ALICE MALCOLM
ARKIV
Living memory is precious and fleeting. Our culture and traditions are often lost through generations leaving very little of the people that came before. Arkiv brings together classic Scandinavian design and a tactile interactive experience. It encapsulates a love of family values, compiling our memories into a dynamic cabinet of curiosities. Designed with longevity in mind there is no planned obsolesce, just shared love for a story.
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Each component within the cabinet is designed to work with with a single user interaction. A crank handle which is made to fit into each box performs a different function such as opening a drawer to access archived letters or spinning a cascade of family photographs.
A curiosity cabinet archiving family heritage.
A way to physically print and store memories that were previously stored in a digital format, ensuring that all aspects of the user’s life that they wish to document are preserved.
A physical representation of the family tree. It is interactive in the way that it allows the user an area to fill in and place a profile of each family member, building up on the family heritage over time.
A crank handle mechanised drawer that is designed to safely hold all paper heirlooms such as letters and photographs, eliminating the make-shift shoe-box storage system and ensure that precious memories don’t gather dust in the attic but are easily accessible and in pride of place in the heart of the home.
A simple environment for the heirloom to sit and be displayed within. The box includes an area for a few objects to hang and rotate using the crank handle, sparking conversation within the family about their origins and giving a space for those special items that would have otherwise have been tucked away.
The cabinet is designed with every family’s requirements in mind. Heirlooms and memories are collected in many different forms. Each box within the cabinet is removable and replaceable to allow the individual to prioritise what aspects of their heritage they deem to be most important to preserve.
