Eray’s lecture on Utility furniture
On Wednesday this week, our colleague Eray Cayli presented his research into Utility Furniture at the Green and Trifty seminar organised by London Remade. If you’re a product designer, a design student or simply somebody with an interest in sustainable design, you’re sure to find his insights persuasive and inspiring.
Eray’s central point — as I understand it — is that the Utility Furniture scheme applied austerity measures not only to material supply and manufacturing processes, but also to the creative freedom and experimental curiosity of designers in that period (1942 – 1952). Imagine being constrained for 10 years of your working life by design committees staffed by bureauctratic appointees.
Are we risking our liberty to explore and develop new designs, materials and processes as British designers of the 1930s had done, unwittingly? If design professionals won’t moderate their own environmental impact, who will do it for them? Would it be possible for restraints to be applied centrally by governments or trade authorities to limit our work for the benefit of a low-carbon economy in the future?
Importantly, Eray has also spotted opportunities that arose from the Utility scheme, particularly for small local manufacturers who benefitted from a shortened supply and distribution network. They picked up the business that was previously aggregated by the big producers in High Wycombe and London’s East End. Will we increasingly make a virtue of local supply and short journeys?
You can download Eray’s presentation directly here. We’ll be podcasting the audio and slides in the next few days, once Eray has settled back in Istanbul.
If you want to follow up on the research into Utility Furniture and its application to new resource-efficient manufacturing business models, contact Pli or comment here and we’ll pick up the conversation with you.
Paul Micklethwaite said (June 23rd, 2008 at 2:51pm)
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.
Christopher said (June 23rd, 2008 at 8:37pm)
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.
Rosie Hornbuckle said (June 27th, 2008 at 1:20pm)
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…
sara kingan said (October 1st, 2008 at 1:24pm)
Have the podcast and slides from Eray’s presentation been made available ? If so how can I access them ?
Thanks Sara Kingan
Christopher said (October 1st, 2008 at 1:35pm)
Sara,you can watch Eray’s lecture here…
http://tinyurl.com/br3r2e
Edward said (October 15th, 2008 at 8:17pm)
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.