Financial Times Weekend 22-23Feb2020

22 February/23 February 2020 ★ FTWeekend 15

(Above from

left) The Sun

Show, blinds

with light

sensors

by A+N;

iridescent

timber coating,

using reflective

nanostructures

similar to those

in butterflies’

wings; (right)

Paula Lorence’s

Taktil objects

for autistic

children

AIGARS_HIBNERIS

—

Bricknikcooking vessels— Ronald Smits Photography

Berlin-based designers Justina Moncev-

iciute and Regina Fischer. Their hand-

fired ceramic shapes — balls, hemi-

spheres and tubes — are strung together

like giant beads to make hangings. One

of these, Graphit Weave, uses unglazed

black porcelain in a triangular section,

threaded on wires to build a highly tac-

tile light-absorbing surface that resem-

blesahillsideslatescree.

Bricknic by Leif Czakai,

Timm Donke and Nathan Fordy

Bricknic (bricknic.org) is a small

brick-shaped terracotta cooking vessel

with a lid. It is a stackable version of the

chicken bricks introduced to the UK by

Terence Conran in the 1960s. Inspired

by communal dining in villages in the

Pyrenees, its designers were more

interested in its social than culinary

potential. “If the whole street has

bricks you can meet for a community

bricknic,” says Timm Donke. Everyone

fills their bricks — made by German

manufacturer Römertopf, who made

the original chicken bricks 60 years ago

— with whatever they want to eat and

then they are tessellated to form an

oven and a fire lit inside.

“After an hour everything’s cooked

andyougetyourbrickbackandyoucan

eat,” says Donke, showing me photos of

stacking configurations from previous

alfrescoevents.

What if you don’t have enough bricks

to form an enclosure? “If you only have

a few you can put them on the barbe-

cue,” he suggests.

Unglazed black porcelain by Claything

like massed caterpillars arching their

backs,lettingmorelightin.

Taktil by Paula Lorence

Conversations with a friend who has a

child with autism led Paula Lorence —

then studying product design at Riga

School of Design and Art in Latvia — to

devise sets of objects that could be

used to aid tactile stimulation. “I

talked to therapists and parents with

autistic children,” says Lorence. “The

therapists use a lot of materials, but

they are not always meant for chil-

dren with autism. Some of the toys

have very bright colours and can over-

stimulate them.”

She made a polished metal cube, a

cork pyramid, a clear plastic ring

twisted into a Möbius strip and a flat-

tened ovoid pebble — their smooth sur-

faces designed to present minimal chal-

lenge to a child with tactile hypersensi-

tivity. A second set, for those able to

cope with more stimulation, includes a

brushandafinnedflowershapemadeof

felt. A third has soft silicone forms in

soothing pastel colours that can

be stretched and squeezed

byananxiouschild.

Lorence says the

prototypes have

proven popular with

children with autism as

well as therapists and parents.

The fact that the objects could pass

for contemporary artworks is inciden-

tal: “It wasn’t my intention at all; I

was just thinking about forms and

textures to interest children.”

Ceramic textile

by Claything

“Ceramics on the move” is

the tagline of Claything (clay-

thing.org), a practice founded by

She has devised objects that

could be used to aid tactile

stimulation when working

with autistic children

House Home

FEBRUARY 22 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 19/2/2020 - 18: 13 User: peter.bailey Page Name: RES15, Part,Page,Edition: RES, 15, 1