Don’t we all want to make things? I think these guys do - The studio of Bisk. Model-makers-extraordinaire.
Wandering into their studio was like wandering into the ultimate wonderland workshop. A boy’s toys playground. A dad’s dream. This is no bad thing – far from it. Mike, one of three guys who run the studio showed me round their humble jumble of wood, metal and plastics. In here it seemed like a grounding in design – a reality into the ways and means of ‘design and make’.
It’s a strange feeling to be surrounded by what could be the possible beginnings of some of the most innovative pieces of art and design in our generation. From the raw materials to perfect models, Bisk are in a position of secrecy amongst an industry rife with copies and remakes. The pieces that are in creation are varied in their mediums [anything from scale lift shafts to scratch built tricycles and over sized presentation bottles] and it almost feels like a slightly James Bond MI6 ‘Q’ type studio, albeit with sawdust covering most of the tools and a melancholy whiff of spray paint or casting resin.
What felt at first like a short step back into a college workshop now feels like a prominent incite into a dying design process – a process that we should garner more interest for and gain more skills in. The ways and means that they involve themselves in are the linchpin in designers final proposals, the means to find out problems and solve them. Perhaps it’s time for designers to step away from the mouse mat and back on the saw and sander? Doesn’t the process of design seem all the more prominent as a 3D process when you’re sitting working a contour with rough piece of P180?
I hope so.