From the whimsical to the functional, Work-Leisure (2019 – 2021) is a survey of objects made in leisure time by industrial workers in west London’s Park Royal.

One of the largest industrial estates in Europe, Park Royal is home to more than 2,000 businesses and 40,000 employees. Over several months, London-based designer Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad visited hundreds of Park Royal businesses and met with workers to catalogue what was being made after-hours and in between tasks on the estate.

The resulting visual archive contains a diverse range of personal, playful, and practical objects which, although made within an industrial context, fall outside of supply and demand. Each of these projects – from a tyre dealer’s rubber chair to a metal technician’s welded flowers to a glazier’s decorative mirrors to an office manager’s feminist embroidery – demonstrates alternative uses of materials, processes, and techniques within Park Royal’s workspaces.

Begun in 2019 and completed once the estate’s businesses reopened in 2021, Work-Leisure seeks to complicate our understanding of the dynamics between occupation and recreation.