Mini Murmuration White Night Brighton 2010

finally - here is the little video we have created for our fleeting White Night Brighton 2010 installation, 'mini murmuration'.

enjoy.

inhabitat...!

just a quickie - pretty chuffed as our piece on our installation mini murmuration has been picked up by Inhabitat...

http://inhabitat.com/2010/11/08/led-installation-sheds-light-on-the-plight-of-endangered-starlings/

wonderful!

White Night 2010...

I always write too many words in my posts, so before I ramble on, here are the pics of 'Mini Murmuration' - our light installation for White Night, Brighton 2010, which was based on

the roosting dance of the Red listed status starlings that call our beautiful West Pier home...

white night or white horses....

There are a few things that I find particularly exciting about the design process - the sketching, the thinking, but one of the best elements has to be the learning.

I find it such a wasted opportunity when designers (of any discipline) churn out ideas that have already been seen in another guise - surely we get our kicks from thinking up mad, weird and wonderful ways of doing new and exciting things? Maybe it is just me, but when I design I try and touch the moon - then figure out how I am going to build the damned ladder to do it.

Designing is challenging, and we should challenge ourselves (and our clients) every day.

But sometimes, no matter how much you plan, design, learn and invent, things can merrily gallop into your path, causing you to have a change of plan.

And so it is with our White Night proposal.

I planned for an ethereal, glowing and fluctuating installation, drifting and rocking next to the beautifully skeletal West Pier for White Night 2010 - this coming Saturday night. With the expertise and help of others I learnt about the rise and fall depths of the local tide, the natural drift, how to produce a double anchor system that would work with different wind directions, how to launch the boat, how to retrieve it, what a timed swell is and how it could cause our little boat a huge problem.

I learnt about the fishing boats of Brighton and why there aren't many about, the underlying structure (or lack of it) of the West Pier, and how great a high pressure front is and how nasty a low pressure front can be.

But knowledge can sometimes feel like a bad thing, hence the phrase 'ignorance is bliss'. And when I looked at the extremely complicated weather predictions for the West Pier area yesterday, the bits I had learnt showed me something I didn't want to see. A phone call to the wonderfully helpful and patient experts at the Brighton Seafront Office confirmed my fears.

Saturday night would be great if I wanted to do a bit of surfing at 1.00 am, with a 5ft swell over 12 seconds, but not so favourable for a little 1960's timber dinghy, full of wind generated LED's, next to a large and imposing metal structure.

'mini murmurations' will not float for White Night Brighton 2010.

Instead, she will be located on the beach (well above the high tide mark!) with her rods and LED's wafting in the breeze, albeit from a static base.

But Mother Nature is not to be messed with, and I would rather this than be swimming frantically out to the installation at the ungodly hours of the morning trying to stop it smash into the Pier. My risk assessment is complicated enough thank you.

So there we go - all have agreed that the low pressure looks ominous and even though I am a bit miffed, there is not much I can do. Instead, we will float her on another date when the gods of the sea are having a quiet snooze rather than the planned knees up this weekend.

Best laid plans...

do something different in the middle of the night...

We can now announce a few more details about exactly what we will be doing in the middle of the night - more specifically, over the night of 30th October - 31st October...

We are producing this:

This, is to be our sea bound installation for the wonderful White Night Brighton 2010 - 'mini murmuration' and this is what is about.

Responding to the 2010 theme of ‘Illumination’ Claire Potter Design have been commissioned to produce an innovative light installation which will play homage to two icons of the city – the crumbling West Pier and the starlings which call it home.

Over recent years, the West Pier has developed from a skeleton into a living performance, when every night, thousands of starlings mass and whirl in the skies above the structure - known as a murmuration - creating a beautiful dance before they settle to roost. Whilst this dance is beautiful to watch, and has become as iconic as the West Pier itself, many do not realise how important this roosting site is, and how threatened the starlings actually are.

One of the four specially commissioned pieces for White Night Brighton 2010, ‘mini murmuration’ is a light based installation which takes this ‘performance’ as inspiration, and aims to educate viewers as to the threatened status of the birds and the importance of the site.

A sea-based artwork will be created next to the West Pier itself, with around a hundred Mathmos ‘Windlights’ - miniature wind turbine LEDs – glowing and swaying above an old timber boat, creating a fluctuating shape reminiscent of the murmurations of the starlings.

Red LEDs have been chosen to highlight the Red Listed status of the starlings on the RSPB Species of Conservation Concern list, whilst the number of LEDs used (approximately 80 – 100) will highlight the massive numerical decline of the birds. Only a small ‘cloud’ of LED starlings will sway next to the Pier.

We will of course be posting more info on the development of the piece as it is made, but if you want to do something different in the middle of the night, stick the 30th Oct in your diary, and come and say hello.

staycation memoirs...

just like a holiday, we blinked and it was over - but we are delighted to announce that our studio staycation was a great success!

over the five open days we spoke to nearly 100 different people, who had a variety of queries from which herbs to plant on a semi-shady balcony to what types of natural insulation are available.

we helped people with natural rubber flooring, colour selection and clematis species.

we had a blast.

so much so, that we are planning on starting a new 'free friday' scheme in Brighton - setting up free design clinics an a variety of locations, one every two months, to help whoever wants to come and say hi!

further details will follow, but thank you to all of our visitors at our very first 'staycation'...

postcards from the staycation...

busy, busy, busy.day one - advice given on herbs for a semi-shade bal

cony, the use of social media and a whole house interior scheme.

more to come, so here are a few pics of our reclaimed space...

studio staycation (part 2...)

ooh - we have now got our flyer for our staycation sorted - click for a bigger pic!

ps - we have just added the back, which is useful - showing how to find us!

pop-up studio 'staycation'...

we are not going on holiday this year.

instead, we are decamping from our base in Portslade and creating an eclectic little pop-up studio in Brighton - offering free advice to all visitors for one week only!

situated in a unit in the Brighton Open Market in London Road, the temporary studio will be made from a whole load of reclaimed and recycled bits and pieces and will be our part of the residency with the wonderful compARTment group.

private or business, large or small, pop along and say hello and pick our brains, or send us an email (hello@clairepotterdesign.com) to pre-book your ***free*** consultation with one of the team...

(Tues 24th - Sat 28th August, about 10 - 5 ish every day...)

compARTment launches in Brighton...

It is typical. With all of the drought inducing spells we have had of late you can guarantee that if you wish for a glimmer of sunshine, the clouds will gather.

And so it was with a sigh I opened by blinds on Saturday morning to be confronted by a very Brighton-esque fine drizzle wafting in from the sea.

So why was I longing for the sun? Well, sunshine = people in the city, and today was the long awaited for launch of the compARTment project in the Open Market, London Road, Brighton. After all of the hard work, graft and passion of all those involved, it would really have been a shame for a bit of precipitation to dampen everyones spirits.

But we are a hardy old lot in Brighton, so we donned our macs and headed down to the Open Market to visit the Artist's Market, watch live graffiti, listen to live DJ's and ukuleles and see an installation made from elastic.

Despite the drizzle (which soon passed) there was a distinct buzz to the market, with the rumble of voices and beats audible over the buses and shoppers.

Turning the corner to the south side of the market, stalls 38 and 39 became visible...

One unit houses the elastic installation by compARTment member and co-founder Nic Blair, whilst the other unit featured the first of regular artist / makers markets. It was wonderful.

visit the compARTment website for more details on what is to come at the units over the next few months (including our very own studio staycation at the end of August...)

white night Brighton 2010...

a very quick post - we are very excited in the studio as we have been selected to produce an installation for the forthcoming White Night Brighton on 30 Oct 2010...

more details to follow (once we have stopped jumping about).

expect wind powered LED's, patterns of nature and an old boat...

that was the week that was...

Last week was pretty hectic here in the studio. there were a series of deadlines, a juggling of projects, an award to be awarded and two out-of-the-office trips.

It started relatively calmly, creating the outline concept for a new urban front garden for a gentleman on the sunny south coast. minimalist, lots of hedges and a variety of textural grasses and clipped forms. At the end of my scribbling I realised that it looked just like a screenshot from that good old '90's wonder, Tetras. I liked it very much. Fortunately, so did our client, so we are now pressing on with constructional drawings.

Next, we had to make an award. Not to go on our shelf you understand, but to be awarded to a graduate on the University of Sussex Product Design degree show - to the person, who, in our humble opinion could wear the badge of 'Best Eco Design 2010'.

We looked around the studio and found some bits and bobs and assembled this:

Made from recycled plastic with bank notes in, a hugely water damaged book, some screws and threaded rod and an old set of printers blocks. We were quite pleased with the finished effort.

So we then had to decide who was going to receive our assembled award, so I trundled up to the Falmer site of the University of Sussex to view the Innovate 2010 show.

I was blown away. The quality and range of projects was truly excellent and after much umming and aarhing I whittled it down to four very notable eco designs. And after even more umming I finally selected the winner.......(to be continued...)

Thursday found me whizzing up to Birmingham where the ever eclectic Gardeners' World Live show was squeezed into the stale halls and concrete expanses of the NEC, which has to be one of the most depressing places in all of the UK.

Once I had parked my car (to the tune of £8) and reminded myself that I was not in some technicolour 80's theme park I started to enjoy the show.

I loved the Girl Guides garden - there was something about the repetitional structure of the quote sticks against the waft of the wildflowers which particularly drew me in. Other lovelies included the rose Re-Bound garden by Andy Tudbury where I was allowed to sit on the pristine white bench and take in the scent that was captured in the space. The dappled shade on the hedges was lovely and the lawn was so flat you could have ironed a perfect crease on your trousers using it as a base.

I also caught up with Tom and Malcolm at Hooksgreen Herbs, and I was over the moon to hear that they were given a Gold medal for their exhibit. I was chuffed to bits for them and got a very stern look from the BBC film crew when I squealed with delight at the news.

Inside the sheds I found the fantastic James Alexander-Sinclair, who was working harder than a donkey on Blackpool beach in summer in the darkest corner of the NEC you could possibly find. Not the most inspiring of places, but James was lighting up the bleakness with his bright and sharp wit so no head torches were required.

After battling my way out of the car park I rumbled diagonally down the country to the lovely little market town of Bromyard where I was staying for the night before my Friday at the Three Counties Show.

The little sections I did see of Bromyard were lovely, which included my lovely little room in the beautiful Bay Horse pub on the High Street. A stunning oak beamed 16th C coach house, The Bay Horse was so full of character you could make a fortune bottling it and selling it to tourists. Everything was wonky, crittall windows creaked in the sun and it oozed history. Coffee in hand, I sat down and watched Gareth at Glyndebourne (which took me back a few years to when I was at music college) and relaxed for the first time in an age.

Breakfast was excellent, with a no-fuss vegetarian option and nice toast in a beautiful section of the dining room downstairs. Thank you to all of the Bay Horse - I can highly recommend it for a stay if you are around those parts...

A mini rally drive down to Malvern and I was at my second home, the Three Counties Showground for the Three Counties Show in watery sunshine.

I headed straight for our 25th Anniversary Garden, which had been developing over the last 5 weeks since it's first outing at the Spring Show. Like a proud mother hen, I clucked around the space, smiling at how lovely the Stipa tenuissima looked, how the fennel had developed into smokey bronze clouds and how the spots of alliums drew the eyes from one section of the garden to another.

Today, Monday the 21st June, it will be dismantled forever.

But, that is what happens with showgardens, they are fleeting.

After taking far too many photos, I wandered around the show with a massive handwoven willow dragonfly I had bought as a Father's Day present for my Dad and eventually met up with the beautiful and fabulous Nina Acton and the very lovely Mark Diacono who I had met a bit before. We all continued around the show, tasting some lovely beer, talking about yellow courgettes and buying more huge dragonflies made from willow. It was grand.

The drizzle signalled my departure from Worcestershire and after shoehorning the dragonflies into the car I whizzed back down south, with a brief delay on the ever predictable and accident laden M25.

What a week.

out of the bubble...

Building a show garden is ridiculously stressful - you work in all weathers, at all hours and end up living on biscuits and various fast food purchases, but I would not give it up for the world.

You meet and get to know better the most wonderful bunch of people you could ever imagine, who understand exactly what you are going through and are there to provide support when you are feeling at your lowest and high five you when you are on top of the world.

I was very lucky to be working on this showgarden with a great client team and fantastic design team (as I have blogged about before) and the actual build went better than I could have hoped.

Here is a little pic of our motley design team crew - (from the right) Alex Bell of Alex Bell Garden Design, James Steed of Outdoor Living Space and myself. (picture courtesy of Three Counties Agricultural Society)

A special shout also goes to all the guys from Outdoor Living Space who worked through snow, wind, rain and hail to get the garden built to our very odd yet exacting standards - thank you all.

I will be doing a few more postings soon about the garden and the general show escapades later this week, but I will start off with a few pics of the very special 25th Anniversary Garden for the Three Counties Agricultural Society, as seen in Malvern last week.

PS - if you want to see it again, come and visit the forthcoming Three Counties Show, where the garden will be open once more for visitors before it is dismantled.....

they're off...

There will be a small pause in posts from the ecospot, as we are all heading up to the beautiful Malvern (very early tomorrow morning) to complete the build of our latest show garden project - the huge, 25th Anniversary Garden for the Three Counties Agricultural Society, in readiness for the opening of the Malvern Spring Gardening Show.

If I get a chance, I will try and stick a little update up here, otherwise you will have to content yourselves with my Twitters, which should get more frequent when I am on site.

And you never know, I might even say something interesting. You can follow me here.

See you all soon...

time for tea...?

Just a really quick post - a huge congratulations to Gaynor Witchard who produced a beautiful garden at the recent RHS Cardiff show and was awarded a Silver-Gilt and Best in Show.

With a gentle, cottagey feel, the garden was wonderfully delicate, and I have been assured that the vintage china teacup birdfeeders we produced for Irene's Garden fitted in perfectly.

Official photos will follow - until then have a look here... (click the tiny 'more images' text in the top left of the picture to see more details!)

Well done again Gaynor!

road trip...

Those who visit the wonderful Malvern Meet blog cannot fail to have noticed the ticking time bomb counting down the very seconds until the start of the Malvern Spring Gardening Show.

So therefore it will be no surprise that I spent one day last week driving up and across half of the country to go and look at stuff.

The itinerary read as follows:

5.45 - leave Brighton. eat a whole bag of licorice allsorts for breakfast by the time the first service station is reached. fill up with petrol as I realise my petrol gauge is not working.

9.30 - arrive at the Three Counties Agricultural Society in Malvern to see what's occurring on site.

9.31 - find Nina and drink an enormous cup of coffee

9.32 - out onto site....And - the garden is looking amazing. Jim Steed and his guys at Outdoor Living Space are doing a sterling job with the detailing slick and bright.

The amelanchiers are blossoming (which is a bad thing, as they will probably be over by the show), the cherries are not yet (which is good), the turf is lush and the pool is Olympic. My excitement could not be contained as I took a whole load of pics before my short sleeved southern arms froze off in the biting midlands wind.

A couple of hours later and back into the minster to drive across the beautiful countryside to Northamptonshire where a section of polytunnel housed a chunk of planting for the garden.

The drive was lovely and quiet, and we stopped at a tiny pub in the middle of nowhere to have a spot of lunch. A goats cheese panini later and we were back on our way.

2.30 - We arrived somewhat later than we had hoped at Manor Farm Nursery, but we were welcomed by Gordon and the promise of a cup of coffee in ten minutes. We trundled up the track to the polytunnels to see the awaiting plants.

They are looking good - slightly smaller than we had all (including Manor Farm) had expected for the time of year, but we have been lulled into a supreme sense of complacency with the winters of late. The continued bands of snow have only extended the dormancy of the plants, who are really just starting to wake up to spring. We need sun, and we need it now to get the plants to their best for the show.

But Mother Nature will not be told. She will do what she does, and if required, I will source some extras for here daan saaaf where we live in a comparative Mediterranean environment.

3.00 - The promised cup of coffee was drunk (along with a biscuit) and we wound our little way back to the sunny coast.

6.45 - A total of 13 hours later, I sat down and ate chips for tea, exhausted, but content in the knowledge that it is all coming together...

apothecaries and apologies...

Again it seems as though I have abandoned this poooor little blog.

Spring has sprung on the south coast, and the amount of work I am trying to squeeze into the time my eyes are open has expanded beyond the time my eyes want to stay open. Subsequently, the blog has been a little neglected.

But no matter, I am here now, so I thought I would write a true diary post about what I have been up to.

I have attended a wonderful seminar, arranged by the Design Council and South East Design all about Designing for Sustainability, which was held at the truly beautiful Stanmer House. There were other wonderful people there and we spent the afternoon talking about carbon calculations, life cycle analysis and closed loop designing before redesigning an object that one of us had brought with us as an example of bad design.

The main speaker for the event was James from Giraffe, who was fantastic - just like a brilliant lecturer who can get you excited about the strangest of things, like carbon calculations. For example, using carbon calculations, you would have to use a ceramic mug 1000 TIMES before it outweighs the amount of CO2 used in the manufacture, transportation and disposal of the traditionally eco baddie that is the expanded polystyrene cup. Interesting eh?

But do not despair. Do not rush out and fill your kitchen cupboards with disposable cups (unlike our local hospital....). Just continue with your mugs and use them till they bust. Then continue to use them as plant pots or crocks.

I also trawled around Lewes looking at fantastic antiques that I cannot afford. Including these AMAZING apothecary drawers, which one day I will have an entire wall of, or I will find a lovely lovely client who will allow me to specify mountains of them for an interior.

We walked around a preserved iron age barrow and settlement and met a dog called Rory and his owner.

I also met a new client, have designed a micro market stall for a local trader using reclaimed timber and done my end of year books. My printer has broken, but the engine of our Morris Minor is being fixed (piston number 4 needs replacing). I have redesigned our website, but have not programmed it yet.

We also created a range of teacup bird feeders for Gaynor Witchard (who will be using them for her show garden at Cardiff at the end of the week), using these lovelies, and started to assemble another batch for a forthcoming showgarden at Malvern.

And of course, Malvern is getting dangerously close. Even though we have been on site since February, the show suddenly seems just around the corner, and the relentless countdown on the Meet at Malvern site is not doing much to calm my nerves. But things are going well, and I have been told that our decorative pool is so large I will be able to do my lengths in it every morning. Sounds good to me. Oh - I have also started to blog for both Meet at Malvern and the Three Counties Agricultural Society website, so take a look for my specific show garden ramblings.

Last but not least, I have been involved in the setting up of a new and (almost) completely unrelated business to my own.

The wares are natural and delicious and more details will follow very very soon...

can you guess what it is yet?

Oh I do like to pootle up to Malvern...

I do love winter - I can be quite a solitary character and the hibernation suits me quite well, but I cannot help but get a little excited when the first snowdrops pop their head above ground and the sun makes a welcome (if not slightly watery) return.

But what really makes me excited, and if I am brutally honest, a little tense, is the realisation that the wonderful Malvern Spring Gardening Show is but a figurative stones throw away.

I have blogged many times about how much I adore Malvern and what we get up to there, such as here and here, and 2010 is to be no exception. It is truly a wonderful show, with a backbone of wonderful people and we are delighted to be involved once more.

So, what are we up to this time?

Well, the official reveal can be found here courtesy of the Three Counties website, but we are part of a small design team who have the fantastic responsibility for producing a large, semi-permanent show garden feature to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Malvern Spring Gardening Show.

So, claire potter design, Alex Bell Garden Design and James Steed of Outdoor Living Space have joined forces to create a conceptual yet (hopefully) beautifully lyrical space based on the history, present and future of Malvern and the inspirational ripples that have extended from the show into the wider world.

The build has already begun (as reported here by the brilliant Meet at Malvern blog), and you will be able to follow the progress of the space here on the ecospot, here on the Three Counties website and on the Meet at Malvern blog, where I will be doing a series of diaries and guest blogs.

Just a taster post really - so watch this space...

an Autumn abundance...

Firstly, apologies for the incredible lack of bloggage over the month of September. Despite how much I prepare, plan and pack, the showgarden upheaval always renders me somewhat unable to blog

So - what occurred over the bright and sunny month of September in the studio?

Well, amongst other things, we went to Malvern. As there is SO much to report, this will take the form of a series of posts...

Even though Autumn is my favourite season, I have a particular love for the wonderful Malvern Autumn Show at the beautiful Three Counties Agricultural Showground, and it was here that we tootled in the middle of the month to create two projects for the event.

The first was our small and quite conceptual showgarden, The Honeybox. Based on a series of concepts around beekeeping, the garden took its form from bee communication behaviour, its planting from good bee stock and featured a modern beekeeper's folly based on the idea of a large 'exploded' hive (three modern National hives were also included).

We were quite happy with the garden, although I was not happy with the planting at all. I had one of those nightmare times when you get completely fed up and try and find something else to do instead of tackling the problem head on. After a rejig I was happier, but I was the first to admit, it was not my favourite scheme at all. This is probably because the colours were a lot brasher than my usual palette, but 'taste' was somewhat secondary with the scheme - the needs of the bees and educating the viewers being more pressing in my mind.

That said, there were some combos that worked really well, and ones that were duly photographed for future use. The wildflower turf against the neat turf path was one element I really was pleased with - the rawness of the long grass with our perception of a 'perfect' lawn was very interesting. The beautiful oak fencing also set the garden off fantastically - thank you to Quercus...

The second project we were undertaking at the show was the Good Life Pavilion stage itself. We discussed at great length the concepts we wanted to base the stage on, and we were delighted when the Three Counties Agricultural Society approved our ideas.

As the concept of the 'good life' is pretty broad, we wanted to include many elements on the stage rather than concentrate purely on the grow you own side, but the stage was awash with fantastic plants from both Hooksgreen Herbs and Rebekah's Unusual Veg.

So, the stage itself was the hub of container growing, with an island unit sprouting from a raised cabbage filled bed and apple crates and florists buckets filled with herbs and edible flowers. The next 'ring' was a small reclaimed brick wall which mirrored the shape of the stage (an expertly built by James Steed and his crew) and represented 'plot' growing, being filled with veg and herbs. The final ring was the foraging area, where wild turf was interplanted with readily available and recognisable UK wild herbs.

Apple crates filled with fresh bread, apples and vegetables, beautiful knitted and corn dolly sculptures, a beehive, hops, a 'wine' demi john water feature and reclaimed glass bottle screens completed the scheme. Seating was also linked to the stage, with two rows of straw bales being placed in the pavilion for visitors to park themselves on.

We were REALLY pleased with the stage and were delighted when we were presented with the Best in Show Award for a Feature from The Three Counties Agricultural Society.

And the garden? We got a Bronze, which was a little frustrating given that some of the key concepts were not completely understood by the judges, but hey ho, I agreed with a lot of the comments on the planting...

A massive thank you goes out to everyone who assisted with both the garden and the stage, for those who came and helped, and to those who came and said hello.

Now for the recovery - and planning for Spring...