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Redesigning Beauty

Published: 05-Sep-2009

Adapting existing products to give them a new lease of scores eco points but the aesthetics still need a little refinement.

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Might seem a bit early to start talking about 100% Design but it’ll be taking next month, after all. All power to the organisers who have, in these ‘interesting times’ , hired the admirable Jamie Anley, Astrid Zala and Phil Nutley of Jam Design as creative directors – a trio never short of ideas, to put it mildly.

This isn’t really about 100% Design, however, it’s about an assortment of new, or at least apparently new, consciousnesses in design, my current favourite subject. I mention the Jam trio because one of their ideas for next month’s show is to rope the selection committee (who, up until now, have been simply that) into a more creative project – each member chooses a single object that somehow comments on the meaning and character of the show. I go back to the yellow bucket with a light inside it (#3) from Michael Marriott in 1995. I also intend to dredge up a copy of FX from that time – the first issue in which the show was previewed – to explore the connection between ‘critical’ (in the positive sense of enquiry) and ‘creative’.

Marriott’s yellow bucket may make an appearance down the page but the choice that really got me going was from that of the redoubtable Barbara Chandler, a senior member of the critical community. She chose the Tetris chair from WEmake, otherwise known as Sarah and Jason Maker, who are part of the KithKin designer collective.

The Tetris (#1), seen from one angle, is not a new idea. We’re in a version of the DIY world here, narrowly missing the ghastly and often disastrous concoctions of amateur enthusiasts, much beloved of TV shows such as Honey I Ruined the House.

But seen another way, the Tetris and ideas like it are radical, not to say revolutionary. They have implications for design, manufacturing, consuming, the new eco-nomy (sic) and the general cultural overhaul that the twin imperatives of financial meltdown and environmental crisis are precipitating.

So what is it? It’s a chair made from waste cardboard – you need big bits, such as a washing machine carton – that you make yourself using plans that you download from KithKin’s website. Intellectual property is handled by the GNU General Public Licence, much like freeware.

There’s a great deal of worthy stuff to be had here, ranging from useful, neat and clever ideas to those that are frankly bonkers. Pretty much of all it, significantly, is trading in intellectual property – as enshrined in drawings, plans and blueprints – not the products themselves (except some music and graphics).

‘SomeRightsReserved,’ says this section of the KithKin site, ‘is a marketplace selling digital blueprints to a range of different products and objects. We connect designer straight to consumer, empowering all parties… The restrictions of commerce are lifted, empowering and questioning the role of designers and consumers alike.’

WEmake’s philosophy is much the same. ‘WEmake is a design business that specializes in laying bare and sharing the creative process,’ it says. ‘WEmake products are designed to express how they were produced. Each piece highlights its production method and encourages users to think about making things themselves.’Tricky one for ‘conventional’ designers, – whose livelihood is built on ideas – to absorb. A culture change is required.

The full implications of this design philosophy are expressed, only partly flippantly, in the explanation of Adrian Bowyer’s RepRap (#4), a self-replicating 3D printer (still in development), which can also be found on the KithKin site.

‘RepRap has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment.’ The plans are free, the materials are cheap and, if you want to get into selling home-made 3D printers, it is notionally a piece of cake to bypass the entire capitalist system.

I say ‘notionally’ because we are talking about a tiny corner of commercial activity here and it is questionable how much the self-make option will take hold among consumers. There’s a definite case for re-education, not only in the context of what people want and buy but in terms of what they are called – ‘consumers’ doesn’t seem to fit, somehow. ‘Resumers’ perhaps. As an aside, it’s no great leap from here to the home crafts, make-it- yourself tradition (a close cousin of DIY).

A recent example of this is The Independent’s ‘Bling up your Billy bookcase’ online feature, which asked reputed designers such as Black + Blum and the aforementioned Jam to add style, glamour and function to one of Ikea’s cheapest storage items. Shades of adding felt flowers to readymade curtains.

The adaptation of a product to turn it into something else became known as ‘found design’ once it entered the the design world. Its provenance goes all the way back to Duchamp and his urinal and, if we go much further down that route, we’ll stumble across art, God forbid. That is why, with the greatest love and respect to Michael Marriott, I want to include his yellow bucket in the 100% Design debate because I didn’t much like it at the time. ‘It’s an upside down bucket with a lamp in it,’ said I. ‘What’s design about that?’

Turns out that what I always suspected – that Marriott is far cleverer than me – is true. Now such work scores eco-points for reducing or eliminating waste and the aesthetic argument is half won. To be really ecoproper, the buckets would have to be exceeded their useful lifespan as buckets but the point is nonetheless made. Design’s values are changing.

Aha, the aesthetics. There’s the rub. The Tetris chair, not to put too fine a point on it, is grotesquely ugly. Unless all your house was made of cardboard and had served in its previous life as a washing machine carton, I can’t imagine many people choosing this product for its looks. Or even its comfort, come to that, though I confess I have never sat on one.

Either we encourage this generation of designers – who most certainly have the right idea, who are thinking about the Future Big Picture both environmentally and commercially – to work out how to make their work more beautiful or we redesign our own idea of beauty. I think the answer lies somewhere in between the two.

One bright spot on this horizon (I’m sure there are many more) is the work of Jorre van Ast, another of those collaborative designers, who works on his own and with Okay Studio. His Jar Tops (#2) Royal College of Art graduation project – a set of moulded plastic screw-on tops for empty glass jars that turn them into sugar sprinklers, milk jugs, oil and vinegar dispensers – is now being made by Dutch tableware manufacturer Royal VKB. They press all the right eco buttons – and they are good looking as well. Hope springs eternal.

Aidan Walker is a consultant editor, writer and seminar programme producer in the design industry.

This article was first published in FX Magazine.