Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The power of questions



~ "The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions".
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le Cru et le cuit, 1964


~ Why I admire her so much?
Adital Ela doesn't go along on the usual path. As a second year-design-student at the H.I.T, she already had noticed that designers were asked to answer a brief. Designers were asked to prepare sketches for a toaster or for an iron in a time that earth was screaming HELP... She thinks that designers should know how to ask the right questions. As she asks today HER students: "What kind of an important valuable destiny we choose to give our creative quality? Who does it serve?"




~ What does she do?
For her final sustainable design project, she had spent 10 months in the rural areas of India. She observed their traditional inevitable sustainable life, and was hooked. One main ceremony was particularly capture her mind. The Chai. She mostly was fascinating by the chai craft cup. They make it from the soil and after drinking, they break it on the ground like it is the natural way to do. And it is.
That was the seed for starting her Terra project, and the beginning of her present exploration and research of production from soil. She believes in implementing old traditional methods in new technologies.

Adital: Can walking in the city feel charging as walking in the forest?

Adital asks in one of her talks

Can women think? A postcard in Adital's workshop

~ What is the Windy light project? (or How to upcycle wind?)
In a wider aspect Adital wants to use our local abundance (earth, wind, and water) to design our personal sustainable uses. like the windy light for example. It's a street light made of renewable wind energy. It is designed to utilize even a soft gust of wind and is created from a repetitive module which integrates wind collection and a LED light source into one element.

Windy Light is a collection of self-sufficient outdoor lights operated by wind energy







~ What is the Terra project? (or How to upcycle earth?)
Stools made of 100% natural material: renewable soil, upcycle and reuse of construction and agriculture waste, in a unique compression process, that was developed based on a long term study of materials and of ancient building methods. This work has been presented in the Ljubljana 23rd Biennial (and have been awarded there), in the Slow Design Exhibition in Budapest and in the Design Museum Holon.

Terra stools. Emotional capsule. Some of the land came from an archaeological site in Jerusalem.











The lovely Terra project's stop motion-making off-movie:



~Are you a design student? If you are, you can watch Adital's last talk on TEDxJerusalem and explore more of her inspiring questions in her You tube channel.

~If you ask me - I believe she is a pioneer, kind of scientist-designer, and her genuine search is representing a holistic approach which will eventually help finding the golden mean between sustainability and technology.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...