Elsie Crawford judges the wallpaper *design awards 2022
Winner of the London Design Medal Elsie Crawford – part of the six-member jury of the Judges’ Awards, the highest honors award from Wallpaper*Design – in Design for Better Reality, our worthy winners
When Ilse Crawford was awarded the London Design Medal in September 2021, London Design Festival Director Ben Evans noted that there was no better time to celebrate the British designer’s pioneering approach to luxury in the context of design than in the present, when the world yearns for connection and intimacy. and take care. The jury citation cited interior design projects such as the 2017 Refettorio Felix at St Cuthbert’s Community Hall as examples of design with empathy and prioritizing luxury.
Els Crawford: “Giving people a better reality”
Refettorio Felix in the community hall in St Cuthbert, 2017. The project was a collaboration with Food for Soul, a non-profit organization founded by Chef Massimo Bottura to combat food waste (all meals are prepared using supermarket leftovers) and support social inclusion.
A frequent phrase Crawford uses to describe her work in interior design is “giving people a better reality.” This is fully reflected in her current work at The Embassies, a Swiss company that is reshaping the idea of a retirement home with a disruptive concept that combines good design with smart living.
“One of the things that is very clear is that loneliness is one of the main reasons people hold back,” she notes. With this in mind, the project reprograms buildings close to urban centers to build homes that offer a dignified and respectful viewpoint on ageing. The key, Crawford notes, “is to create communities that you really want to be in, and that happens by default to act as a support system.”
Studioilse restoration of the famous Ravintola Savoy restaurant in Aino and Alvar Aalto since 1937, in collaboration with Artek, 2020. Reads: Statement from the studio describing the project. The Altos believed that one of the main tasks of modern architecture was to “refine materials in a more humane direction”. And so are we. So-called “soft” values are vital in a hard world.
Anna Freud Center, Space for Children’s Mental Health Research, Training and Therapy, 2019. “Our goal was to take the institution out of the institution and design a place that feels warm, calm, solid, safe and reassured in difficult times,” says the studio. “Our design supports and enables both basic and complex human needs simultaneously.”
Homes are meant to become places of culture and purposeful participation, based on independence, freedom, kindness, and dignity (often lacking in old age living structures). The sites are equipped with green spaces, work spaces, and learning opportunities, as well as street facing elements that connect them to the local community, and the sites are set to debut in the next few years. Particular attention is paid to the aesthetic symbols of the project:[The spaces] It should be universal: great for young people, great for old people. We’re not looking for an aesthetic for the elderly, whatever that may be. Because one of the very strange things is the typecasting of that age, as if we weren’t all rushing toward the same destination,” she notes.
Wallpaper Judging * Design Awards 2022
As one of the judges for the Wallpaper*Design Awards 2022, Crawford believes the award is intended to “draw attention to a design that can inspire the future. It’s about recognizing projects that may lead the way. The time we are in is probably not about rewarding the past but about rewarding the past.” It is more about looking at future outliers.
It found that items of common interest to the Designer of the Year candidates were particularly deserving by this metric. They have what is needed for the future: start looking at design not as a noun, but as a verb, and [as] More integrated into our world, looking for less attention.”
Top of page: 3D Tables by Objects of Common Interest, Crawford’s Choice for Designer of the Year category in Wallpaper*Design Awards 2022. Produced for their solo exhibition “Future Archeology” at Etage Projects, Copenhagen (October 22 – December 4, 2021). Photography: Stefanos Tsakiris. Above: Slack Education Campus by Kerry Architecture, selected by Crawford as the best public building. Photography: Kerry Architects
She was also impressed by the Francis Kerry Education Slack Campus in Kenya. “The primal intelligence of this building was very impressive,” she comments. He has devised a design that makes education attractive, and sustainable building attractive and viable. A great public building that uses traditional knowledge as well as termite insights to create a building for education where it is needed. §
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