Molet Thoughts

Design Nature is an interdisciplinary platform nurturing a community based on the shared values of holistic, sustainable design, respect for nature and appetite for Good Life. We bring together people, organisations and businesses, aiming to stimulate exceptional creative synergies.

Ari and Daphne, our architects, went to a special experience in nature, after winning first place in the design marathon ‘Material Overdose’ of the design museum in Holon, which invited designers to create something completely different from the products we all throw away. After they landed and recovered, they wrote down a bit of the magic they experienced there. You are invited to dive with them into the world of nature and connections.

Ari’s experience

Coming back from the moon. That’s the feeling, even without ever having gone before. They were intense, deep weeks. I summarize this experience by strengthening the mission, our mission in this world. The work we do every day, the motivation to get up every morning and put all our energy and effort into the work we do: CONNECTIONS, that’s what we do. We connect wood planks with each other, we also connect them with other materials. But mainly we generate sensitive human connections. Deep connection with oneself, with our being, with our deepest feelings. Connection with our nature, with our essence. Deep connection with our environment, with our planet earth, so neglected and damaged for so many years. Through connecting with ourselves we realize that we are a whole. We understand we must respect and take care of ourselves. By working with our hands, with our body, connecting discarded wood, giving them a new life, we can reconnect with our friends, family, with our partner, co-workers and even with strangers. We connect companies, NGOs, educational institutions. We connect the strongest with the weakest seeking for balance and harmony. We look in each created furniture piece for a stable structure, but above all, we seek for the balance in our social and natural ecosystem that surrounds us.

Experiencing the Design Summer School offered by Design Nature (DN) in Sobole, Poland, showed us that we are not alone, that we are more than we think seeking to change and improve our world, seeking to connect in a profound way with our being, with our peers and with our natural environment. Education, Innovation and the Good Life, those are the pillars of DN. Totally aligned and connected with the values ​​that we promote at MOLET every day. We are also united by the passion for Design, convinced that it is a powerful tool for positive change, for generating a positive impact. We educate to break paradigms, to raise awareness and demonstrate that there is another way of doing things, to learn to respect ourselves and respect planet earth. We innovate in order to break the status-quo, to offer creative solutions to the challenges we face in these complex times as a society. Understanding through the action that many times such innovation is based on simple and fully encompassable solutions. This is how we promote a good life, respecting the nature that surrounds us, connecting deeply with the people around us, respecting and listening to our body and mind, and feeding our soul.

 “How can we serve?” Tomek Rygalik, DN cofounder, told me in one of our beautiful and deep talks. That is the motto that moves us. How can we leave the place we came to in better condition than we found it? How can we be better persons and help improve our home, our family, our office and work team, our school, our neighborhood, our society. How can we help everyone who needs it? How can we help to raise awareness to achieve a better world? That is the question and the engine that moves all of us who carry out MOLET every day, as does Design Nature in Poland, and luckily many others in different parts of the world. We are not the majority yet, but we are more and more.

 I’m listening at this moment to “Hermanos Gutierrez”, transporting me directly to those magical days in Sobole, magical place and magical people. A deep experience that left a strong mark, that reinforced the course, that motivates us to continue connecting, creating, innovating, educating, learning, collaborating and improving ourselves every day as individuals, as a society, creating together a better world. Thankful for this opportunity.

Ari Liberson, August 2023

Daphne’s experience

A week in Sobol, Poland. A week of unexpected days.
A week in which we woke up to the chirping of the birds, joined a morning run or a movement circle. At 9, when the gong sounded, we sat down around a long wooden table for a nutritious, rich, colorful and diverse breakfast. 15 people, speaking different languages, with completely different backgrounds.
The wooden benches connected us physically and mentally, and that’s how we got to know each other, talked, laughed and dived into deep conversations. From there we continued with the facilitators to a series of workshops, where each workshop brought with it a different topic related to art, design and ideas.

At two o’clock the sound of the gong sounded again and we all gathered around the same table, talking about what we had learned, sharing experiences, enriching each other with the knowledge we had gained.
So with a cup of coffee in hand we continued to another workshop. This time everyone embarks on a journey of recording sound and creating a personal soundtrack.
In the evening we met to listen to the recorded segments and drank wine. Music and dancing soon joined the atmosphere – all of us together.
This is what the days looked like at Design Nature – a family home in nature, among the trees, next to a stream where spectacular sunrises and sunsets are part of the routine.

All this magic is led by two Polish designers: Tomek Rygalik and Gosia Rygalik, who established the place with the aim of creating a multidisciplinary community. A community with sustaining values, that sees nature and a sustainable way of life as a way to create connections.
Connection between you and yourself,
Between you and a new idea
Between you and the environment,
Connections between you and another person.

The idea of the place and of connections through sustainable design thinking is very similar to our values at MOLET, so naturally on one of the evenings, Ari and I led a workshop like we do in Israel at Molet. Only this time, we used the raw leftover wood as the material, which came from the workshops in the place.
It happened on the last day of the seminar, and the participants of the workshops, architects, designers, guests from the area and friends were present there.
Ari and I invited them to participate in the challenge – to build something that carries the weight of their body or of several bodies.

In one hour, mixed groups of adults and children joined together and designed something new.
They operated electric saws, screwdrivers and drills – some for the very first time.

The design of a moment, a creation and a partner led to a moment in which three people are embraced together, lifted off the ground in equilibrium.
The smile on their faces as soon as they succeeded, tells the story of the place in Sobol in Poland and ours here in Molet: to look for the best that exists, to connect, to design, to be inspired by nature while preserving it, in harmony, in movement and in communication.

Daphne Dagan August 2023

https://www.designnature.com//