Katy Brett

Like many other pre-industrial home-making practices, crofting in the Scottish Highlands involved gathering organic materials and using them to create interiors. My project, Anthropocene Crofting, draws on this local design model to critique the prevalent approach to interior design, one that is shaped by mass production and globalization. Anthropocene Crofting blends traditional crofting methods with contemporary design technology by integrating photogrammetry and manufactured materials into the gathering process. This hybridized approach reflects the paradox of our modern-day surroundings, where natural systems have been overwhelmed and displaced by human activity. Working with these methods, I reimagined the interior of Apartment 229, located in a multistory tower block in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I used objects unearthed in Greenpoint, both in their raw form and in digital reproductions, produced with photogrammetry and CNC technology, to create articles for the domestic interior. I reconfigured plastic cutlery, discarded bones, and a 3D-scanned piece of driftwood as domestic objects—a transformation that shifted their significance and uncovered meaning. Rather than offering solutions, Anthropocene Crofting poses questions: How can the search for significance in local waste materials transform our approach to interior design and help us create emotionally rich, sustainable domestic interiors? Does this revitalization of tradition bring us closer to nature or take us further away as it reveals an inorganic reality? theworldwildweb.net @katy_brett