How do we de­sign spaces and ob­jects in a way that is pleas­ing, holis­tic and sus­tain­able? Artist Mar­lon Dar­beau ad­dressed the ques­tion dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion at Mak­ing Space, a TEDx­Portof­S­painSa­lon event, host­ed joint­ly by Sus­tain T&T as part of their green Green Screen se­ries, on No­vem­ber 11.

The event took place at Al­ice Yard on Robert Street in Wood­brook. The arts space was the site of Dar­beau's first ex­hi­bi­tion in T&T four years ago.

On Sun­day night he shared his phi­los­o­phy of de­sign with the au­di­ence, draw­ing on sev­er­al of his artis­tic projects.

Denise Dem­ming of TEDx­Portof­S­pain wel­comed guests, not­ing that it was the an­niver­sary of their first event in the se­ries ded­i­cat­ed to dis­sem­i­nat­ing "ideas worth shar­ing." She said their next ses­sion, en­ti­tled Art Un­usu­al, would take place at Trinidad The­atre Work­shop on No­vem­ber 29.

Sus­tain T&T di­rec­tor Carv­er Bac­chus thanked TEDx­Portof­S­pain and Al­ice Yard for their work on the col­lab­o­ra­tive event and in­tro­duced a se­ries of four Green Screen an­i­mat­ed short films. Each five-minute short fea­tures a dif­fer­ent call to ac­tion, en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to plant trees; eat lo­cal, eat well; re­duce, reuse, re­cy­cle; and, take ac­tion.

These were fol­lowed by two TEDx videos, both deal­ing with the sub­ject of de­sign and how form af­fects hu­man ac­tion and emo­tion.

Dar­beau elab­o­rat­ed on the theme, start­ing with his own per­son­al his­to­ry as an artist. He said his fa­ther and grand­fa­ther were crafts­men, work­ing in met­al and tim­ber, re­spec­tive­ly, and that he saw his work as a con­tin­u­a­tion of that tra­di­tion, us­ing his art and de­sign train­ing.

Il­lus­trat­ing his ideas with a slide show, he de­scribed the cre­ative de­sign process. He spoke about the Jazz on the Beach con­cert space in To­ba­go, where he had to in­cor­po­rate "ex­pe­ri­en­tial fac­tors" like the move­ment of the sun and peo­ple's re­luc­tance to sit close to the stage; Peera, his own take on a tra­di­tion­al wood­en bench, re-imag­ined as a wood-and-met­al bench/tool box com­bi­na­tion; and Dish Out, a de­sign for serv­ing spoon sets made of ma­hogany and stain­less steel.

For the oc­ca­sion, Dar­beau in­stalled some of the blue and white fab­ric discs from the Jazz on the Beach project. He said in the day­time set­ting, they were meant to "bring the clouds clos­er," but con­fig­ured in Al­ice Yard's space it seemed "more like swim­ming through wa­ter."

He was pas­sion­ate about cre­at­ing "life­time ob­jects that you can pass on," made lo­cal­ly by T&T crafts­men. He not­ed that the form of ob­jects in­flu­ences how peo­ple in­ter­act with them, and the way spaces are cre­at­ed in the built en­vi­ron­ment al­so in­flu­ences peo­ple's mood, en­er­gy and ac­tion.

Af­ter Dar­beau's talk, Dem­ming asked guests to take part in Con­ver­sa­tion Caf&ea­cute;s: they were asked to split up in­to groups of five to net­work with peo­ple they did not know and dis­cuss the top­ics dis­cussed.

At the Yard on Sun­day, as at all Green Screen 2012 events, It's Up to Me Nvi­ron­men­tal, an NGO ded­i­cat­ed to re­cy­cling aware­ness, part­nered with Sus­tain T&T to en­sure that all waste gen­er­at­ed at the event was sort­ed in­to pa­per, plas­tic and met­al for re­cy­cling.

Sus­tain T&T's Green Screen' se­ries of free en­vi­ron­men­tal movies con­tin­ues:

NO­VEM­BER 17

6.30 pm: Halfway Green (12 mins) + Food Inc (94 mins). Blan­chisseuse Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

NO­VEM­BER 19

6.30 pm: The Is­land Pres­i­dent (101 mins). In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port-of-Spain,

1 In­ter­na­tion­al Dri­ve, West­moor­ings.

NO­VEM­BER 20

6.30 pm: You've Been Trumped (95 mins). Pre­sen­ta­tion by the Green Build­ing Coun­cil.

San Fer­nan­do Hill.

No­vem­ber 22

5.30 pm: Halfway Green (12 mins) + Food Inc (94 mins) + Car­bon Na­tion (86 mins). In­sti­tute for Crit­i­cal Think­ing, UWI, St Au­gus­tine.