Home Sweet Home pulled in the crowds at Haworth

In keeping with the family feel of the Designers Saturday event Haworth presented 'Home Sweet Home' at their Brewhouse Yard showroom.Home Sweet Home is a spectator led generative art installation in which each participant had the opportunity to build themselves a house and become part of a small but perfectly formed cardboard community.  On arrival, Residents were given a flat packed property and plot with which they were free to do as they pleased.  The development boasted a number of services to help settle you in – a notice board, a postal service and even a local fm radio station.  The project generated excitement for creatives, urban designers, architects, sociologists, psychotherapists and most importantly the general public who were enabled with a 'playful' means of expression about how they would like to live, allowing the architects and children alike to express their imagination.

The 'iconic Building Competition' was also carried out during the event.  Twenty London based architectural and design firms were invited to participate in the recreation of some of London's most iconic buildings for the reintroduction of Designers Saturday in the UK.  These buildings sat adjacent to the houses which the general public had built.  All attending the event were given a ballot form to post their votes for the design teams' models.  The effort, imagination and creativity demonstrated was extraordinary.  Haworth UK welcomed over 500 visitors to the showroom for the event and the reactions and feed back we received for the competition and Home Sweet Home, on both Friday and Saturday was extremely positive with 236 voting papers deposited in the ballot box.  Given the reaction and comments that we received over the two days, we decided to display all the models in the Haworth UK showroom for the month of October along with the explanation boards with the practice and team member details. The winner of the Iconic Buidings competiton was Sidell Gibson with its re-creation of the Old Bailey. 

Our fabric suppliers Camira and Kvadrat were also present at the event providing cushions for the visitors to sit on.

Guest speaker Mr Mark Davy of FutureCity Ltd took centre stage and carried out his RIBA accredited CPD presentation titled 'The blurring boundaries between fine art and design disciplines through cultural branding and masterplanning'.  The talk looked at the growing interest by the private sector in new collaborative approaches to design including art and architecture, street furniture, water, lighting, landscape architecture and graphics and advertising.

A 'Street Party' was also present over the two day with plenty of food and drink and fun activities for kids.