So Long...

Seven years, six European cities and over 350 posts about design, architecture and creativity. I Like Local has provided an amazing opportunity for me to deepen my understanding of the designed world and its importance and to share my thoughts with a small but perfectly formed audience of readers all over the world. But now it's time to move on, and so this is the last post on I Like Local.

If you've visited before, many thanks for stopping by and reading, sharing, commenting and emailing. If this is your first time here, enjoy the 350+ thoughts, lists, interviews, reviews, arguments, reflections and snapshots of design in certain times and certain places. Head over to my website to find out what I'm up to now and sign up to the mailing list for an occasional update on current and upcoming projects in Ireland and elsewhere.

All the best
Aideen

Best of Year #7

Another year, another move, another one planned (last one, I swear) and a host of posts on I Like Local! I left the busyness of London behind in September to come and spend some time in design-savvy Denmark, and in that time I have been sharing my Copenhagen discoveries here, in the Irish Times and in other publications. I've also launched a brand new design festival that will hit Copenhagen in a couple of weeks, made great friends, eaten fancy food and ridden on almost everything in Tivoli. And while it's been AMAZING to live here in Copenhagen, it's finally time to go home to Ireland, so once the festival's done I'll be packing my bags and heading back to Dublin. There will be a few final things to discover and share here in DK, so stay tuned, and take a look below for some of the highlights since I got here.

Design in Dublin #4: The Lifeline

Here we are! The fourth and final part of my Design in Dublin series, published in full in Iterations issue 3. Enjoy the last of the series, which looks at Kaethe Burt-O'Dea's work on the Lifeline and other projects as examples of citizen design, and read back on parts #1, #2 and #3 if you haven't already.

Design in Dublin #3: DCC Beta

Welcome to part #3 of my Design in Dublin series, looking at the work of Dublin City Council Beta as civic design. This follows on from parts #1 and #2, and stay tuned for the fourth and final part. Design in Dublin is published in full in Iterations issue 3, an Irish design journal available from the IDI.

Design in Dublin #2: Framework

Following on from part #1, which looked at the Dublin Honey Project as an example of agile design in Dublin, here is part #2 of my series of posts on Design in Dublin, this time looking at some of the work being done by Dublin City Council which I class as being responsive design. Design in Dublin is also published in full in Iterations issue 3, available from the IDI.

Design in Dublin #1: Dublin Honey Project

To round off my studies in Curating Contemporary Design last year I undertook some research into (surprise, surprise) contemporary Irish design. More specifically, I looked at design in urban settings in Ireland, as I was getting a little frustrated at just how often Irish design was presented as being rural in exhibitions at home and abroad (you can read some of that research in a three-part series here on I Like Local called Design, Exhibitions and Irish Identity). As my research into contemporary Irish design in urban settings progressed, I honed in on Dublin, and began to see some patterns emerge. I documented these in an essay which I'm sharing here now, in four parts. You can also read this essay - in full - in the third edition of Irish design journal Iterations, which is available to buy through the Institute of Designers in Ireland. Without further ado...

Irish Degree Shows 2016

Here we go, I Like Local's annual Irish degree show listings! Things are kicking off a little earlier this year in order to make sure spring shows like Burren College of Art and IADT's technology showcase are included, but keep your eyes peeled on this post as degree show season continues. I will update it as I get more information on shows all over the country, so what's starting off as 14 listings is bound to grow and grow... Is your show one of the missing ones? Then tell me! You can reach me by email or on Twitter. So without further ado, here is your guide to finding new Irish design talent this year. Let's go!

Copenhagen Cool

Shortly after arriving in Copenhagen, I was commissioned by Image Interiors & Living to write a guide to buying design in the Danish capital. Here's a fairly comprehensive list of places to find contemporary, classic and vintage design in a city made for interiors shopping, along with an amazing illustrated map by fellow CPH resident Philip Kennedy (above, click to enlarge). If you find yourself in Copenhagen, happy shopping!

Producing Better Production: Den Danske Keramikfabrik

I recently wrote a piece for the Irish Times about craft and cooperation in Danish design, looking at a number of different design collectives in Copenhagen and elsewhere. One that got a brief mention is Den Danske Keramikfabrik (DDKF), an initiative by 18 ceramicists and ceramics studios to bring ceramic factory production back to Denmark. I only wrote a small amount about it in the Irish Times, but it deserves much more than that, as it really is a cool project. So here goes...

ID2015: the end of something, or the beginning?

When the Glass Society of Ireland asked me to contribute to their annual journal, it provided a great opportunity to reflect (boom boom) not only on glass, the discipline I specialised in years ago for my undergraduate degree, but also on the year that has passed: 2015, the Year of Irish Design. It's been an interesting thing to look on at from afar, and a particularly curious thing to consider from my current Scandinavian location. Read on...

Learning From Japan

While I went to the opening back in October, it wasn't until last week that I returned to Designmuseum Danmark to take a proper look at its latest exhibition, Learning from Japan. Showing work from both Japan and Denmark from the 1870s up to 2010, it explores an interesting, and rarely considered idea: that rather than always being the influence, sometimes Danish design has been the movement being influenced...

Vital Interventions: Assemble wins the Turner Prize

Assemble, a collective of London-based 'sort of' architects who design and make urban interventions and community collaborations has won the 2015 Turner Prize, the UK art world's highest accolade, previously won with such iconic conceptual works as Damien Hirst's cow and calf in formaldehyde and Martin Creed's light going on and off. The work that got Assemble nominated is very different: a regeneration project in Liverpool's dilapidated Toxteth neighbourhood, which is inspiring proof of the power of a determined community and enlightened designers. But what does Assemble winning the Turner Prize mean for work of this kind in the future?

Buy Design in Ireland 2015

It's always handy to know where to go when you fancy a little design shopping, but it's especially useful this time of year. I've put together guides to buying design in Dublin and in Ireland before, but here's one with a few of my old favourites, new finds and seasonal pop ups to make sure you have plenty of options when it comes to buying gifts this year. Without further ado...

The Vitrine Project

Cropping up around Dublin on 20 November and launched on YouTube today, The Vitrine Project is a collaboration between advertising agency In the Company of Huskies and Irish Design 2015 (ID2015) that aims to reframe the everyday. Marking the opening of Liminal, an exhibition of contemporary Irish design that ID2015 has brought home to Dublin following showings in Milan and Eindhoven earlier this year, gallery-style vitrines were deployed for one day across Dublin to re-present the everyday objects that surround us. Placed over bins, street furniture, bar stools and products in shops, the vitrines were accompanied by the type of label you see beside a museum artefact, but in this case the labels told viewers what the objects were, proclaimed that 'Design is everywhere' and asked the question, 'Does this object belong in a design museum?'

Nordic Makers

The timing has been pretty funny: as I move to Copenhagen, a Danish duo open a design store in Ireland. Based between here and Dublin, Klaus Kristian Sørensen and Louis Weyhe Funder opened the doors of their shop, Nordic Makers, in Dún Laoghaire three months ago, bringing limited edition work from small studios and emerging designers all over the Nordic region to an Irish audience. And as Klaus and Louis tell me here in Copenhagen, that Irish audience is lapping it up.

New Architecture: Ireland by AP+E

Recently here in Copenhagen Denmark's leading design school, KADK, hosted an exhibition entitled New Architecture: Ireland, curated and designed by Irish/Danish/Dutch architecture practice AP+E. Showcasing the work of six Irish practices to have emerged during the recession, the exhibition included a range of projects of a non-commercial, social or community-based nature. Using custom-designed armatures which frame the work of the individual practices while unifying the exhibition as a whole, New Architecture: Ireland created a space to study a moment in Irish architecture, complemented by its surroundings in the school's library. Copenhagen was the second of four stops for the project in the Nordic region, having shown first in Tallinn, and most recently in Oslo. The show will finish its tour in Stockholm, opening there on 16 November.

Ad Man Glamour

Originally published in Image Interiors & Living in January of this year, this Sandymount house tour, styled by Sheenagh Green and shot by Mark Scott, has taken on a new relevance. It's the home of mid-century furniture collector Geoff Kirk, who swears by Scandinavia as a source of much of his great collection of furniture, lighting and tabletop objects. For a slice of Nordic decor in Dublin, read on...

Maritime Museum of Denmark

Exhibition space buried underground and wrapping around a dry dock, a bridge leading you to Hamlet's castle housing an auditorium underneath and granite seating looping round a new public space, tapping out a message in morse code: I wasn't long in Denmark before I made a trip to the Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingør, and from first sight I was hooked. Opened in late 2013, the competition to design M/S Museet for Søfart, as it's known here, was won by Bjarke Ingels Group with a clever approach to a very restrictive brief. The museum was to be housed in a 60 year-old dry dock sandwiched between Helsingør's new cultural centre and Kronborg Castle, a UNESCO heritage site most famous for being the setting for Shakespeare's Hamlet. The museum would need to make an impression and create its own presence... without disrupting anyone's view of Kronborg. BIG achieved this by putting the museum not in the dry dock but buried on either side of it, using the dock itself as a public space intersected by three bridges: one that leads you to the castle (containing the museum's auditorium) and two that zigzag towards the museum's entrance. The design of the museum is incredibly impressive in that it successfully hides and reveals the museum simultaneously, while carving out a unique urban space in the process.

Back in DK

It's taken a few years, and a few locations in between, but I've finally returned to Denmark! I lived in Denmark's second city, Århus, back in the summers of 2008 and 2009, and it's there that I Like Local began as a sort of personal blog/design blog hybrid. It was a way for me to share the design and architecture I was encountering day to day, and in the six years I've been writing it since, it's always been populated with my finds as I've travelled from city to city. Before I start (re)discovering design and architecture here in Copenhagen, I thought it would be good to share some of those posts from the early days below, and you can read all of my Danish posts here. Enjoy, or as they say here (I think, my Danish is pretty ropey...) nyd!

Framing Family Life

The last of my 'so long London' posts is my most recent piece for Image Interiors & Living, a house tour in London's Islington, styled by Amanda Cochrane and shot by Tim Young. Read on...

'I'm all about framing moments' says Dublin-born Irenie Cossey as she reaches for a piece of artwork by her youngest daughter, Clara. It is a box frame displaying two dolls that Clara, aged six, made from paper and wool, sitting on a shelf surrounded by other colourful creations. As you look around the room you see a host of other keepsakes and mementos, and soon you realise that throughout this spacious north London home you can find ornaments and gifts, family hand-me-downs and children's artwork. Don't let the white walls and modernist furniture fool you: this is a house that treasures memories and perfectly frames the many moments of family life.