Faculty of Design

Graphic Design

Kyle Miron

Building Place

Marc Augé, in his book ‘Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity’ spoke of ‘Place’ and ‘Non-Place’ as being like a palimpsest, where “the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed.” (Augé, 12). Finding Place and Building Place are much the same. The former serves as the groundwork for this project, a history that is carried through the starter itself. The latter is a piece that is designed, like the starter, to continue growing. The project is a packaging design for not just the starter, but also the practice of maintenance. It is intended to be given to someone who will spend time with it and, when ready, pass it on to someone else—something that could go on indefinitely. It also invites those who participate to retain some of the starter and to devise their own way of passing it on. The piece is comprised of a box that serves as the housing, the jar of dried starter, a stamp, and another box, containing a leaflet about the project and a stamp pad. In receiving the package and engaging with the piece, the participants are invited to leave a trace of themselves on the back of the leaflet with the stamp.Building Place both asks and seeks to offer an answer to the question, “how can we reimagine our communities in a way that not only sees us depend more closely on one another but also the land that we are indelibly a part of?” It is a statement on how the act of culturing wild yeast and using it to bake bread resembles a means of non-capitalist production, and how sharing these means may, with time, create the conditions for social fermentation—a culture, however small, to form.

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