Why? How?

When red wine was poured into a glass container and placed in front of a lit torch, the staff members of the Shakespearian Theatre could not have imagined a simpler way of controlling the stage light - furthermore, a simpler way of saving wine. The wine is symbolic of money in the modern day and age. As the amount of money people were willing to pour into their products kept decreasing, industrialization was brought onto scene. As a consequence of industrialization, redundant to say, were the multiple cloned versions of an original. Soon, the term ‘hand-made’ became a synonym to ‘expensive’ while the development of machinery blurred the line between what was authentic and what was not. Despite the many claims arguing otherwise industrialization, in addition to our natural curiosity, had and still continue to push the envelope in the way we think and create.

It is a common knowledge nowadays that the price of a newly introduced Apple product will be lowered to a good amount within months. The time gap between the newly introduced products becoming so common as to have their price tags be reconsidered is a shorter but parallel example to the evolution of chair designs from the mid 19th century till now; the 21st century. As industrial revolution led to the industrialization of almost every product, products started lacking personality and the pride of the owners had started diminishing. Such consequence had lead to the Arts and Crafts movement, and to the creation of Morris & Co. Despite the company’s claims of having their products be all hand-made, the price competition against mass-produced products had later led the company to utilize machineries as support in the creation of their designs and not vice versa. With the acceptance of industrialization into our lives, designer chairs such as the Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer had started reshaping the standards of mass-produced goods. The Wassily Chair was significant in its contribution to advancing the manufacturing techniques. The use of steel tubing on this chair was revolutionary at the time, which challenged a German steel manufacturing company in manufacturing the chair. The company had perfected in creating the seamless steel tubing for the chair. The challenge had widened the boundaries and made possible and affordable the numerous generations of chair designs that utilized this technique.

Besides the design’s ability to challenge the modern technology, the drive to do so is another element that makes such advancement possible. As tourists stand in awe in front of the intricately carved marble columns of the St. Marks’ Basilica, they are most likely to document the historical architecture with their palm sized digital cameras. The idea of eternity is what has been desired and thrived for because it satisfies the innate human characteristic to want mental and emotional stability – hence the photo albums and history classes. Such desire has brought upon inventions such as the digital camera, but more in tune with the essence of such a need is the invention of the mummy. The first mummy is said to have been done by the Chinchorro Tribe, dating back to 5050 BC. The tribe had mummified all of its members when they had passed away. Their complex mummification ritual involved the deconstruction and reconstruction of the body with less decomposable materials. The ritual included putting on a wig to the dead body. Such ritual is believed to have been developed out of grief, as a means to physically keep the deceased close in physical resemblance, thereby keeping their spirits close. Parallel in ideals to such mummies are the modern day technology of Cryonics. Cryonics is a way of preserving humans and/or animals for the future technology. Preservation is accomplished through freezing of the body. Scientists believe that, although the bodies that are put into the Cryonics tubes are legally defined as dead, their personalities and memories are mostly kept in the cellular structures and chemicals of their brains. By safely freezing this component of the body, when future technology allows, it is believed that once the bodies are melted back into life, they will be the same person that were frozen to death in the past. Although some descendent generations of the deceased will not be able to meet their frozen loved ones till their bodies are defrosted, the idea that the lives of their loved ones are put on hold, not dead, are what gives them hope and what strengthen their desire to further push technology.

The pure element to design - our need of definite answers - is what I try to incorporate in my design ideas. Just as our interests and needs in comfort of having our loved ones close by had enhanced our technology of preserving the deceased, I believe that anything can be possible with the great interest of the mass because money tends to flow towards the interest of the public. This does not mean that I wish to work at an electronics firm designing smaller and prettier phones every month. My design goal is to take the Wassily Chair as an example. Functionalism states that products should be “well adapted to their purpose; bare of ornament; standardized; machine-made, and reasonably priced; and expressive of their structure and materials.” The Wassily Chair definitely meets all the requirements of a functionalist’s standards except for the “reasonable price”. Although the Wassily Chair maybe not affordable, but it definitely had advanced the technology which then allowed many other new designs affordable to the public. The Wassily Chair, in a way, is a design proposal. It shows up on scene and in accordance to the general public’s reaction, the technology that surrounds the creation of the chair becomes more and more advance, thereby making it easier and more affordable to mass produce the design. There are many things in our lives that can use this power. How is it that cell phones that were the size of a brick had become a touch screen pad the size of our palms within the past decade when medical support in third world nations or simply a cure for many illnesses has still not been found? I hope to design ideas that can both generate the interest and therefore generate a flow of funding and new generations of ideas and products to bring the technology in important fields up to date.