today is international mother earth day, a day to raise awareness for our collective responsibility, or to quote the 1992 rio UN declaration: to promote harmony with nature and the earth to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environmental needs.
apart from all the practical environmental considerations that we follow, we can learn so much from the earth and all its plant and animal inhabitants. most of our design objects, for example, are based on scientific formulas and the mathematics of nature - to give beautiful things a deeper meaning.
someone with a big hope that we can change the way we think about and produce materials is the dutch haute couture designer iris van herpen. she finds a deeper meaning of earth’s nature in every collection and combines it with state of the art technologies.
before her current collection, she presented 'roots of rebirth' in spring 2021. a collection that references the entanglement of life that breathes beneath our feet. the miraculous lacery of interconnectedness from the natural ‘wood wide web,’ weaving a dialogue between the terrestrial and the underworld.
highlight: the holobiont dress, made of recycled plastic by the environmental protection agency parley (and somewhat reminiscent of our PUSH bowl?)
she also had collaborations with the tech university in delft or M.I.T. professor neri oxman and stars like beyoncé, tilda swinton, cate blanchett, lady gaga and the fabulous björk. the last collaboration was also exhibited at the MoMa NY.
the changeant plissé woven metal dress and 3D laser cut cape, are designed especially for the video.
INSPIRED BY INSECTS
the netflix series 'abstrakt', brought the scientific art installations by professor neri oxman to a wider public. silkworms, shrimp shells or insect exoskeletons provided the material.
but do you also know the ladybird-inspired sneakers by artist keita suzuki, which have been shown 2019 at ’21 21 design sight’ in Tokyo?
an exhibition in particular about insects being role models for design, including artificial objects, robotic and design studies, based on the various aesthetics and skillful structures of insects.
next to the scientist takeshi yoro, the exhibition co-director and graphic designer taku satoh was really keen to reengage people with insects. in an interview he said: „insects do things that seem unbelievably high tech by human standards. this is because their world is overwhelmingly large, and vast numbers of species exist, each evolved into great diversities.“
photography of iris van herpen © maya fuhr, the canvas agency, 2017
