Without Empathy, There Is No Good Design

Ilse Crawford is a designer, academic, and creative director with a simple mission: to put humanistic needs at the heart of her life’s work. As founder of multidisciplinary design practice, Studioilse, she works with her talented team to bring this vision to life, having designed spaces for the likes of Soho House Group and Aēsop, as well as sustainable furniture collections for Ikea.

Fundamental to Ilse’s practice is to approach every project or problem with empathy and humility. “Good design is more than the way something looks,” she stresses, “it’s about wellbeing and making life better – not just for us, but for others and the environment.” This holistic notion of design for wellbeing is one that is permeating each and every facet of contemporary design, yet one that is particularly critical in built environment fields.

“We spend 87% of our lives inside buildings,” Ilse states, “how they’re designed really affects how we feel and how we live.” This attention to wellness and wellbeing in design is exemplified in Studioilse’s project Ett Hem, a hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, that truly embodies the native meaning of its name, ‘a home’.

Originally designed by architect Fredrik Dahlberg and built in 1910, this architectural gem from the Arts & Crafts era was once upon a time the residence of a government official and his wife who were avid art and design lovers.

In reimagining the residence as a hotel, Studioilse worked with great sensitivity to preserve the personal quality of Ett Hem and embed it in the hotel. This meant going above and beyond simply designing a hotel with a homey aesthetic to continuing the story of the home that already existed. As such, Ett Hem’s design revolved not around how a hotel can be made to look and feel like a home, but rather around how people might be made to feel cared for and valued.

“Hotels often offer a lot of services on the surface but the only actual interaction taking place is putting in an order and receiving it on your bill,” says Ilse, “We based the concept on the idea of warm and intelligent human contact throughout and designed into that. The kitchen is shared by guests and the chefs who use local produce and ingredients and are able to talk about that. We carefully selected sustainable brands and producers. We wanted to create a system where the money you spend goes back into good companies.”

 

Studioilse’s work is testament to the fact that wellness and wellbeing goes further than just an ideal tagged onto an end result. To design for wellbeing is to think in ecosystems – taking into consideration where things come from, who they sustain, where they go and how its crafted and how it can change the way we live.

Watch the complete short film Wellness and Wellbeing presented by Ilse Crawford for VOLA below:

On design is a digital platform created by Vola to shine a spotlight on elegantly resolved architectural projects from across the globe and share the insightful and inspiring perspectives of pioneering industry professionals. Wellness and Wellbeing is On design’s third film feature, so there’s even more juice where this came from. For instance, a personal account of the intrinsic relationship between Danish culture and design from Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen, founding partner of Norm Architects.

VOLA
vola.com/on-design

We think you might also like vaatsu shastra and design for wellbeing

The post Without Empathy, There Is No Good Design appeared first on Habitusliving.com.

Without Empathy, There Is No Good Design

Ilse Crawford is a designer, academic, and creative director with a simple mission: to put humanistic needs at the heart of her life’s work. As founder of multidisciplinary design practice, Studioilse, she works with her talented team to bring this vision to life, having designed spaces for the likes of Soho House Group and Aēsop, as well as sustainable furniture collections for Ikea.

Fundamental to Ilse’s practice is to approach every project or problem with empathy and humility. “Good design is more than the way something looks,” she stresses, “it’s about wellbeing and making life better – not just for us, but for others and the environment.” This holistic notion of design for wellbeing is one that is permeating each and every facet of contemporary design, yet one that is particularly critical in built environment fields.

“We spend 87% of our lives inside buildings,” Ilse states, “how they’re designed really affects how we feel and how we live.” This attention to wellness and wellbeing in design is exemplified in Studioilse’s project Ett Hem, a hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, that truly embodies the native meaning of its name, ‘a home’.

Originally designed by architect Fredrik Dahlberg and built in 1910, this architectural gem from the Arts & Crafts era was once upon a time the residence of a government official and his wife who were avid art and design lovers.

In reimagining the residence as a hotel, Studioilse worked with great sensitivity to preserve the personal quality of Ett Hem and embed it in the hotel. This meant going above and beyond simply designing a hotel with a homey aesthetic to continuing the story of the home that already existed. As such, Ett Hem’s design revolved not around how a hotel can be made to look and feel like a home, but rather around how people might be made to feel cared for and valued.

“Hotels often offer a lot of services on the surface but the only actual interaction taking place is putting in an order and receiving it on your bill,” says Ilse, “We based the concept on the idea of warm and intelligent human contact throughout and designed into that. The kitchen is shared by guests and the chefs who use local produce and ingredients and are able to talk about that. We carefully selected sustainable brands and producers. We wanted to create a system where the money you spend goes back into good companies.”

 

Studioilse’s work is testament to the fact that wellness and wellbeing goes further than just an ideal tagged onto an end result. To design for wellbeing is to think in ecosystems – taking into consideration where things come from, who they sustain, where they go and how its crafted and how it can change the way we live.

Watch the complete short film Wellness and Wellbeing presented by Ilse Crawford for VOLA below:

On design is a digital platform created by Vola to shine a spotlight on elegantly resolved architectural projects from across the globe and share the insightful and inspiring perspectives of pioneering industry professionals. Wellness and Wellbeing is On design’s third film feature, so there’s even more juice where this came from. For instance, a personal account of the intrinsic relationship between Danish culture and design from Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen, founding partner of Norm Architects.

VOLA
vola.com/on-design

We think you might also like vaatsu shastra and design for wellbeing

The post Without Empathy, There Is No Good Design appeared first on Habitusliving.com.

Love, Life, New Beginnings

Sometimes life is truly unpredictable. No, let me rephrase this: life is unpredictable! Who thought that I will finally quit my corporate job, marry, and start a new chapter in my life all over sudden. Let me reassure you, I did not think of those options myself. But they happened. And as quite often in life, the stars seemed to have aligned for it all to happen in a serendipitous sequence of moments. 2019 was the year of closing chapters, but also opening new ones. And 2020 started with the best new chapter in my life: marrying the person I love.







In today’s post I want to focus on this wonderful new chapter. I am typing these words exactly one month after my wedding day. And I am as happy as I can be. Believe me if I tell you I never saw myself getting married – you know like really doing the thing, organizing something nice for close friends and family, all that goes with such a special moment in life. But then as I said it before, life is unpredictable. I met that one person and suddenly everything was different. I wanted to get married and even very much so. And I could not be happier with my decision today.



My aim here is to share with you all a very important moment in my life. However, I do not like to get too personal here on the blog. Mostly because I also want to respect other people’s desire for privacy. And in this case I will stick to my stance. So even though I will share with you a few details and pictures of my wedding, I will not talk so much about my partner, our love story, the guests and so forth. But I will tell and show you quite a bit of a this very beautiful day.

We decided to get married in Copenhagen, Denmark beginning of January. We chose Copenhagen because of two reasons: First of all it is very simple and not bureaucratic to get married in Denmark if you come from different countries (in our case we are from Austria and Brazil). Secondly, we both love Copenhagen, Danish design and have a connection to the Danish capital. So it felt like a perfect match to celebrate our love in Copenhagen.







Our wedding was more on the intimate side – we invited about 20 close friends and family members to celebrate our day with us in Copenhagen. After a beautiful ceremony at the Copenhagen City Hall, we cheered with some bubbles at the SP34 hotel. Later we invited our guests to a wedding lunch in one of my dream locations in Copenhagen: the GRO Spiseri restaurant.





GRO Spiseri is a wonderful organic restaurant in a greenhouse on top of a building in central Copenhagen. It is surrounded by a rooftop garden where they grow their own veggies, herbs, fruits and even produce their own honey and eggs. We booked the greenhouse for our guests to have an unforgettable experience with us – one that was also framed by my love for plants and greenery as you can assume. They served us an excellent 3-course organic lunch made with local ingredient and accompanying wines as well as a Denmark inspired wedding cake.











Another aspect that you can guess is a certain idea that I had for the table setting. Together with my partner we discussed what we both would like as our wedding table. The decision was simple as we both love a natural styling and have a soft spot for Danish design. We decided to stick to neutral colors and match the ambiance of the lovely greenhouse. The mix & match tableware was accompanied with grey linen table runners and striped linen napkins from Linen Texture, additionally we selected pieces from Danish design brand Georg Jensen with the famous Koppel pitcher for water, stylish Cobra candleholders, Bernadotte vases for the table and one Alfredo glass vase for the side table all of which were filled with dried flowers, eucalyptus and some Craspedia as color dots.









Another wish of mine was to add little hints and details highlighting our various backgrounds. The Brazilian vibes were set with the most traditional wedding detail from Brazil – the ‘bem casado’ cakes. These little handmade cakes are beautifully wrapped and served at the end as well as gifted to all guests as a little memento from the wedding. ‘Bem casado’ means well married and should bring love and prosperity to the newly weds. My partner was responsible for this task as a native Brazilian and did quite a job to order handmade bem casados all the way from his native town of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. The cakes were made by local pâtissier Fernanda Beltrame (in case you ever need perfect bem casados) and wrapped according to our wishes in soft beige tones with dried flowers. Also a big OBRIGADO to my partner’s brother for bringing two boxes of little cakes from Brazil to Europe!







When I learned about the bem casado tradition, I had an instant idea now to include something special from Serbia, where my family originates. I asked my all-time favorite Serbian ceramicist Ana Savic of anaeskeramik to make a set of wabi sabi plates where we could place a bem casado and offer it as a gift to our guests. Moreover, I asked her to include our names, the date and location of the wedding on the bottom of each plate. I think this is a wonderful way to have a ‘well married’ set of something Brazilian and something Serbian. Just like us as a couple.









The aforementioned linen for the table comes from Moscow, Russia, where my partner currently works and lives. And I also felt the need to include something Austrian of course – as I was born and raised in Austria. My choice was simple yet delicious: the original Mozart chocolate balls from the Fürst confectionary in Salzburg for every guest. Also we added a few bottles of excellent sparkling wine from my partner’s region in Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul. We opted for great sparkling wines from the Casa Valduga winery.







All these details set the tone for a relaxed and very happy lunch with our guests. Imagine a bunch of happy, smiling people from Brazil, France, Austria, Serbia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark speaking all kinds of languages. But for this day only one language was needed to understand each other: the language of love. We were truly happy to see all our guests get so well along even though many of them did not know each other and/or did not speak the language of each other.









After lunch all our guests were granted some time to relax and freshen up before joining us for yet another stylish occasion to celebrate our love: a dinner at Cofoco, a landmark restaurant in the Danish capital. A six-course dinner with accompanying wines were waiting for our guests, as well as good talks and laughters.









I would not be able to share all of this beautiful details with you if it wasn’t for our excellent wedding photographer Alex Mart who spent the entire day with us taking photos and immortalizing this wonderful occasion. If you ever look for a great, fun and talented wedding photographer, do get in touch with Alex. I really loved his work and spending the day with him!





Also I would like to thank my dear friends Christina and Ben who helped me all along the way to prepare this special day. Christina was basically my wedding planner dealing with all details and administrative stuff, from choosing the florist to answering emails and decorating the table. Ben’s impeccable taste for styling was very helpful for our table setting as he worked with Christina on decorating the Gro Spiseri restaurant for our guests and us. Thank you guys, you rock! Also I want to thank all our wonderful guests for making this day truly special – these people traveled from as far as Brazil and other European countries to celebrate our love! Muito obrigado, thank you, hvala, danke, grazie, tak and merci to all of you!



Last but not least I want to thank my partner and now husband for being the most wonderful human being – his love makes me smile and fly high. You make me the happiest person on earth, Cleber! Te amo.

Love is love! Enjoy my friends!

Photography by Alex Mart

The post Love, Life, New Beginnings appeared first on Happy Interior Blog.