It's a Wrap: T.O.s Design Weekend in Review
Above: Jeremy Hatch's porcelain installation; zigzag table by David Chang and Amrita Takhar; ceramic flashlight pendants by Andrea Chin. Opening image: copper lights by Derek McLeod.
Derek McLeod’s beautiful copper pendant lights looked something like what London designer Tom Dixon might make but the installation of 50 of them in the hotel's wide hallway and the craftsmanship of each was point perfect.
So was Studio Junction’s elegant wall bench. Made from scrap wood, the seat bowed outward from the wall like a soft wave. And thumbs up to Room 207 where a trio of designers (David Chang, Andrea Chin and Amrita Takhar) used the room itself as a starting point for creating a series of smart objects. For instance, the hotel room's wooden floor planks inspired a plank-like carpet design and the room’s ancient rad system led to the making of a copper rad-like mood light. The piping was perforated hundreds of times to let a light installed inside the piping to seep out in lovely yellow circles on the wall.
Chang and Takhar’s walnut table was pure genius. Two hinges at each end allowed the table to fold and unfold in endless formations -- from a four-plank zigzag shape and a square open at the centre, to one very long table that could probably seat at least eight. Takhar says the flexible design was inspired by a “morning brainstorm,” and a desire to “make a table interesting, because tables normally aren’t all that interesting.” It worked.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Hatch of Vancouver installed something that looked almost impossible: a porcelain-cast series of ropes, pulleys, skids and wrenches — the kind of roughshod equipment and supplies you might find on a fishing boat. All white and installed in a white room, just knowing Hatch had shipped this super fragile body of work in huge crates all the way from British Columbia gave the room some sort of mystical aura. He told Designlines that quite a bit it broke enroute, but that just makes the impractical ensemble all the more poetic.