Elisabeth Buecher

I would like to warmly thank Barabara Dohmann for funding my degree. Her generosity enabled me to focus all my energy on studying.

My Shower curtain is a green warrior

Design brief: "How can your shower fight water overconsumption in either a disturbing or a gorgeous way, using innovative materials, printing techniques and inflatable technology?"

• This shower curtain slowly inflates around you while you shower. It leaves you only a few minutes to take your shower before trapping you.

• The spikes of this shower curtain slowly inflate while you shower. It leaves you only a few minutes to shower before pushing you out.

My approach to design can sometimes appear shockingly radical but I have got different reasons to legitimise that. An alarm clock is not what we can call a pleasurable object. It is often even painful to be awoken by it. However it is a necessary object, which regulates our lives and the society. That’s what I call the “design for pain and for our own good”. Some of my designs seem to constrain people, acting like an alarm clock, awaking people to the consciousness of their behaviour and giving them limits. People often need an external signal to behave more. In France the government added thousands of new radars on the roads to fight excessive speed. And it worked: there are far less people killed on the roads of France today. I call it “design of threat and punishment” and I use it as an educational tool.

* The “Water-conscious toys” collection aims at children and their parents. It consists of actually 3 sub-collections: a series of shower curtains, a series of bath panel/games and a showerhead attachment. The shower curtains match the bath panels and people can choose between buying one or both. Children play with the toys to learn about quantities and sharing with other living beings. It creates a conversation between kids and their parents to learn to respect water from a very young age.

Behind your curtains, the stage of your imagination

What is hidden behind your curtains? I chose to work with old fashioned and kitsch polyester curtains and to print mysterious shadows, fantoms, apparitions on them...Brrrrrrrr

Stepparquet

Previous work

Biography

I am a 27-years-old french girl coming from the Loire Valley. I studied textile design in Paris in both Olivier de Serres and Duperré applied arts schools. I did several work placements in the fashion and television fields. I have been living in London for three years and I am dreaming of New York (the moon is also option). I am an artist and a designer. I would like to work in the fine art field as well as the design field.

Contact

Please contact me elisabeth_buecher@yahoo.fr

My lovely classmates and me