Design for Czech-Israeli kids
During a student exchange program at AAAD (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Prague), I studied at two departments simultaneously, the first was my original department, Applied Arts, and the second was The Studio of Textile Arts, to which I turned in order to acquire knowledge in that field.
In both departments, without ex-ante coordination, the main projects dealt with kids oriented designs: At the Department of Applied Arts the project was the design of a wooden kids' chair, in cooperation with TON factory, whose chair no.14 is a milestone in the world of modern design. At The Studio of Textile Arts the mission was to design a pattern for kids' textile that will fit a subject that has to do with unique childish behavior and with the area where kids spend their time during the day. The project was carried out in cooperation with LA LINEA factory, one of the biggest textile factories in the Czech Republic.
When I arrived to Prague, during the student exchange program, I felt like a kid myself, looking forward to explore a culture I am not yet acquainted with. The processes of thinking and building the object were affected by myself being an Israeli who worked in a Czech design environment, which expressed, in my perspective, a synergy between the east European cherishment of handcraft, reused materials and appreciation for tradition, and the west European openness to innovation and progress.
When I have examined the differences between Israeli and Czech children, I have noticed that the Czech children appeared to be less interested in the adult world, but also appeared to be more temperate. Thus, my starting point for the design for kids was in respect to Israeli and Czech children. In both of the projects that appear in the presentation, I decided to refer to the actions of children in their own unique way: the kids' chair represents a childish movement that has frozen, expressed by the angles between the backrest and the armrests, and the chair's legs. The series of patterns, FOODINKA, expresses children’s love for food, the play with food, and preparation of in the kitchen, etc… with the formation of the vegetables and the manner of their placement relative to the linear cleanness of the linoleum cutting technique, which together create a childish dynamic in the pattern.
Michal Derhy-Exhibition (6.12 MB)
Michal Derhy is a Fourth year student in the Industrial design department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. The projects exhibited here have been presented at the end of the year exhibition "(Clauzura") of the "AAAD - VSUP" in Prague, the Czech Republic, which she attended as an Erasmus Mundus exchange student.
