design*kung-fu

I started off thinking about this post as a sort of apology or explanation for my six month lasting absence from this blog. Keep it simple. Find an easy way back. Okay, so… Fail.

Here I am, turning it into an epic sort of self conversational brain ejaculation. Enjoy.

Time is, as we are well aware of, a relative matter. Great minds like Newton and Einstein have contributed greatly to our understanding of the rather abstract concept of time.

Take the common tortoise. It leads a happy life, taking one thing at a time. “Wow, look at the sheer size of that juicy dandelion leaf!” – might take an hour to actually reach the depth of the little tortoise brain. The triggered action to set things in motion to see if the dandelion leaf is, oh so juicy indeed, could take another few hours. And off it goes into happy days of chewing and resting in the sun. So, for the tortoise itself, things are moving at a genuine pace. Yet its surroundings would somehow seem blurred an strangely hastily. Never quite in its reach to grasp what is going on around it.

nk | design*kung-fu

Trainride

 gg

I wouldn’t say I am like a tortoise. But I do things in my own time.

I’ve had too many things to do in the last six month. Time, and my concept of it, did not allow me to reach this mind frame.

I worked for a large architecture company in Melbourne, Australia. Being responsible for communications, graphics, pr. Very busy place. Good people. Time is whole different concept in a work related environment – whatever you do, time just seems to be running through your fingers and uups, 6pm again, see you tomorrow! There you go, its relative. And, you could ask yourself, am I just now wasting my own and your time as the same instant?

I like time. It interests me, amazes me, confuses and inspires me. And yet, I feel I never have enough of the stuff! Sometimes I find myself contemplating what I would do if I could randomly stop time. Or capture it and release a few moments when ever I need them.

Unsurprisingly, time often shows up in my private photographic work. Be it as a stylistic device or as the subject itself. Taking long time exposures, especially at night is something mystical. You never quite know what you end up with an the result is always unique.

A great inspiration to me is the work of a fellow Teuton, Hans-Christian Schink. Next to sharing his interest in the relationship between landscape and built environment, his black and white series “1h”, which makes the passing of time somewhat abstractly visible, encourages me to further experiment.

Stay tuned.

As I moved into a new house a few weeks ago, a bed wasn’t the only thing I needed to get me started. Most importantly, I needed a desk. And again, I wanted it to be made out of recyclable materials, as well as be relatively cheap and easy to transport, as I don’t possess a car. Again, milk crates and cardboard where the first to jump my mind. Since cardboard is a waste/recycling product and easy to come by, I sharpened my 2B TK and started sketching. Being initially made from trees/paper, I pictured a somewhat treelike shape. Layers of bark peeling away, revealing a growing form that could to some extent be made up as I go long. Like a growing paperbark tree, native to the Australian landscape.

nk | design*kung-fu

I went to collect some old cardboard boxes and quickly realised that this project can take weeks, if not month to finish. I postponed it to future endeavours.

So back to the good old milk crate it was.  Next thing was the height issue to come by. Your general milk-crate has proportions of about 340x340x310 mm. My height being 183 cm, 3 crates would mean i have to sit on a bar stool and 2 boxes leave me somewhat hunched. Depending on your height and chair, 750-800mm is generally considered to be efficient to work at. So I needed about half a crate. Thankfully one night out in Carlton and a midnight stroll provided me with a few orphaned bread crates! So to work I went, 4$ spent on cable ties.

nk | design*kung-fu

nk | design*kung-fu

The finished left side. Bread crates where used for footings and as support for the tavle top.

nk | design*kung-fu

The openings of the crates where positioned to serve as either drawers/storage or to hide cables, etc.

nk | design*kung-fu

Once all the parts had been assembeled  the table top was quite wobbely, so I had to use some temporary support from underneath and get a 30$ MDF sheet from your local hardware store. Not my favourite, but okay temporarily as I had to get to work.

nk | design*kung-fu

nk | design*kung-fu

Thanks to the structure of the bread crates, I was able to hide power supply and most cords under the table to with ties.

pp

Check this one out. Time lapse of the evening led light concert of the Rectangular Square Stadium at AAMI Park in Melbourne, Australia. Lighting design by Artists Alexander Knox and Bruce Ramus. Building design and construction by Cox Architects. Stills of the Rectangular Square Stadium on my website.

Moving into a new house recently challenged me with the task of creating furniture for myself.

nk | design*kung-fu

I purchased a 100% recycled queen size mattress from a nearby Brotherhood of Lawrence store. So now I needed a base to stay away from the cold floor on chilly Melbourne nights. Trying to use materials that are waste products or in any other way free, light and reusable, two things came to mind. First, the milk crate. A very common and frequently used product of the Australian dairy industry. It is made from plastic, is very light and stackable, comes in a range of nice and bright colours and supposedly has high fines on it if you get caught finding one on the side of the road. So beware and only take donations!

My second thought was to use cardboard. Its free, extremely light and quite durable depending on how its used.  After a series of testing I decided to use both, milk crates and cardboard boxes for two reasons: keeping the waste of material down to a minimum while also taking advantage of the structural strength and minimising the weight.

nk | design*kung-fu

Once all boxes had been assembled, all I needed was a few hours of work these tools.

nk | design*kung-fu

Now I could start looking for a suitable shape!

nk | design*kung-fu

nk | design*kung-fu

When I had found the shape I liked, while maximising the structural integrity, I was confronted with a small problem. The surface was very uneven. Nevertheless, I decided to execute my build and flatten out the surface with loose sheets of cardboard later.

nk | design*kung-fu

So I strapped three major parts together, which in the end where assembled to one solid piece of cardboard-plastic dream-time goodness.

nk | design*kung-fu

The result is light, comfortable and costs exactly 8$ AUS (without the mattress I’m afraid).

nk | design*kung-fu

Imagine the face of the girl working at magnation when I purchased two copies of the current Landscape Architecture Australia magazine, featuring me on the cover while accidentally wearing the same pants and shirt as on the shot by Peter Bennetts. She seemed slightly puzzled, and just for the fragment of a second, blinked and shook off the weired feeling that something in this 15 second encounter had been very strange indeed.

cc

Peter Bennetts