Each year, the University of Gloucestershire offer their final year students the chance to complete an end of year exhibition space to showcase their favorite pieces of work. The form and format of which can be anything and everything, so long as it fits inside the alloted space.
Our exhibition stand itself, was comprised of four 1.2m x 2.4m chipboard pieces, arranged in an X shape allowing four students the space to exhibit work in each section. With the space being so small, I realised quite quickly, that anything I designed had to be small enough to fit in the space, yet big enough to make an impact.
To make said impact, my concept was based around creating a snippet of a real life interior. To do this, I included lighting, curtains, furniture, cornicing, skirting, dado rails, a ceiling rose, and wallpaper, and styled the space to make it look like a real life interior and that the exhibition visitors were viewing by peering through a window getting a sneak peak of what was inside.
I learned a lot from this project, namely how difficult it can be to pull everything together and how expensive things can get. It also allowed me to create my first real life interior, as opposed to theoretical projects similar to those at university.
Planning stages
The design and making process
The final outcome
The wallpaper was a House of Hackney dupe with a bit of a vintage feel to it that was paired perfectly with the array of antique, or second hand items. These were partly chosen out of my desire to be more sustainable, but also the cost of these items was much lower than similar brand new products. I ended up getting the chair out of a skip and recovering with Warwick Fabrics’ Polyester Velvet, the cornicing, skirting and dado rail from multiple other skips, the side table from a car boot along with some of the frames and other bits from various charity shops. I was also able to make a lot of the items myself which saved a lot of money, such as the curtains and chair recover.
Within the frames, I featured work from my final year project and it included my renders, the planning documents, floor plans, mood boards and snippets of the fabric sample used in the upholstery of the sofa within the design. On the table were my business cards and a synopsis of the project including more of my previous works.
After 3 years of theoretical projects, it felt so nice to be able to design something tangible and physical. This was also a graded piece of work and contributed to my achievement of a First Class Degree.
