Travel emotions

As a designer, I find it really inspiring to travel. To see places. How people live and "do things". Objects, routines, etc which we take for granted at home can be presented differently abroad.
I'm in France - this is my second trip this year. In January I was in the village of Availles-Limousin, an hour from Poitiers. And now I'm in Sospel, about an hour from Nice. I'm really digging these rural French towns - with one or two bakeries, a butcher, a weekly market!
On both these recent travel occasions, I noticed the same emotions cropping up. And I tried to document them:
In days leading up to today - a little restless perhaps but busy and glad to have a definite deadline to work towards and around. Wondering if it was necessary to go, what the point was, why.
At home, on the day of flying to Sospel, I'm excited and rearing to go. Tidying, cleaning, prepping, packing. Proud to be independent and able to go at a whim but also a little lonesome to have to undertake yet another journey-and change of environment-on my own. Last time I was really scared about going, was it the change of scene? I conquered that this time by arranging a lift to the airport.

At the airport, same ol' same ol' - frustrations with baggage scanning routine, long walks to boarding gate, heavy hand luggage, noise noisy noise of announcements and bright pushy commercialism of shops.
Delighted at the restriction that travelling to somewhere requires - limitations of what to bring, activities that can be done - liking that!
And in the airport upon arrival, trepidation at what lies on the other side of the automatic doorway past the "Anything to Declare" area. And relief that this is a civilized European country and bombardment by hawkers and eager taxi men is not de rigeur - recollections of India and even New York.
On the train to Sospel, it's all to easy. Train announcements are so standard and predictable, no matter what language. There's a familiar routine to follow, common everywhere. Travel isn't challenging in modern societies. I could be anywhere! Wondering why I am - why amn't I just at home if it's all so samey. And disappointed that I don't have a satisfactory answer to that question. Keep moving. The train takes off - change. There's a sameness but it's different.

Eileen Gray at IMMA

Visited the Eileen Gray exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin today. A perfect activity for a bank holiday monday - and we weren't alone in thinking that, a government minster and a radio broadcaster also visited the museum at the same time!

We claim Eileen Gray as one of our greatest Irish architect/design/artists. But she spent her working life in France. The houses she had built are on the Côte d'Azur. But of all the copies of letters, the video recordings, imagery etc, there wasn't any in French; we didn't get a feel for the francophile aspect of Eileen's life. Even though the exhibition is supported by the Centre Pompidou.
There are beautiful pieces on display, and personal letters to someone called Pru (I never did find out who she was or what their relationship was), and articles by contemporaries praising Ms Gray's works and ideas. Le Corbusier makes an appearance. There is information about lacquering, the shop she had on Rue de Saint-Honoré in Paris and more.

Having studied architecture, I was familiar with her work and E-1027. I appreciate the effort of her design, the consideration put into finding solutions to particular problems in unique situations.
For example, a stunning dressing-cupboard. Used as a divider between the sleeping section of the room and another section (can't remember exactly).

There are shelves of different heights. Glass shelves. Wonderful hinged-drawers which swing out from one side. A full-length mirror. It's wonderful. All the more wonderful considering the precise location for which this object was designed. And the multiple functions it fulfills. The obvious functions which we can see in this exhibit - a dressing-table/cupboard; and the not-so-obvious which we can deduce from house plans and photographs - as room divider in a particular house interior.

And that's the problem I have with the exhibition overall. It's wonderful for a designer and trained architect like myself or to someone who is not coming to Eileen Gray for the first time, someone who reads plans and drawings, is familiar with the design scene of the age... but without that education this exhibition seems to be about objects of furniture, items without context, rug designs without rooms in which to put them or clients to own them.

Which is not what it's about for me. See this interior photograph - see the circular rug and circular pattern, that uncomfortable circular Michelin-man-esque chair, and the wall decoration with it's semi-circular arc. The objects are designed to be in this space. The chair is ok if it's uncomfortable - the room is a bedroom not a sitting room!
I'm disappointed. Nevertheless, the exhibition showed me some new sides to Eileen Gray - lamp designs and that interiors shop. She was great - but why was she great, oh curator, why?