Fashion Design-Wedding Bands

As a little gift to some recently newly weds we know, I made a set of matching wristbands for the happy couple.

The design is simple enough, a long strap of leather made to wrap twice around the wrist before being secured in place with a clasp.  A thinner one dyed red for her and a wider one dyed brown for him, both with matching stylised Chinese characters for the word ‘happiness’, when these two characters come together they become the Chinese character for ‘marriage’, just as when the happy couple come together.

Fashion Design-Belt up

After my belt decided to wear out and break, it was only natural that I make a new belt instead of buying one.  So that’s exactly what I did!

A double prong buckle and decorative belt loop with the Adam n Eve logo on it adds a little colour to the finished belt.

Fashion Design-YoYo'in again

Another Metro cardholder I made, this time the client wanted the Taiwan flag in all its original colours, I am particularly pleased with the deep rich tone of the final colours.

Fashion Design-Tag It!

A friend asked if I could make them a luggage tag after they saw some of the Metro cardholders I had made.  I thought it would be an interesting item to try and make, so I agreed to the challenge.

The design of the luggage tag has a clear plastic window on one side to keep the travellers information visible, yet protected from the elements.  The other side of the tag is decorated with the flag of Taiwan.

With the friend now backpacking around the world, the tag is joining them on their travels.

Fashion Design-Take the World on!

A custom project for a customer, consisting of matching luggage tag and passport holder.

The luggage tag followed an earlier design I had made, with some improvements to the design, while the passport holder was a new design I had to come up with for the job.  The passport holder was a little trickier with its unseen mechanics due to the clients wishes to have card slots on the inside of the holder.  But with some layering and juggling, there are now 3 card slots for the customers use.

The outside of both items was embellished with the customer’s logo, to make the whole set matching.

Fashion Design-Watching it all

After the strap on one of my watches broke, instead of buying a new strap or even a new watch, I decided that making a new strap would be the better plan.

So using some webbing, and green dyed leather, I made a simple yet comfortable watch strap for my everyday use.

Fashion Design-Time for all that Jack

A simple book cover that I made to protect a year dairy from the wear and tear of everyday life, and to allow the cover to be used on following diaries as well.

The design uses a leather cord to keep the cover on the diary and also acts as either a bookmark or as a method to keep the diary closed by wrapping the cord around the diary.

A little Union Jack leather patch with our logo stamp on it allows for easy identification of the front of the diary.

Fashion Design-Jack it up!

The second set in the Union Jack keyring series

Fashion Design-That Jack?

A little notepad cover with penholder, designed to fit into a back pocket or small bag.
I made this for personal use, so the design I used is of an alternatively colored Union Jack using yellow instead of red and green instead of blue.  While the colors are not what one is used to, the iconic shape of the Union Jack allows for this design to work well.

Fashion Design-It's Easy to YoYo

Following the creation of some keyrings, I started to play with making other everyday items from leather.

Here I have made a couple of different cardholder designs, primarily for use with metro cards and credit cards.  One design has an open end with a finger cutout to allow for access to the card (useful for credit cards or ID cards), while the other design encloses the card completely within the leather case (better suited for metro cards or swipe cards).

I used two different techniques to color the leather with different designs, one technique actually allows the leather to adopt a new color, and the other is just a coating on the leather.

Architecture-Flower Power

A plug-and-play idea for a building, the concept being that a central core (like what is found in most buildings) is used as an anchor point for pre-assembled units to plug into. This allows the building as a whole to be quickly and cheaply upgraded or undergo a change of use.

The design here is for a student dormitory, each unit is made from a standard 20 or 40 foot shipping container. A single 40-foot container can be used as a two person, en-suite dorm room, as a student lounge or as a communal study room. The 20-foot containers get fitted out as laundry or utility rooms with the option of using them as retail or café spaces.

With the different units, custom floor layouts can be composed around the central core for each building level, creating a flower like pattern. With an option to include large outside balcony areas between some of the ‘petal’ room modules.

Take each floor layout stacked up, add some weather screens where required by site conditions, and voila, an interesting, quick, cheap, flexible and visually stimulating building.

Fashion Design-A measure of a man

A solution to a practical problem. While needing to use the engineers rule on many occasions, the problem arose that it is not convenient to transport it in ones pocket or carry a bag solely for the use of the ruler.

So I designed and made a fitted, belt mounted pouch for the ruler, with a snap closure to keep the ruler secure and made in safety orange for the job site, the pouch has proven very useful it keeping the ruler both safe and easily accessible.

Fashion Design-Jack of all trades

After some requests, I have been playing with some design ideas for leather keyrings. The common request has been for a Union Jack based design, so with that base I have started to create several different Union Jack based keyrings, these are the first of those designs.

Fashion Design-Undercover Umbrella

An undercover umbrella!? The umbrella is not my design, that part I bought. But the original case that came with the umbrella was not very well constructed, so after it fell apart I decided to make a sturdier case using leather.

The leather case is quite simple, a leather tube tapered at one end with a drainage hole at the end. An attached shoulder strap so that the umbrella can be easily carried when not in use and the case can be kept over a shoulder when the umbrella is needed. The leather is treated, and natural wear has brought out the natural brown of the material.

Plus, it’s great fun to walk down the street with everyone thinking you have a katana (samurai sword) slung over your shoulder.

Architecture-Twist and Shout

Using the shipping container modules that I designed for use in the building of a student dormitory in the south of Taiwan, I used the simple stacking of the modules to create a design proposal.

The design is very simple, it uses a long spiral ramp as the main walkway to access every dorm room, with stair and elevator cores at diagonal opposite ends of the building, creating open landing areas for circulation and domestic activities. The slant of the ramp creates a unique triangular entrance way into the central courtyard of the building, which has been made as large as possible to allow for the maximum use of the space along with the a high degree of shading from the building itself as the south of Taiwan can get very hot during the summer months. From the exterior the building is quite modest and understated per the requirements of the university, but from inside the spiral nature of the building creates a slightly surreal sensation of the building almost floating above the ground. A sensation that mimics the buildings environmental footprint.

A modest elevation

Large internal courtyard

Triangular entrance and slight floating sensation

Architecture-I'll take mine to go...

I’ve always been interested in pre-fabrication and mass production when it comes to buildings. And over the years there have been many different ways of applying these ideas to the buildings around us.

I also have an interest in using materials at hand, not to recycle them, but use them in their original forms. The idea of doing this interests me and with the forms created from such structures, I would hope, inspires other people to see more than just the face value of an object.

Now we’ve all seen shipping containers, those oversized Lego blocks floating around the world on ships, and it’s not a new idea to use them as a building.

But more recently people have started to look at these items more seriously as building components, I like this idea and think it’s a great one! I remember first playing with the idea back in 2001, and since then, many good examples of this architecture have been proposed and some even built.

One of the concepts I have played with is a modular design that can be literally stacked into a building like Lego blocks. Providing a few different pre-fabricated blocks, gives great flexibility to any designer. That coupled with the shipping containers inherent structural strength and stackable nature, means that building with these steel boxes is incredibly easy.

Here I have included the box modules that I designed for a university dormitory project in the south of Taiwan.

The basic box

A 2x box configuration for a 4x person dorm room

A 1x box single occupancy dorm room

One box of a 3x box configuration for a 4x person dorm room-Living

One box of a 3x box configuration for a 4x person dorm room-Bathroom

1of3 possible configurations for the 3x box 4x person dorm room

A 2x box elevator unit, that can be stacked to create the elevator shaft and landing on each floor of the building

A 1x box staircase unit

All of these components can be carried to the desired building site on a standard container truck, be hoisted into position and then secured in place. Low rise buildings are simple and quick to install on site, and with each unit being pre-fabricated off site, only utility connection have to be made to have the building operational and ready for use. A simple building using a system like this could conceivably be installed on site in a couple of days, drastically reducing the costs to the building contractor and land owner, as well as scoring some decent points from a sustainability standpoint.