There is something Orwellian about the name ‘Department of Life’ and this overflows to the feel of its interior space, a space constructed or formed from subterranean materials of steel, iron, wood, slate, stone, marble, copper, glass and botany…. it’s nature and industry forming a bond.

The idea also at concept stage was to capture some of the spirit of Orwell’s 1984 with more positive and happy thought processes, processes that re-visualizes the past to merge for the future. It’s a paradox and contradiction of the world Orwell visualised and painted.

By this, we mean a return to a social reality where instead of shopping via a keyboard anonymously with Big Cookie Brother watching you, instead you can immerse with others and feel the life within the structure, fabric and décor of the building and all its contents. If you want to shop you can, if you want to meet, talk, engage, listen, read, drink or eat you can, if you want to go further … tie the knot (get married). Love is the ultimate department of life.

1984 has of course come and gone, some would say we are living in a world where technology has mirrored much of what Orwell wrote. Now post 1984 how we are living our lives has been shaped by excessive technology and as such a social disconnection pollutes us. In a dystopian world nature would take over and eventually reconnect most of life, the Department of Life is about such reconnection.

Our Nine Departments of Life:

Fashion Life: Baby, Child, Man, Woman.
Plant Life: Plant, flower, pot.
Home Life: Furnish, light, read, listen
Past Life: Vintage, antique.
Family Life: Pets, gift, play.
Outdoor life; Run, ride, walk
Food Life: Food, drink, cook.
Social Life: Meet, eat, treat
Love Life: Tie the knot, love.