Especially since the start of the pandemic daily life is increasingly filled with anxiety, cabin fever, chaos and worries, but hardly any joy. Aside from gallows humour there is not much to laugh about. In times like these one might even wonder if it is morally wrong to have a good time. In Sophia Schullan’s opinion, lightheartedness should never be a guilty pleasure. On the contrary, she thinks it can be a valuable tool to empower oneself to make the best of a bad situation and become more resilient.
When she found herself stuck in her one room apartment all by herself during the first lockdown, she was certainly not amused. The designer’s everyday routines that used to be a grounding part of her busy life, quickly became boring and monotonous as soon as there was nothing else to do. Not a very inspiring situation to be in – until she asked herself how her suddenly predictable everyday life could be redesigned to be fun and exciting again.
Rather than designing yet another product to solve this problem, Sophia started treating the products that were already surrounding her with a new attitude: Playfulness. To practice Playfulness the designer turned her perspective on boring everyday life into a source of inspiration. She therefore redesigned trivial everyday routines – using ordinary household items only – in a playful manner into something fun to play with.
To start her day on a positive note she focussed on redesigning her former uneventful morning routine in absurd new ways. Trivial tasks like brewing tea, stirring it with milk, roasting toast, buttering it and doing the dishes afterwards were transformed into playful experiments that might work… or not. Therefore this project doesn’t care about efficiency, but entertainment.
To tickle her brain and push the limits of playfulness Sophia redesigned every step of her morning routine three times each. Hence result of this project is a collection of 15 playful installations that were filmed to also entertain others – and hopefully inspire them to outwit their daily grind and create unexpected moments of joy, even when stuck in most familiar surroundings and situations.