Juteopolis

#6




As our first project in second year we got to experience working as a group, this experience is the start to understanding the real world of design as we will find ourselves in many situations where we must learn to work as a team. In other words I found it very beneficial!

We were to design an exhibition space in the DCA Centrespace based on Juteopolis. Verdant Works were involved and although they are an exhibition of this topic we were to come up with a designers take on the theme.

We worked together to research the themes of Juteopolis (the history of the Jute industry in Dundee) and found that the interesting facts all seemed to point at the idea of connections in the industry. Everyone was connected and knew each other because of the jute. Families lived in close quarters, literally living on top of one another in the tenements. Neighbours became your family and your co-workers your best friends.

We took this idea and developed it further. The was an average number of people that stayed in one house - 8 - and at that there was sometimes only one room! This brought us to the idea of there being 8 objects in the room that connect to each other in some way. Over lapping and occupying each others space as it represents that idea in the tenements.

As part of the brief we were design the exhibition so that it travels and is sustainable as Jute is a sustainable material. So our 8 object became cubes of different sizes representing rooms, and each were constructed out of flat-pack cardboard. This made the cubes lightweight and easier to transport as some of the cubes reached 3000mm x 3000mm.

Each cubed displayed a different element of connection between the people of Juteopolis. Some had coloured jute attached from one to another and showed elements of weaving, as the connections between the people weaved in and out of different families. One box showed a projection of a workers hands signaling the "sign language" that they had for the noisy mills. This showed the connection between the workers as it was like having there own secret language.