Every day we come across situations where we have the chance to show our creative and innovative spirit. Sometimes we run out of time, imagination, or even knowledge, and our fallback is to solve problems based on old patterns and shortcuts, and when we show off our work, it is predictable, even boring. But what happens when we want our students and mentees to live up to their fullest potential and create things that inspire others? This was our focus with the Secondary School for Hairstyling in Ljubljana.
These budding hairstyling artists are proud to present their innovative project “Frizura Arhitektura”, or “Hairstyling and Architecture”. This project joins the two disciplines through a method of sensory perception as championed by Mindful Spatial Experiencing (MSE), which systematically develops participants’ spatial awareness and embodied knowledge. It is an approach to connecting with one’s surroundings not just through sight, but through smell, touch, taste, and hearing. This heightened spatial awareness and embodied knowledge in turn stimulates innovative and creative problem solving.
The first phase had us select 10 representative architectural creations in Ljubljana whose function is not merely to provide shape, but also to awaken the senses and address the human body as such. The next phase was experiential, as we visited the chosen locations and explored connection with space that we created with our senses and motion.
We then moved on to the experimental phase, where the students expressed their corporal and sensory experience through the medium they know best – hairstyling. Each of the 10 locations was used to design a new hairstyle that the students later on created on a model. Synthesis followed, as we took the models to the locations around Ljubljana and shot a series of photographs.
Frizura Arhitektura grew into much more than a school project – it was a collaboration that showed the Secondary School for Hairstyling’s thorough understanding of the need and the opportunity to introduce new pedagogic methods that are founded in mindful spatial experiencing. Such methods make it possible to completely change our old ways of doing things so we can act according to our own desires and values. Our creations then become a source of inspiration, as well as an opportunity for a truly unique experience.
THE PHOTO SERIES
Photography: Primož Lukežič
THE TEAM
Would you like your students to meet a tool that tickles their imagination, increases their creativity, and takes their innovativeness to a whole new level? Just get in touch – we’d love to design a workshop for you!