8 in a bed

Studio Project Semester 1, Year

The project brief was to in groups, design an exhibition space that somehow explores the theme of "Juteopolis". The space is to be interactive and also must be transportable as it may be used as a travelling exhibition. Oh and as much as possible sustainable.

This was to be no mean feat.

Juteopolis for those of you who don't know was the name often used when referring to Dundee. Dundee was for a period of time the Jute capital of the world as it would import the raw materials from India and put through a carefully designed process to end up with the finished product. From cleaning to, thinning, spinning on to bobbins, weaving, then making sacks, carpet backing, road underlay Jute was Dundee. Everything was somehow connected to the industry.

It was this idea of connections that my group decided to pursue further. We looked at various different elements that the industry in the town related to such as health, education, communication, social and living conditions. As we looked into these ideas we never really felt that one element was more important than the other, all we really knew was we wanted to include all of these things into our design. We developed a design based on living in Dundee, at the time it was common for as many as eight people to be living in one house of then sharing a bedroom. We came up with eight squares all of varying sizes occupying the one space, this came to be fondly known as 8 in a bed. It was decided that the eight squares in there own way would show a different part of the industry but at the same time all be connected to each other. One cube would play a back projection of a workers hands showing how they would communicate with each other (this was a type of sign language developed in the mills) another would show the ratio of men to women, one man to three women. The idea of the exhibition space was to give the viewer the opportunity to experience what they want to experience.

The cubes themselves were to be made out of cardboard in such a way that it could be taken apart and reassembled easily, this both covered our transportable and sustainable material part of the brief.

Overall we wanted to look on the Jute industry as something positive in Dundee, not, as so often happens, a shrine to the past and the doom and gloom of life. We wanted to celebrate what the workers had and what the community and town meant.

I really enjoyed working as a group for this project and learnt a great deal from working with my peers. It was interesting to get to understand how others work and also to pass on skills and knowledge to each other. It really does help when your group is on the same wavelength and I feel my group really connected.

Isn't it bizarre how most things work better when connected?