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Segovia March 11, 2016.- Yesterday in Madrid the director of Hay Festival Segovia Sheila Cremaschi announced a new project entitled “ The Dream Workshop.” The main aim of the initiative is to bring together key players from diverse fields that include literature, gastronomy, architecture, and science, to produce a series of sculptures in hardwood brought from forests in the US. The statues will be displayed at the end of September during the Segovia edition of the famous festival of art and ideas, with IE University serving once again as key collaborator and academic partner.

“The Dream Workshop” is an initiative organized by Hay Festival Segovia, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), and IE School of Architecture & Design. The aim is for four groups led by creators (inspirers) will interact with architects and Spanish designers of international renown to produce four statues (four dreams) crafted from wood from forests in the United States.

The first group is made up of architect and IE professor, Izaskun Chinchilla and chefs Juan Mari and Elena Arzak. The second team comprises Spanish writer Javier Cercas and RCR Arquitectes. The members of the third group are the Dean of IE School of Architecture and Design and executive director of the Pritzker Prize for Arquitecture, Martha Thorne, and Italian architect Benedetta Tagliabue. Finally, the last team is made up of Jacob Benbunan, co-Founder and CEO of Saffron Brand, and Spanish paleontologist Juan Luis Arzuaga, who is also the scientific director of the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos.

The resulting works of art will be sculpted at “La Navarra” carpentry workshop, one of the best wood workshops in Spain, and displayed in an exhibition that will take place during the 2016 edition of Hay Festival Segovia. The exhibition will also show the process of how the statues were produced, and will serve as a platform where the authors can share with the public the whole creative process, beginning with where the ideas came from, through to the crafting of the final artistic product. In the words of the organizers: “Thanks to the dreams of these inspirers, the designers will have the opportunity to investigate technical and aesthetic possibilities more deeply, and consider the environmental benefits of using wood taken from luxuriant US hardwood trees.”

The different phases of the process - from the materialization of the dream on which to base the design to the production phase - will play roles that are as valuable for the project as the final realization of each wish in the form of an object made of wood. The participants, with the help of architecture students at IE University, will record each phase of each project, and will compile the data needed to analyze the complete life cycle of each one of the sculptures.

The presentation of the Dream Workshop was held at IE University’s Madrid center. Participants included Hay Festival director Segovia Sheila Cremaschi, the dean of IE School of Architecture and Design, Martha Thorne, and the director for Europe of the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), David Venables.

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