Hedvig, The Blog

I often change the spaces that I work in.  In Zambia, I re-designed the UNICEF library so the tables where in a hexagonal shape, the tables didn’t touch in the middle so I placed a tall plant on a stand. Thus encouraging quiet interaction between people, maintaining privacy and making the space feel more alive.  Then, I initiated regularly changing all the display boards, so that they were colourful and informative for both the workers and visitors.  Hardly radical change, but as a 17 year old intern, I was surprised that the library staff didn’t consider making the space an attractive, stimulating to be a component on what they did?

Clearly other people spend a lot of time thinking about the design of their workplaces, others spend years tweaking and adapting their spaces.   Last night a friend recounted an advertising agency that has an “ideas floors” with a fridge full or coronas, sofa, a constant supply of croissants, and rooms for specific elements of advertising like “the essence room”.  Hearing this reminded me of Happy Computers were the main space for a training organisation is really colourful with sofas, little tables, plenty of juice, biscuits, there are bowls full of sweets, ice-creams.  It must be working because in 2007 they were ranked  in the top ten for best workplaces in the UK by The Great Place to Work Institute .

There are obvious components of what make a space work: good lighting, comfortable size, the right furniture.  Then there is the element that is particular to the people that use the space… quite clear comparing the room that George Bernard Shaw wrote in compared to Eric Hobsbawm’s.  Quite a lot of the writers highlight that it is a private space that they can do what they ‘bloody like in it’ (Simon Gray).

Since my days at UNICEF, I have gone on to change most of the places that I have worked in.  In my last house this is the space I made for my work Room in Leyton.  Now, being back in Hackney, I am faced with a room that for some reason is quite challenging: the “living room”.  We don’t live in it, we hang out in the kitchen, and thus the “living room” hasn’t really got a function especially not during the day. The TV is seldom used, nor is the piano, the music is turned up so that we can hear it in the kitchen.  A year ago when I lived here, we were a creative bunch: a journalist, an urban planner/regenerationist and me.  Two of us were doing a course in technical drawing, so I thought about having a draughtsmans table, using the walls to display articles, explore ideas, photos that we had recently taken.  Now, given that two of the three of us are self-employed and freelances, maybe we could add a new function of using it as a workplace.

As a designer, I try to understand what makes peoples want to inhabit and appropriate the space.  Sometimes you pick up it up in conversation.  At others something catches your eye.   So, this space that is sometimes used to work it, but could it be the future workspace? This is the defunct sitting space.

The question still remains, of how we can re-design the rooms combine the function of using it as a workspace and as a living room, but one that we actually work and live in.  All suggestions welcome.

So, it has been a month since I left FRP, and in that time I’ve moved from Leyton back to Hackney; spent time looking after my nephew; found a new flatmate; reading; pottering about in the garden and submitted a funding application.

It is great to be back in Hackney: living with one of my best friends,  closer to other friends, having impromptu dinners, meandering along the canal and keeping amused by observing the Hackneyites.

Spending time with my nephew has been a lot of fun.  It is great to be instructed by someone that is three that I must go trampolining, read stories of Thomas the tank engine.  I find it amazing being around to realised how quickly he learns, and how the world expands with each new piece of information of which he becomes aware.

The quest for a new flatmate was quite a process, involving drafting a semi amusing ad, fielding all the responses and having various open house days and evenings.  The marathon one Sunday was made tolerable by the continuous supply of crepes.  In the end there was a bit of a battle between three girls, all of whom were interested in similar stuff, and in the end we went for Sarah.  She just moved in this weekend, and so looking forward to seeing what changes that brings.

Having time to read has felt like quite a luxury, not because I didn’t read before, but just because the stuff I am reading requires a fair amount of attention (like how to start up a professional gardening business) and now I’m getting stuck into a book about alternative forms of creative collaborations.  The lighter entertainment came from the new book by Richard Reynolds about Guerrilla Gardening, which was a good read.

The garden is more like a concrete patch, but the window boxes are coming along.  With a good amount of compost harvested we are now growing an array of veg like potatoes, beans, peas, pumpkins, squashes, tomatoes, carrots, salad leaves, edible flowers, herbs  and more.

The funding application was just to cover some of the start up costs for our pilot projects, so will see about that one.  Aside from that we are doing various bits of the project, but June will be the month of more concerted time developing our business plans, segmenting the market, doing some more research and the like.