Júlíana Sól Sigurbjörnsdóttir

After women give birth, their whole identity changes into being a mother. Although most women do not see that as a negative thing, they do struggle with finding their identity again, and often it comes in a new form. Many women experience loneliness, exhaustion and anxiety in motherhood and have a hard time getting back into the “real world”. 1 in 10 women experience some form of postpartum depression and struggle with finding balance in their life. After discussion with other mothers I found that there was a common desire to have a physical space to go and socialise with their children, but also to create something and learn while having some time for themselves. 

The idea of the Motherspace to have a collective of mothers teaching each other crafts, yoga meditation, or anything that could enhance their mental health and wellbeing, while your children can play and have safe childcare. The goal of the design is to separate the space between the mother and the child, ensuring though that the mother has easy visual access and the opportunity to merge with the children’s space if wanted or needed. The interiors should represent calmness and creativity for the adult, and stimulate and express playfulness for the child.

Creating Shapes

When starting designing the Pop-Up I had sketched images of pregnant women and put them in a more abstract form. It’s an important factor in my process to just start sketching and see what comes of that. To realise my sketches, I used a piece of paper and wire to determine the form of my Pop-Up.

Overlapping

After the Pop-Up, I was a determined to design a space for mothers. Using ultra sound scans I studied the form of the baby and the womb and the chambers could function as rooms, overlapping them on the floor plan. Still sourcing inspiration from my previous project I had the thought in mind that the baby was in the centre of the room and the mother around. Doing multiple overlapping exercises helped me contextualise my design.

Model Making

The design of the space came together with making a physical model. The model showed me the potential of each room and also helped to make my vision come to life. It was also a trial and error process for me. When creating the model I noticed that some things I had sketched could not work in real life. So with editing the model with a pencil, I could arrive at my final design.

Fig 1: J. Sigurbjörnsdóttir. (2023) Shape making. [Photograph].

Fig 2: J. Sigurbjörnsdóttir. (2023) Overlapping. [Photograph].

Fig 3-5: J. Sigurbjörnsdóttir. (2023) Model Making. [Photograph].

The Extinction Beckons exhibition by the installation artist Mike Nelson is a disoriented trip around different spaces within the Hayworth Gallery. Using materials that Nelson has salvaged himself, the first space makes you feel like you’re in a dark warehouse. I imagined a desert outside because of the red light illuminating through the window. It almost feels like you’re not allowed to be in there. The subtle smell of the old artifacts tricks your mind into thinking your in another decade.

That feeling continues into the labyrinth. I think Nelson is playing with the notion of space and time. We are in a gallery room in the Southbank center but the moment you enter the labyrinth you loose the sense of where you are. Although it wasn’t my favorite piece in the exhibition it brought questions and emotions. Each space made you think, who lives there? Where are we?What year is it? I also thought it was interesting how if you entered one door you saw a room from one aspect, and if you entered another door you were in the same room but from a different perspective.

My favorite work in the exhibition was the sand dune. Comprised of three different works, it was visually the most powerful work for me. Aesthetically it was just beautiful to see the sand in the room, and I thought that the lighting above it also enhanced the experience, imitating daylight above the sand. Again, Nelson is using time to disorient the viewer. When entering the shed, I imagined myself somewhere in the desert, 40 years ago. The tires in the sand that were collected on the m25 highway, serving as modern fossils in the sand.

I enjoyed this exhibition very much. Nelsons uses interiors to play with the mind of the viewer. Smell, lighting, the use of space not only disorients the viewer but also blurs the idea of time and location making you feel like you’re in another world, not in the Southbank Center.

Sensory design is something that needs to be considered in any interior practice. Who is the design for and how will people perceive and experience the space. As I‘m designing a space for both children and grown ups it’s important to think about how those two groups will interact with the space. Sensory design and children is something that I would want to explore more in my practice. Children are still shaping their senses so they associate things differently than adults. I also think colours, and chaos in space can effect children negatively. There needs to be a balance to enhance calmness in children, while still having fun an promote creativity. Children also touch everything to experience things as they are still making association with their vision. So it’s an opportunity for the designer to create a world of discovery of the senses for the child

Shatra Workshop Pavilion

The Shatra Workshop Pavilion was built in 2021 by a group of international architect students. It’s a self built wooden mobile pavilion that is envisioned as a common ground for multiple scenarios. My pop up is aimed to encourage mothers who want to create and make art, while having their children with them. The use of fabric in the pavilion is such a simple way to create a sense of privacy, and the structure of each section serves as a little workshop on it’s own. As I want my pop up to be a moveable structure, I find this pavilion quite inspiring as it’s such an effortless design where you can cane make the function of it the focal point.

https://www.archdaily.com/970085/shatra-workshop-pavilion-milos-jokic-plus-ana-sabanovic-plus-nikola-abramovic-plus-luka-vujovic

Giant Fragments of a women’s body

Designed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Mugler fragrance, the women’s body is the focal point of this pop up designed by Random Studios. I’ve been exploring the woman’s body and how it grows during pregnancy, seeing if there’s a way I can realise the the growth in my pop up. The pop up should serve as an inspiration for the mother to grow personally so it’s quite interesting to think about if that could be translated to the interior. The use of colour in this project is also something that I can identify with for my project, a as I envision to have a small space for children that could be recognised with using colour blocks.

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/12/05/random-studio-mugler-pop-up-selfridges-london-retail-interiors/

Mobile Art Shop

I’ve been exploring how I can make a box interesting. If the pop up is a box – how can I make the contents of it inspiring and engaging for the user. I want to create a moveable workshop for mothers with a place for their children also. In my design practice I really love using simple forms and practical design as a base and building on that a unique experience, which I think this Mobile Art Shop that MOTOElastico has created achieves perfectly.

https://motoelastico.com/MOBILE-ART-SHOPS

When entering the world of William Kentridge, each room evokes different kind of emotion. The calmness of the detailed charcoal drawings, and the complexity and drama of the moving images and sounds. For me, you observe his art in two different ways and then you combine them together. First I was stricken by the richness and depth of the drawings and tapestry, and then beginning to understand the stories behind each artwork, the political and cultural aspects of them. Kentridge understands what medium can evoke emotions and curiosity. I was especially fascinated with the tapestry room. You enter pure calmness. Months and months of work to create images that depict the intense history of migrants and politics, something that is just as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. But you can loose yourself in the details of these tapestries as you look at every single stitch and colour. As a designer, I feel that the exhibition itself – how it is curated was really interesting. Going from loud dramatic rooms and into calmness. And in the middle of the exhibition you are in his studio. Seeing all his experiments and words he uses, and understanding his way of thinking and working. Each room gives a story, but there is a thread through the exhibition that connects in the middle with his studio, where the work happens.

For the Future Bathroom project, my first point of interest was to create some kind of a therapeutical experience for the client. As my client is a collector of shells it means she is often in contact with the ocean, and practices winter bathing for mental and physical health. After exploring the practice of winter bathing and the many benefits of doing so I decided to make that the focal point of the design. It’s something that I have tried myself so it felt natural to expand on that idea, and bringing that experience inside as it is usually something that is practiced outside. The act of winter bathing is something that is done in many nordic countries but each country has their own ritual. I studied the Icelandic and Danish method, where there is equally important to warm your self in between the ice baths. In Iceland there is a lot of heat in the ground so we are privileged to have open air swimming pools and hot tubs all around. The hot tubs are often in a spiraled form, which I wanted to incorporate in my design as I have been exploring the fibonacci sequence.

Mapping out my movements when I do winter bathing I discovered that there had to be some flow in moving from the warmth to the cold. I would run into the shore and into the ocean, gradually going deeper, and running back either to a sauna or a hot tub that would be close by. From that point the bathroom was split into three fibonacci squares – one being the main function for the ice bathing and warm bathing, and the two smaller ones the more functioning part of the bathroom, toilet and bassinets. The spiral is the ice bath, where you are in your own little meditative area. After dipping in you can enter the bath tub gradually with wide and deep steps. From the bathtub you can stand up and enter the shower and steam room. I’ve continued the use of glass blocks to create the moving water effect in the room, getting the feeling of being outside inside, and having natural movement in the space.

Danish designer Bonnie Hvillum’s Natural Material Studio created these biodegradable materials out of algae, clay and foam. Algae can be found in any kind of water, but I’m most familiar with seaweed that is found in the ocean. The designer, in collaboration with Frama Studio, created three different fabrics that she turned into drapes, curtains and clothes. I can relate this material to my own work, as I have been exploring sea shells and water. The texture is very organic and because the algae is alive, each fabric has a different pattern to it.

Carlson, C (2020). SNatural Material Studio and Frama showcase algae and terracotta fabrics [online] Dezeen. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/08/28/sea-stone-newtab-22-design-shells-materials/

Taking the waste of of seashells from the seafood industry the, Newtab-22 has created a beautiful material resembling concrete. By grinding the discarded shells down and mixing them with a non toxic binder, the effects of concrete is created. This made me think that I could use some of the collection of shells that my client has to experiment with smaller objects for her interior, while still achieving the affects of the shell.

Crook, L (2020). Sea Stone is a concrete-like material made from shells. [online] Dezeen. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/08/28/sea-stone-newtab-22-design-shells-materials/.

We recently visited the museum of the architect and collector Sir John Soane. The museum is compromised of three residential houses that have been merged together, creating somewhat a feeling of illusion. The collection and rooms blurred the partition of the houses. It felt as some sort of a game to know which house you were in, and also made you wonder if the design and collection was relevant to that house or positioned deliberately. In relation to my window project I found a lot of inspiration, not only with his collection but also the placing of object, colours and how the light affected the experience of each room. The ceiling windows and coloured glass reflecting on old relics and artefacts impacted my visit in the museum and created some interesting questions for my own project, such as what kind of texture and movement of light do I want in my contemplation space. As I have been researching and using the golden ratio in my designs, I also liked how some rooms were able to frame really interesting compositions with the collection. Even if the rooms can be filled with artefacts the placement of them seem to be so purposeful and visually pleasing.

Can Lis is the family summer home built by danish architect Jørn Utzon in the 1970s. Creating invisible boundaries between the inside and outside. The space of contemplation is not always being inside and looking outside. Utzon has created a space that can be viewed as interior and exterior, allowing you to contemplate in the fresh air. “The windows are built as deep niches, a sort of very wide gun slits which soften the contrast between the darkness inside the house and the dazzling brightness of the Mediterranean sun outside.” (F.B. Andersen, year unknown) The day and night can also be seen as the boundaries between the inside and the outside.

Andersen, F.B. Guide to Utzon, Can Lis. Available at: http://www.utzonphotos.com/guide-to-utzon/projects/can-lis/ (Accessed: 2 November 2022)

If the idea for contemplation is to look outside a window, then you can ask yourself what do you want to see? You might now want to see the outside clearly, rather have the glass create vague images of the outside. “He wrapped the courtyard-facing facade in translucent glass bricks, from which the house takes its name. It is said that he wanted the house to be “a box of light.” (H. MacDonald) The glass blocks served as a great inspiration for my project, it’s a form of creating movement in the room for contemplation, while still keeping the interior simple and minimal.

Macdonald. H. Maison de Verre. Available at: https://www.kinfolk.com/maison-de-verre/ (Accessed: 2 November 2022)