He may not be the first and certainly won't be the last person to be inspired by nature but Greg Hatton inspired an entire roomful of Brisbane designers when he spoke about his work at the recent DIA Bubble and Speak breakfast I attended. With a background in environmental management and clear passion for the environment it was probably only natural that Greg's design pieces followed the same pattern. Even so, it was great to hear, in an industry where so much is about production, consumerism and the latest injection moulded plastic techniques, about someone whose work is truly
sustainable and reliant on nature. Most of his pieces are from found objects, pieces of local timbers or local rocks...This got me to thinking about other parts of the world where the only way to build is with what is local and indigenous to them... A trip to Morocco last year illustrated this perfectly. Driving through the low Atlas mountains I noticed that each village was a unique colour that perfectly reflected the colour of the desert soil around it. Built from mud bricks, the dirt collected on site, the villages appear to rise up out of the ground, a product of their immediate environment. Villages high up on rocky ridges were red and dusty, in the more fertile valleys the villages were a darker brown that reflected that... Time for more of us to start thinking, using and acting locally I think!
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