It Takes a Village
Creating a sustainable community
Exhibited at the London Design Festival 2025, the project explores "community" as "family" and embraces my grandfather's eccentric fruitarian lifestyle and his unique health-based philosophy of the mid-20th century. This includes principles of vernacular architecture and the importance of building community around engagement to create something more important than the individual.
I set out to produce a bench with the help of the community and a series of guided workshops in London: blackberry foraging, rope dyeing, and straw upholstery. The bench is modular with the ability to grow as the community grows. Through a community's collective efforts, a structure that naturally disintegrates and fades over time can be maintained and even expanded or enhanced as a step towards improved body and mind health.
