The week saw three great workshops led by Sevil Peach, Richard McGuire and Maarten Baas.

For the first time, I resisted the temptation of taking a look at the work in progress, but rather spent the entire friday afternoon together with all participants, walking around the premises and enjoying the presentations of the finished workshop results. In glorious late summer sunshine, we covered a lot of ground to see the great diversity of projects that came together during the course of the week. And a great week it was – covering a hugely diverse range of topics and approaches, the participants achieved some truly spectacular results.

Sponsored by Kvadrat, the Danish home textiles company, Sevil's workshop titled „1001 Meters of Fabric“ actually had almost 2000 meters of different materials from the current Kvadrat collection to play with – a spectacular challenge to the participants and the workshop team. This overwhelming wealth of material met the extreme proportions of the Boisbuchet premises and sparked some wonderful projects that led the team to physical exhaustion at times. Not having anticipated the weight of the material and the sometimes strong winds of the late French summer, the team had to struggle and work extremely hard.

As a wonderful counterpoint to the huge proportions of „1001 Meters“, Richard's workshop „Design is Play“ looked into the fine details of developing toys. Representing a more classic, practical approach to product development, the participants explored their ideas first in small teams, and then on their own.

Maarten's workshop participants were working with the title materials - „Tape and Cardboard“ - and were first challenged to explore their ideas of beauty - and ugliness, as they were already at it. Then they had the rest of the week to explore their individual projects, producing very playful and conceptual interior design results. I loved some of the scarecrows that were produced during the initial exploration phase of the workshop, and which decorated the Boisbuchet garden during the week... An intense feedback session polished off the workshop.

The week was rounded off by presentations by the workshop tutors, so we had the opportunity to see Richard's latest piece of work, a twenty-minute animated movie in stark black-and-white. It is a stunningly beautiful, scary piece that was created within the context of a movie called „Peur(s) du Noir“ - Fear(s) of the Dark. Six designers' takes on the topic make up the full movie which is due to open at box offices in the UK on October 3rd.

We also heard a hugely inspiring talk by artist and designer Finn Sködt, who has been working for Kvadrat for many years and who created the colours for the gorgeous Divina range. The „1001 Meters“ participants received ponchos made of Divina, and seeing them walking in the evening sun in front of the Boisbuchet castle was an absolutely spectacular view.

Maarten presented an overview of his work, as well as some early images of his latest projects. Reluctant to base his works purely on „smart ideas“, he encouraged a strongly intuitive approach to designing objects. Even though sometimes seen as lacking respect for other designers' work (especially when burning – or „smoking“ - his peers' key design items), he represents to me a fresh approach that is full of humour and charm. His presentation also gave interesting insight into the world of the big name limited edition design business.

On the leisure side of things, swimming in the lake, late evenings outside, and intense conversations with workshop tutors, the participants, and the staff alike made this another wonderful week in Boisbuchet. So also a big Thank You goes out to Malene, Tina, and the rest of the staff who helped take care of us and made us feel so much at home!

(All pictures Tine Kromer / C.I.R.E.C.A.)