Lotte van Laatum

Lotte van Laatum refers to her work as contextual design… intensifying the relationship between people and their products… for instance the Kaguya-hime (meaning shining princess…) she did this year for bamboolabs (apparently an initiative to develop bamboo products…) tells the story of an ancient Japanese legend in which a bamboo cutter finds find a little girl inside the hollow bamboo stem… to cut a long story short… she grows up to be a beautiful woman and many men wan to win her heart… she picks five contenders and gives them special assignments, but they all fail… so she returns to her original home… the moon…hmmm… my kind of story…

These cutting boards by Lotte van Laatum are more down to earth… almost below sea level actually… they represent regions in the Netherlands… Lotte wants to creat awareness about the sustainable use of local resources… the wood is from trees from the various regions that are only cut when this is considered necessary for the well being of the forest as a whole. The cutting boards were recently presented during Salone Internazionale del Mobile Milano 2007 and available through the webshop of TuttoBeNe. Check out Lotte’s website for more special projects!

This was a really fascinating site to look at - I love the diversity of the projects and the ideas behind them. I've often thought about the amazing and diverse skills that refugees have that frequently are over looked when they arrive in a new culture and country (like when I worked in an indian restaurant years ago with a nepalese tandoor chef who was actually a chemical engineer by trade)...I wonder if there are similar projects going on in Australia (I live in Melbourne)?

Posted by: viveka | 07/05/2007 at 09:27 AM

this is fun!

Posted by: sara | 07/05/2007 at 06:50 AM