Journal Entry: 01/16/25

Time is the fourth dimension — Length. Width. Height. Time.

As designers, these four dimensions describe what we do and how we spend our time. We measure. We contemplate scale. We consider hours of labor. We look back at what has come before, and we make plans for something that is yet to be. 

In this way, design can function as a form of time travel. Exploring pasts and predicting futures. 

One clear example of this was our 2024 exhibition Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors, where we reached across time to realize an unbuilt work of architecture designed 90 years prior by Eileen Gray.

EILEEN MIRROR

Length 24 - 60 inches
Width 24 - 60 inches
Height 5 inches
Time …  ?

How slippery is time even here with this one object? How and what do we measure? 

Cork is a regenerative material. Bark is peeled from mature cork oak trees on a 9 year cycle. The bark can only start to be harvested after a tree is 25 years old. The trees can live for over 150 years.

It is possible therefore that the trees we can thank for our Eileen Mirrors were planted in the late 1800’s. In fact, the math lines up such that they could share Eileen’s birth year of 1878, and still be standing proudly. Or they could have been planted just as she was leaving the Earth in 1976 and only have seen their second harvest. 

In this way, craft can also function as a form of time travel. Through natural materials, we tap into the flow of Earth’s time. Stretching ourselves backwards to the timescale of a cork forest. Or farther …

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