Amelie Labarthe

Home Creatures Comfort

A collection of playful comfort objects for the home

MA Work In Progress Movie January 2008

So what is it all about???

What is the project about?

I designed a collection of playful comfort objects for the home, as friendly entities for grown ups who don’t want to grow up.

What materials and technologies have you used?

I used soft and affectively charged materials that people like to touch in their everyday environment, that are familiar to them. The content of a pillow, velvet, wool, comfortable surfaces. The processes were « low tech » to allow a simple but creative, and most of all personal, interaction between object and user.

What is your vision of textile futures?

I imagine playful, fun, tactile and poetic experiences that respond to the use we make of things. I think we’ll never lose the need for affective memories to follow us along through life : people need comfort and will always need this feeling of homeliness to feel good. I believe in the potential of people’s creativity to complete and give life to inanimate objects in their home. i like non-matching and random things because they tell stories. I truly believe as a designer that procrastination is the key to quality design work.

What inspires you?

Clouds ; colours ; MacGyver^? ; Punky Brewster ; Sesame Street ; Jaques Tati’s movies ; vintage toys ; anything from the fifties ; a chewing gum glued on a shoe ; the different greys in the city ; the way my cat Mascara has always made me think how close she looks to a proper mascara brush ; mess ; but most of all the way children approach things in this very unworried and spontaneous genius way.

What are you dreaming?

Mary Poppins’ bag (I’m so buying it) Owning a crazy shop like the Nabootique in the Mighty Boosh TV show (and actually make money out of it) A Marsupilami nest on top of a tree A random life line Heart shaped clouds An automatic sandwich maker.

some approach questions...

What makes it home? Are there specific or stereotypical objects, memories, smells, atmospheres that create this special idea of a personal place? It has to provide us this feeling of safety, comfort and property, and it must be a piece of territory we can have the impression to own or inhabit. This project is about creating playful ways to mark one's territory through fun and simple rituals, in order to escape from everyday s stressful life. It's also a reflexion on the role of nowadays transitional objects, even the ones for "grown-up people", such as keyboards and portable devices, and how they can comfort us in an even more tactile and poetic experience.

Work In Progress...

Biography

Amélie Labarthe graduated in 2006 in Textile & surface materials Design, from the School of Applied Arts Duperré in Paris, France. She is a colourist, specialized in print, but she always felt attracted to many design fields and aspects. That's why she also studied painting, visual communication, space and product design in a preparation course for the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan in Design Field, in Paris. She's always approached her projects in a playful way and she works a lot with children. She loves to initiate creative starters and scenarios with them and for them. Her dreamed future job would be to be an "atmosphere creator", where design would have to be multisensorial, involving colours, graphism and volume, always willing to tell a story or inviting to appropriate and to project oneself. She is also part of music projects, and loves to combine her skills in order to create experiences involving different levels of communication.

to see more of my previous and current work check my website : http://amelielabarthe.com

Year 1 Projects

• Habitat PHILLIPS PROJECT 2007

The memory catcher, future habitat solution for nostalgic people

click on window to play movie :

Find back your own feeling of home. Home is strongly linked to pieces of affective memory, places we've visited or lived in, people or objects we've cared about, specific smells... Home is and will always be a feeling to carry on in order to design our present personal space. The memory catcher is a blanket for 2032. It displays pieces of visual memories you've chosen to inject in it. The soft and tactile screens are also able to capture smells. What fragments or fragrances of memories will you choose to define this abstract feeling of your "home"?

the memory catcher is foldable like this memory we all kept from our childhood playground : this paper origami game. Most of us will struggle to put a name on it, but there still remains a familiar sensation, like this home feeling so hard to depict.

*ECO HIGHWAY Sustainable wallpaper for children. GRAHAM & BROWN competition winner (5th), 2007

"Take a journey round the world without even leaving your home, thus reducing your carbon footprint. This super-highway has been created to encourage kids to use their imagination and travel this new world in an eco-friendly way….. using milk instead of petrol"

* Epigenetics, fabric for life workshop, 2007

3 days group project "EPIGAMI", check the link below : a fun way to explain what epigenetics are http://textilefutures.co.uk/exchange/bin/view/TextileFutures/IndustryProjects#group_1_Epigami

* Innovative textiles project, 2006 :

Soft Organi-City

comfort in the city : From the random "Wrapping Tube seat" idea to a collection of fabrics and transitional objects. Soft Organi-city universe turns the city codes and landmarks into protective shields, dedicated to the dreamers among urban people. A distinct camouflage to recreate your vital bubble in public and impersonal spaces.

Previous work

Children trends "m.u.p" diploma scenography, Paris, september 2006. Graduation project setting into space 3 tridimentional poetic universes

• A Cloud of Milk
• Immobile Transport in a Mobile Home
• Neon Raspberry Portrait

Links

• website : http://www.amelielabarthe.com

• http://www.myspace.com/ameliekrumpli (personal page, animation movies, network and creative friends)

• http://ameliekrumpli.canalblog.com (Texture for Life , my blog and critical journal)

• http://www.myspace.com/metuo (music composition and network)

Contact

Amelie Labarthe, London

e-mail : krumpligirlATgmail.com

UK phone number : 07726158026

website : http://www.amelielabarthe.com

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-- AmelieLabarthe - 2008