Platformtwo

Dear all

I’ve sent details of the satellite brief in an email to the group (mainly your rca accounts), so please check your mail. Greetings

Hannes

Dear all

here some of the links mentioned in todays presentation:

Anschlaege / Community project Berlin

Wokmedia / Julie Mathias

collective website of anschlaege.de / Berlin (mostly German

The first satellite brief will be mailed to you separately, regards

Hannes

Hello Platformtwo

Here some more input for the first brief:

Platformtwo brief_01

Title : Neighbourhood watch.

Brief:The first brief is about collecting stories of your hood, stories that no one know yet, spying on your neighbourhood, seeing what’s out there, its very much about observation and, making the unknown known, bringing weird and unusual things, places, characters to the surface, bring us your story of your neighbourhood, something that we don’t know yet, be curious and nosy, and tell us a great story of your neighbourhood.

Presentation:verbal + photographic and historical evidence.

We shall meet on Thursday the 8th morning to listen to your story (time to be confirmed)

Listen to the 52 Bus trip story

The official sites: http://www.neighbourhoodwatch.net/

http://www.neighbourhoodwatch.uk.com/

http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/nbhwatch.htm

http://www.kingston.gov.uk/community_people_and_living/crime/neighbourhood_watch.htm

Get to know some statistic of your area:

On you tube, home made CCTV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGoFWbQw8UA

What the American coopers tells us http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrRVNcy6o0Q

After a rather long-awaited summer-break we are now back at College.

After weeks of speculation we finally have the results of the ballot papers.

This years platformtwo has got 14 students from across the world, with cultural inheritance in England, France, Holland, Greece, Albania, Slovakia, Italy, Iran, Turkey, Switzerland, Sourth Korea and possible many more.

Wellcome to Platformtwo:

Fabien, Josephine, Merel, Georgios, Vahakn, Christopher, Kalliopi, Marc, George, Bethan, Bahbak, So- Hyun, Nina, Clemence

Although the process of growing was ment to continuously go on, we could show some strong developments on the first night:
- 100 porcellain glasses (Yuri and Isabel)
- Grass growing out of the walls transforming the staircase into the green lung of the place (Mario)
- Boarded up exterior of the building incorporating pop-out furniture (Gemma)
- A sign that grows with use (Gemma)
- Giant Pinball constructed with wire patterns (Aysenaz)
- Permutating pattern wallpaper produced with home office means (Isabel and Simon)
- Reconstituted bar made with cement and wooden branches (So-Hyun, Roidrigo, Simon)
- A computer designed and processed wall which surface functions as system to fasten various things as e.g. plates, vases and ashtrays (Greetje, So-Hyun, Rodrigo)
- Hand Knitted lampshades covered with kress (Greetje)
- A deliciously smelling wall made of baked bread tiles (Greetje)

Here some impressions of the process of transformation and growing.

In the beginning it seemed, that this basement joint was just another London B-site. But as we learned later, this was a place with a history. in 1970 April Ashley, one of the first openly living transsexuals in Britain at that time, and business partner Desmond (Dizzy) Morgan, opened in the same premises their club AD8. From the start it became a hot spot with London’s celebrity society. Ingrid Bergmann, Ava Gardner, Francis Bacon, this place has seen them all.

March 9th, 2007

A night of wonders and marvels. After it looked like, the Bar would not be ready in time, everything worked out in the end, involving a motor cycle ride on Tom Dixon’s machine and a ad-hoc cab delivery of beer and several expeditions to restock the vastly vanishing supplies. It is believed, that there was no such party since the days of April Ashley.

March 22nd, 2007

The Allotment goes second. After the hysterical sucess of the first opening night, Platform Two decides to have a second go, but this time in the more private atmosphere of 30 handpicked guests, with homemeade food and the beer, that was exclusively brewed for this occasion.

February 5th, 2007

In the spirit of the allotment, that also involves the context of home–grown and home–made, Platform Two learned, how to brew its own beer – home–brewed.

January 29th, 2007

After hot discussions, Platform Two agreed on ‘the Allotment’ as overall working theme and leading idea. An Allotment is “characterized by a concentration in one place of a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individual families, in allotments the parcels are cultivated individually”.

According to this, Platform Two divided the place into the different areas that were necessary to run it, groups of two to three began to adopt the tasks and ‘grow’ them, both in concept and in reality.

January 23rd, 2007

After the former tenants of 8 Egerton Gardens Mews (SW3) had to abandon the premises due to an affair involving illegal gambling, Brompton Estates, the owner of the place, approached The RCA and Platform Two with the idea to make it the place of an unusual project.

Since Platform Two is interrested in exploring different ways of selling and consuming food, the thought suggested itself, to establish this former restaurant and in-place as our research laboratory .
In a presentation of first Ideas to the people of Bromton Estates, together with Tom Dixon Platform Two layed out a variety of possible approaches.

November 23rd, 2006

In pursuit to discover some of probably the best chocolate in the world, Platform Two made its way to West Norwood to visit the Rococo Chocolate manufacture, where a hand full of blessed people celebrate the art of cocoa indulgence to its summit. One of the things we learned on this day - chocolate makes high. [www.rococochocolates.com]

We can finally announce the opening of “THE ALLOTMENT”!
We would like to see You on Friday the 9TH of March
@ 8 Egerton Garden Mews, SW3

Start: 19:30

We are Looking forward to see You.

Platformtwo
Design Products Dept.
RCA
———————-
THE ALLOTMENT
“Characterized by a concentration in one place
that is assigned to individual parts of the overall design”
8 EGERTON GARDEN MEWS
LONDON SW3

We want to understand the area we are going to run our restaurant/shop/venue in. What are the underlying patterns, the secret drifts, that make Knightsbridge what it is? Whether you are interested into the economical structure around the place, or the different groups of people, that commute the place during the day, or just the pattern of duct covers there…

…observe it, document it in any form and bring it with you for a brief discussion on Saturday 9th, 2pm at the DP Studio.

Although just meant to be a snapshot of ongoing work, this year’s work in progress show demonstrated a remarkable bit of effort people made to present their platform and themselves. Due to its rather improvised nature, the exhibition space rather rendered the impression of a big child’s play room or an loophole to a maniac’s brain. This inspiring atmosphere seems also to have made it’s impression on the visitors. Platform Two’s instant market place can be considered as a successful experiment on how people perceive the consumption of food and the different strategies involved.

Also on the show was the second part of the Manifesto Project with a hand printed result from each participant.

(Pictures arrived)

1st stop: Ridley Road Market

Rodrigo & Mario try out Yuri’s japanese

jelly!

2nd stop: Neal’s Yard Cheese factory

3rd stop: Strange turkish bread factory in

Tottenham Hale

4th and final stop: Martino’s place for soup and books

The first part of our manifesto writing project was a collaboration between students of design communications and platform two. After grouping up two by two (mixed), we were asked to write and a mutual manifesto and publish it somewhere in the RCA.

Anne Harlid and So Hyun

Gemma Holt and Filip Tyden

Georgina Wu and Mario Stadelmann

Sarah Gottlieb and Isabel Lucio

Simone Brewster and Erwan Lhuissier

Zamir Antonio and Yuri Suzuki

Aysenaz Toker and Simon Denzel

I am no longer an official member of Platform 2. They sent me home after graduating and haven’t let me return. I will occasionally pop my head into the studio but if I don’t see you at college no doubt we will meet someday somewhere.

This seems like a great space to advertise.

so….

check out www.robandmax.co.uk to find a little post-RCA Platform 2 project by me and Rob Phillips, another fellow P2 graduate. It is a photo-etched brass lampshade and is currently being displayed in a window gallery in Canary Wharf.

Thats all for now. Hope to see you at your interim ‘work in progress’ show. I hear it is going to be tasty.

Good luck

Max

Platformtwo has built it’s sordid reputation on Direct Action .

We believe that design at Masters level should be less theory, and more about real experience.

To give ourselves a window on the real world, we have negotiated a prime retail space in Knightsbridge, which will become a literal platform from which to engage the public in the products and services of Platformtwo .

This space will become the marketplace from which we will indulge in live testing our products and services. Any profit will be ploughed back into the latform to enhance the educational experience.

Design cannot exist as an activity in itself, therefore Platform two will create a series of situations which will force the designers into unfamiliar real life situations.