Vibes: January 2021
The first month of the new year brings us hope, ambition, and a lot of food for thought.
🐿 Short on time? Here's the nutshell...
We have flung open the window of opportunity for this new year following a universally challenging 12 months. This January vibes takes the geometry of plants, the Black experience of climate change, and Jupe's visionary pre-fab travel pods into a new dimension. Get an insight into ethical coaching with Tiwalola Ogunlesi, take a peak into green living spaces with Hilton Carter, and learn how we can use human stories to reform economic design. Lots to sink your teeth into!
It’s a brand new year for the Driftime® calendar — make time to rest, reset, and recalibrate.
👆 The High
We've been celebrating the small things this month. Not only has our bulk Minor Figures coffee delivery made its way to the office door, but our outlook has been shifting to appreciate fresh sunny days, the brisk daily walk, and evenings spent on the sofa. In other news, our BCorp application is almost ready to submit — a milestone in the sustainability marathon, and the culmination of over a year of hard work, improvements, and adjustments.
👇 The Low
Another month, another lockdown. However many weeks after and we are stuck on a bit of a broken record. Is anyone else feeling a slight case of déjà vu?
What's been your high & low? Leave a comment below…
The Driftime® team.
“Faced with the collective forgetting, we must strive to remember” – Renni Eddo-Lodge
The futuristic flat pack company Jupe has launched it's travel pod — a geometric alternative for the go-to glamper.
Inspired by space travel, Jupe's design team connects innovative structure with an equal connection to the natural and digital world. Co-founder and micro-home entrepreneur Jeff Wilson considers architecture as an impetus for change. Last March saw the world's first standalone intensive care unit created in response to the coronavirus epidemic. Each unit comes with a connection to the "Internet of Things", a "network-ready treatment space" that helps to navigate air, climate, and noise control. Jupe reaches new heights of insightful creation, going above and beyond the ordinary. In their own words; "just add land".
"Plantfluencer" Hilton Carter brings us mood-boosting shoots and Apartment Therapy, a source of real-life and agricultural design solutions.
Quarantine has seen plenty of green fingers spritzing roots and polishing new leaves, our urban jungles and windowsill gardens seemingly flourishing in this brave new world. As Hilton says, "plants are more than just a decorative addendum to living spaces," they provide company and observe growth. With the right care and attention, we can coax some new life into our homes, and extend our time to tend to those living with us, leafy or otherwise. More to the point, the BFI have published 100 great films for winter 2021 — find the likes of Babylon, Happy Old Year, and My Neighbour Totoro amongst many other excellent titles.
Confidence, ethical coaching, and influencing change: how can we control our own narratives?
"Confidence is a practice, there's a science to it", wise words from Tiwalola Ogunlesi, empowerment coach and self-love activist who speaks to how we can step into our own power and shift our perspective into matching our potential. Host Frankie Cotton facilitates an accessible space to dissect imposter syndrome, helping to identify what it is, how it presents itself, and what we can do to use it to motivate forward movement. We particularly enjoyed chapter 8, an insightful look into how Tiwalola uses her voice and platform to advocate for positive change, and what obligations we might have to influence others where we can. A great listen.
Whilst stories are shaping design, we still find ourselves asking - "econowho?"
Dan Burgess and The Spaceship Earth are bringing some fresh truths about the causes of societal breakdowns, generating some speculative solutions with this engaging experimental digital publication. The economy is calling for a reboot. Through stories and personal narratives we can redesign, upgrade, and improve our systems into something more all-encompassing and inter-connected. Stories for Life base this theory on the "Two Loops" model from the Berkana Insitute, a fascinating process of "hospicing" a harmful dominant system, whilst "nourishing" a healthy and emergent system.
Navigating the Black experience of UK climate activism — what is environmental equality?
It's Freezing in LA! magazine brings us the best of contemporary climate change content, hitting home with an illuminating article by Christine Ochefu engaging with Michaela Coel's 2020 masterpiece I May Destroy You. Impact and identity intersect with our melting caps and rising seas as we interrogate how the climate movement engages with Black people and Black communities. History, stereotypes, and alienation all play their part in distancing the Black diaspora from the cause, a bitter aftertaste rooted in colonialism, racism, and gentrification. Coel artfully advocates for accessible activist spaces that platform marginalised voices, centring the dialogue in progress and green change. Have a read here and buy the print edition for the full story.
"Where there is matter, there is geometry" — a fruitful exploration into pattern, sequence, and recurrence.
In contributing to upcoming book "Tutti Frutti", design studio Patternity explore the architectural qualities and patterns within plants, fruits, and vegetables through the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci sequence. The book in question, courtesy of Bompas and Parr, is an offshoot of the multi-sensory experience studio delivering complex and compelling genre defying projects. One of our favourite projects include a sanitiser design competition artfully responding to a hygiene crisis — take a look at their projects and services to learn more about the various combinations of sonic, gustatory, aromatic, and haptic stimuli responses they provide to a myriad collaborators and designers.
Is there something we could be doing better? Share your thoughts, leave a comment and let’s continue the discussion.