Comments on: Eray’s lecture on Utility furniture

By: Edward

Edward — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:17:07 +0000

I agree with Rosie that designers thrive on limitations. When designing such things as furniture there can be many restrictions. Manufacturing processes, materials, enviromental challenges, government restrictions like fire codes, etc. That is the challenge to the designer. I have a friend who is a designer and always does two designs. One very primitive and one as he says is “whacky.” And then he works from there is fit the final project. This keeps him creative but practical and useful to the job at hand.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:35:22 +0000

Sara,you can watch Eray’s lecture here…

http://www.plidesign.co.uk/inspiration/2008/07/utilizing-resources-product-design-in-1940s-britain/

By: sara kingan

sara kingan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:24:49 +0000

Have the podcast and slides from Eray’s presentation been made available ? If so how can I access them ?
Thanks Sara Kingan

By: Rosie Hornbuckle

Rosie Hornbuckle — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:20:38 +0000

I’d also add that designers thrive on limitations, whether identified by themselves or imposed by others; to design is to respond to new and challenging situations. Legislation is perhaps a way of government providing direction for change, but is there potential for these limitations to force design down a particular path when another may have been more beneficial? Almost certainly but as with utility products only extreme and unvoidable circumstances would call for such intervention… we hope! As Chris hinted, government policy doesn’t move fast enough for design (and scientific) innovations which hopefully means that more businesses will soon be ahead of the game… current regs might even slow them down…

By: Christopher

Christopher — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:37:26 +0000

Good point Paul. I think EuP and WEEE are relatively benign restrictions, in the sense that the producers must comply but it’s up to them how they do it. It’s a risk for regulators to set the question _and_ give the answer but that is sometimes the effect of inadvertently badly-framed laws.

That underlines the principle — stay ahead of the regulators and you are free to design as you choose.

When WEEE producers begin to take individual responsibility for their output, rather than the present collective system, they’ll be able to add a competitive edge to their product design by developing clever strategies for disassembly and on-cycling.

By: Paul Micklethwaite

Paul Micklethwaite — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:51:54 +0000

I also enjoyed Eray’s presentation at Wednesday’s event, and agree with Chris’s comments above.

I think the parallels between wartime and the present, drawn by this event (credit to London Remade) and by Eray’s talk in particular, are interesting. We are seeing increasing regulation which places constraints on products going to market in the EU, in terms of eg. proscribed materials (RoHS), energy use (EuP), end-of-life treatment (WEEE). The extent to which this recreates, or differs from, wartime utility restrictions on designers is an interesting question.

Eray’s slides also quoted from Judy Attfield’s “Utility Reassessed” book; it’s important to acknowledge that design historians without any stake in the Sustainability debate have been discussing the Utility schemes and their impacts for some time.