Two Friends and Three Pieces, was more than about creating a piece, it was about a social experiment about creativity in a time trial and how three friends would manage to do it. It’s true that good results take time, and that creativity isn’t triggered by pressure “When creativity is under the gun, it usually ends up getting killed. Although time pressure may drive people to work more and get more done…” (AMABILE, Teresa) but in our modern society there are opportunities that last less than 24h, and more and more designers have tighter deadlines. We knew this would be a task of endurance so we needed to complete the more creative tasks while we were still fresh, and leave the more technical ones to when fatigue would strike. And if we took the most of each member we would get the same work as 72h of one single person. The great part about this team was that all of us were in “different” stages of the design world and we were great friends “surprisingly, the most important ingredients for a smart team remained … members who communicated a lot, participated equally and possessed good emotion-reading skills.” (WOOLLEY, Anita). But honestly we were only anxious about celebrating our friendship while doing what we love… that is to create. These 24h were divided by various tasks such as  contextualization, research, mind map, brainstorming’s, generating ideas, fast sketching, butterfly effect, 3d development… etc. We mapped out all in a circular timeline so it would be easier to understand what was done and when it was done to reach a final result.

The result of this experiment was Babel, a modular piece made of three different office accessories to help a user organize and take the best of his desk. There were some constrains to the project, that you could read in the briefing mission  “Create three objects within 24h….Think objects easy to produce and with small size but with great conceptual and aesthetic power.”. So our main constrains were only about the local suppliers and due to its size we also knew that the focus would be on the accessories. After some debate and market analysis we decided to focus on the Office, creating a piece that would almost be a piece of art when not in use and useful to the users desk when needed.  Conceptually we wanted the project to be made of three different pieces with which each one of us would be more responsible for. And that was the factor that eventually took us to the Babel concept. Our concern was that the pieces would always fit in each other so that the user could do its own combination as he pleased, and only buy the modules that he wished for. You can check our live visual search that was made in Pinterest .

Babel is made from three modules, Aureola, Virtude and Dante. Aureola is a lamp that can be used both horizontally and vertically and is either a small pin board in one side or a small storage area in the other. Virtude is made of cork all around allowing you to pin notes in every direction you want, and like Aureola it has a different function in both sides, one for iPhone and pens rest in the other for storage, duck tape and a pencil sharpener with deposit. Last but not least, there’s Dante, a mainly storage unit with small wood modules that can be arranged as you please in you desk while you turn it into an Ipad stand. The materials used in this piece are Corck, Marble, Oak, Walnut and Brass, and it’s assembled dimension is 375x250x320mm.

I can fairly say that these 24h had a great final result and were a spectacular experience that I had the chance to share with João Rocha and Rui Sales. I’m certain that another 24h will be done again, with a different thematic and involving more people from different areas. Stay tuned to my website  to be updated of any news regarding the Second 24h.

“It was a pleasure to contribute to the completion of this project, not only for being the first edition, but also for being able to, once again, work alongside with these two great friends and professionals. I look forward for a second round!” – Rui Sales

“It was a honor to be a part of this first 24h event created by André Teoman, that alongside with Rui Sales resulted in an ambitious experience, where creativity was always present, resulting in 3 products with a lot of potential. Three designers with there own style but with a strong friendship that made it easy to surpass the difficulties seen in the productive process” – João Rocha