Though The Stop’s Night Market is over until next year, there are still many projects and their designers to be exposed to those of us not lucky enough to attend. I sat down with Amrit and Tae of Lokki Studio to talk about their experience and contribution to the event.
Long time friends and current masters students, Tiffany Chiang, Michael Bootsma, Taehyung Kim and Amrit Phull formed Lokki Studio from a shared belief in the value of love, food, labour, community and friendship. The name comes from the collective adoration of a Japanese film called Ruokala Lokki which tells the daily life of a Japanese diner in Finland. The sentiments of the film resonate with the emerging studio and inspired their name, Lokki in fact means seagull in Finnish. It’s a charming film filled with Alvar Aalto furniture and Marimekko clothing, which overlaps Japanese and Finnish cultures surrounding food and community. Worth a watch if you enjoy food and design culture.
Though they have collaborated as couplets throughout their academic careers, Lokki Studios’s cart of portals for The Stop’s Night Market was their first endeavor as a quartet. The concept came initially from a fascination with doors during a previous, unrealized project. From there, the formation of the cart was entirely derived from whatever doors could be obtained from donors through Craigslist.
What began as digital design conversations over Skype, evolved into a five day cultish event of communal construction and shared dining in a back alley off Dupont and Christie. In contrast to the typically insular process of building, their public location within a family oriented neighbourhood invited the inquisitive passerby to partake in the affair. Community visibility and the participation of friends and family further enriched the shared process of the cart’s creation. The highlight moment for the group was wheeling their cart along the two kilometre journey to Honest Ed’s; an event which generated a great zeitgeist within the community.
As the event unfolded, Lokki watched their assemblage of doors transition from day to night, illuminated by a concealed valence of lights. “It was like opening the door to a room and having light pour out,” Amrit describes, a gesture which is inherently welcoming and invited guests into the culinary world of The Gaberdine and The Harbord Room.
With their first undertaking realized, I inquired about further pursuits. The collaboration of friends who make up Lokki Studio seem to always have something on-going, from shared research and writings to design competitions and installations, not to mention the endeavor of completing a Masters thesis.
Take for example, Taehyung Kim’s recent installation in the School of Architecture atrium which served as testing grounds for Masters thesis investigations into implied geometries.
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