I N T ERNATIO NAL WO M E N’ S DAY S P EC I A L
Inside a pool residence at Tipai resort, India. Designer Ariane Thakore Ginwala has helped to revive crafts and skills back to life for the surrounding community. By working with permaculture principles, the former depleted teak farm is now flourishing with biodiversity.
Spanish architect Paula Rosales of Kitchen For Life has designed a clever kitchen system that disassembles and reassembles using durable, non-toxic materials, which can easily be added to and repaired. Instead of leaving your largest home purchase behind when you move house - you can now take it with you!
Photo credit: Ariane Thakore Ginwala
Photo credit Nacho Uribesalazar, 2021, reproduced by permission of Casa Décor.
‘Anita Roddick gave me the best education in sustainable design’ By Chloe Bullock, Founder of Materialise Interiors. When I was six-
IWD Special
years-old, a mile away from us,
entrepreneur and
activist Anita Roddick
was busy setting up the first The
Body Shop in the middle of Brighton’s Kensington Gardens. It was 1976.
My family were early adopters of this
shop and its unusual natural products. Her creations were decanted into
different sized refillable containers -
sometimes even medical urine sample bottles - complete with hand-written labels that blurred over time in the
bathroom. We loved her home-made
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products using unusual and unexpected ingredients. The shop looked and
smelled exciting - like nowhere else
I’d seen, with fence panel walls, dried flowers and rolls of stickers by the till which I would covet.
Little did I know this shop and its
innovative owner was going to impact my life so much - as well as changing the skin & hair care industry and its
practices so radically across the world! “If you think you’re too small to have an
impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.” A quote from the Dalai
Lama, often re-quoted by Anita Roddick.
I literally grew up with Anita’s values and
campaigns as she used the window area
to draw attention to global issues around people, planet and animals - from
Greenpeace to Amnesty International to banning animal testing.
When I returned home to Brighton
after I’d graduated in design, it was the
early nineties recession and I was really struggling to find work. In desperation I
wrote a letter to Anita, whose company had boomed and had been floated on the stock exchange. Her international
headquarters, complete with a pagodashaped office building and factory, was just along the coast in Littlehampton.