Laura Clarke

Wabi Sabi: Store + Studio
Location: Huddersfield, UK

Brief: Create a solution to discourage a throw-away culture, and to give young people a community space to improve wellbeing.

Wabi Sabi is a space for upcycling workshops and retail, highlighting the current backlash to a throw-away society, and adopting the growing trend towards crafting and making. The concept for the design is WABI SABI, an unspoken intrinsic concept in Japanese culture that values imperfections and craftsmanship, and celebrates change over time. The concept has strong roots in the Japanese tea ceremony - inspiration was taken from tea houses and tea gardens, with a lot of references to shoji screens and the flexibility that they bring to Japanese architecture. The design took inspiration from many more traditional Japanese craft techniques such as kumiko, shou sugi ban and kintsugi, informing the sheer curtain partitions, the material use, and the wayfinding graphics.

I have a passion for ethical and concept driven design and am currently looking for a junior position at an interior design practice. I particularly enjoy the concept and development phases of design projects, where I get the opportunity to immerse myself in research and form strong and innovative concepts.