DT_CH_20201009_PAGES

065 066
42
COSMIC TELEPHONE
Troy Conrad Therrien, Violette Van Parys
and Julio Cavallucci
Troy Conrad Therrien, Design Trust Feature Grantee
Caves, circles, pyramids, temples, basilicas, cathedrals,
mosques... the architecture that seems to have always
gotten our attention is all about getting their attention.
Spirits, gods, God, angels, demons, djinn... whatever
you call them, they are The Dead, possibly our dead.
The oldest cultures know the necessity of tending to
ancestors. Strangers wearing hazmat suits dumping
our kin into the ground without family, without funerals,
without rites isn’t right. For the 2020 Architectural
Association Summer School, Troy Conrad Therrien
and Violette Van Parys approached it through the seed
of sacred space: the altar. Student, Julio Cavallucci
fashioned his out of old magazines and mirrored
cardboard. Synthesising modernist form with Mexican
syncretism in an altar for a recently rebuilt taxi stand,
he later discovered it was calling his name all along.
After installing, he found the altar originally displaced
by the polished steel architecture of the stand: a spitting
image of the one he designed from scratch. Collage with
Christmas lights or cosmic telephone?
2020
Julio Cavallucci
Cosmic Telephone
"D" EMBROIDERED CANTON SILK
Polly Ho, Loom Loop
Design Trust Seed Grantee, DTFS 2019 Mentee
Polly Ho has long been exploring the 400-year-old
traditions of Canton silk practices with the support
of Design Trust, continually impressed with the ecofriendly,
artisan dying techniques of plant-based dye,
river mud and solar power. Once hugely popular, the
fabric is rarely seen today except in traditional Chinese
costumes, often only worn during special occasions.
In her efforts of rejuvenating and conserving a fabric
considered to be representative of traditional culture
and craftsmanship, Polly has produced a sample of
canton silk, embroidered with Design Trust’s "D" Logo.
Polly Ho 400
Polly
D