Alternative Interior Surfaces Project: Week 1

The next project me and my enormous year of 9 people have been set is an Alternative Interior Surfaces project for 4 weeks. It's a collaborative project, so we've all been put into groups of 3/4 where we have to create an alternative textile or surface collection for a contemporary domestic interior. Collaborative projects are great because you learn how to work with all sorts of people whilst having to bare in mind each others ideas, so being open minded is a must have, along with compromise. You must be able to compromise. 

Week 1: Introduction, Concept Ideas, Research & Contextual Awareness 

We have been given 4 words to choose from as a starting point: Industrial, Minimal, Dramatic and Playful. Fortunately, my group (over a familiar hot beverage) quickly came up with our concept of an Industrial and Minimal fusion. By the end of the week we have to present a mood board featuring our research and final idea for our concept. Also by this stage, we individually have to have chosen an interior product or application to design for and show supporting research appropriate to this.

An industrial bedroom will be our interior and I have chosen a headboard as my product. 

My group and I decided to take a day out from the studio and go exploring. We discovered a scrap yard called Samuel Burns & Co (EH32 9SA), which took about an hour on the bus to get to, however we ended up taking another long winded hour detour as we, typically, got lost. I have to admit, my sense of direction can be shockingly poor and at the moment more frequently than ever before. I blame being in a new and unknown city! So when eventually finding this place we came across a little note on the door saying, "we're closed this Wednesday, back as normal tomorrow"...whaaaatt!! The one off day and it happens to be this one. Not cool! I was not going to be defeated though. The others weren't keen to go back the next morning but I kept pushing it, and thank god I did. We came out of the scrap yard with the most amazing photos. We had gone at the perfect time of day when the frost was still set on the very random and weathered objects. Not sure I could ever bring myself to buy any of the things lying around there. Sorry Mr Burns. 

Emma and myself on top of the dumpster

A little insight into some of the beautiful surfaces we discovered at the yard

We selected 5 out of the 71 photos we'd collected from the scarp yard as our inspiration for deciding our final colour pallet. Susanna, the third and final member of the group is amazing at photoshop. I have no idea how she did it, but someone she came up with these colour swatches, picking out each colour within the image. I'm still a mere novice at the whole photoshop thing but one day I'm hoping to be able to master something like this. 

Mood board showing our final colour pallet and theme

Bring on week 2!