Rather than just exploring the 2D, this is another example of a graphic design studio from Spain that creates interventions in 3D exploring new boundaries of self-expression.
A multi-disciplinary graphic design studio with a work full of strong emotional narratives. What makes ‘us’ different is the approach they usually give to their projects. Instead of using purely graphic identity, they also translate their ideas into any medium, sometimes by designing objects telling the message by their own.
(Click on the title above to check their super website)
THE CLOCK
‘The clock is to time as the mirror is to space.
Country clocks are among the most sought-after of objects, precisely because they capture time and strip it of surprises within the intimacy of a piece of furniture. There is nothing in the world more reassuring. The measuring of time produces anxiety when it serves to assign us social tasks, but it makes us feel safe when it substantializes time and cuts it into slices like an object of consumption. Everyone knows from experience how intimate a ticking clock can make a place feel; the reason is that the clock’s sound assimilates the place to the inside of our heart. It is precisely this process of infusion or assimilation of the substance of time, this presence of duration, which is rejected, just like all other returns to inwardness, by a modern order based on externality, spatiality and objective relationships.’
Sketching few outlines and bringing them alive is Nendo’s most recent work, exhibited until today at London’s Saatchy Gallery. The collection, made of stainless steel, confuses the user with its emptiness. At first glance, these objects are full of volume. Getting closer, the human eye is not able to immediately judge if they are floating or standing, where they start and where they finish.
A good example of feminine design is Ditte Hammerstrøm. She combines contemporary materials like foam or plastic with traditional manufacturing processes achieving very honest results. Ditte has created her own signature by producing pieces of furniture that, despite of being modern, they express familiar warmth.
THERE IS NO WAY TO THINK WE ARE ALL THE SAME.
Martha Nussbaum in ‘Examined Life’.
THE BEAUTY OF DARKNESS
I would never find a better description about our visual perception with food, and how important to our appetite are the colours we use to serve it.
Unconsciously, the colours of the food awake our primitive instincts. The image received in our retinas is a micro-landscape of tonalities, textures and shapes. The appetite is ready to knock the door. However, where the cook decides to show his makings may become a place of pleasant delight.
I found in Tanizaki’s words the reasons why some Japanese lacquerware are made in particular dark colours and materials, and definitely, in a different way from Western shiny lacquerware.
The beauty of darkness lies in enhancing the light of the things.
‘It has been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music evoked by the combination of lacquerware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark. With Japanese food, a brightly lighted room and shining tableware cut the appetite in half. The dark miso soup that we eat every morning is one dish from the dimly lit houses of the past. And above all there is rice. A glistening black lacquer rice cask set off in a dark corner is both beautiful to behold and a powerful stimulus to the appetite. Then the lid is briskly lifted, and this pure white freshly boiled food, heaped in its black container, each and every grain gleaming like a pearl, sends forth billows of warm steam - here is a sight no Japanese can fail to be moved by. Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness.’
In October 2008, The Impossible Project saved the last Polaroid production plant for Integral Instant film in Enschede (Netherlands) and started to re-invent and re-produce a new instant film for traditional Polaroid Cameras.
Today, Impossible Project has created an entire brand image with a convincingly simple and pertinent design that does not go too far away from the deceased Polaroid’s.
PX 70 Color Shade (a new color film for the Polaroid SX 70) and PX 600 Silver Shade UV+ (a new black and white film for Polaroid 600 cameras) are already available.
(Click on the title above to know more about Impossible Project.)
RAPID PROTOTYPING OR RAPID DESIGN
In 2009 Roland Kreiter won mydeco.com’s ‘Pure Creativity’ competition for his mysqueeze juicer. Talking about 3D Rapid Prototyping, this object is manufactured with the same technology by Alessi, but this time using the stereo litograph process.
The judge for this competition was Philippe Starck. Apparently, this object pays homage to the famous designer’s Juicy Salif squeezer. In the words of Alberto Alessi: “This seemed to me like a worthy tribute to “Juicy Salif” (1990), the most controversial citrus-squeezer of the twentieth century.”
Is it worth it because it is even more useless than the Juicy Salif? Reading ‘The culture of design’ by Guy Julier, I found this statement Starck himself made about his design: “This is not a very good lemon squeezer: but that’s not its only function. I had this idea that when a couple gets married it’s the sort of thing they would get as a wedding present. So the new husband’s parents come round, he and his father sit in the living room with a beer, watching television, and the new bride and mother-in-law sit in the kitchen to get to know each other better. ‘Look what we got as a present’, the daughter-in-law say.”
On September the 6th, Alessi and mydeco proposed a new competition looking for any creative ideas to make a short-film for a future international publicity campaign of mysqueeze.
“The object itself is not immediately self-explanatory and we want to see some creative uses for it. What is it? How would you use it? Is it an object or is it kitchen equipment, who knows? mysqueeze is a blank canvas”, explained Daniel Nelson from mydeco.com.
So, does the canvas still blank when the product is already manufactured? There is no need to explain why it is uncomprehensible that, reaching this point of the product, the company is looking for its possible functionalities. It has come a time in industrial design where companies and designers are laughing at consumers by designing products with no purpose at all. An object that has to work as a squeezer should, at least, suggest its use.
In this case, the value of the juicer seems to be based on Starck’s perceived status and signature.
It might be more reasonable to reconsider the juicer as a tremendous piece of art, a sculpture. Judging by the picture of the object’s presentation, I am sure it will fit much better in a gallery space. Or, in case of squeezing, do not forget to wear your leather glove.
A CALL FOR RESPONSIBLE USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES
On the occasion of the 2010 London Design Festival, Tent show in Brick Lane offered its first room to the Lab Craft, a platform for 26 well-known designers to show their latest experiments with new technologies. UK-based Committee studio paid tribute to Rapid Prototyping (RP) process with their Lost Twin Ornaments. This innovative technology is an automatic process consisting in the transformation of 3D CAD files into thin, virtual, horizontal cross-sections layers forming a final model of the object. It was firstly used to aid product development. Now, this technology produces finished models. As you can observe in the images below, RP enables to make forms that were definitely impossible to achieve less than two decades ago. As Committee states in their website: “we are now witnessing a new wave of pure abstract form-making as recent advances in digital technologies allow artists, designers and architects to create complex new shapes that were previously un-constructible or even inconceivable without the aid of a computer.”
RP is not yet a process that could mass produce though. Objects made by RP could only be produced one by one. It is still a time consuming and especially, an energy wasting process. Committee has used this technology to create their new range of objects Lost Twin Ornaments consisting of two found objects joined together by an amorphous plastic ‘item’ made by RP. These Ornaments are considered experimental sculptures by their creators.
Are they sculptures of art or sculptures of design? In any case, what are these sculptures expressing? The only explanation I give to these pieces is that two designers are ‘playing around’ with RP. They even state on their website: “lacking a vision for making an abstract form of their own, Committee needed a device to guide the process”. It does not seem there is any reason for these creations except for exploring the boundaries of form.
It is comprehensible that such a revolutionary process is turning popular among designers and it is now becoming increasingly usual to find rapid prototyped objects in the market. The problem arises when the use of a manufacturing process only justifies an over-concentration on form. “There are different approaches to materials and technologies: those who pursue solutions through a deep understanding of existing materials and processes, and those who turn automatically to new technology” like Committee with their Lost Twin Ornaments. There should always be an important engagement between designers and processes: technology is at the service of the human being and not viceversa.
If ‘techmania’ continues to increase, a time will come where every high tech product will be accepted as ‘good design’ in the market. It is already happening that handcrafted objects are turning into valuable pieces, progressively considered as sculptures or fetish objects. The bee vase by Libertiny could have definitely been made by RP with an accurate precision in the hexagonal mesh structure. Instead, the vase took one week to be built by bees. In my opinion, an interesting contrast with the issue discussed here. This ’natural’ process is pure technology in the same way.
(Source: objectthinking.wordpress.com)
