As technology surges ahead, our ability to adapt it to our lives and living spaces often lags behind. For us, enamored with our new gadget, what it is often takes precedent over where it goes. A good example of this incongruity is the proliferation of personal computers in contemporary kitchens.

In many homes, the kitchen has become the social hub, and since computers support every facet of our daily lives, the overlap is inevitable. So what can a kitchen computer do? For starters: Online cookbooks replace their printed ancestors; video conferencing with family and friends reinforces and enhances the social nature of the space; music software eliminates the need for audio players; and web browsers provide access to information and entertainment, making TVs superfluous. The kitchen and the computer are an ideal match, but their pairing remains as awkward as sushi and milk.

Attempts at integrating the computer into the kitchen have yet to produce sophisticated results. In 1969, Honeywell offered a kitchen computer with a binary interface for $10,000 from Neiman Marcus. It’s unclear if any were ever sold. More recently, specialized kitchen computers built onto refrigerator doors may allow you to keep track of your grocery list, but they have little regard for spatial planning. Their only reason for appearing on appliances is because appliance companies developed them. The niche market for a kitchen-specific computer may never justify the research and development that a desktop computer does, so the latter will remain a better choice. The immediate problem is that kitchens are poorly designed to accommodate our regular computers.

A search through online images for “kitchen computer” turns up hundreds of photographs illustrating the challenges encountered when computers are ham-handedly introduced to this new environment. Desktops and towers take over kitchen islands, inelegantly divide space, and turn what is normally an active surface into a computer lab. Wall-mounted monitors 
appear in spaces where televisions are normally installed, while the keyboards and mice that operate them are placed on the nearest countertops by default. Kitchen office nooks, originally designed around land-line telephones and paper calendars, are now repurposed for computers and printers. Laptops are designed to do well in makeshift situations, but in kitchens they are particularly vulnerable to 
hazards. What each of these scenarios shares is an integration problem.

The issue persists even for those who wish to remodel their kitchen to support computer use. In interviews with four interior designers, each said their clients always request a dedicated computer space in the kitchen. It’s surprising then that kitchen manufacturers don’t offer any integrated solutions (although laptops do get plopped into their neatly styled photo shoots every now and then).  Nevertheless, counter and table surfaces are the basic locations for considering computer placement within today’s kitchen.

For a computer that is an integral part of the cooking process, a counter-height station, gracefully placed within the kitchen, is ideal. Steps away from an omelet that needs flipping or a pot requiring a stir, a countertop computer allows its user to stay engaged in food preparation and socializing while remaining plugged in. The kitchen designer’s hallowed “work triangle” refers to an ideal triangular configuration for storage, preparation, and cooking areas. To be useful during cooking, the computer should be located within this triangle. Unfortunately, kitchen companies have given this little thought. Even worse, when asked about accommodating computers on counters, sales representatives expressed enthusiasm for installations that place computers “safely” behind roll-top appliance garages. But appliance garages were designed for storing cereal boxes and blenders, not for computers that demand interaction.

Die-hard laptop users face another set of problems and possible solutions. As the laptop is brought in dangerous proximity of cooking it should be elevated above the range of most spills. Like cookbook holders that make reading easier, a small portable laptop pedestal would raise our electronic companions out of harm’s way, and a silicone cover will protect the keyboard from sticky fingers. Areas of kitchen islands and counters where cooking preparation doesn’t take place could also be raised, creating distinct levels for computing. Convenient stow-away space and well-placed electric outlets would complete the laptop integration.

Reviewing the floor plans of standard kitchen models, it seems quite feasible to redraw the kitchen work triangle as a quadrilateral. Solutions 
to our problem become clearer as we consider where our computer 
will sit in relation to the stove, sink, and refrigerator. Neighboring the sink is out of the question until computers are waterproof. Next to a stove, conditions improve slightly. Like the refrigerator, the computer’s backside should be against a wall, so it doesn’t create a wall of its own in the middle of the kitchen. These constraints leave our digital device away from the sink, on a counter, along a wall, and most likely fighting for space that currently belongs to cabinets and preparation surfaces. A monitor can be mounted on an adjustable arm that allows it to be flexibly oriented. The dilemma between preparation surfaces and keyboards and mice is irrelevant for those who favor touch screens. A wireless keyboard and mouse can be temporarily stored in a drawer, but this offers little solace to those who don’t unplug. It’s also likely that in the absence of cookbooks, radios, land-line telephones, and old office nooks, there is some surplus surface to be found.

The irony of many high-end kitchen designs is that many of the people who buy them don’t even cook. And we can be sure that there are people who don’t use computers either. Yet for those who do both, hope could be on the way. This past fall a dedicated kitchen computer named QOOQ was introduced in France. With a ten-inch waterproof screen, wifi connectivity, recipe subscription service (with video), and meal planning calendar, it’s an intriguing step into uncharted territory. The drawbacks are that it’s only available in French, and its dedicated software doesn’t allow us to do many of the things we have come to expect of our machines. It seems for now the ultimate solution has yet to come.

 
Photo © Getty Images

Last June I attended a plastics trade fair in Chicago. Walking through a stadium-sized hall filled with the wares of mould manufacturers, I became lost in a maze of production tools and as a result it took me two hours to find the plastics companies I had come there to see. In a second hall I found hundreds of booths selling a host of bizarre metal gadgets and tubes, which I learned are the components that make the moulds themselves. Many of today’s products are created with the help of hundreds of other inter-dependent manufacturing products. I left the fair with the dizzying realisation that the metal-gadget industry is built around the mould industry, which is built around the plastics industry, which is built around other industries like the automotive or furniture industry, which are built around real people’s needs.

Products furnish our existence. They are all around us and appear in an incomprehensibly large variety. A world population of 6.7 billion, which data suggests will increase by almost forty percent by 2050, assures that the gamut of human needs is wider today than it has ever been and is growing fast. Assuming that even the poorest of the world’s citizens use a dozen products to execute their daily tasks, and factoring this into the global population, there’s a staggering minimum of 80 billion products operating in today’s society.

Webster’s dictionary defines a product as: “Anything produced or obtained as a result of some operation or work, as by generation, growth, labor, study, or skill.” Our society expands the definition by requiring that a product sell at some profit. Outside of these loose parameters, a clear expression of what products mean in the world today is surprisingly difficult to find. Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance, offers no entry on the subject.

In the everyday, products seem simple: we buy them, they serve a purpose, and if they cease to be useful, we discard them. A deeper look at the situation takes us down a rabbit hole where billions of inter-dependent products, hyper-specialised factories, massive shipping movements, a splintered design profession and fanatical consumers obscure any unified sense of what products are, and lead us to numerous contradictions and questions.

The truth is, most of us live a life surrounded by products without the slightest clue as to where or how they’re made – and for good reasons. For instance, while shopping at a clothing store, little evidence suggests that entire industries are at work to make even the simplest items. Nothing there will tell you that your shoes were the work of professional manufacturers, designers, engineers, product-developers, sales teams, marketing teams, accountants, lawyers, factory workers, shipping and receiving staff. And why should it? Most retail shops are in the business of selling products, not educating the consumer.

As we look around, it’s easy to see that everything in our built environment is also constructed with products. Works of architecture are massive agglomerates of commodities churned out by the building industry: glass panels, beam fittings, ceiling tiles, carpeting, overhead lighting, HVAC systems, electrical conduits – the list goes on and on. What we don’t see from the average building facade is that behind the scenes these products are rigorously assessed to meet the highest safety standards. It’s not uncommon for facades to be built and tested at explosives facilities before they’re realised in cities. Why? Car bombs. What does this mean? It means that windows are designed as much against explosives as they are for people, and of course, behind this act of bomb-proofing are more specialised products.

Transporting these things from their factories to their destinations is a shipping operation of massive scale and the largest of its kind in human history. Visualising this phenomenon takes only an application of basic geometry to the dry financial figures we read in newspapers. Consider the fact that every year China exports $1.3 billion worth of car tyres to the US, which sell at an average price of $40. Unit cost over total sales tells us that in this particular business deal there are 32.5 million tyres shipped across the Pacific Ocean. Given that the average car tyre takes up .07 cubic metres, we know that these yearly shipments carry 2.2 million cubic metres of tyre – which is more than double the volume of the Empire State Building. At this rate it would only take a decade to outfit midtown Manhattan with a rubber skyline. How do we accomplish such incredible shipments? It’s done with the aid of thousands of other products like turbofans, shipping-container cranes and navigation software.

Shipping containers in particular have had a profound impact on how products are designed. The more compactly products fit inside a container, the cheaper the shipping cost per unit becomes. In home furnishings, Ikea is the master of this technique. A colleague of mine designed a bed system for the Swedish brand some years ago and the project was cancelled when it became apparent that the design was poorly shaped to meet the minimum quantity per container. Under these constraints, home furnishings have as much to do with the companies that transport them as they do with the places to which they are shipped.

The tendency with all these things is that products are increasingly designed around other products – metal gadgets for moulds, windows for bombs and furniture for shipping containers – and decreasingly designed around people. Another example of this is how competition in developed industries creates a flood of similar but different products. In this case the principle objective of the design is to stand out among others like it. As a result, every type of product generally comes in endless variations. This is conspicuously apparent in the bottled-water section of any market, and here too, the bottles seem to speak more to each other than they do to us.

As consumers we have been conditioned to expect and accept products that look and function differently from precedent models. Change is a pillar of industry, and the technology and design professions are based on the belief that positive progress can be created through invention and improvement upon what already exists. An example of this is how typewriters were outdone by word processors, which in turn were superseded by computers. The basic function in each case – writing – is unchanged, but the level of performance is increased drastically with each successive model. For millennia, writing was achieved with pen and ink, but in the last century we have changed our facilities for this activity several times. Such shifts impact our behaviour and our society profoundly. A small effect would be that children spend their time learning keyboards instead of cursive script; a large one would be that global communication is transformed forever.

Considering the immense power that products have on the social and political functions of our society, it’s surprising that they go largely unchecked by government and institutions. Deregulated manufacturers can pretty much make and sell anything, as long as it doesn’t result in injury, death or a lawsuit. Ultimately the only real check and balance on products is the market, which leaves all the responsibility over much of our surrounding environment to manufacturers and designers.

When a politician does something even slightly scandalous, journalists are up in arms for weeks, but before a peep is heard from the press about a faulty product it has to go as far as severely injuring people – the toxic Mattel toys come to mind. The lack of criticism is understandable given that horrible designs are far less interesting and far more abundant than corrupt politicians. The few design critics there are, justifiably spend their time writing about the products that inspire them over the ones that don’t. However, a broad and deep reflection on products is lost amidst a total division between the politics, science, technology and style sections of our newspapers. Under the jurisdiction of the style section, which largely functions as a trend-spotting shopping guide, the meaning of design is mostly conveyed through tasteful home furnishings, accessories, graphics and fashion, and rarely through hard facts and larger social phenomena. The result is a misguided public that associates design exclusively with rarified products, and lacks the vocabulary to assess designs that carry heavier political impact, such as solar panels, subway cars and medical equipment.

Humans have successfully catalogued most known plants and animals, yet any hope of doing the same for products was buried in landfills a long time ago. This hampers serious study on the subject, because we have few outstanding historical resources on which to base such an endeavour. The closest things we have to taxonomies of everyday products are vintage Sears Roebuck catalogues, and those went extinct years ago. Technical manuals for engine components are easy enough to come by, but I doubt Library of Congress holds on to these things. In short, we have a better understanding of the natural world than we do of the one we have constructed, though whether we like it or not, the latter makes up our predominant reality.

If we turn to design museums for in-depth knowledge, we find that their collections focus only on the most inspired products, which collectively offer us a distorted bigger picture. The products that most profoundly affect society are not necessarily well designed. With few exceptions, design museums are little more informative than good retail shops. Both tend to be filled with perfectly nice products but lack the depth of information that would give the public a greater sense of what objects mean in today’s culture. Outside the institution, the general lack of information is only obscured further by the marketing profession, whose job it is to distract us from anything but satisfaction. You would have better luck getting free products from a company than unbiased information from its public-relations team.

The values that our society places on products become clear when we look at the designers who garner the most attention. Lots of people know who Karl Lagerfeld is, fewer know what Philippe Starck does, fewer still know that Chris Bangle designs automobiles, and almost no-one could name the best wind turbine-designer. While we tend to like, understand and appreciate simple products, we are not easily enamoured with technical or infrastructural things. This has as much to do with how products are marketed and covered in the media as it does with the public’s ignorance regarding engineering and technology. And the two only perpetuate each other. No one gets excited about buying a new car battery, but a new lounge chair is a different story. As a result, there are countless coffee-table books on chair design and few good resources on the infrastructural products that distinguish our time from the twenty-first century BC.

One would think that the industrial-design field might at least have developed some internal solidarity on how to go about making a product, but there’s as little consensus there as anywhere else. The profession is barely a hundred years old, but since its beginning, ideological differences and have caused division, argument, fragmentation, and specialisation.

In the early twentieth century, while a craft-based decorative approach caved under rational functionalism in Europe, a modern decorative movement gave way to streamlined styling in the US. Exiled by Nazis, the proponents of functionalism immigrated to the States, where some Americans were developing a functional organic design. To cater to the specialised needs of the post-war automotive industry, automotive design schools formed independently of industrial design schools, creating an academic and vocational division that still exists today. The field was further segregated as some corporations created in-house design teams and ceased to rely on independent design offices. While streamlined styling diluted into lesser forms of styling, functionalism flourished, turned into clean-cut modernism and eventually won people’s favour. Then boredom set in, which was followed by disbelief in commercialism, anti-design, ergonomics and a growing distrust between the in-house and independent designers. With postmodernism came more arguments. Out of frustration, some designers succeeded into a new profession where they could be taken seriously, at least briefly: product design. Since then, the field has disbanded into nothing less than anarchy.

In an essay expressing frustration with this phenomenon, the American designers Bruce and Stephanie Tharp list the plethora of specialised methods from which today’s designers can choose:

user-centered design, eco-design, design for the other 90%, universal design, sustainable design, interrogative design, task-centered design, reflective design, design for well-being, critical design, speculative design, speculative re-design, emotional design, socially-responsible design, green design, conceptual design, concept design, slow design, dissident design, inclusive design, radical design, design for need, environmental design, contextual design, and transformative design. ’

They missed a few, but the list is still telling. The absence of a philosophical unity in the way we go about making things is a symptom of our technologically driven, globalised culture. From the Bronze Age until very recently, individual cultures had their own specific ways of making objects, but today there are as many ways to make products as there are designers and manufacturers.

Currently, artists are the only group with the clairvoyance to shed light on some of the larger phenomena surrounding products. More than any other sources, Andreas Gursky’s photos of factory workers, Damian Ortega’s exploded car, and Edward Burtynsky’s ‘Manufactured Landscapes’ give us a vivid understanding of who makes products, how they are built, and what effect they are having on the environment. Why this should be has as much to do with our distance from these happenings as it does with the artist’s ability to convey them. In simpler times, people knew the craftsman who made their goods, understood the basic tools used to make them, and lived in odorous proximity to where they were dumped after use.

The segmentation of today’s consumer, retailer, manufacturer and waste system leaves each with little knowledge of or impact on how the other functions. Uninformed sales staffs have never seen a factory floor, and therefore can’t possibly explain its workings to the customer. What few factories are open to the public are not exactly destinations for tourists and school groups. Consequentially, the public has no way of distinguishing what has been made on an eighteen-hour shift, in a poorly ventilated factory – by underpaid, underage workers – from what has been made in positive working conditions.

Market studies, focus groups and intuition combined can’t predict how the public will respond to a product once it’s released. Don Chadwick, the American designer, once explained to me that that when he, Bill Stumpf and Herman Miller took a leap of faith with the Aeron Chair, none of them had a clue that the design would result in what is now the ubiquitous office chair. And how could they have known how millions of people would react to their product before they started selling it? 

The geographical gap that separates consumers, manufactures and the waste we all create is perhaps the bleakest of all. A few examples are enough to depict the grim reality. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an island in the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas and made up of discarded plastic products carried and trapped by ocean currents. Western countries dump mountains of old products on poor countries willing to sell landfill space. Cities of E-waste have popped up in Africa and Asia, where local inhabitants sift through toxic heaps of old keyboards, computers and monitors, salvaging parts for profit while poisoning their communities.

Nevertheless, our faith in products is unwavering. Like sports teams, religion and TV, products gather large groups of devoted followers. Days before a new iPhone is released, eager customers equipped with tents and camping chairs begin queuing up outside Mac stores. In 2008, the opening of the Harajuku H&M shop drew approximately 2,500 fashionistas, who waited in line for hours in the cold November rain to be the first ones in. Amidst a vast abundance of products, our obsession with them leads us to behave as though they were in short supply.

Some recent tendencies in technology and design are pointing towards a conceivable decline in tangible products. Software, digital information and communication are all achieved with little in the realm of physical material. The letter-openers, paper trays, calculators, calendars, Rolodexes, and land-line telephones that characterised my mother’s desk are not on mine – they’re in my pocket. Single digital products are eliminating series of disparate objects.

Another interesting shift away from physical products is in the focus given by some in the design industry to designing services and activities geared towards improving customer-service strategies and corporate work patterns. The fact that both the clients and the design consultancies are speaking of design in terms of service and not product implies a world with fewer products and more activities. This would do wonders for the obese children who never get outside. Yet until products become invisible, we’re still left with billions of them to figure out what to do with.

The more products our culture turns out, the more contradictions appear around them. We can equate the widening gamut of products with an increase in their specificity to each other, and a decrease in their relationship to us. Boosted unit sales mean boosted unfamiliarity between the manufacturers and their customers. The more industry and manufacturing grow, the farther they get from our doorsteps and the less we understand their processes.

The same can be said for garbage. It’s ironic that we are trashing the natural world, which we cherish, admire and study, for products that we don’t care enough about to document. Surrounded by an abundance of products, we take desperate measures to acquire them. Our willingness to accept novel tools and rapidly change our behaviour around them makes us the most adaptable civilisation yet. Still, our astounding ignorance of how these tools are made, distributed and disposed of make us the most ignorant. While we have little control over the rate at which products are made, we do have the ability to control our knowledge and thus our interaction with them.

Even amidst the growing complexity that surrounds them, products maintain their power to imbue our lives with a sense of fulfillment. The best products are tools that enhance our lives, allow us to do things that would otherwise be impossible and give us great pleasure. Think of the difficult work of street cleaners and the essential brooms that help them do it, or the excitement to be had with a wonderful fishing lure. Imagine the incredible satisfaction of eliminating electricity bills and pollution by installing a state-of-the-art wind turbine on your roof. Made with positive intentions, products like these aren’t designed to dupe you, grab your attention over other items on the shelves, or end up floating in the ocean. The overwhelming challenges that stand between human needs and the products that answer them can only be solved optimistically if they are understood. With such knowledge and optimism, our chances for a healthy manufactured and natural world increase exponentially.

Photo © BMW AG

‘ ”Discursive Design.” Bruce and Stephanie Tharp. 2008 National  Education Conference Proceedings.  Industrial Design Society of America: Virginia. Pp. 237-245.

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.

Expanding a product’s range by varying its size and function is an approach common in the tableware industry. Your collection has the continuity of a family of plates and bowls. The proportional adjustments between SHE SAID and SHE SAID lowide, are nicely done, there is a clear and natural relationship between them.

Titling furniture with a phrase is refreshing! It reminds me of something Eames said regarding Saarinen; that he was a concept man and that the name Womb, was outside the vocabulary of a decorator. I’m sure that in the 1940s calling his chair Womb was a radical thing to do. I think it’s important that we renew the kinds of names we give to furniture and HE SAID / SHE SAID is doing just that.

The top half of HE SAID / SHE SAID reveals the sophistication of Mattiazzi’s manufacturing technologies. The smooth geometry that joins the backrest, armrests and legs is the formal language of injection-molded plastic, and it’s surprising to see in wood. I gather that using a 6-axis CNC machine to carve wood is essentially the reverse process of excavating an aluminum mould for a plastic chair. So industrial wood is not an oxymoron. The level of handcraft in the joints that run along these contoured surfaces is also impressive. When it came to the legs and seat you kept the manufacturing simple, using straight stock and bent planes. This mixture of high and low-tech processes gives the collection a strong identity.

These pieces are ambitious, push their production technology, update nomenclature, and restructure our concept of how a family of chairs is composed. You’ve brought some liberated and radical notions to furniture, and managed to make some solid products.

Cheers,

JO

Photo Marcus Gaab

Big-Game
Design Overview
Stichting Kunstboek
2008

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.

1. Discern that Link is a close relative of fifteenth century European chandeliers, which were made with rudimentary wooden crosses that held single candles on metal spikes at their outer most points, and were hoisted with rope so that they could be lowered and raised as candles needed to be replaced.

2. Realize that Link, in its simple construction, disaffirms the decorative features that have existed in lead crystal, cast metal, ormolu and bronze chandeliers.

3. Observe that Link features incandescent bulbs, and mind that this is how chandeliers have been lit since electricity became widely distributed in the early twentieth century.

4. Consider that Link’s cables power the bulbs and suspend the chandelier, then note the common economy of function between these and the ropes of hoist-able chandeliers, which suspended the chandelier and facilitated frequent candle replacement.

5. Think of how the high cost of candles made chandeliers a symbol of status for the nobility of the fifteenth century, and comprehend the irony of Link when you realize that today’s bulbs costs very little and when left bare even connote poverty.

6. See Link’s double symbolism: modularity referenced from mid-twentieth century American and European modernism, and playful engineering found in British Meccano Toys from the early twentieth century.

7. Deduce that laser cutting sheet aluminum is a contemporary manufacturing method, which is cost effective when manufacturing small quantities of a given product.

8. Know that Big-Game’s products, as many contemporary European designs, have use and symbolic values, but are strongly appreciated for their conceptual value and their ability to engage subjects in interesting mental activity. Then appreciate that Link explores and expresses its theme with poignant humor, mental acuity and bold construction.

9. Follow or disregard the previous instructions and form your own understanding of Link.

Link

As climbers in the 1960s ascended new routes that required multiple days to climb, it became imperative for them to find ways to sleep on the rock wall. Drawing from hammocks, cots, tents and sail construction, a generation of climber-designers invented a new typology: the portaledge. This archetype is liberated from the conventions of furniture design and its development took great ambition, courage and mental freedom. The design facilitates a radical form of life on earth and ascents that would be impossible with out it. The following historical information was gathered through interviews with Conrad Anker, Mike Graham and John Middendorf, climbers who were instrumental in the evolution of the portaledge over the last four decades.

1960s 

Warren Harding invented the first hammock suspended from a central point, which he called a B.A.T. (Basically Absurd Technology) tent. Central suspension facilitates deployment and prevents the tipping that occurs with two-point hammocks. Harding almost died during his 1968 attempt on Half Dome, in Yosemite after being trapped in a threeday storm, where his B.A.T tent filled with freezing rain and snow. 

1970s 

Climbers Billy Westbay and Bruce Hawkins created the first portaledges by re-appropriating steel and canvas cots stolen from park lodges in Yosemite. These were a vast improvement from single-point hammocks with regard to comfort, but weighed up to thirty kilograms (almost three times the weight of today’s models). During this period climbers also used submarine ledges, made from U.S. Navy aluminum tube cots that had been purchased from army surplus stores. In 1972 the climber brothers Gregg and Jeff Lowe designed the LURP, a highly innovative portaledge prototype with the first collapsible frame. Mike Graham, a famous American climber, founded Gramicci in 1977, and made his Cliff Dwellings using equipment that he carried in his truck, and would set up his shop in friends? garages and basements. His minimal corner connections were an important innovation, but they also made the Cliff Dwelling vulnerable to structural failure under extreme forces of nature. 

1980s 

Fieldware Designs, a climber owned company, produced a chrome molly tube portaledge. Seperate 90 degree fittings solved earlier structural problems and have since become the standard connection for tube frames. In 1986 the bold American climber John Middendorf founded A5 Adventures. With strengthened 90? corner fittings and thicker tubing, the A5 portaledge was structurally superior to any previous design. The A5 fly tent was made from a 3-once Oxford fabric with a heavy-duty waterproof urethane coating. The fly’s construction was inspired by tepees and folded out of a complex pattern with a single seam. This was a great advantage for waterproofing. 

1990s 

With the advent of the portaledge, climbers began ascending big walls in alpine style, which refers to a continuous ascent, with all of one’s equipment. Prior to the portaledge, climbers had to climb in siege style, securing hundreds of meters of rope along their entire route and setting up multiple camps along the way. Middendorf’s double portaledge introduced Shark Fin fabric dividers between bed areas, which serve as connection points for three additional straps connecting the central axis of the bed canopy to the central suspension point. For the most extreme conditions, A5 designed and produced a Diamond Fly, which, as Graham’s Wind Shield prototype previously suggested, diverts upward winds from hitting the underside of the portaledge. During the Nineties, A5 was purchased by the California based outerwear company The North Face and later by climber Conrad Anker who renamed the company ACE. 

2000s 

Anker added protective bumpers to the frame, integrated pockets for drinks into the Shark Fins of double portaledges, and began anodizing the aluminium tubing. Today owned by Black Diamond, the A5/ACE designs are produced in China.

• Above: Photo Gordon Wiltsie
• Below: Photos Jean-Louis Wertz

A stocky, Mexican, teenage rocker thrashes around the dance floor. In a tantrum he kicks and punches, he’s an indiscernible cluster of torn jeans, greasy black hair, flannel shirt and creeper shoes. He barely avoids a collision with the only other guy dancing, a raging Texan; enormous, bald, twenty-something, in cowboy boots and overalls.

The band is playing next to them and the female lead singer is shouting, “I’m gonna burn, burn your house down!” Loud pulses of garage-punk emit from the band’s mess of cables, angry faces, rigid arm movements and sticker-covered instruments. 

The thrashing on the dance floor grows more intense. The Mexican rocker spins out of control and knocks into a table, sending a glass ashtray shattering to the ground just next to the booth where Konstantin is seated. As he dances the Texan kicks over the microphone stand and it delivers a shriek of feedback. The Mexican picks up a sturdy wooden chair in his hands and shakes it violently, stomping the chair’s legs on the floor in pace with the drums. He jumps, the chair falls, he kicks it, picks it up and then he wipes out on the floor. Again the Texan kicks the microphone stand – more loud feedback. The chair stands by itself and the Mexican is dancing wildly around it. 

Konstantin and I exchange a glance but say nothing. We are both impressed with the energy, the chair and the rockers. It continues. The Texan has now begun dancing with a different chair. Picking it up he points its legs away from him like arms and together they push forwards and backwards. The band leads one song straight into another, the dancing rockers and their chairs keep going and they all form a throng of loud sweaty chaos. 

Dimly lit pool table lights and a neon Budweiser sign cast their glow on a wall lined with full-scale posters of bikini calendar girls. I am attempting to make a movie with my camera, which I’ll later realize is only capturing noise because Joe’s Bar is so dark. Since the bar seems like it could easily host a bar fight, I’m careful not to point the camera for to long at the truck drivers playing pool or the locals seated at the bar. During this three day vacation in Texas we have observed that all bars have signs posted at their entrance forbidding firearms indoors, and this makes us slightly nervous. 

The band has stopped playing and is now packing up their gear. They announce that they are selling merchandise and Konstantin buys their CD. We learn that the punk band is called Sparkle Motion and are from Austin, Texas. Tired and satisfied the Mexican sits on the chair. 

Unlike Le Corbusier’s “human-limb-objects”, which he describes as “docile”, “discreet” and “self-effacing” servants to their human masters, the punk-chairs at Joe’s bar have conspicuously strong personalities and through aggressive animation they become active characters. I remember the lyrics of Elvis’ Jail House Rock: “don’t you be no square, if you can’t find a partner grab a wooden chair” It is clear that chairs still make good dancing partners.

Furniture, in so far as it carries meaning, is always about something. Throughout history, furniture’s subjects have included ancient gods, Jesus, rationality, ergonomics and fictional narratives. Konstantin Grcic’s subject matter is formed by the process of making the furniture itself, and not by external, predetermined or abstract values (that is, Jesus, rationality…). His process occurs in the specific context created by the personality of a client, the demands of a brief, a production technology, an intended user, a model-making method, or even the character of one of his four assistants who might work on a given project. Grcic is an unobstructed thinker; the only assumption that he makes is that furniture should be useful in some way. Moreover, he distinguishes between useful and functional: where function serves a predefined utilitarian need, useful only has to serve a purpose. By making inventively useful things, Grcic critiques the functions and forms of established typologies. He is also formally unrestricted. Working in specific contexts his logic guides the shape of his designs and since the contexts in which he works are diverse, so too are his forms. Grcic’s designs are liberated both functionally and formally. Although the purposes and forms of his designs are radically original, they almost always make historical references to older typologies and thereby carry familiar qualities. Grcic’s process, or subject matter, invokes a series of oppositions; craft model-making and industrial production, experimental yet practical uses, and forms that are at once new and historical.

This unconventional approach to design results in objects that are somewhat alien and intriguing. Grcic’s piece of outdoor furniture called ‘Landen’ fits this description. Constructed with steel sheets, steel grids, steel walk boards, rubber padding and painted black, ‘Landen’ is wider than a Hummer, virtually indestructible and so heavy that it can only be moved by a crane. Its shape recalls the Apollo Lunar Lander: in a park it would be as curious as the black monolith that lands in prehistoric times in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. People will surely ask, “What is it?” Such a bizarre object beckons investigation; however, the useful encounters that it prompts come to clarify any questions regarding its purpose. As one approaches and climbs into ‘Landen’, its legs reveal themselves as steps and the rectangular shields that protrude communicate their purpose as backrests. This activity is fun, but the user must remain alert and take caution not to fall. In the same way that people adapt curbs, ledges and steps when they sit and lean on them, they will come to use ‘Landen’ as a flexible outdoor prop. In Harmony Korine’s Gummo, two teenage boys make use of a concrete drainage channel as they recline on it, sniffing glue and watching the sky. Uninhibited by formalities, these characters exercise the same inquisitive attitude that Grcic promotes through ‘Landen’. The large circle cut out of ‘Landen’s’ upper platform defines a central bench area where up to eight people can sit. The shield/backrests enclose users in a social hub and shelter them from the urban environment for which ‘Landen’ was designed. Defining a new kind of outdoor furniture, this piece ignores established types of seating, and instead takes its departure from outdoor scenarios like campfires, construction sites and jungle gyms. ‘Landen’ engages the public by demanding re-appropriation, thought and physical activity. It also creates a dialogue between users by physically orienting them towards each other. These are results that normal park benches cannot achieve. ‘Landen’ is a sign of progress and like many of Grcic’s designs it expands the boundaries of furniture.