Constructions of Leisure

It springs from a great interest in what we do in our leisure time, what we do for entertainment and how we get it. “Constructions of Leisure” is a good title to plunk ontop of my mess of papers and books on my desk and in my mind. With many trips to our epicenters of entertainment such as Las Vegas, the Efteling, and even to cities such as your own Econstad in Friesland, I am fascinated in the level in which we are in control of our leisure. And this is why miniature hobby is a highlight in my research, as it exemplifies a level of involvement that we are losing to 21 Century prefabrications. It is in having a hobby, where we make our own entertainment, where we play the shots by starting from a blank slate and build up a complete experience, that we are at our best as creative human beings, and may I suggest is in deep trouble because of competition from all sides of material and virtual domains. As more and more theme parks and recreational cities are built (think Las Vegas and Dubai) where people live full-time, we are getting lazy at having everything done for us, and here lies the crux…. we are losing control to entertainment and lifestyle engineers with their pre-fabricated kits.

Detail Travels Through Paradise

Don’t get me wrong… as we work harder and longer, we need things done for us because we need the quick fix. We place our leisure time in the hands of others, to provide for those special two weeks of vacation once a year. So it is a valuable service. However, are there other ways to amuse ourselves and get a more consistent and regular dose of getting away from it all??….
Well, I believe so, and this is in having a hobby. Where inside our own homes we can lose all sense of time, put our troubles at the sideline, and dive into our own worlds of fantasy, where what we do is from ourselves, where our hands are directed by our imagination to customize our world. And it is in miniature landscape building that we find the possibility to do so… where we can make up for the deficiencies in the real world, and create landscapes of wish fulfilment… where we would like to be, or where we can narrate our vision of the world as it is, and as it could be.

Detail Travels Through Paradise

In miniature building, we have a certain amount of power to say this is me, this is you and this is the world we could be in. Miniature builders of both amateur and professional are speaking out from their basements and attics, studios, and offices, tweeking and tinkering, creating a debate about our 1:1 world.

Upstairs you will find laid out before you a cornucopia of narratives, where a diverse group of builders have come together in the last couple of weeks to work beside and with one another swapping stories and tips. It’s here that you will find a shared experience where the architectural model builder works along-side the train hobbyist, the artist beside a Sandberg Institute student, a Product Designer next to a 10 year old master of imagination, and and a lawyer next to a fashion designer. All have something in common, to support the imaginative process… to lead you to gaze through a train window to landscapes of both the nostalgic and the apocalyptic, from the hyper-real to the more abstract, where you will be seduced and sold on the idea that our paradise is what we make of it. Travels through Paradise presents a platform where both the professional and amateur stand on the same ground of expertise and experience, and a common stance that what’s done in miniature can have implications on our 1:1 world. The overlaps that happen between the groups makes paradise liveable and achievable.

Detail Travels Through Paradise

I invite you to go upstairs and be seduced and even be absorbed, but don’t forget to pierce the bubble and demand more of yourselves to be represented in your daily lives, where Paradise is found in the doing and producing of it than in the mere consumption of it.

Cynthia Hathaway, (Toronto, Canada) is designer and educator. She has her undergraduate degree in architectural design from the AKI in Enschede and graduated as a Master in Industrial Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven. After being the creative director of the Master course "FunLab" specializing in the Designs of Experience at the Design Academy, she now is the director of Hathaway Designs with clients like KesselsKramer, Calvin Klein, DSM, Carrefour, DesignLab Bangkok and Organic Inc. Her designs can be found in the Droog Design collection as well as in the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, and Motherbrand of Canada. Hathaway's research into, and passion for, the world of miniatures began with the writing of her Master’s thesis simulation. She continues to be inspired by the leisure domains of hobby and entertainment. For this show she presented a reflection on the professional and amateur connections to miniature building of landscape.