “East London has a thriving community
of creative people” – Nicolas Roope appeared first on Dezeen.

In this movie filmed by Dezeen, east London designer Paul Cocksedge describes his discovery of the interesting forms created when polystyrene cups are heated and how he used the process to create a pendant lamp.

Cocksedge first experimented with polystyrene cups ten years ago at the Royal College of Art as part of a project set by Ron Arad, who asked students to “grow a product”.

Above: image by Mark Cocksedge

“I placed the cup inside [the oven] and something really beautiful happened,” he explains. Heat distorts the shape of polystyrene while strengthening it, and Cocksedge made a movie of the process in reverse that looked like the cups were growing.

Above: image by Mark Cocksedge

He then built a large number of deformed cups into a sphere to create his Styrene lamp. ”As a designer we always search for form and interesting aesthetics, but this was like a dream come true because the heat was doing it for me,” he continues.

Above: image by Mark Cocksedge

The custom lamp he contributed to the Stepney Green Design Collection is 90cm in diameter – almost twice the size of the designs sold commercially – and was previously on display at the V&A Museum in London as part of an exhibition on British Design. Cocksedge has a studio in London Fields, east London, not far from Stepney Green.

The Stepney Green Design Collection consists of 10 products selected by Marcus Fairs of Dezeen from creatives who live near to VIVO, a new housing development in the east London district. The project also includes objects chosen by east London bloggers Pete Stean of Londoneer and Kate Antoniou of Run Riot.

Above: Styrene on display at the British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age exhibition at the V&A, 2012

The collection is on show at the Genesis Cinema, 93-95 Mile End Road, Whitechapel, London E1 4UJ, from 10am to 10pm every day until January. After this, the objects will be given to VIVO residents.

See all the items in the Stepney Green Design Collection here and watch the movies we’ve featured so far here. The music featured in the movies is by American designer and musician Glen Lib. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

The post “Heat-shrinking the polystyrene cups created
beautiful shapes” – Paul Cocksedge appeared first on Dezeen.

Designer Gitta Gschwendtner talks about making her Bodge Bench for the Stepney Green Design Collection and east London’s “great creative atmosphere” in this movie filmed by Dezeen.

Gschwendtner is originally from Germany but has been living in London for over 20 years and has worked from her studio in Hackney, east London, for 12 years.

She worked outdoors using rustic wood-crafting methods to create the two-seater bench from her Bodge series, and the one-off three-seater bench for the collection is based on this design.

“Bodging is a very traditional chair-making technique where you use green timbers and no electricity, working in the woods with hand lathes and axes,” explains Gschwendtner.

The Bodge series also features a two-seater and six-seater bench, as well as a single chair, all made using the same technique in a similar style. The other pieces are all made from oak but this special-edition bench has been crafted out of English olive ash.

The Stepney Green Design Collection consists of 10 products selected by Marcus Fairs of Dezeen from creatives who live near to VIVO, a new housing development in the east London district. The project also includes objects chosen by east London bloggers Pete Stean of Londoneer and Kate Antoniou of Run Riot.

The collection is on show at the Genesis Cinema, 93-95 Mile End Road, Whitechapel, London E1 4UJ, from 10am to 10pm every day until January. After this, the objects will be given to VIVO residents.

See all the items in the Stepney Green Design Collection here and watch the movies we’ve featured so far here. The music featured in the movies is by American designer and musician Glen Lib. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

The post “East London has a great creative atmosphere”
– Gitta Gschwendtner appeared first on Dezeen.

In this movie filmed by Dezeen, Studiomama founder Nina Tolstrup talks about the chair she modified for the Stepney Green Design Collection and how “there are always materials to be found” in east London.

“One of the things that is quite fantastic about the East End is that there are always bits, pieces and materials to be found around, and with a little resourcefulness there’s a lot of potential in exploring and finding the beauty in the unloved,” says Tolstrup.

The colourful Re-imagined chairs were first created for an interior project that required new designs quickly, so Tolstrup took chairs she ”found in [her] local streets in Bethnal Green” and gave them a new lease of life.

She stripped the old chairs down to the frames, which she powder-coated in bright colours then added new backs and seats that were upholstered locally to match.

“It’s kind of a full circle: from a chair that was actually from our streets that has found its way back into the Stepney Collection,” she says.

The Stepney Green Design Collection consists of 10 products selected by Marcus Fairs of Dezeen from creatives who live near to VIVO, a new housing development in the east London district. The project also includes objects chosen by east London bloggers Pete Stean of Londoneer and Kate Antoniou of Run Riot.

The collection is on show at the Genesis Cinema, 93-95 Mile End Road, Whitechapel, London E1 4UJ, from 10am to 10pm every day until January. After this, the objects will be given to VIVO residents.

See all the items in the Stepney Green Design Collection here and watch the movies we’ve featured so far here. The music featured in the movies is by American designer and musician Glen Lib. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

The post “In the East End there are always materials
to be found” – Nina Tolstrup appeared first on Dezeen.

In the next movie filmed for the Stepney Green Design Collection we curated, east London designer Donna Wilson talks about the knitted tree with creatures nestled inside it that she contributed.

Wilson originally exhibited her knitted creatures at the Royal College of Art graduate show almost ten years ago, after which New York gallerist and retailer Murray Moss ”latched on to them and bought the collection,” she explains.

The knitted tree was created for an exhibition called Endangered Species at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (below) as a way of “giving the creatures an environment and place to live”.

The characters inhabiting the tree include Cyril Squirrel-fox (below) and his offspring Rill and Ralf – read more about the knitted tree and creatures in our previous story here.

In the movie, Wilson speaks about the importance of manufacturing the products in-house at her Bethnal Green studio, just a stone’s throw from Stepney Green – see all our stories about Donna Wilson here.

The Stepney Green Design Collection consists of 10 products selected by Marcus Fairs of Dezeen from creatives who live near to VIVO, a new housing development in the east London district. The project also includes objects chosen by east London bloggers Pete Stean of Londoneer and Kate Antoniou of Run Riot.

The collection is on show at the Genesis Cinema, 93-95 Mile End Road, Whitechapel, London E1 4UJ, from 10am to 10pm every day until January. After this, the objects will be given to VIVO residents.

We’ll be publishing movies of all the designers who contributed to the collection over the coming weeks – see all the items they designed for Stepney Green Design Collection here.

The post Donna Wilson on her knitted tree for
the Stepney Green Design Collection appeared first on Dezeen.