1.Material culture and craftsmanship
Craftsmanship preserves material culture and its practice can also be considered a form of meditation.
Culture is not only about words written in books. Our predecessors speak to us and pass down knowledge also through their material works. An eighteenth-century ecclesiastical furnishing bench tells us much about the world that created it. One can read the mindset of its designer in its form, the available technology in its wooden boards, the experience in the choice of construction solutions used by those who assembled it.
In craftsmanship, the relationship with nature becomes direct and experience teaches its essential rules.
The craftsman today has the ability to use traditional honest materials, or disguised ones.
Honest materials are those that appear according to their own nature, while disguised ones are those that, through transformation processes, appear with a nature different from their own. A walnut board would therefore be considered an honest material, while a laminate panel with a fake wood finish would be considered disguised.
Making this clarification is fundamental when design is oriented toward the pursuit of quality and honesty, as quality never needs to be hidden, mediocrity always does.
The relationship between quality and truth is inseparable. Visual lies remain deceptions; instead, one must understand that there are no noble materials, only materials suited to design requirements. A pot with a gold handle placed on the fire would burn our hand when we tried to grab it, while one with a humble wooden handle would fulfill its purpose.
Throughout history there have been many attempts to unite social criticism and design theory. The Arts and Crafts of W. Morris, the social objectives at the dawn of the modernist movement, Moral Design as a means to improve society through the inhabited environment within the scope of Scandinavian design.
Today, however, in addition to these social and moral objectives, we must also consider other aspects related to ecology and product consumption patterns.
2.Ecology, consumption and quality
The pursuit of environmental balance is a necessity that must compel us to review the foundations of the system, improving it through the search for truth.
Eliminating the moral sins contained in designs and in compulsive consumption behaviors. The greed that causes much damage and yields little gain, embodied for example in the practice of planned obsolescence of products. The lie of the chase, the fashion of the updated model, which leads to replacing functioning products with others. The disrespectful use of objects that leads to unnecessary and excessive consumption.
A new, more conscious morality needs to be proposed.
Every product should come with scheduled maintenance instructions to maintain maximum efficiency and its repairability should be designed in. Practicing conservation through restoration.
Past evidence tells us of a world where products were often made to last and be repaired. It is not uncommon to find antique furniture two or three hundred years old, made of wood, the fruit of all the technical wisdom accumulated over centuries. The efforts to produce without specialized machinery and automation were immense and therefore aimed at creating quality.
Quality lasts over time.
Commitment improves the human spirit, work ennobles the person.
3.Designing the product
Archè primeval. Tecton fabricator.
The Architect is therefore the first of the fabricators, who based on the physics or nature of material things and on his morality or metaphysics defines the order of things.
The relationship between industrial and artisanal, between digital and analog. These elements may seem antithetical but they are merely the tools that the architect-craftsman uses for definition.
Architecture is order. Functionality is one of the fundamental aspects of the form of objects.
The form of objects, the spatial configurations that objects can have, are limited. Aristotle's theory of solids illustrates in a schematic model what they can be. A form can serve multiple functions.
Nature is immutable, therefore it is the human mind that defines the design. Objects that serve the same function change over time, become specialized, are perfected. Personal conception and historical period influence the results. During the Renaissance, the unity of arts and fields of knowledge created sudden progress and many ideas that remained on paper were prophetic.
For the architect, the study tools always remain: sketch, drawing, model, and realization which serves as verification.
Symbol and color are references to spiritual aspects and syntheses of ideal concepts, in direct relationship with decoration. This can be accidental or superimposed.
Accidental when the form of an object coincides voluntarily or not with a symbolic form.
Superimposed when any decoration is applied over the form. Even coloring an object is therefore a form of superimposed decoration.
The surface textures themselves of both honest and disguised materials are to be considered a decorative form and expressive tool.
The effect of time and use on objects creates the character of lived experience and must absolutely be considered and designed for.
The representation of the design and the illustration of the product are extremely important commercial factors and influence the effectiveness of communication and narrative, known in English as storytelling.
The more an object evokes the archetype, that is, the primeval form and function that an object should ideally have, the more recognizable it is to customers. Customers are more inclined to buy what they know rather than try what they don't know. Evolutionary strategy favors following the path of least resistance because it optimizes energy consumption. Therefore it always tends toward the familiar, hence the importance of advertising and narrative.
March 15, 2021
Luca Perlini
Equilibrio coat rack, references to minimalism and arte povera. Structural solidity. Environmental impact and object maintenance, customization.
Canopy bed, designing bulky objects in the era of e-commerce.
Elle table, sturdiness, honesty of materials, shippability, customization of dimensions and finishes.
