Architects Independent: December 2012

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Jaakko ja Maailmanvalloittajat in Qatar...

A TV program about me (and my family's) life and work here in Qatar will be shown on Finnish TV this Saturday evening...

The program will be on Yle Areena, on Saturday December 22, at 18.15 local (Finnish) time... The program is mainly in Finnish...

Please take a moment to amuse yourselves with how awkward I seem in front of the camera...

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Berry-Bowl - An 'Old School' Design...

A few 'old-school' images I came across whilst skimming through one of my hard-drives, of a project I did during my school days, at the AA, completed in 1997... These photos, even though somewhat grainy and over-contrasted, nevetheless capture quite well the subtle richness of the bowls' colors and translucencies as well as their inherent tactile qualities that, in their bulbous curves, encourage one to touch and interact with the design...

The design's original mold was made out of a short, log-like, segment of birch, brought by my father (with bark and all) from Vilnius to London in a duffel bag (to the custom officers surprise). This I shaped (using a lathe) at the school wood-workshop into a 1:1 replica of the bowl. This, in turn, was sent back to a glass factory in Lithuania where, according to the somewhat rudimentary pictorial instructions included below (as I don't speak Lithuanian and none of the personnel at the factory seemed to understand English) the bowl was fabricated... After a bit of toing & froing (a number of prototypes...) the bowl reached a form I could be content with...

It had its first showing at a small exhibition conducted by a, somewhat ad-hoc, group of fellow AA students called N.A.I.L. (Nordic Architects in London), where we displayed some of our smaller scale design works (this included an early rendition of the Cu3o Cabinet)... Good times...

I still have a few samples left of the bowl, perhaps I'll re-photograph them and include a future blog entry with a tad more 'professional' images of the design...

A light blue rendition of the bowl...

A blue, gradually transcending to clear glass, version of the bowl...

The bowl with blueberries...

Above & Below: Some of the images sent to the glass factory in Lithuania to explain the process for making the bowl (based on the provided birch wood mold)...