Metropolis Marzo 2009

The Magazine of
Architecture and Design
METROPOLIS THE MAGAZINE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

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March 2009
March 2009
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SUSTAINABLE
The 20th-century definition of good design was driven primarily by form. Today the stakes are too high, and the world too complex, for a superficial response.
A
SUSTAINABLE ACCESSIBLE FUNCTIONAL WELL MADE EMOTIONALLY RESONANT ENDURING SOCIALLY BENEFICIAL BEAUTIFUL
Juicy Salif, courtesy Alessi; MoMA Good Design catalog cover, the Museum of Modern Art/ Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY; DC3, Peter Ehrbar/courtesy Wikimedia Commons
ERGONOMIC AFFORDABLE
ARGUMENT
What is good design? Some 54 years after the Museum of Modern Art abandoned its Good Design exhibition program, the question lingers in the air like the smell of last nights dinner. Its bandied about in the media and lurks behind the scenes of every product-design competition, from Germanys Red Dot and Japans G-Mark to the IDSAs International Design Excellence Awards. The question goes further than designers personal need for recognition and reveals a much deeper cultural anxiety about consumerism. But is it a useful question? One problem with good design is its connotation of moral authority. Whose good are we talking about? MoMAs idea of good, like the 1950s British and European equivalents, implied good for all but tended to translate into a Modernist aesthetic rampage against ornament and historicist styles. Victor Papanek, ever reliable scourge of the design establishment, dismissed museum exhibits of well-designed objects as parades of well-worn genres. [T]he objects are usually the same, he wrote in his 1971 book Design for the Real World,
by
Peter Hall
The catalog for MoMAs 1951 Good Design exhibition
a few chairs, some automobiles, cutlery, lamps, ashtrays and maybe a photograph of the ever present DC-3 airplane. Innovation of new objects seems to go more and more toward the development of tawdry junk for the annual Christmas gift market. The link between good and sellable was deep in the veins of the Good Design program. Its founder, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., was the son of the owner of Kaufmanns department store in Pittsburgh, and was unabashed about the importance of eye appeal in the jurors selection of objects for the orange-and-brown Good
In a 1971 book, the critic Victor Papanek referred to the ever present DC-3 airplane as a staple of industrial-design shows.
METROPOLIS March 2009
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WHAT IS GOOD?
FORD MODEL T by Henry Ford teristic of the optimism of the postwar years. It also cemented the importance of the image as the means by which product design is judged, prefacing Guy Debords sardonic prophesy: that which appears is good, that which is good appears. Current concepts of good design have a hard time shaking off this legacy, this Cold War mission to stimulate consumption with images of products and rid the world of ornament, pastiche, and, implicitly, Communism. (After launching the program, Kaufmann put together Design for Use, USA, an international exhibition of exemplary work, sponsored by the State Department, to promote
Design tag. The exhibit was held in January and June at the Merchandise Mart of Chicagos semiannual home-furnishings shows, with a carefully timed pre-Christmas nale at MoMA. Goods were arranged with a department-store taxonomy furniture, tableware, accessories, and so on. If Good Design is remembered today for helping bring to the American publics attention the designs of Arne Jacobsen, Finn Juhl, Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia, and Venini, among others, it also directed a fair share of tawdry junk to the Modern, from shrimp cleaners to pancake ippers.
XO LAPTOP by MIT Media Lab and Yves Bhar
Kaufmann used no grand aesthetic theory: he simply charged his jurors with the task of nding high-quality, widely available, reasonably priced wares that were new to the U.S. market since the previous show. This established, as Terence Riley and Edward Eigen put it in an essay about the program, an equivalence between the good and the new a concept that became a charac-
the American dream overseas.) But without a comparable value system, do we descend into a relativist morass, in which good and bad are simply matters of taste, culturally constructed terms serving different agendas? In the 21st century, surely, we need to move beyond the impasse of cultural relativism, but without resorting to 1950s dogma and agendas hidden under the guise of good. This is easier said than done. Its tempting, for example, to simply replace good with useful. In these uncertain times, with rampant consumerism taking a breather, it might even make sense to revive the framework of MoMAs 1942 show Useful Objects Under $10. No doubt Papaneks ghost would be
Edgar Kaufman Jr. (left) conferring with Alexander Girard, the architect responsible for MoMAs 1953 Good Design exhibition
NERVOUS ROBOTS by Dunne & Raby
Sottsasss bookcase was a provocation to remind us to see form not as an end in itself but as the beginning of an interaction.
Ford Model T, courtesy the collections of the Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company; XO Laptop, courtesy One Laptop per Child; Nervous Robots, courtesy Dunne & Raby; MoMA Good Design photo, the Museum of Modern Art/licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY
In these uncertain times, it might even make sense to revive the framework of MoMAs 1942 show Useful Objects Under $10.
delighted by needs-based criteria supplanting eye appeal. We could imagine MoMA festooned with Make magazinestyle creations, with perhaps a historical exhibit or two on vernacular design. But the problem with usefulness as a standard is that it doesnt allow for useless objects, which are actually quite an important part of design practice. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Rabys nervous robots, for example, are polemical objects that cannot be purchased, let alone used. Some important icons of product-design history are similarly useless: Raymond Loewys streamlined pencil sharpener (which never went into production, or needed to), Philippe Starcks famously dysfunctional Juicy Salif lemon squeezer, or Ettore Sottsasss Carlton bookcase (you could put books on it, but that wasnt the point). One could argue that this useless stuff isnt design. But the above examples were created by designers and belong to an ongoing conversation about design. Sottsasss bookcase was a provocation to remind us to see form not as an end in itself but as the beginning of an interaction. Dunne and Rabys robots sprang from the idea that design can serve as a medium for discussion about the cultural and ethical implications of technology, an alternative to the Hollywood genre of corporate design, which tends to glorify technology. Many objects are designed not to be useful but to make an
argument. And my contention is that every object is an argument of some sort, and its strength or weakness as an argument is a good guide to its value. The theorist Richard Buchanan once identied three rhetorical characteristics of a products design: Its logos, or technological reasoning, is the clarity of its functionthe way in which, say, a spoon is an argument for getting food from the plate to the mouth, or a clamshell shape suggests that the cell phone needs to be opened to be used. Its ethos, or character, is how it reects its maker; a Dieter Ramsdesigned Braun product conveys an unobtrusive, efcient quality. Its pathos, or emotion, is how it persuades its potential users that it is desirable and useful to themits sexiness, if you like. But the most valuable effect of considering an object as an argument is that it allows us to look under the rhetorical hood and consider it not as an inevitable or neutral invention but as something that embodies a point of view. The iPod may seem like an innocuous music-playing device, but in fact it is an argument about how we should navigate, purchase, download, and listen to sound. Its an argument based on premises negotiated among the various stakeholders (Apple, the music industry, acoustic engineers). Similarly,
Carlton bookshelf, Aldo Ballo; Braun T3-T31, courtesy Braun; exhibition photo, the Museum of Modern Art/licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY; iPod, courtesy Apple
Storing books is perhaps beside the point here.
the Ford Model-T was an argument for personal transportation using fossil fuels. Frequently, designers are not given to thinking about the premises on which their arguments are based, but in a world where every decision is connected to a sprawling set of decisions and consequences, they should be. Viewing designs as arguments frees us from the art worlds tendency to evaluate on aesthetic criteria alone. It insists on contextual evaluation: design is not just about how a thing looks or how it works; it is also about the assumptions on which it rests. CARLTON BOOKSHELF by Ettore Sottsass
tion by recent events. The great design thinker Horst Rittel once wrote that a design problem keeps changing while it is treated, because the understanding of what ought to be accomplished, and how it might be accomplished is continually shifting. Learning what the problem is IS the problem. The current issue of Metropolis makes a case for ten criteria for evaluating design arguments today, in the troubled economic, ecological, and political climate of the early 21st century. Arguably, these criteria provide an ethical framework for evaluating design so that the longestablished yardsticksdesign that is functional, beautiful,
My contention: every object is an argument, and its strength or weakness as an argument is a good guide to its value.
BRAUN T3-T31 by Dieter Rams
An installation view of MoMAs Good Design exhibition in 1951.
The new One Laptop per Child XO computer, the MIT Media Labs $100 machine for children in developing countries, lacks the sleek eye appeal of a Macintosh and has been criticized for pioneering a non-Windows user interface based on a theory rather than user testing. But a full appraisal would note that it is an argument for closing the digital divide based on the theory of learning by making, which assumes that children learn by creative experimentation and making social objects. A polished-aluminum case and a user interface rooted in les, folders, and wastebasket metaphors would be irrelevant in rural India. Seeing good design as an argument has one more point in its favor. Good Design was a stamp of approval that bestowed a suggestion of timelessness. As such, it depended on a rather xed notion of problems and solutions, an old-fashioned model that still persists in everyday design language. But in reality, problems are too big and slippery to stamp or x. Who would have known in 1950 that wed be recycling plastic, eliminating chrome plating, and singing the praises of urban density? Im sure there are designers at Boeing and General Motors who have seen the parameters of a project changed beyond recogni-
enduring, well madeare offset by values like affordability, accessibility, ergonomic strength, social benet and necessity, and emotional resonance. No argument could meet all these criteria, but it might satisfy a few. More to the point, a loose framework gets us beyond the problem of labeling design as good or bad, or seeing problems as solvable. There are no solutions to design problems. There are only responses in the form of arguments. www.metropolismag.com #
IPOD
by Jonathan Ive
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GOOD IS SUSTAINABLE
BENDING THE REEDS

Eric Chans bamboo armchair is not only a tribute to his native country, its a primer on the physical properties of one of our most renewable materials.
by
Julie Taraska
Ecco Designs choice of bamboo, a sustainable material, capitalized on the reeds innate flexibility.
Courtesy ECCO Design
When Eric Chan speaks of bamboo, he likens it to his Chinese countrymen: strong, exible, always moving. He talks about how, in Chinese art and literature, it represents purity and honesty. He extols its raried uses and everyday applications. And then Chan, the founder of the industrial-design rm ECCO Design, reaches onto the shelf behind him, picks up a three-foot-long bamboo reed and several processed bamboo samples and drops them on the conference-room table of his New York ofce. Today people treat bamboo like woodthey
People treat bamboo like wood, Chan says. Theres a lot of glue and labor, which is not ecologically sensible.
extrude pieces and glue them together, he says, handing me a block of bamboo strands afxed to one another in a checkerboard pattern. You are using a small portion of the bamboo when you use it that way. Theres a lot of glue and labor, which is not ecologically sensible. He picks up the bamboo reed and bends it in half. Trees are solid. But bamboo, by nature, is exible. It responds to pressure but doesnt break, He lets the reed go, and it bounces back. This is ergonomic, he says. How can I use that natural exibility? Two years ago Chan got the opportunity to nd out. To mark the tenth anniversary of the citys reunication with China, the Hong Kong Design Centre approached ten designers to make a product that celebrated
the countrys heritage and its place in the global design community. Chan, who was born in China and raised in Hong Kong, decided to build a bamboo armchair that exploited the materials physical properties. Partnering with Herman Miller, with which he has had a longstanding relationship, Chan created the ECCO 9707, a chair that uses individually exing bamboo slats in its seat and back to provide comfort and ergonomic support. Combining traditional craft with modern technology, it also relies on a minimum of adhesives and sealants to remain eco-friendly. Herman Miller provided nancial and technical help for the
project, which started in May 2007 and ended that December with the delivery of ten limitededition chairs. But unlike the companys usual product explorations, here commercial concerns took a backseat. We let the goal to innovate be primary, says Timothy McLoughlin, Herman Millers designfacilitation manager. Market
The designer Eric Chan finished the 9707 with several coats of water-based lacquers, giving the chair a reddish hue.
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considerations would only enter the picture if the team worked on iterations beyond those for the exhibit. In that way, McLoughlin notes, it recalled other one-offs Herman Miller has supported, most famously Gilbert Rohdes Modern furniture collection for the Design for Living House, shown in 1933 at Chicagos Century of Progress Fair, and the berglass chair that Charles and Ray Eames, along with Eero Saarinen, produced in 1948 for a Museum of Modern Art furniture competition. Chan began his design process with a series of research trips to Anji County, in the Zhejiang region of China, which is internationally recognized for its bamboo production. Its a beautiful area, whole mountains full of bamboo, Chan says. He also knew of the local governments efforts to promote sustainable harvesting of the material, and to encourage residents to work locally and take an active part in the regions management. Over the course of the project, Chan returned to the area a few times. He visited the bamboo forests, learned about traditional fabrication techniques, and talked to managers and craftsmen at local factories. He visited the regional bamboo museum, which
The strips bend to conform to the weight and shape of the users body (top and middle). The strips at the end (right) allow for horizontal movement.
Bent bamboo reeds prior to chair assembly
In renderings of the Super Seat construction, polymer strips keep the bamboo from sagging.
Below: An early prototype of the 9707. Below right: Chan examines a drawing of the chair.
But bamboos flexibility is also its biggest liability: too much give and the chair would sag like a stretchedout sweater.
Produced in Toronto, the chair uses bamboo from China and Canada.
Courtesy ECCO Design
traces the use of the material from traditional objects to cuttingedge applications, and met with suppliers. All of this research colored his design. Chan, who has more than a dozen chairs to his credit, started with the seats shape. Using his experience and 3-D geometry software, he calculated a generic ergonomic prole, taking into account the average persons weight, height, and leg and arm span to create a curve that would be comfortable for 95 percent of users. But that was a static model. For the next step, he had to factor in bamboos give. His core questions were how much the reed should move, and how to manage that movement. He began with a solid bamboo back and seat. The panels were good but not exible enough, he says. Chan cut the bamboo into slats of different widths and thicknesses, experimenting until he got the tension, shape, and response that he wanted. His aim was to make the reed function like a gentle spring. When you pushed back, it would bow and cradle the body; when you let up, it would bounce back to its original place. So your heavy portions, or the more concave and convex areas of the seat and back, they would respond, he explains. But bamboos exibility is also a liability: too much give and
the chair would sag like a stretched-out sweater. So Chan needed something to control the reeds range of displacement. That came in the form of four horizontal polymer stripsone in the chairs back and three in its seatthat he wrapped around each slat and afxed to the chairs ribbonlike frame, which was inspired by the frames of traditional Ming chairs. Known as Super Seat suspension, the polymer technology had been developed by Chan and Herman Miller for Geigers Foray ofce chair. Used on the 9707, though, it allowed continued on page 128
In looking at what industrial design should be in this time of economic and environmental crisis, it seemed crucial to hear from some of those who are hardest hit by the tumult: American car manufacturers, graduating students (p. 99) and retailers (p. 112).
THE NEW REALITY
MOTOR CITY BLUES

Can the Big Three automakers stave off bankruptcy, kick their addiction to gas guzzlers, and create the next generation of cleaner, greener vehicles?
FISKER KARMA
2009 release $80,000 Luxury plug-in hybrid 50-mile electric range
by
Michael Silverberg
APTERA 2E
Fall 2009 production $20,000$45,000 Three-wheeled electric or hybrid 100-mile range
TESLA ROADSTER
Available $109,000 227-mile all-electric range
G.M. CHEVROLET VOLT

2010 release $40,000 Plug-in hybrid; 40-mile electric range 640 miles with small gas engine
In Detroit the sky is falling literally. As a chastened Big Three offered subdued presentations at this years North American International Auto Show, a massive Pentastar, Chryslers logo, toppled into the crowd from an overhead display. It doesnt take an augur to divine the symbolism there. According to industry analysts, the collapse of one or more of the Detroit manufacturers is a distinct possibility in the next year. As a way out of their troubles, Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors have told Congress theyre retooling for a greener future, rolling out the hybrids and electrics that consumers have clamored forand the industry itself has resisted for years. But can an industry teetering on the edge make good on its promises? The cars that the Big Three have touted are unlikely to pay off in the short term. They might
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in fact put the companies deeper into the red. G.M.s Chevrolet Volt, expected for 2010, has received the most attention of the next-generation hybrids. The battery holds enough charge to drive 40 miles before a fourcylinder gasoline engine kicks in, giving the car a range of perhaps 640 miles. For the urban commuter, it seems to satisfy both environmental and practical concerns, at least until the day when a nationwide plug-in infrastructure makes the gas engine obsolete. But with a $40,000 price tag and an initial run of 10,000, it will likely end up as what the industry terms a halo car, creating good press and positive brand associations but not pulling its nancial weight. Theres a widespread sense that these cars are goodwill gestures aimed at placating a skeptical Congress. Nick Cappa, a Chrysler continued on page 131
Courtesy the manufacturers
GOOD IS ACCESSIBLE
UPDATING A WORKHORSE
CARRIAGE CONTROL
Formerly in front and far away from the text, the control has been moved to a more intuitive spot.
MARGINS
Now set in front, the tabs used to be on the hardto-reach back side of the braillewriter.
READING TRAY
Before, the paper collapsed when touched. The added tray aids in checking ones work.
KNOBS
The big, flat cog is designed to make rolling easier for users with limited hand mobility.
by
Kristi Cameron
FRONT HANDLE
The integrated handle (which doubles as an armrest) is a more balanced way to carry the machine.
Tom Petroff Photography/courtesy Product Development Technologies
COLORS KEYS
They require about half the amount of pressure to operate as those on the classic Brailler. No longer in somber steel tones, the braillewriter is offered in two blues and one shade of red.
NOISE
The enclosed plastic body makes typing quieter and less disruptive.
The Perkins Braillerwhich has served as a literary lifeline to the blind community for almost 60 yearsgets a long overdue redesign.
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Most people understand that the act of reading Braille is a physical one, in which ngertips skim a landscape of raised dots. But what about writing Braille? The most basic tool, the slate and stylus, requires the user to press each dot (up to six per character) by hand into the back side of the page, working in reverseas if in a mirror. No wonder the mechanical alternative, which makes brailling more like typing, has been so widely adopted. The standard machine used around the world is the Perkins Brailler, released in 1951.
MARGINS
Left: The ten-pound machine, designed in 1951, had a small, poorly balanced handle on top. The reach to change margin tabs on the classic Perkins Brailler was so awkward that many young children couldnt do it alone.
PDTs handle, which acts as an armrest during typing, allows for a more natural carrying position.
FINGER STRENGTH
PDT saw small kids using two fingers to press down a single key, so it made keys with a softer touch a top priority.
Aesthetically and functionally, the ten-pound steel device is a bit like the Underwood Champion portable typewriter released the same year. Both are dependably rugged and clack nostalgically when you hit the keys, but, frankly, its hard to imagine anyone lugging around either one in the featherweight age of the MacBook Air. So when David Morgan came on board in 2005 as the general manager of products at Perkins School for the Blind, he was faced with modernizing the Boston-area organizations enduring best seller. What people love about the machine is its indestructibility. The number one complaint, however, is its weight. Think about a little kid carrying ten pounds around all the time, says Judi Cannon, a Brailleservices specialist at Perkins Braille & Talking Book Library. The dilemma is this: because Braille cannot be rendered in
READING
Because students like to check their work, it was common to see them working with wrists bent over paper that collapsed against the back of the braillewriter.
bits and bytes but must remain solidly 3-D, the device cannot be dematerialized. Paper still has to roll through it; the dots still need to come out crisp and clear. Though there are plenty of Braille-writing alternatives note-taker PDAs, screen-reading software, computer embossers the mechanical device still has a role to play. Its really the pencil and paper for people who are blind, says Kim Charlson, the director for Perkins Braille & Talking Book Library. And in places like India, the cost of those other technologies (around $6,000 for the Braille Sense Plus note taker, versus $375 for Perkinss classic braillewriter) puts them out of reach, while the slate and stylus is so laborious
Theres something about the immediacy of the written word through Braille that still attracts folks to the Perkins Brailler, David Morgan says.
The well-liked prototype reading tray (above) made it into the final design (left).
that it impedes the learning process as students begin to compose more complex sentences. There seems to be something about the immediacy of the written word through Braille that still attracts folks to the Perkins Brailler, Morgan says. So we wanted to gure out how to stay true to the original design. There was always a doubt that we could downsize this package and still capture the same physical characteristics.
Product Development Technologies was recruited to bring the machine down to scale and upto-date because, according to Morgan, the Illinois-based rm was one of the few within a day ight that had in-house engineers and experience with medical devices, and could source the international manufacturing. PDT also has a built-in research process that led directly to many of the changes that were made. We watched people in the environments in which they actually use the Braillerin Boston, Indiana, Mexico City, Malawi, and remotely in India and South Africa, says Sona Patadia, who led PDTs design team. Watching quietly allows you to see needs that people sometimes arent able to articulate. Observing students bend their wrists 90 continued on page 119
Center top and bottom photos, courtesy Perkins; others, courtesy Product Development Technologies
GOOD IS FUNCTIONAL
REDEFINING DESIGN
by
Jennifer Kabat
CAPPELLINI LOVE
by Stephen Burks
Love, courtesy Cappellini; bottom photos: left and center, Uta Brandes, Sonja Stich, and Miriam Wender/courtesy Birkhuser; right, Peggy Frster, Cologne/courtesy Birkhuser
These papier-mch stools, part of a collection based on recycled materials, are made by South African artisans using old magazines and nontoxic adhesive.
Once they have left the factory floor and are actually being put to use, products get deployed in myriad unintended ways. Its a lesson the industry should take to heart.
DESIGN BY USE
As Uta Brandes, the author of the new book Design by Use (Birkhuser), points out, people invariably use products in ways their designers never foresaw.
A radiator doubles as a storage shelf.
A boiler becomes a magnetic board.
Egg coddlers hold spices.

How many ways can you use a plastic bag? What about a paper clip, a Post-it note, or a park bench? This isnt a quiz; its about messing with design, about reinventing objects and endowing them with new uses. We all do ityou, your kids, your parents, your sister in the burbs. Weve all slid a matchbook under a table to stabilize it and turned a sheet of paper into a dustpan, and in that sense everyone is a designer. Design doesnt simply happen at the moment of creation, when an object is given certain attributes to solve a specic set of problems. It happens in the myriad ways a plastic grocery bag is reused, reconceptualized, reborn.
thored with Sonja Stich and Miriam Wender, both designers), explores how average people redene products. The book is a sort of reader-response theory to design. Just as Roland Barthes posited that readers (rather than authors) create meaning in a text, here its the users intentions that matter. Brandes throws down a gauntlet, writing, Each object must be investigated from two opposing perspectives: from the perspective of design and from
the perspective of use. In other words, people arent thinking about the concepts that lead to products; theyre simply looking for things that fulll specic needs. Once designers begin to take that indepen dent agenda into account, she argues, then we can expect a qualitative and open design approach as a result. Brandes also pleads for simple things, since they are the easiest to transform into ad hoc solutions. The more complex a
ROUGH-AND-READY
by Tord Boontje
Design doesnt simply happen at the moment of creation, when an object is given certain attributes to solve a specific set of problems.
Made of inexpensive or recycled materials, this collection was designed to be simple enough for anyone to build. Ten years later, the plans are still being distributed for free.
Rough-and-Ready, courtesy Studio Tord Boontje; Composite Lounge, courtesy Stephen Burks of Ready Made Projects; bottom photos: far left and center left, Daniel Zander, Cologne/courtesy Birkhuser; center right and far right, Uta Brandes, Sonja Stich, and Miriam Wender/courtesy Birkhuser
That spirit of reinvention now seems particularly apt. The sobering landscape of the new economyor, rather, being thrown back to old economic realities (circa 1933), where things, either credit or shiny new products, cant be had so easilygives new impetus to nding ways to recycle. Those values are also a welcome relief from the climate of the recent design boom, when furniture fairs rivaled fashion extravaganzas, and designers and architects became stars. (Zaha Hadids celebration of Chanel handbags in Central Park, anyone?) During the boom, products were outsize, expensivebaroque, even. In the developed world, however, we hardly need another new sofa, chair, or pretty much anything else. As in the 30s, simplicity is once again best, and necessity the mother of many peoples design interventions. Uta Brandes, a German academic, is the design sociologist for this moment. Her new book, Design by Use: The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things (coau-
COMPOSITE LOUNGE
by Stephen Burks
For an installation this January at IMM Cologne, Burks treated donated designs like trash in an effort to get manufacturers to consider the life cycle of products.
A glass stores cutlery.

Jam jars are repurposed for spices.

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An ironing board is also a coatrack.
A pitcher holds brushes.
How many times have you used a chair as a bookcase, a lamp stand, or a bedside table?
HOME-MADE
Subtitled Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts, this 2006 book features products that people altered to suit their needs during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Forks are repurposed as a TV antenna, and an old ball serves as a plunger.
design, the more needs its supposed to t, but the harder it is to rejigger to meet your own. Knives may be made for eating, but Brandes reminds us that they serve as quite good letter openers. And in that vein, how many times have you used a chair as a bookcase, a lamp stand, or a bedside table? (The chair in my bedroom is not at all as Ebert Wels intended it when he designed it in 1928; instead, its bedecked in sweaters and ski pants.) Improvisations are hardly limited to such small and almost inconsequential interventions. They range in scale from the Internet (a military application from the Cold War) to the makeshift solutions common in the developing world. In the 2006 book Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts, a punctured ball and a stool leg become a toilet plunger, and spare forks are turned into a TV antenna. The latters creator, Vasilii Arkhipov, recounts in the book, My mother had the forks in her cupboard. She bought them when everything was collapsing around us. There wasnt anything but forks to buy in the shops then. They werent even very good forks, in the practical sense. But they went well with that aerial. Such transformations are
nothing new. The artist Kurt Schwitters used trash to build his Constructivist Merzbau house around himself; and in Marcel Duchamps hands, voil, the urinal became a fountain. During the recession of the early 1970s, skateboarders discovered that empty swimming pools were highly conducive to riding. In the early 90s they reimagined park benches and rails as an urban theme park. Now, with the recession, California skaters are back to draining and cleaning pools behind foreclosed homes. Punks transformed the safety pin into an emblem, an anticapitalist symbol, rejecting middle-class values and new clothes by sticking them (often, many worn together) through jeans, leather jackets, and even their own cheeks. This design misuse, postuse, post-design, nonintentional design, or whatever you decide to call it, can create evocative, meaningful objects more meaningful, in fact, because of the users participation in the process. The British sculptor Richard Wentworth once said, I nd cigarette packets folded up under table legs more monumental than a Henry Moore. Five reasons. Firstly, the scale. Secondly, the ngertip manipulation. Thirdly, modesty of both
A chair serves as a clothes hanger.
A table helps to cut paper.
Memos are posted on a clothesline.
Cups double as pencil holders.

Home-Made images, courtesy FUEL Publishing; bottom photos: far left and center right, Uta Brandes, Sonja Stich, and Miriam Wender/courtesy Birkhuser; center left and far right, Daniel Zander, Cologne/courtesy Birkhuser
gesture and material. Fourth, its absurdity and fth, the fact that it works. Ten years ago, just when design was set on its collision course with fame and money, Claire Catterall curated the exhibition Stealing Beauty at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in London. The show objected to the dictates of good design and the imperatives of taste and style. The participants took the muck and matter of the everyday world and repurposed it. Catteralls catalog essay seems particularly tting a decade on. If design caters only to those who can afford it, who subscribe to a certain ideal and approach to life, what is left for those who cannot aspire to such lofty heights or simply dont want to? In this light, she wrote about the show, the work can be seen to have a political and social resonance if only because it responds so directly to the circumstances of its need, conception, production, and, ultimately its consumption and use. Stealing Beauty featured Tord Boontjes Rough-and-Ready furniture: a chair, table, shelves, and lights made from salvaged wood, old blankets, and plastic sheeting. The collection follows Brandess ideasnot only nding a new use in old things but also in being nished by the user. He gave away the plans so anyone could make the pieces. A fan of Wentworth, Boontje offered an antiaesthetic that democratized design and production. Although it started as a stylistic comment about what design was at the time, underlying is the concern of using what you have as an anticonsumerist approach, he explains now. Often, people automatically buy things when they need something versus making it themselves, and today when many more people are aware of the pitfalls of con-
sumerism, the option to make their own things and become self-reliant again seems tting. With Rough-and-Ready, if it breaks, because you made it, you know how to x it, and you start to understand it in a different way. The collection still has legs: the chair is currently being shown at the Museum Shop, in Amsterdams Museum
Square, where 30,000 copies of the plans are being given away. This January at IMM Cologne, Stephen Burks, another designer interested in post-use, created the Composite Lounge with trash containers and streetlights, as well as Moroso-donated furniture. The bar was made from bottle crates, while a Dumpster found new continued on page 127
REPEAT
by Hella Jongerius
The designers first textiles collection for Maharam, released in 2002, has such large patterns (Repeat Classic shown here) that everything upholstered with it comes out looking slightly different.
Repeat, courtesy Maharam; NikeID, courtesy Nike; bottom photos: far left, Zajonc + Partner GmbH, Breisach am Rhein/courtesy Birkhuser; others, Uta Brandes, Sonja Stich and Miriam Wender/courtesy Birkhuser
NIKEiD
The footwear companys iD line allows buyers to customize their shoes onlinecolors, materials, finishes, and even fit.
An old PC tower is used as a mailbox.

A plinth becomes a bench.

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Steps turn into benches.
A window ledge is used for sitting.
GOOD IS WELL MADE
IN PRAISE OF THE SUPERNORMAL

MONOPOD VITRA 2008
by
Paul Makovsky
Portrait, courtesy Established & Sons; Monopod chair, courtesy Vitra; Air Armchair, courtesy Magis
When it comes to promoting new products, the idea of a designer wearing a synthetic pink suit, feigning boredom, or throwing a temper tantrum for the media suddenly seems so last yearespecially for Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa, who have spent their careers designing well-made products without resorting to stylistic gimmicks or personality quirks. Their low-key, let-the-objectspeak-for-itself approach (with
maybe a little promotion here and there) has worked exceptionally well for them. For the past three years, theyve had the design world abuzz with their refreshing exhibition celebrating normality in design and the beauty of simple, well-made everyday objects. Morrison came up with the idea for the exhibition a few years ago when talking to a Muji employee about Fukasawas Magis stool. He remarked that both the stool and the cutlery he had done for Alessi seemed like examples of a new way to design. They looked like unassuming objects but shared a quality that went beyond the visual, utilizing sturdy materials, simple forms, exacting details. Morrison called it supernormal. Its a philosophy that seems all the more relevant in a stalled economy. Recently I spoke to Morrison, who works for Alessi, Flos, Muji, and Established & Sons, about the exhibition, his new work for Vitra, and the state of design today.
In a recent exhibition, Jasper Morrison coined a term for a collection of humble, well-made objects. His own work exhibits the same simplicity of purpose.
AIR-ARMCHAIR MAGIS 2005
How do you define supernormal? The key point is that its designed so that the visual characteristic is not the most important one, or it may even be suppressed. Its about unsensational-looking objects that perform in a sensational way. In fact, it may take time for you to notice how well they work.
SUPER NORMAL EXHIBITION 2006
The key point is that its designed so that the visual characteristic is not the most important, or it may even be suppressed. In fact, it may take time for you to notice how well it works.
CRATE SERIES WARDROBE ESTABLISHED & SONS 2008
CRATE SERIES BOOKSHELF ESTABLISHED & SONS 2008
Aside from function and durability, what makes an object supernormal? If you take all the stuff out of a room, all thats left is an architectural atmosphere. As you start to bring things into it, the atmosphere that develops in this space is very different, whether it was an antiques dealers store or a dental practice. The atmosphere is made out of the objects as well as the architecture. Architecture is like the background, and the objects have their effect. So the atmospheric effect of any object is a tangible thing. Thats the most interesting thing about design: knowing what to put into an object to make a good atmosphere. Supernormal objects all have that ability to make good atmosphere. One example: about ten years ago, I bought a chopping board, and after about five years, I started to appreciate it, and then I started to understand how great it was. Sounds a bit over the top, doesnt it? That board was cut at a slight angle, which allowed me to remember not only which side is whichin case you want to cut onions on the top and meat on the bottombut when you wash it, you can set it against a wall to dry, and the edge doesnt sit in a pool of water. Little things like that, which are almost imperceptible when you first become acquainted with an object.
Youre subconsciously aware of those things, but not on an everyday level. And that makes good atmosphere for everyday life. So much design these days is about going for a magazine cover and making a big show. In reality, if we take these objects home and try to live with them, they just mess up your atmosphere and, more than likely, dont work because so much attention has gone into how they look. Did you have some specific objects in mind that you wanted to include? We looked across a range, from furniture and kitchenware even to outdoor stuff. We looked at many catalogs and companies. I liked those Fiskars scissors with the orange handles and had to find out where to buy them. It was quite a lot of effort to bring it all together, but theres plenty of stuff missing.
CRATE SERIES LOW CHAIR ESTABLISHED & SONS 2008

Crate series, courtesy Established & Sons; Super Normal exhibition photo, courtesy Vitra
So the atmospheric effect of any object is a tangible thing. Supernormal objects all have that ability to make good atmosphere.
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PLATE BOWL CUP ALESSI 2008 GLASS FAMILY ALESSI 2008
In the case of cutlery, you had so much to choose from. Which one did you decide to include? I picked my one. (Laughs). Theres another one by Sottsass that is very good. We included a very basic range of six or so spoons that are all supernormal in a slightly different sense.
KNIFE FORK SPOON ALESSI 2004
If youre a designer, think about why youre doing it. And if youre, as we all are, a consumer, then think about what you are buying, and dont be duped by looks alone.
What did you want visitors to come away with from the Super Normal exhibition? Its a reminder to think about why and what design is for. If you are a designer, think about why youre doing it. And if youre, as we all are, a consumer, then think about what you are buying, and dont be duped by looks alone.
The Basel chair for Vitra is another interesting example in the progression of your work. Can you explain the thinking behind it and what it does? Its all about atmosphere. I realized that designing a good-looking chair may be not enough. If you put forty of them in a restaurant, do they make for a good atmosphere where people will be relaxed enough about their surroundings to enjoy their lunch? Usually not, because the effort to make them look good has prevented the designer from considering their effect on the atmosphere, and the result is an overload of unnecessary, four-legged attention seekers! Having realized that, I started to think about the kind of chairs that avoid that problem, and that's how I came to the project of the Basel chair. Its actually a sort of apology because theres a sushi restaurant in my neighborhood in Paris that has forty Air chairs, which I designed, on the pavement in pink. Thats a great example of the visual pollution of design. The Basel chair is trying to correct that. Am I going to try to buy all those pink chairs back? I should, but as the whole interior of the restaurant is also pink, I dont think it would work. The chairs are all right, but the color just isnt for Paris.
You talk about how design is breaking down into two schools, one driven by marketing and the other by the designer. How would you characterize the designers point of view? I would characterize it as the truer point of view, where the interests of the user and the environment are put before the spin of selling things with cutesy stories!
BASEL CHAIR VITRA 2008
Flatware, glasses, and tableware, courtesy Alessi; Basel chair, courtesy Vitra
Your Crate series is beautiful and stirred up some controversy in the design world. Explain the thinking behind these pieces. When I moved into my apartment in Paris, I used an old wine crate the builders left behind as a bedside table. I stood it on end, stacking books below, and used the top side as a table. It worked so well that I became very attached to it, and when Established asked me for a project, I had the idea to get them to remake it. When it was shown in Milan, people were outraged, accusing me of a cynical approach to design, which surprised me. It was the same year that one of my colleagues (who shall remain nameless) had the idea to present a chair that could wear clothes! After that, I decided to prove how uncynical I was by expanding the range to satisfy as many functions in the home as I could. Im not sure its finished yet.
CRATE SERIES STORAGE UNITS ESTABLISHED & SONS 2007
THE CRATE ESTABLISHED & SONS 2006
The media is to blame for presenting design as a visual game in which considerations for the everyday reality of an object are set aside in the interest of selling the magazine and getting everyone all hotted.
Is the media to blame for promoting bad design? The media is to blame for presenting design as a kind of visual game in which considerations for the everyday reality of an object are set aside in the interest of selling the magazine and getting everyone all hotted up about how glamorous it is. Its understandable that they would do this, but unfortunately it has a distorting effect on our perception of design. We have started to think of design as we do fashion, as something temporary that keeps us up-to-date and in the know. But like the Christmas advertising aimed at preventing people
from buying pets that they later abandon, a sofa is for life (almost). The other point is that despite all the creative juice that goes into making these showstoppers, the results dont make for good atmosphere. They make for something fake and trivial and uncomfortable, the kind of atmosphere where you ask yourself if your trouser legs are cut thin enough! An atmosphere for people who choose to hide from life behind a veneer of style. Thats enough moaning from me. I don't mean that design shouldnt look good or that there isnt a lot of good design around, but you get the point.
Stool and pipe chair, courtesy Magis; crate series, courtesy Established & Sons
Naoto Fukasawas 2006 Dj-vu stool by Magis inspired the Super Normal show. PIPE CHAIR MAGIS 2008
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GOOD IS EMOTIONALLY RESONANT
Creating an evocative user experience involves tapping into our most powerful method of recall and recognition.
by
Donald Norman
DAD, I GOT A 93 ON MY HISTORY TEST!!!
SELECTIVE MEMORIES
Life is lled with unpleasant experiences. Not only do we survive them, but in hindsight we tend to minimize the bad and amplify the good. Psychologists call it rosy remembrance. Recently, I gave a lecture on this subject and afterward received an e-mail: Your discussion . . . made me remember my trip to Thailand a few years ago. . . . I traveled for three weeks and lost 10 pounds because I didnt like any food. There were insects on steroids everywhere I turned and the restrooms were no joy. ... However, I had the time of my life and I would go back in a second. The message came attached with photos of awful, insectlike food, a mammoth spider, and an unseemly squat toilet. Scary meals, scarier bugs why on earth would anyone go back for more? Clearly, the positive aspects of my correspondents trip (her memories) far outweighed the typical Third World inconveniences. This fundamental behavior, which can be powerfully merciful when it comes to ordeals like childbirth and marathons, has important implications for how we interact with designed objects. Why, for instance, are peoples most prized possessions often tries, even kitscha chipped teacup, a torn and faded photograph, a wire Eiffel Tower? Our attachment to those objects is entirely shaped by memory. Because past experiences are no longer recoverable except through recollection, we value objects by the emotions they provide rather than their intrinsic worth. Its why the memories surrounding them often transcend everything else about them. For most of the 20th century, product design was largely about the physical appearance of objects that solved well-dened problems. Museum curators treated products as exercises in stylingArt with a capital A. But today, as our technology becomes more complex, as computers are embedded into so many of our gadgets and gizmos, the dominant way we interact with products is through experience. If the last century was
BRING PASTA, BREAD, OR BOOZE
arakonyunus/iStockphoto
say, or a yen for sweets). Visceral design is about appearances. Expert skills operate at the behavioral level. These are so well learned, so automatic (language, for example), that theyre performed with little or no conscious effort. The reective level is where our consciousness resides, where we ponder the past and contemplate the future. Despite the sensual pull of the visceral, and our utter dependence on the behavioral, the reective level ultimately dominates our perception. Why? Life is a series of temporary, eeting experiences. The rest is, literally, memory.
CONGRATS, GRAMPS, YOURE NOW OFFICIALLY ... OLD!!
Look at what we do on our cell phones. . . . It is the messy, tedious, glorious stuff of life, facilitated by a cool or clunky contraption in our pocket.
about rationality and reason (or attempted to be), lets hope this one ushers in a deeper appreciation of human behavior. Ideally, logic and reason would remain important, but cognition (how we understand things) and emotion (how we value them) should play equally important roles. In my book Emotional Design, I argue that the interplay between cognition and emotion occurs on three levels: the visceral, the behavioral, and the reective. The lowest level, the visceral, is unconsciously triggered by the environment and driven by involuntary, biologically determined reactions (a fear of heights, So if memory rules perception, where does that leave the 21stcentury product designer? The obvious answergo out and create objects capable of evoking vivid memoriescomes loaded with an inherent problem: memories exist in the mind of the user. The object, however well conceived, is merely a tool. It may be beautifully resolved, function perfectly, come in trendy colors, possess an elegant interface, and even make the user feel better about himself, but the object itself is ultimately a go-between: we love our objects (when we love them) for the human experiences they provide. Why are some people emotionally attached to their cell phones even though they tend to replace them every year? The cell phone is a tool for connection, just as the automobile is a means of transportation. Everything else about these objects (and think of all that goes into differentiating one car from another, when the basic function is exactly the same) is dened by the rituals, cues, and memories built into them. Look at what we do on our cell phones. We fall in and out of love. We irt with the cute boy two rows behind us (via text message). We watch YouTube videos. We contest credit-card
IM SORRY, ILL STOP, THIS IS DEFINITELY THE LAST ONE
charges (with operators in India!). We haggle with clients. We remind aging parents to take their blood-pressure medication (in loud, head-turning voices). It is the messy, tedious, glorious stuff of life, facilitated by a cool or clunky contraption lodged in our pockets or buried in our purses. The iPod was a revolutionary object: smart, prescient, beautiful, emotionally engaging. It transformed our listening habits and inspired a raft of copycat devices. But what is an iPods ultimate function? Its certainly not to upend the recording industry as we know it, or to render aging radio DJs obsolete (although it is doing both, ruthlessly). The iPod is a tool for bringing a roomful of music one of the strongest sensory cues known to maninto the palm of your hand: touch a button and youre reliving the quaint and awkward horrors of your high school prom. But creating a product with emotional resonance does not require Jonathan Ive and his band of merry pranksters, or a team of German automotive engineers. It is not about technology or elaborate styling. Our love of objects is not even about the objects themselves. It is always about us. We grow to love the objects that connect us to other people, create meaning, and remind us that were alive.
CAN WE DO THIS FACE TO FACE?
91
GOOD IS ENDURING
The legendary Italian designera man of fiery polemics and rigorously pure formshas produced a remarkable body of work, built surely for the ages.
MARI ON MARI
by
Martin C. Pedersen
Enzo Mari is a man of many erce, incendiary proclamations. His favorite, of course, is Design is dead. He enjoys saying it as least once every interview. One of the last of the old Italian masters, Mari has always been an intellectual provocateur, prone to long rambling ruminations on art and design that vacillate between genuine brilliance and philosophical hot air (perhaps its the translation). His career began in the late 1950s, a generation behind Achille Castiglioni and Ettore Sottsass, and its remarkable for its output, variety, and inuence. The 76-year-old seems to have designed everything but buildings (unlike Castiglioni and Sottsass, he was not trained as an architect). A recent retrospective, Enzo MariThe Art of Design, held at the Galleria Civica dArte Moderna e Comtemporanea, in Turin, Italy, merely hinted at the breadth of his work. We decided to pair quotes from the elegant exhibition catalog (from interviews by Francesca Giacomelli) with samples of his seminal work, coupling the purity of his insights with the rigor of his lines. Today Maris no-frills aesthetic is not only a tonic for proclamation. His is an enduruncertain times but a stunning ing legacy. Design is dead, rebuke of his most famous long live Enzo Mari!
ON NECESSITY I am convinced that the low cost constitutes a safe perimeter for the quality of the design, if for no other reason because it forces the designer to eliminate any foolish ideas he might get: the solution of the form cannot be anything but necessary.
ON PROCESS
This search for what is essential is still today my first thought when designing a product.
Courtesy Enzo Mari Studio
TIMOR DANESE 1966
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ON ENDURING
In order for a product to be continually renewed, it must be continually provided with different masks. These, as such, can only encrust a product with the overlapping of a thousand signs taken from the catalogue of universal formalism.
ON FORMALISM The market for design survives on formalism. A few words on formalism. There are two kinds: that which is acknowledged and declared, and that which derives from total ignorance.
FRATE DRIADE 1973
Maris career began in the late 1950s, a generation behind Achille Castiglioni and Ettore Sottsass, and its remarkable for its output, variety, and influence.
ON EXHIBITION DESIGN
When a group of objects has within it a formal quality that is the reason for their display, this must not be the justification for displays that tritely repeat the poetics of the object, or for pseudo-poetical contradiction, where what is displayed is the display itself and not the object to be displayed.
SELF-DESIGN PROPOSAL 1973
ON RETROSPECTIVES
I am aware of the fact that I am like an affectionate mother with many children who might feel more love for the weakest of them. I preferred to entrust the selection of the works to a group of about twenty friends who love design, that I invited to express themselves each time solely on the basis of that which had moved them.
TRINIDAD DANESE 1969
ROCKING CHAIR GEBRDER THONET VIENNA 2001
ON FORM
Form is everything. It is form that leads me to investigate, and understand, ideological and political drives.
16 ANIMALS DANESE 1957
ON SOLVING YOUR OWN TECHNICAL PROBLEMS If the purpose is the quality of the form, it can be no other way. Otherwise, it is just formalism.
ON DESIGN PRODUCTS The design product is substantially artisanal even if such products imply the use of costly industrial equipment. But while, as in the case of the coffee cup, these costs do not influence the final cost because of the number of cups produced, in the case of the design product the quantity of products that can be sold is unpredictable, minimal or at times zero. It is for this reason that they need to look in the direction of an elitist market.
Maris favorite expression is Design is dead. He enjoys saying it at least once every interview. But his no-frills aesthetic is actually a stunning rebuke of that famous proclamation.
ON TOY DESIGN
The shapes of toys must be based on archetypal images, and these images must be realized with the highest possible quality and not in the style of childrens drawings.
ON QUALITY
The quality of form emerges regardless of the trite reasons that lie behind technique and the market, that nowadays are always influenced by the rapid transformation of ties between production, methods and what is in style.
ON COLLABORATION Each time I have spoken to master artisans I have done so in an attempt to design a coherence with their knowledge and at times intervening to improve it. I do the same thing with workers, but with the artisan, even if he does understand, its different. He might own a small shop in which to work independently, if he does not, his boss might himself be an artisan. Therefore, the premises that will allow me to transmit my knowledge of form exist. But, nearly always, because we are talking about an artistic craftsman, his references are strongly influenced by the silly things picked up in art institutes, and this involves the difficult task of getting rid of them.
ARRAN DANESE 1960
Courtesy Enzo Mari Studio
ON DESIGN EDUCATION
During the first month, my professor of painting, followed by one who taught sculpture, and then the one who taught decoration, all suggested that I chose a different course of study: I asked too many questions and was never happy with the answers I got. So I ended up taking a stage design course, and fell in love with perspective and stagecraft. On my own, I wrote a paper that I called 27 ways to plant nails.
ON PROCESS (PART II) Like every other intellectual activity in history, [a project] can only come about by negation. I negate all that which seems to be but is not. I could continue to do so endlessly, but a project must have an outcome. ON PLAY When a child is growing up, [play] is the activity needed to discover ones potential and to learn about the world. For this reason, objects used to play with are soon abandoned by children, who go on to other things, once an experience has ended.
SOF SOF DRIADE 1971
ON SHAPING ATOLLO
A sheet of PVC is placed in a wooden mold; hot compressed air then pushes it up against the mold so that it takes on the same shape. But the sheet has to be perforated beforehand. A rubber sheet is placed between the PVC and the mold (this is the inventive part), allowing the compressed air to produce the shape.
JAVA DANESE 1968 AT0LLO DANESE 1965
ON EMOTION
When the quality of form emerges, it goes straight to your heart. It has no need for justification.
95
GOOD IS SOCIALLY BENEFICIAL
PRODUCTS FOR A NEW AGE

IV MONITOR
Design that Matters
Standard IV monitors require trained personnel. The Medicine Mondiale Acuset flow controller (bottom) is simple enough to be used by family members and friends.
by
Ken Shulman
Field hospital photo, Doctors without Borders/courtesy Design that Matters; others, courtesy Design that Matters
It may not be entirely fair to call industrial design a slacker at social responsibility. But its certainly true that the discipline has struggled to gure out how to do good while still doing well. Architecture has had an easier time with green design, stroking its social conscience with solar panels and geothermal pumps while stoking the bottom line with lucrative commissions. And whether funded by governments, NGOs, or private donors, the worlds poorest communities still need hospitals and bridges and homes. Its harder to make the same case for iPods. Its not that industrial designers havent wanted to take a break from building a better MP3 player, but until recently neither they nor their employers could see how they might save the world without going broke. Altruism is a good reason to do something once, but not to repeat it, says Timothy Prestero,
After years of lagging behind architecture, industrial design begins tackling some of the worlds most vexing problems.
founder of Design that Matters, a nonprot social-enterprise design company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The organization teams student volunteers, professional consultants, and aid agencies to tackle some of the worlds thorniest design and distribution problems. The companys current collaborations include a lowcost, low-energy microlm projector to promote literacy in West Africa and an intuitive intravenous-drip ow controller to allow nonmedical personnel to assist ailing family members. Theres a reason design isnt beating a path to the doors of nonprots and aid agencies,
BABY INCUBATOR
Design that Matters
The low-cost baby incubator, developed by Design that Matters, rests on wheels and is designed to navigate uneven floors in hospitals and clinics. Developing-world clinics are gadget graveyards, Timothy Prestero says. You often find a brand-new machine sitting idle for lack of a fifty-cent part.
Until recently neither industrial designers nor their employers could see how they might save the world without going broke.
LITERACY PROJECTOR
Design that Matters
In collaboration with USAID, Design that Matters created a microfilm projector and portable library. It was given to 45 villages in Mali. To date, the device has helped more than 3,000 adults learn to read.
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DESIGN FOR SOCIAL IMPACT: HOW-TO GUIDE

by IDEO
Produced with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, IDEOs toolkit provides lofty inspiration and brass-tacks guidelines for firms eager to partner with aid agencies and other nonprofits. We focused on IDEO as market leaders, as a company that does things differently than most, the Rockefeller Foundations Maria Blair says. The illustrations below are from the Educate Others chapter of IDEOs Design for Social Impact: How-to Guide.
IDEOs toolkit provides lofty inspiration and brass-tacks guidelines for firms eager to partner with aid agencies and other nonprofits.
D.SCHOOL .IN/.ZA DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Provide value. Be focused. Set up for success. Five Design Challenges
Support or build the capacity of a design program in Africa and India by developing curriculum or providing professors.
EMPATHY FIELD TRIPS

Executives or other interested parties pay to participate in cultural observations to gain firsthand experience in the developing world.
MODES OF ENGAGEMENT
Summary of offerings Modify the way you work. Educate others. Develop networks. Identify funding streams. Modify your structure.
DESIGN CERTIFICATION
Train and designate individuals to be official social-impact designers. Certified designers can be hired by participating companies.
INTERN HOSTING
Host fellows or interns from emerging countries and markets, and train them in your design process.
Prestero says. They dont tend to have a lot of money. Of late, there has been a modest stirring in the eld. Design students at top schools clamor to work on projects in which they can express creativity and concern. A few seasoned design rms contribute their employees inactive but billable white time toward the greater global good. Consultancies now partner with NGOs and aid agencies to redraft their eld-service and delivery strategies. Even major foundations have been swept up in the urry, sponsoring workshops and research that explore the role design can play in ghting poverty, disease, and social injustice. Theres a real hunger to work on these projects, says Sami Nerenberg, a 2007 Rhode Island School of Design industrialdesign graduate who now teaches the Design for Social Entrepreneurship studio at her alma mater. Her students designed,
among other projects, a backpack to be manufactured by the homeless, and reorganized volunteer services at a local inner-city school. Two years ago I was part of a minority at RISD interested in these issues. Today students are looking at our economy, looking at where consumerism has led us. They want to shift away from producing excess and do something that makes them feel useful. Organizing the homeless in Providence or teaching adults to read in Timbuktu may seem like unlikely roles for a trade long associated with releasing products into oversaturated markets. But the early innovators of socially responsible design believe they can make a vital contribution. In development work, you tend to get jaded, which limits your thinking, says Graham Macmillan, senior director at VisionSpring. The New Yorkbased NGO partnered continued on page 122
PUBLISHING
Publish books, articles, blogs, and other tools on design for social impact. Publications help novices re-create the design process independently.
PROCESS WORKSHOP
Spread the word: conduct a two-hour to one-day session teaching the process of design for social impact at conferences, NGOs, and think tanks.
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Courtesy IDEO
I will be graduating in May and hope to continue my work at a start-up, Bettr@ (www.bettr.at), that is focused on helping people get better at whatever it is that they are passionate about. While it may seem impetuous to be working on a start-up during such turbulent economic times, I contend that new businesses are the value-creation engines that we really need now. Corporate playbooks are being rewritten. Decades of allegiance to orthodoxy are being shattered, and organizations need new choices more than ever.
While I look forward to developing a career that celebrates design and its power to inform change for the better, Ill be gladin the short term at leastsimply to pay the bills and afford a trip to the dentist.
When I decided to change careers and return to school three years ago, $80,000 in loans seemed reasonable. Now I think Suze Orman would slap me right across my face and ask me what I was thinking. Because all consumer-product companies are now feeling the pressure to become more green, Im hoping that may create opportunities for younger designers whove been trained to approach projects that way from the outset.
ASH BHOOPATHY
AGE 27 / MASTERS / DESIGN / INSTITUTE OF DESIGN, ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
CAROLYN SCHAEBERLE
AGE 26 / MASTERS / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / PRATT INSTITUTE
I recently presented my graduate thesis about improved water management in the developing world. It is not just a problem for the world of microfinance, humanitarian workers, public-health workers, engineers, and policy makers; it is a massive design challenge. Looking forward to my professional life, I hope to continue working in this area of design. It seems that aid agencies and other similarly minded organizations have only just begun to realize the tremendous resource that designers can be when creating solutions for the developing world.
In the past, a lot of the economy has been built on speculation and manipulation; constant inflation meant that eventually things had to collapse. We will have to start building with realistic ideas, purposeful designs, and different materials to help make change. Everyone needs to be more responsible. This means designers will have to be more critical and question their motives and the impact of a design.
ANDREW PEERLESS
AGE 30 / MASTERS / DESIGN IN DESIGNED OBJECTS / SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
JOE KOURY
AGE 37 / SENIOR / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
THE NEW REALITY
GRADUATING CLASS
Given the dismal state of the economy, we decided to ask students completing ten top industrial-design programs (both bachelors and masters) about their career plans. Theres certainly no lack of problems to tackleenvironmental, social, or otherwisebut there will likely be fewer jobs to fill, at least for now. Heres what some young creative minds have to say about their prospects.
LUKAS PEET
I plan on going abroad to scope out workhopefully in Germanyin the quickly growing new field of media architecture, which is a sort of hybrid of interactive media art with objects and spaces. Its really a matter of how you look at it. This field might not make the most sense in the current economic climate, but I feel it will be a huge part of the design market in future years.
AGE 21 / SENIOR / DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN
One of the key things I have learned throughout my degree work is that design is fundamentally a way of thinking. It doesnt actually matter what the industry or the problem is. So despite an economic downturn, I think that the areas in which I can work have increased rather than reduced.
Reporting by Kristi Cameron, Caroline Cole, Tscharner Hunter, and Suzanne LaBarre; headshots courtesy the students
I am hoping to use my industrial-design skills in need-based design, the type of problem solving that betters life by providing basic needs (water, food, and shelter) and improves society. Want-based design usually makes our lives more beautiful or easy, but doesnt really make the world better. Currently, the majority of people on the planet dont have all their basic needs provided for, and I believe we as designers can help change that situation. While this type of work isnt really a true part of the industry as of yet, it has certainly received a lot of attention in the last few years.
While it may be scary to enter the workforce in a time that some of my teachers have referred to as one of the worst possible years to graduate, I have confidence that we designers can offer creative solutions to the problems that were facing today. The only way out of any crisis is to change our focus, our habits, and our routines, and designers have the skills to help the world achieve this.
SHINICHIRO FUJITA
AGE 21 / SENIOR / ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN / ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN
The recession points to some new constraintsdoing more with less, finding greener solutions, creating new cultural stories for a better future society. These constraints are not a burden. They make my work better and more relevant. We design for our time. Is there any alternative?
MOLLY ROSENBERG KRISTINA DRURY

AGE 27 / MASTERS / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / PRATT INSTITUTE AGE 21 / SENIOR / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN
GRACE LEE
AGE 25 / MASTERS / 3-D DESIGN / CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART
SHERAZ ARIF
AGE 31 / MASTERS / INNOVATION DESIGN ENGINEERING / ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART
SHOHAM ARAD
AGE 31 / MASTERS / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN
As the economy changes, we all have to be prepared to be entrepreneurs. My thesis is about energy consumption. I am taking the current iteration of backyard-tech biodiesel generators and designing an object that is welcome in ones home. I am designing for the paradigm shift that I believe is starting to take place, a shift in the way we think about and acquire our energy. Its a shift that I believe has not been possible until this moment.
I find this a very interesting and exciting time to be a designer. Id like to think that the condition of the environment and the economy is forcing people to question whats really necessary, to ask, Do we need another cell phone, another iPod dock, another SUV? These sorts of questions provide opportunities for designers to create things with more purpose than some of the redundant, wasteful products that are already out there. My hope is that people can stop bickering about what might happen later and we can start focusing on what can be done now.
SAM STAAR
AGE 21 / SENIOR / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
JENNIFER RIGGI
AGE 24 / SENIOR / PRODUCT DESIGN / PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL FOR DESIGN
With the inauguration of President Obama, Im full of unprecedented hope. Not because he speaks about green jobs or the possibilities of renewable energies, but because he addresses the difference between long-term and short-term solutions in this economic crisis. It seems like all I hear about from my peers is How will I ever find a job? or How will I ever be able to make something that will sell if people are not buying products? Call me an optimist, but Id like to tell them that if they see only a bleak tomorrow, then they arent being the creative designers they went to school to become. The ability of designers, specifically industrial designers, is to identify short-term and long-term value in products. We are taught to understand every single impact our decisions can have in the world. I cant wait to graduate and make a difference.
T WEB EXTRA For more student responses, go to Metropolismag.com.

99
GOOD IS BEAUTIFUL
CABBAGE BOWLS
The Japanese artist Yasuhiro Suzuki created these nesting paper bowlsmolded from real cabbage leavesfor Kenya Haras 2004 Haptic exhibition.
The mastermind behind Mujis global brand explains the stripped-down beauty of Japanese design.
EMPTY PROMISE
by
ART DIRECTION
Haras covers for the magazine A Book (left) show his preference for pristine white layouts. (His new book Designing Design includes an entire chapter on the color white.) Above: A calendar Hara designed in 1999 with Yukie Inoue.
Mason Currey
Late last year, the Japanese housewares brand Muji opened its fourth New York store on West 19th Street, a few blocks from my ofce. Now I can visit Muji on my lunch breakwhich I do, frequently, even though its stock rarely changes, and Ive already bought about as many translucent plastic bins, recycled-paper notebooks, and portable toiletry containers as one person can justify. Still, I always come up with some excuse to drop by againan ink rell for my favorite pen, say, or another inspection of those smart leather key wallets that, at $26.50, seem just a touch too extravagant for these recessionary times. In short, I am one of those aspiring minimalists and unabashed Japanophiles who fetishize Muji (which roughly translates to no brand) and its promise of an elegant, uncluttered lifeeven though,
Lately, like an addict trying to get to the root of his dependence, Ive wondered how to explain Mujis unique and powerful appeal.
HAPTIC LOGO
For his exhibition on designing the senses, Hara created a logo using animal hairs on silicone.
paradoxically, achieving this life seems to require buying more things. At least Im not alone. Based on the design communitys widespread reverence for Muji, an uninitiate might think it is some sort of cult and not, in fact, a company that began in 1980 as the house brand of a large supermarket chain and rst saw success with affordably priced packages of irregular foods. (One of its early hits was Broken Dried Shiitake Mushrooms.) Lately, like an addict trying to get to the root of his dependence, Ive wondered how to explain Mujis unique and pow-
erful appeal. Its not merely that the products emphasize function. (In fact, as Ive discovered from buying ofce supplies designed for A4-size paper, theyre sometimes an awkward t for American lifestyles.) Affordability isnt the answer, either; by the time Muji products get to the United States, theyre often much pricier than comparable items from other retailers. No, the Muji magic works mainly for aesthetic reasons. Admittedly, their products are not what you might traditionally call beautifultheyre unadorned, anonymous, simple sometimes to the point of
Bottom left and opposite, amana; center, Takashi Sekiguchi; all images courtesy Lars Mller Publishers
101
blandness. But their strippeddown rigor is lovely in a quintessentially Japanese way. To better understand this core qualitywhat makes Japanese design so, well, JapaneseI consulted Kenya Hara, a Tokyobased communications designer and the mastermind of Mujis global brand identity. Hara does not design Muji products or even oversee its product-design division. But since he joined the companys advisory board in 2001 and took over its art direction, he has done more than anyone else to shape the companys image and philosophy. He is also an active promoter of design through books and exhibitions; his latest book, Designing Design (Lars Mller Publishers, 2007), is packed with photos of the unusual and provocative products that have resulted from his public explorations of designs ability to transform our everyday dealings with the material world. (Were showing several examples from the book on these pages.) From Hara, I learned that my rst mistake in thinking about Japanese design is falling back, lazily, on the notion of simplicity. As he wrote to me in an e-mail: Simplicity is a concept that emerged in the West around 150 to 200 years ago. It was discovered after the arrival of modern society made complex patterns and decorations no longer necessary to symbolize great authority. Something is simple when form and usage are closest to each other. By contrast, Japanese visual culture esteems emptiness, a subtly but crucially different trait. As Hara describes in his book, the concept of emptiness has its roots in the late 15th century, when Murata Shuko an adviser to Shogun Yoshimasa Ashikagadeveloped the tea ceremony as a conscious attempt to reject the inuence of Chinese culture and to highlight uniquely Japanese values. Shuko turned away from splendor and embraced an aesthetic of austere beauty and elegant rusticity called wabi. In physical terms, this translated to unadorned utensils and small, ceremonial tearooms with a few, uniform elements.
MUJI ADVERTISING
In Mujis advertising campaigns, Hara has tried to present an empty vessel to the audience, with spare photos and minimal text. Several of the ads, like a 2004 poster shot in Cameroon (left), dont even include Muji products.
From Hara, I learned that my first mistake in thinking about Japanese design is falling back, lazily, on the notion of simplicity. Japanese visual culture esteems emptiness.
The point is that what seems merely simple to the untrained eye is actually carefully orchestrated and rigorously controlled. The tea ceremony is stripped of unessential trappings to allow people to invest it with their own meaning. The same principle applies, Hara says, to product design: The result is design that at rst appears to be simple and unspecial, but is in fact the reection of a sophisticated approach and sophisticated thought processes. With Muji, the result should be products that unobtrusively occupy peoples daily lives and provide reliable doses of small pleasure. CLINIC SIGNAGE
In 2002 Hara and the graphic designer Yuji Koiso created a signage system for the Katta Civic Polyclinic using large red type inlaid in white linoleum.
Bottom, Nippon Design Center; all images courtesy Lars Mller Publishers
As Hara writes in Designing Design, Muji products are supposed to inspire acceptance, not appetite.
Ironically, people like me, who covet Muji goods and take pride in knowing their semisecret design pedigreethe companys anonymous designers have included Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, Naoto Fukasawa, Shigeru Ban, and Enzo Mariare, in a sense, missing the point. As Hara writes in Designing Design, Muji products are supposed to inspire acceptance, not appetite. The appropriate response to the brand is This will do, not This is what I want. Its something that Westerners, and Americans in particular, arent typically very good at. But I like to think that my covetous attitude toward Muji is somehow appropriate. Understanding Japanese product design and visual cultureat least, from a Westerners eyes requires embracing contradictions. Muji presents a bundle of them: its no brand goods have become a potent brand of their own; its products aspire to anonymity yet are created by some of the worlds foremost industrial designers. More broadly, Japan values material goods as a means of fostering spiritual reection; it devours foreign culture yet has developed an aesthetic consciously opposed to outside inuence. Even simplicity is complicated. As Kenya Hara writes at the beginning of Designing Design, The whole world looks different if you just put your chin in your hand and think.
FLOATING WATCHES
For the Swatch Groups branch office in Tokyo, Hara conceived of these hovering watch faces projected from the ceiling.
Center left, Takashi Sekiguchi/courtesy Lars Mller Publishers; bottom left, courtesy Nippon Design Studio; center right, amana/courtesy Lars Mller Publishers
WATER PACHINKO
One of Haras few product designs is this mimimalist variation on the pachinko machine (a Japanese version of pinball), which uses water droplets on a sheet of heavy paper that has been sprayed with a hydrophobic coating.
PERFUME BOTTLE
Hara recently designed the packaging for Kenzo Power, a mens fragrance. His mirrored-metal bottle was originally intended for sake.
103
GOOD IS ERGONOMIC
The Iraq war has produced thousands of wounded veterans, propelling research into the ultimate ergonomic challenge: the perfect prosthetic.
by
Suzanne LaBarre
A CALL TO ARMS
Courtesy Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics
Retired Army Sergeant Juan Arredondo (bottom right) was among the first amputees to test this new $50,000 bionic hand.
Military amputees now find themselves on the front lines of prosthetics research, with each new development promising more than mere mobility.
I lost one limb in Iraq, says Garth Stewart, a 26-yearold Army veteran, reclining on the futon of his dorm room at Columbia University, a glint of metal peeking from his trouser leg. And in return Ive gotten at least twenty. A blast outside Baghdad in 2003 made pulp of his left foot, forcing doctors to sever his leg seven inches below the knee. Stewart, like many military amputees, now nds himself on the front lines of prosthetics research, with each new development promising more than mere mobility. He has had a leg for running, a leg for swimming, a leg for grappling. Hes had gray legs, esh-colored legs, legs with balls, computer-programmed legs, plastic legs, carbon-ber legs, and titanium legs too. He has had a leg for just about
every occasion. (Indeed, Stewart has been photographed drinking beer out of at least one of them.) Today, the ex-gunner marches around campus, where hes a senior studying history, in a simple mechanical contraption that mimics the J-shaped curve of a human foot and feels, as he describes it, completely natural. I really capitalized on my investment, he deadpans. Three decades ago, Stewart would have had little more than a wooden foot. Either that, or he wouldve been dead. But renements in medicine and armor have guarded against the direst consequences of war, allowing Stewart and nearly 900 other soldiers to emerge from combat alive if not physically
105
HANGER
The prosthetics-services provider Hanger fitted Arredondo with an i-LIMB hand, which has individually powered fingers that permit a wider range of movement than standard prostheses. To drive, Arredondo flexes his forearm, stimulating electrodes that close the hand around the steering wheel.
Top photos, courtesy Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics
whole. According to a 2004 Senate report, amputees make up 6 percent of the Iraq wars wounded, compared with 3 percent in previous wars. This represents just a sliver of total sales for the nations $900 million prosthetics industry, whose primary customers have diabetes, AARP cards, or both. Even so, the war has trained the klieg lights on wartime amputees, bolstering R & D funding and, in turn, innovation. About $50 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has gone toward developing intelligent upper limbs. Soon, amputees will be able to sense and manipulate objects as they would with a real hand. They will wield mind-controlled Luke Arms (so named for Luke Skywalker). They will traipse about on electronically powered feet that make the wearer feel as if hes oating on air. If you plot prosthetic innovation against time, youll typically see a spike after every major war, says Hugh Herr, a biomechanics expert at the MIT Media Lab and an amputee himself. He is researching the aforementioned bionic foot with $7.2 million from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Its a science that needs a war to advance even the tiniest increments, and for that reason, ever since the birth of the articial limb, its aesthetic has largely been shaped by the experience of combatfor better and for worse.
It sounds like a coat being feverishly zipped up and down. Zipzip, zipzip, zipzip. In a corner of Room 213 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in a gym behind the dismal concrete face of the nations largest military hospital, Sergeant Kevin Brown lumbers over to a weight machine. Zipzip, zipzip, zipzip. He wears a prosthesis on his right leg, a bulky plastic thing that looks like something out of Transformers, and when he walks or climbs stairs or even sits, the limb cries out: Zip! The Power
When Brown walks or climbs stairs or even sits, the limb cries out: Zip! The Power Knee is hailed as the worlds first powered bionic knee.
WALTER REED
Walter Reed photographs by
Nina Berman
for Metropolis
Prosthetist John Warren molds a limb socket in the hospitals artificial-limb lab (right). The lab (below) also produces lifelike hand coverings.
BIOQUEST
Since losing his left leg in Iraq, Garth Stewart, an Army veteran, has worn some 20 prostheses, including the BioQuest foot (right). The limb normalizes Stewarts gait by mirroring the shapes of a human ankle. Such devices allow Stewart to remain active. At far right, he practices jujitsu with a friend.
Knee is hailed as the worlds rst powered bionic knee. It propels the user forward, compensating for the extra energy above-the-knee amputees expend walking (58 percent more than able-bodied people). Released in 2006 by ssur, an industry giant based in Reykjavik, it joins a host of intelligent articial legs that take their design cues from Silicon Valley. Microprocessors, Bluetooth, ultrasensitive sensors: manufacturing body parts has fast become a digital affair. I coach Little League football, says Brown, an Iraq veteran who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident Stateside but who nonetheless remains active. And this helps me off terrain, walking up and down hills. Which isnt to say the limb is foolproof. Brown lowers continued on page 124
POWER KNEE
ssurs Power Knee electronically propels Sergeant Kevin Brown up stairs (below), but because the limb is heavy, he wears a lighter microprocessor-controlled leg (left) for daily use.
Top left, courtesy BioQuest; top center, courtesy Garth Stewart; top right, Sarah Palmer; bottom far right, courtesy ssur
107
GOOD IS AFFORDABLE
Sam Hechts intriguing Under a Fiver collection highlights the ingenuity and folly of some of the worlds most inexpensive objects.
BANAL GENIUS
by
PLASTIC
Paul Makovsky
108
Angela Moore/courtesy Industrial Facility; illustrations, Criswell Lappin
Its one thing to make a wellmade, functional object that looks good. Its a bigger challenge to have it manufactured in the millions and cost close to nothing. Since the mid-1990s, the industrial designer Sam Hecht has traveled the globe searching out local hardware stores, supermarkets, and pharmacies to amass a curious collection of low-cost, massproduced objects costing less than ve pounds (about seven dollars). Its part of his Under a Fiver collection. Its not about luxury or conspicuous consumption, so the room to maneuver is very small, he says of his nds, which now number around 200. Youre dealing with often extremely primordial, basic activities. On a local level, I started to notice different ways of doing these everyday activities, like brushing teeth or washing vegetables. The items generally serve a specic purpose; few involve a designer; and not all of them work particularly well. They
TWO-HEADED NAIL
This is possibly the first object I ever found for the collection. Construction workers use it when they put up temporary scaffolds or jigs. They hammer one of these nails in, and a second head is always protruding, so when they want to take it out, its supereasy. Very, very clever.
BABY TOOTHBRUSH
An odd thing, really. Its made in France. Its for adults to use to clean their babys teeth. Its not colorful in a childs way and doesnt feel like it has been overtaken by clich childrens toy imagery or anything like that. Its almost a medical object.
WATERING CAN
I found this watering can/ sprayer combo in Malaysia. A lot of manufacturers present something that feels incredibly optimistic when you see it, but then it doesnt work. Here the spray from the nozzle is far too distant to actually hit the plants, because the spout is in the way. When something comes along that has a certain oddity to it, people do get excited and buy it. I did.
WASH BASIN
This is used in Orthodox Jewish households for the washing of hands before each meal. You use the right hand to pour water onto the left. Then you move the jug over and reverse the process. Theoretically, you shouldnt be sharing the dirty handle. This was a cheap, rather ugly, and unfortunate plastic mold in the most garish colors, like yellow, purple, and pink, with absolutely no religious iconography or impression whatsoever. Its fascinating that this object could be reduced to such a level and perform such a sacred task.
GAS LIGHTER
The whole product is literally a switch. Its very cute and well resolved for such a cheap object. I think it was about a pound or something.
make a promise, generally a functional one, he says, pointing to a two-in-one potato peeler and grater that at rst glance seems like a good idea. You can peel potatoes, but the surface of the handle is a grater as well. But you cant hold it because its incredibly uncomfortable, cutting your hand. Theres a feeling of extending the products quality on the manufacturers terms and failing miserably. Hechts curiosity about the things people arent necessarily paying much attention to has helped him and his rm, Industrial Facility, cofounded with Kim Colin, design products that work for companies such as Herman Miller, Muji, and Established & Sons. We asked Hecht to talk about a few Under a Fiver products, both good and bad, a selection of which Rizzoli is publishing this year in a forthcoming book.
Its not about luxury or conspicuous consumption, so the room to maneuver is very small, Hecht says. Youre dealing with often extremely primordial, basic activities. On a local level, I started to notice different ways of doing these everyday activities.
TOILET FLOAT
I was in a grubby hardware store in the United States, and Id never seen anything of such beautyit was like some sort of Faberg egg. Beautifully made, yet it goes into a place where it is never seen. I was surprised to see it still being made and not being replaced by generic plastic toilet floats.
PVC BOLLARD
There is a certain brilliance to an object that is not only beautiful but wonderfully conceived about how its used: if a car drives over it, it pops back up. The bollard is simultaneously graceful, ingenious, and banal. Clearly, the factory and the manufacturer put a lot of care and thought into it.
PAINTBRUSH PLATE AND SPOON

I picked this up from a catering company in the U.S. It has a piece taken off of it to extend its functionality. The designer used an existing plate and just adapted it. It adds fuel to the beauty of the object, because you are seeing something that is very regular and normal, but theres something odd about it, which represents its new kind of use. This elegantly made French spoon allows you to stir a mixture if youre cooking, and the bottom is cut off so you can scrape the bottom of a bowl. The brush snaps out of a cardboard pack of ten. It reveals this attitude toward disposability in America, where you can just do a paint or lacquer job super conveniently and feel good knowing you threw away a good brush. Its rare to find that in Scandinavia or other countries where craft, or a certain amount of care for the brush that youre buying, is more important.
PAPER URINAL
I was in the hospital in the U.K. and saw this as a lovely object that mimicked the form of the metal urinal. Its hygienically sterilized and you dont have to wash it. You throw it away.
FIRE IGNITOR
This fire starter is made of shards of waste wood that are wrapped with a gray piece of paper with a wick in the middle, which is then dipped in kerosene or petrol and dried and sold. It is literally a bomb. You light it and throw it in a fire to start it up. It is very Swiss, very elegant.
The designer used an existing plate and just adapted it, Hecht says. It adds fuel to the beauty of the object, because you're seeing something odd about it, which represents its new kind of use.
WINE BOTTLE SPONGE

Its a very nice way of recycling bottles. You twist the sponge in your hand quite tightly until it compacts, then you stick it down through the neck of the bottle, and it reexpands and youre able to clean the bottle. You twist it and pull it out.
NAIL VARNISH
Its quite clever for women who paint their nails. It has two notches on the end of the bottle where your second finger slips into it, so youre supporting the bottle with your fingers rather than holding it.
TRAVEL IRON
About ten years ago, there was a fad in Japan where they were making a lot of products that contained or produced heat. Punching in the pack mixed two chemicals, creating enough heat to be able to iron a shirt, and then you threw the pack away. It had this toxic material inside, and yet they made the whole thing out of cardboard and an aluminum shell. I dont know how much better it was than just buying a hot can of coffee and ironing with that.
110
Angela Moore/courtesy Industrial Facility; illustration, Criswell Lappin
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The Magazine of

Architecture and Design

METROPOLIS THE MAGAZINE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

METROPOLIS March 2009

XO LAPTOP by MIT Media Lab and Yves Bhar

NERVOUS ROBOTS by Dunne & Raby

METROPOLIS March 2009

Storing books is perhaps beside the point here.

BRAUN T3-T31 by Dieter Rams

An installation view of MoMAs Good Design exhibition in 1951.

METROPOLIS March 2009

BENDING THE REEDS

METROPOLIS March 2009

Courtesy ECCO Design

METROPOLIS March 2009

Bent bamboo reeds prior to chair assembly

METROPOLIS March 2009

Courtesy ECCO Design

THE NEW REALITY

MOTOR CITY BLUES

G.M. CHEVROLET VOLT

Courtesy the manufacturers

METROPOLIS March 2009

METROPOLIS March 2009

METROPOLIS March 2009

A radiator doubles as a storage shelf.

A boiler becomes a magnetic board.

Egg coddlers hold spices.

A glass stores cutlery.

Jam jars are repurposed for spices.

An ironing board is also a coatrack.

A pitcher holds brushes.

A chair serves as a clothes hanger.

A table helps to cut paper.

Memos are posted on a clothesline.

Cups double as pencil holders.

An old PC tower is used as a mailbox.

A plinth becomes a bench.

Steps turn into benches.

A window ledge is used for sitting.

GOOD IS WELL MADE

IN PRAISE OF THE SUPERNORMAL

METROPOLIS March 2009

AIR-ARMCHAIR MAGIS 2005

SUPER NORMAL EXHIBITION 2006

CRATE SERIES WARDROBE ESTABLISHED & SONS 2008

CRATE SERIES BOOKSHELF ESTABLISHED & SONS 2008

CRATE SERIES LOW CHAIR ESTABLISHED & SONS 2008

METROPOLIS March 2009

PLATE BOWL CUP ALESSI 2008 GLASS FAMILY ALESSI 2008

BASEL CHAIR VITRA 2008

METROPOLIS March 2009

CRATE SERIES STORAGE UNITS ESTABLISHED & SONS 2007

THE CRATE ESTABLISHED & SONS 2006

METROPOLIS March 2009

GOOD IS EMOTIONALLY RESONANT

DAD, I GOT A 93 ON MY HISTORY TEST!!!

BRING PASTA, BREAD, OR BOOZE

METROPOLIS March 2009

CONGRATS, GRAMPS, YOURE NOW OFFICIALLY ... OLD!!

IM SORRY, ILL STOP, THIS IS DEFINITELY THE LAST ONE

CAN WE DO THIS FACE TO FACE?

TIMOR DANESE 1966