Beanbag to Bread

I had a very positive response to Tokujin Yoshioka’s furniture design work because I think that it embodies some of the aesthetics and ideals that I find important. In an earlier assignment when asked to address the subject of chairs while concentrating on functionality, I chose a beanbag chair. I thought that the bean bag chair represented simplicity and a return to basic necessary form very well, because it literally is nothing but form to support the user. It is just a large piece of fabric filled with some sort of conforming material that can mold to the necessary spatial and size requirements of any individual while still maintaining comfort. And it does it all very sparingly.
After researching into the beanbag chair, and then watching the video on Yoshioka (who was also listed on the page for this assignment), I decided that there was a very definite thread that could be followed connecting the two together. Yoshioka’s design for the PANE (bread) chair involves the use of fibers in ways that they would not typically be used. The chair starts out as basically a block of fibers that have some tensile and supportive strength that form a solid mass. It is then shaped by hand to the specific form and wrapped to maintain it. Next it is “cast” in a tube and heated to bring out a reaction in the fibers, making them more rigid and supportive. The finished form when pulled out of the tube after it has been “baked” is that of a spongy like tangle of fibers that has the ability to support a wait but really has no defined structure. I find this very consistent with the beanbag chair, not so much in form but in method and in the achievement of what is being attempted. In other words, I think that they both accomplish the same goals in different ways. While the beanbag chair has basically no form on its own but only achieves form when someone is sitting on it, the PANE chair always has a form but has no internal structure that is the same. In a microscopic view it is just as loose as the beanbag, and it is only through human involvement that it is made into something more. In this way I think that Yoshioka’s endeavors into furniture design are effective in making the PANE chair the next level for minimalist design through material exploration.

Response to the Mercedes Benz "Boxfish" Concept

Taking aspects of nature and incorporating them into one’s design is nothing new, in fact it is probably the oldest form of design on the planet. If objects in nature such as the Nautilus can arrange themselves accurately into mathematical formulas like the Fibonacci sequence, then it is fairly safe to say that they are doing something right. For this reason, I thought that the topic of the Mercedes Benz concept car that was adapted from the shape of a boxfish was very interesting, because it provided proof of nature as a design mantra.
However, I was a little disappointed when I actually researched the car. In fact, I didn’t get very far past the picture. While yes, indeed the car does show reflections of the boxfish both in color and shape, I think that it is too literal a translation of biological design. A product or design can be representative of an animal or plant without actually looking like someone superimposed the features of that animal onto an automobile frame. This might be a slight exaggeration in this case, but it is still the jist of the problem with the Mercedes.
While, yes, there is an explanation to WHY the biologists and researchers chose the boxfish for their design inspiration, the fact that they actually had to have an explanation for it is the problem. A design should speak for itself and its own aesthetic independently of its inspiration. While it is admirable to choose such a “pedestrian” fish for inspiration, it is still more important to create a piece that places aesthetic as priority over literal representation, and that is what I personally think falls short in this vehicle. There are definitely other examples of design let alone that of automobiles that achieves the mission that the Mercedes Benz designers have outlined.

More Design Does Not Mean More Crap

When addressing the question of whether design influences or is influenced by the user, I believe that most good design is more the first because it should be a greater part service and a lesser part “setting the bar”. It is important in terms of progression for there to be room for the avant garde and the forward-thinkers, because without them all design would be circular and therefore nothing but modification without any innovation. However, this form of design for new expressions of form and discovery must take a second seat to design for a need. For example, it is all well and good for a designer to completely reinvent the way sixty percent of the art world reacts to form through studies in metal and plastic but what is that designer really doing? There was no empty void in the world that was gasping for a vase made completely out of one sheet of styrene, or a light that made it look like it wasn’t plugged in to anything. In many cases like these, the designer accomplished no great repair in the universe after the creation of their designs because there was no tear to begin with and therefore there is no one asking for a problem to be fixed.
This approach to how design affects a user ties in to the question brought up in class recently that asked whether it is wrong for us as industrial designers to introduce more into the world rather than addressing what is already there. There are plenty of things in this world that were designed ten, twenty, a hundred years ago and have not been redesigned since then that have problems and no longer function correctly in relation to how they did in the time in which they were created. It seems that especially now there are broader and broader problems arising that have become more on the tongues of regular people, not just the ultra-discerning or a limited few observers. Now is the perfect time for an industrial designer, not the worst, because it is now that people are starting to realize that things can fail, even if not especially things that by all assurances are not supposed to. There is a lot of mistrust in the world today but also a lot of willingness to become a community. Because of this, design has the ability to sway mass amounts of people extremely quickly; it is human nature to need something or someone to turn to when confused or in doubt and that is what people are now. It is our jobs to make sure that so long as we have people listening that we don’t sway them the wrong way, into mindless consummation, but rather show them what we can do to help.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with being a consumer, as long as a person is conscious and responsible. It is only to say that I tend to think that the real purpose of us as industrial designers is to be the problem solver not the artist. There is room for aesthetic, there is no doubt about that, but if that is all that a design is, then just making a pretty piece of crap and getting it manufactured ten million times is really not going to do a whole lot to aid an elderly woman who is having increasing trouble writing down anything because of severe arthritis and pens she can’t hold, but it will look fantastic on her side table.