Faculty of Design

Industrial Design

Leah Braykson

past the present

To create a personal archive of physical memorabilia for our past, present & future selves in order to consume and keep objects in a way that allows us to grow and be more intentional :  Past the present refers to the future too (literally!), everything is impacting everything all the time. Dealing with the fear of the unknown & of vulnerability, & not wanting to take the time to find/create ourselves - we might attach ourselves to the things we want to be through objects, without reflecting on what it actually represents in us & what we feel that we are lacking. We might also have a much harder time remembering things and looking back on memories when we store them in a way that is passive rather than active. There's no use in storing in the back of our heads or the back of our rooms, if we're never recalling and putting in the effort to remember just to not know and forget. Throughout the process of creating this project, I've had to do so much internal refection. Having conducted interviews/conversation with people I got the chance to understand the way that people like to collect objects, whether for the sake of memory or for the sake of habit. I took everything I learnt and put it into this shelf. So this piece works as a shelf and a room divider. The purpose was for it to be able to be used on both sides, so that no object could be forgotten. It includes a set of 3 spinning mini shelves (so that you can not only interact with your own artifacts but the shelf as an object itself, its not just another shelf-there are interactions that bring you back to your things and to yourself), a triangular shelf made for paper objects and books, & a magnetic board that takes inspiration from fridges.It also works as a point of reflection for more than 1 person at a time, living with another person and having it in your home -> means being able to move past our individual memory and towards a collective one, putting our objects of our past on it can help us understand each other and the way in which our lives intersect and connect.

“"We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory." -Louise Gluck”