Smith Pro is a portable storage unit for the culture of function in today’s home and office. The design responds to a lack of adequate furniture for desktop printers, video game consoles, DVD players and flat screen televisions, by providing space for these items and the accessories that surround them. If left empty the upper platform provides an ample makeshift surface. At home the largest storage area fits video games or DVDs and next to a desk it can host folders or pocket books and bags, which often end up on the floor. A total height of sixty centimeters allows Smith Pro to roll under tables and desks. Smith Pro extends the Smith family of versatile storage units in Danese’s catalogue.
As part of SAIC’s Industry Partners Studio led by Dr. Bruce M. Tharp, fourteen students from the Designed Objects program worked under a theme set by Jonathan Olivares to explore contemporary contexts of education and make a series of accessories for Danese Milano. SAIC’s philosophy of a critical and re-imagined approach to design resonated perfectly as Olivares set the premise that established desk accessories have lost their relevance, and urged the class to explore unsolved problems surrounding today’s work activities. During two meetings at SAIC the participants discussed Danese’s particular culture, the products that JODR designed for the brand, the students’ research and their initial prototypes. Danese’s president, Carlotta de Bevilacqua, Olivares and SAIC faculty gave the students feedback on their work as they developed their projects in preparation for this exhibit. The results are surprising, relevant and humorous; a pillow for laptop naps, a tray that saves our keyboards and laptops from destructive coffee spills, and a backpack station, that converts a bag into a piece of furniture. The strength of the students’ prototypes can be assessed in this exhibit by JODR, where they are displayed in a mock dorm room alongside Danese furniture.
April, 2009 Nitzan Cohen called to ask if I would write a text for the catalogue of his new collection of wooden furniture for the Italian producer Mattiazzi. I spent a few days considering the work, and replied with this email.
NC,
I find several points of interest in your project for Mattiazzi.
The masculine-feminine variation between HE SAID and SHE SAID reminds me of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Aside from their clothing, the differences between them are subtle – Mickey’s nose is slightly bigger and Minnie has eyelashes, HE SAID has protruding, aggressive armrests, while SHE SAID’s curve down gently. It’s strange that chairs haven’t always had masculine and feminine variations, when so many other products do. In Freudian analysis, knifes are male and spoons are female. The best sets of cutlery have great tension between the knife and spoon and I can see a similar tension between HE SAID and SHE SAID. Distinguishing chairs in this way re-imagines their role, introduces a new dynamic between chairs, and a new form of product development for them.
During a one week workshop, ÉCAL’s second year industrial design students were asked to research furniture types that exist on the margins of society and understand their functions within their sociopolitical environment. Thirty students each chose typologies ranging from gun cabinets to portable saunas. A three day research phase was followed by two days of analyzing the problems inherent in the chosen object’s design and its surrounding culture. To prove an understanding of their subject students wrote and sketched a brief for a design that would positively contribute to their object’s role within its environment. Each student contributed 8 pages to a 240-page booklet that summarizes the research and design planning accomplished through the workshop.
A book retracing BIG-GAME’s work since 2004, with contributions by Pierre Keller, Françoise Foulon, Pierre Doze, Alexandra Midal, Max Borka, Dieter Van Den Storm, Didier Krzentowksi, Jonathan Olivares, Urs Honegger, Milo Keller, Fabrice Samyn and Giampiero Pitisci.
The photographs shown in this lecture were taken in the South and Midwest of the United States. Elvis Presley’s Graceland, a replica of the Gerald Ford administration’s oval office, a monster truck race, abandoned furniture in Detroit, and other encounters reveal how designs from the margins of society address original problems with inventive and uninhibited solutions.
