We’ve been keen vermiculture enthusiasts for a number of years and have can o’ worms set up at our homes and in the car park behind our office – we feed the worms with our kitchen organic waste and they create highly fertile soil and liquid fertilizer.

The problem is that the bins are not made locally, and are plastic and ugly so you always want to hide them and they’re not always desirable for small outdoor spaces.

We wanted to design a wormery as something beautiful, a piece of furniture that could contribute to a small urban garden or apartment balcony.

So we focused on the joinery details and ours is constructed of stacked dovetail jointed hardwood trays, with thin sheet stainless steel bases. The system is modular so if your trays are filling up too fast you can add more. The lower section is lined to collect the rich leachate from the upper trays and has simple brass tap to one side to drain off this worm ‘tea’ which is great organic liquid fertiliser when diluted 1:10 with water.

The lid is a miniature green roof which completes the installation and makes this part of the garden proper. If you’re planting annuals you can drop them under the lid at the end of the season whereupon the worms will turn them into soil for next years plants. The plant tray lid could be something ornamental or edible, the tray itself is 11cm deep – a perfect plant pot.

The wormery is wider than it is deep so it wont protrude too much. Overall it’s 45cm(w) x 375 (h) x 230 (d).
The hardwood which is lightly finished with Danish oil, was ‘leftovers’ from a local joiner but we’ll be making the mark 3 out of Western Red Cedar as it’s durable softwood with a nice finish that can be easily sourced from sustainable suppliers.

Photographs by Philip White and Maxwells Photography Dublin as noted.

For more information see TANKCOLLECTIVE

(Meet the artists and curators with live music courtesy of HWCH & The City)

To Reserve a place; email with your name and mobile number

1. Thursday 2.30pm starting at Phonebooth  3 outside Shanahans.

2. Friday 1.00pm Starting at Phonebooth 5  outside Celtic Note.

Performances as part of HWCH

1. THURS: 3pm / Georges Street / Cocophone cover Lionel Richie / Phonebooth 6
http://breakingtunes.com/cocophone

2. FRI: 1.30pm / Dame Street / Kara Kara / Drum Machine experiment / Phonebooth 1
http://breakingtunes.com/karakara

3. SAT 3.30pm / College Green/ Inni-K / Acoustic Performance / Phonebooth 2
http://breakingtunes.com/inni-k

For more free daytime concerts go HERE

Freephone festival Audioguide for HWCH and Openhouse available from each of the 6 installations.

The very talented Mr Paul Mahon filmed and edited the video and music was provided by DJ Bantum, a remix of Come On Live Long’s ‘Elephant and Time’.

]]> http://www.abgc.ie/info/showreel/feed 0 http://www.abgc.ie/design/in-paint-in-teeth-in-mountains-in-stars http://www.abgc.ie/design/in-paint-in-teeth-in-mountains-in-stars#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:30:57 +0000 gearoid http://www.abgc.ie/?p=1608 In Paint; in Teeth; in Mountains; in Stars.

The LAB, Foley Street.

You can see more of Orla Whelan’s work here.

Curated by Aisling Farinella
Exhibtion Design and Fabrication abgc

We’ve been dedicated fans of Absolut Vodka’s special edition bottles for ages so it was great to be involved in an exhibition for the launch of one. This time the theme was fashion and the Absolut forsook the full enclosure of the previous years sequins, studs and mirror ball (Masquerade, Rock, Disco) for an elegant faceted bottle with a simple midnight blue silk garter.

The Absolut Mode launch consisted of a multi media exhibition and included both heritage and newly commissioned pieces, photography and Video work.

Irish Designers Eilis boyle, Helen Steele, Natalie B Coleman, Simone Rocha and Sorcha O’Raghallaigh were asked to design new work inspired by the brand. They join the likes of Versace, Tom Ford, Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney who have all previously been commissioned by Absolut in an association that began back in ‘87.

We based our installation design on the fashion photographers cyclorama and floated curving paper backdrops between the Steel trusses of the Georgian Warehouse the exhibition was launched in and used steel cable to suspend the mannequins. Special photography gallery walls were also constructed with a series of plinths for the heritage items. Lastly we made two Absolut Mode inspired pieces ourselves; the first a secretly lit mirrored cube 300mm wide to display a single bottle which cantilevered out of the entrance wall and secondly we created a 1.2 x 2.4m wall hung, internally illuminated, light box of glowing bottle silhouettes and bottles all wrapped in midnight blue silk.

We were fascinated by the range of materials and techniques used by the Irish Fashion designers and we hope by association some their vision and bravery will wear off on us.

NATALIE COLEMAN A lambskin leather dress with laser-cut detail and Carrickmacross lace.

SIMONE ROCHA Lace dress with plastic trapped lace collar and crepe de chine skirt.

EILIS BOYLE Liquid silk organza dress, dip-dyed and stained in midnight blues and black. Steel and silk knitted straps.

SORCHA O’RAGHALLAIGH A chainmail crystal dress made from crystal, jump rings and chains.

HELEN STEELE A colourful multi-layered and twirling kaftan in crepe de chine with printed jersey leggings and a silk satin printed scarf.

Heritage pieces.
The pieces include a pair of bespoke boots by Manolo Blahnik, a Hugo Boss suit, a Versace dress once worn by Naomi Campbell, a hat designed by Daniel Swarovski and a dress designed by Greek–Cypriot designer Erotokritos.

ABSOLUT Mode by Rich Gilligan and Aisling Farinella

Launch Night Video by Albert Hooi

Lastly, try as we might neither of us managed to get into the Manolo Blahnik hooker boots, though AB in fairness did come close.

The Lab is a purpose built arts facility in Dublin City which includes Gallery, Rehearsal studios and the City’s Arts Offices.

We we’re invited by Orla Whelan Artist and Sheena Barret Curator to make a structural intervention for a show by Orla; “In Paint; In Teeth; In Mountains; In Stars”.

As part of the exhibition program we were then invited to present our recent collaborative work in the context of our studio practise.

Ten years ago we completed our first project together and in 2007 we established a partnership in the creative hub of South Studios [Dublin 8] with the tenet of devoting 1 day a week to those self-directed, multidisciplinary projects that had origianally inspired us to work together.

Now are practise has become defined by collabirative processes and the varierty of our work. In addition to various residential and commercial architecture projects we have prodeuced furniture, designed and built exhibition designs, video, photography and garden installations.

In this talk we preented projects with and for artists, photographers, film makers, fashion designers and craftsmen and the work processes engaged with.

The Video of the Talk is 44 minutes long and was shot and edited by Jenny Brady.

We’ve been based in a collaborative studio since 2007, and since then there’s been a few interesting developments in this area with the likes of Block T opening in Smithfield and the Fumbally Exchange in the Blackpitts. Farther afield we’ve seen the likes of the Hub (Vienna & elsewhere) and this place; Studio Banana.

If south studios had a Spanish cousin this place would be it.

Originally set up 4 years ago (within a month of south studios opening), Studio Banana is large subterranean studio comprising of over a dozen freelance creatives and startups.

The basement studio was founded by Spanish starchitects Studio KG, who also designed the smart fitout. They’re joined by a medley of creatives from the fields of photography, audiovisuals, architecture, graphic design, product design, animation, fashion & advertising. Spaces rented by the desk create an environment where a variety of independent creatives can share facilities and develop their practice both autonomously and through collaborative process.

What’s the set up like?

The set up is simple; a long banquet style table is the centerpiece of the office space, wrapped with 5 shared office spaces each of which can open up to become part of the central space. The entrance area doubles as the meeting space with the wide steps down from the street becoming, with the aid of a few cushions, a raked auditorium for monthly movie/presentation evenings where the studio is open to the public.

Getting light into the basement is dealt with fantastically in what could have been a tungsten dungeon – clerestory glazing filters sunlight into the meeting areas, the front door illuminates the entrance hall and roof lighting from the rear of the plan filters down through heavy louvres and polycarbonate screens. Everything is painted brilliant white – sometimes too austere, but it works fine here of the soft quality of the light entering the building.

What they do that others don’t?

These guys are not hiding their lights under a bushel! In addition to the open nights, Banana pimps out the talent for Cursos Banana (classes), and runs Banana TV, a mixture of in-house production and video selections curated by the various creatives.

They are also developing the Studio as a brand in it’s own right, hiring out its constituent elements under the umbrella company as a combined service; a real media agency across all mediums. I had the pleasure of meeting Key Portilla-Kawamura who explained their global vision (Yep, they’ve a global vision too!) of establishing connections with studios world-wide in places as far afield as Auckland and the Americas.

Special thanks to the most gracious host Victoria Ovin, product & packaging designer, multi handed collaborator and studio manager who gave over some of her morning to guide me around and make introductions.

!Hasta luego!

www.studiobanana.org
www.studiobanana.tv
www.studiobananacursos.com

For her 10th collection Eilis Boyle forsook the traditional catwalk presentation and commissioned Aisling Farinella & Richard Gilligan to produce a video of her work. We were asked to design and light the exhibition to launch the video.

The challenge was to, within a single room, light half a dozen pieces, several oversize photographic prints and maintain the least possible amount of ambient light so as not to take from the video which was being projected against one wall on a continuous loop.

The pieces themselves had really strong textures and by using hand made spot lights created with black out cinefoil elements of the delicate patterns were brought out in the form of shadow play.

The hanging system we had previously developed for the IGI ‘Laundry’ show whereby we created a set of weightless invisible ‘tracks’ 3m above the floor. The tracks consist of 0.5mm nylon chord maintained in tension through simple eyelet and counterweight system and with any potential sag in the lines is controlled through the mass of cement blocks.

The wonderful movie produced by Aisling & Rich can be found here.