I’ve spent many weekends here during my younger years in my teens and twenties at med school. For those of you that are younger , embrace hard work , love the labour , and the people you’ll meet.. it’ll be part of your fabric as you go through your life journey .
What your seeing is one step of a multi step process when you dry clean your shirt.
The shirts sorted, stains soaked, washed, dried, pressed, packed - for £1.80
The work that goes into the labour intensive jobs Is overlooked & under appreciated on a daily basis..
Instagram is a place for showing off the high life (that drives mental health issues in so many)
I’m taking a moment this Easter/ Ramadan to appreciate the tough labour jobs and people
As a dr if I could I would prescribe a labour job “low skilled low paid” for a period of time. I think it’s so formative and humbling & GROUNDING
To appreciate what we have - we know gratitude is central to good mental health.. & practice calming the desire to have more and feel envy or resentment or anger for what we don’t have.
Attachment to possessions drives depression, anxiety and many mental health issues & unhealthy relationships
Being grateful for what we have , whilst desiring to drive impact and value - enjoying what you reap sensibly and taxing your wealth by giving charity all helps to loosen one’s attachment to £$/possessions.
Giving space and time to reflect , we can always learn and evolve if we look in the right places and take a moment to muse
#ramadanmusing#mentalhealth#volunteering#launderette#drycleaning#lowpaidworkers#grounding
My fixation with all things related to soap powder continued while at the Royal College of Art in 1986 when Swatch set a student competition for all departments to create something based on the theme of ‘time and motion’. Like many students back in the day I spent a couple of hours each week at a local launderette washing and drying my clothes. I would sit mesmerically watching the clothes spin and tumble for their allotted time. This I thought was pure time and motion. So I had the slightly bonkers concept of building the corner of a launderette. I phoned a washing machine manufacture and talked them into lending me a brand new machine in the classic orange of British launderettes and then built around it in great detail. I pinched a couple of signs from my local launderette and even glued a fag end to the linoleum floor. To my surprise the final piece won a £500 prize and was then to be included in the winners exhibition at the Henry Moore Gallery within the RCA. I pushed the concept a little further and wanted to plumb in the machine and allow students to bring in their washing and do it in the gallery. Unfortunately the powers that be within the college were having none of it, even though I pushed and pushed for the idea.
Years later I returned to the RCA to work on a project for the college and while chatting to a student I discovered that there was an orange launderette washing machine tucked away in the corner of the basement. It had obviously never been picked up by the kind company who lent it to me. I wonder if it’s still there? #soap#powder#launderette#wash@rcavisualcomm@swatch#art
Bakers
Up My Street Cards
Louise Lockhart
Just found! A box of the cards from Up My Street, long out of print. There are 4 cards and at a bargain price of £5 for the set! Something good to surface from all the decluttering. The cards were published as a part of the wonderful collaboration between myself and Louise aka @theprintedpeanut and I’m thrilled that we’ll be publishing a follow-up later this year, something cheerful to look forward to.
The cards are available via link in profile.
#upmystreet#shoplocal#independentshops#bakers#montecarlocafe#handyman#ironmongers#launderette@designfortoday@theprintedpeanut
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Barbican Launderette | London, England | c. 1973
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The Barbican Launderette on Fann Street in the City of London was opened in 1973. It not only served the 2,100 homes within the Barbican Estate but was also essential for residents at the nearby YMCA building
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The Launderette is part of the Barbican Estate - a residential estate that was built during the 1960s and the 1980s within the City of London, in an area once devastated by World War II bombings and today densely populated by financial institutions. It is recognized as one of the finest examples of Brutalist architecture in the world
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Covering 40 acres, it sits on the area known as Cripplegate. Following one of London’s heaviest bombing raids on December 29 1940, the area was almost totally destroyed. Planning started in 1952 to rebuild the area and architects Peter Chamberlin, Geoffry Powell and Christoph Bon were appointed to design the new development
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Constructed through the 1960s and 70s, the complex was officially opened by the queen in 1982. Flats were distributed between three 43-storey towers – Shakespeare, Cromwell and Lauderdale – and a series of 13 seven-storey blocks. The architects combined private, community and public domains with eight acres of gardens and lakes, a cinema, theatre and exhibition hall
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The Barbican Launderette has been owned by the same family since it opened, and is one of just 350 launderettes to remain in London. At their peak in the 1980s, there were over 1,600 launderettes in the city; today, as over 97% of households have their own washing machines, London launderettes are an increasingly more of a rare sight. Nevertheless, although numbers are dwindling, launderettes are unlikely to disappear entirely; and those that remain will continue to play an important role for local communities
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📸: @Coinop_London
✍: @wikipedia + @Coinop_London
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#AccidentallyWesAnderson#WesAnderson#VscoArchitecture#Vsco#AccidentalWesAnderson#Travelmore#BarbicanEstate#BarbicanLaunderette#Brutalist#Launderette#Laundrette#London#England🇬🇧