Friday 19 September 2008

Nobel textiles in St James’s Park



In this project five designers from Central Saint Martins have been paired with five Nobel prize winners. The idea was that they would collaborate and the designers would produce a collection reflecting the research undertaken by the scientists. The work was on show in five greenhouses in St James’s Park. This was a good venue because the work was secure yet accessible to the general public and catalogues and information had been left in the greenhouses for further information. I thought the most interesting display was that by Rachel Wingfield which involved a series of structures and solar cells. I also thought the biodegradable garden furniture by Carole Collet pictured here was a clever response to the subject of apoptosis. The five projects are listed below.


Philippa Brock collaborated with Sir Aaron Klug (Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1982) to produce a collection of Jacquard weaves that explore the methods of transforming 2-dimensional weaving approaches into 3-dimensional models. Carole Collet collaborated with John Sulston (Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2002 with Sydney Brenner and Robert Horwitz) to create a collection of garden furniture based on the principles of programmed degradation. Rachel Kelly worked with Tim Hunt (Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2001); she has designed a collection of transparent wallpapers and paper lanterns in response to his discovery of cycling proteins which appear and disappear. Shelley Fox collaborated with Peter Mansfield (Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2003), and has created a fashion collection based on the MRI mapping of the body fat of six volunteers. Rachel Wingfield collaborated with John E Walker (Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1997), to create architectural scale textiles that explore urban food production, in response to John’s work on ATP synthesis.

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