Finding your creative comfort zone with This Orient magazine

As we chug along with work during these early months of the year, it’s important to remember that our creativity is a delicate, sensitive part of us that needs to be nurtured. But how do we find that perfect comfort zone at work?

This Orient is a new magazine centred around our working lives, adding to a lineup of work-related titles like Lagom, Offscreen and Kinfolk. In their first issue, they speak to architects, photographers, artists and other creatives about finding the optimum comfort zone, so we asked editor Hassen Ben Chtioui to give us some tips.

Do it the Italian family way
Italian sculptors Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, who form Formafantasma, talk about the benefits of working in small spaces to remain in close contact with the rest of the team. This helps with communication and strengthens bonds, especially with everyone cooking together and eating lunch around a big communal table.

But silence and isolation are just as important
For Jasmine Dporta, the Berlin-based designer, a trip home to Bolzano, a city in the Italian Alps, is crucial when she feels stressed and needs to achieve inner balance. On the homebound train ride, she starts feeling peaceful as soon as she sees the mountains of her homeland.

A tiny sanctuary for Paweł Althamer
Taking isolation quite seriously, architect Piotr Brzoza and studio Project Praga designed a tiny retreat for Polish artist and sculptor Paweł Althamer, as an extension to his existing workplace. Conceived as a sponge connected to the building, it looks like a beehive on a tree and provides privacy for him to relax and come up with new ideas.

Eman Ali’s punk and heavy metal playlist
Omani photographer Eman Ali (below), based in London, needs a good music playlist and a playful attitude to get her going. This usually starts with a selection of heavy metal and punk tracks. She very much lives in her own little world for hours while taking pictures – almost a trance-like state that could be denominated as her personal comfort zone. “It’s definitely a state of mind. Once you are comfortable in your own skin, nothing can stop you,” she explains.

Munich as a fashion label’s comfort zone
Yasar Ceviker and Susi Streich (below) founded the label ‘A Kind of Guise’. They live and work in Munich but also have a store in Berlin. They enjoy the prejudices people have concerning Bavaria’s capital city: people are snobs, but they represent the buying power. Munich is a big village, but everything is reachable on bicycle so the designer couple also enjoy Munich due to its proximity to their manufacturers, as they mostly produce locally.

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