Nonobject Design, A Deeper LookBy: Yuval Saar, Design Journalist for Haaretz Newspaper
What is Practicality?
A camera that takes pictures in two directions and a square bicycle are among the items under discussion in the revolutionary design book NONOBJECT. Academic scholar Barry Katz and designer and author Branko Lukic, the co-writers, explain in an interview what exactly can be done with a tablespoon comprising a hundreds of mini-teaspoons. Hint: enjoy the thought of it, first and foremost.
When a sentence like “I believe this book will change the way we think about design,”appears in the introduction, our immediate response is skeptical. This is also the case when a designer whose works are featured in the book is compared to design greats such as Dieter Rams, who first said “Less, but better,” Ettore Sottsass, Mario Bellini, Philippe Stark, Naoto Fukasawa, Jasper Morrison, and Jonathan Ive –Apple’s lead designer. But when the person behind these words is Bill Moggridge – director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the first laptop designer, one of the founders of IDEO, and winner of the White House lifetime achievement award in 2009 – the observation has weight.
These accolades are only a small portion of Moggridge’s praise for NONOBJECT, a new design book published at the end of last year by MIT. Indeed, what is at stake here is no run-of-the-mill design book whose highlights are gorgeous photos, but a book whose stunning photographs share equal standing with the elegant interpretive text that accompanies them. The proof: where else can you find a design volume rich with citations from philosophers and creative folk such as Levi Strauss, Borges, Plato, Goethe, Wittgenstein, and more?
In NONOBJECT, Barry Katz, an American design theorist who is also an IDEO research fellow, presents the outcome of research work by Branko Lukic, a designer of Serbian origin who lives and works in California. Among the objects presented in the book: a camera that takes pictures from both sides to provide a more holistic picture with a broader perspective of the photographed moment; a tablespoon comprising a hundred mini-teaspoons meant to intensify the sensuous experience of eating; a mobile phone with holes into which one must insert one’s fingers rather than push buttons; another phone with push buttons all around that can be dialed no matter how it is held; chairs on a single leg drilled into the floor that create a light, floating feeling, and more.
Lukic’s starting point involves challenging the well-known dictum “Form follows Function.” This idea became popular with the rise of the electronic chip, which eliminated the need for form to express an object’s purpose. This raises the philosophical question – what is an object, and how are we to relate to it? According to Katz, we can no longer deduce what an object does simply by looking at it; he offers the iPhone and Blackberry as examples: could we guess the gadget’s function from its look? As a result, he writes, designers now have limitless freedom to design objects, though they may not always make use of this freedom.
Speaking on the phone from Lukic’s Studio in Palo Alto, Lukic and Katz say the cooperation between them began four years ago when Lukic, who was working at IDEO at the time, showed Katz his portfolio and asked if he would be willing to add narrative structure to the material.
“I was amazed by what I saw and agreed immediately,” Katz said. “Over time, I tried to understand the broader implications of his research into form, to understand what he is talking about, and to give the material a wide-ranging cultural and philosophical context. Then we proceeded to talk about the structure of the book, how to put it together. We agreed that we didn’t want to produce another coffee-table book; we wanted to publish a book that will be of interest not only to designers and architects, but to everybody who cares about the future of the design world.”
“Our connection was intuitive at first. We didn’t know each other too well,” adds Lukic. “It took little time to get accustomed to each other, but fairly quickly we found the way to work together. Barry listened and took notes when we spoke. I think his particular kind of knowledge of art and design history is a prerequisite for a true appreciation of the book. Many people in the design community don’t immediately understand the book, which is entirely fine by me; this is often the case when something is new or different – not done before.”
Designers don’t understand the book as you would expect?
Lukic: “Some designers don’t get it. Designers are visual thinkers (most of them). They glance at the objects, they don’t really read the whole book. The book deals with stretching the boundaries of the possible; to understand each of the ideas behind objects shown in the book, you have to read the text. This book explores the intangible space between the user and the object (product). Sometimes it’s something fanciful or amusing, or something that opens you to a new possibility or approach. It’s not that we are attempting to reinvent the world, but we do discuss the relationship between people and products in a serious and thoughtful way.”
Katz interrupts with a smile: “Wait a minute! I thought we are trying to change the world.”
Lukic: “Okay, maybe we are!”
Some of the objects you present in the book are obviously not practical. Where is the line between serious thinking about design and gimmicks or something that could be a student-like exercise?
Lukic: “This is an interesting question. What is practical? Something that endures for thirty years? We may say that the common tablespoon is practical, but at the same time it is not as practical as the one presented in the book. We are often influenced by the media telling us what we should or shouldn’t think or buy. There are zero gimmicks in the book, besides the single intention to try and break through boundaries. Marketing has quite a sway over the design world. Is all the stuff in your house really the stuff you want? How many brand-name objects do you see before you when you wake up in the morning? How many of them are truly important to you? Is there any way to change the value of objects that remain with us over a long period of time?”
And yet, where do you draw the line?
Lukic: “The problem in industrial design practice is that you have very little room to maneuver. As a result – and it’s no surprise – when you shop, what you see all looks the same. I was always amazed by the relative lack of freedom we had even when we were working for big clients. Today I’m even a bit ashamed of how little creativity we managed to muster. We couldn’t always display the range of our creative talents in this market. This was precisely my goal — to explain and illustrate new design principles. This might be also the reason that the phone received so much attention and was featured on many websites and blogs. The goal is to open up the mind. It’s not that we want to go and manufacture this phone.”
Katz: “The thin line between imagination and reality is really at the heart of the book. I’m an academic, not a designer. For me, it’s a research question, and from my perspective on the design world, the most important development is a dramatic rise in the importance of research in the design process. Once upon a time, the customer would hand you a brief, tell you what s/he wants, and you would go to the studio and start sketching. Today, it’s not like that. I see the book as a new arena of exploration motivated by imagination, by the effort to stretch the boundaries and see what will happen. Can we imagine a bicycle that is made entirely of ninety-degree angles?”
Lukic: “On the other hand, you have to remember that the book is thoroughly immersed in business practices. We have a studio and clients. This way of thinking has practical applications. As a designer, you can come up with something truly different from anything that has come before.”
How do you explain the fact that everything still looks the same? Is everybody going for safety? Do people just care about going home at the end of the day with their paycheck?
Lukic: “Many times this is the reason, but remember that as design firms get bigger, they tend to grow more cautious. There are exceptions, of course, but at least in the US, this is an industry that moves by numbers, statistics and business plans. There is so much intellect behind design thinking today, design is just barely art, more of a calculable science. But for me, design is also art and always will be.”
Are the objects in the book new? Is there any way at all to make something that never existed before?
Lukic: “I always see my work as trying to help people see things they didn’t see before and to experience things afresh. I dedicate every day of my life to this: by definition, it’s called design. But design isn’t only that, design should also be enjoyable and relevant. It’s amazing how many people are virtually asleep at the wheel – mired in routine. I search for new horizons. All I do is drive the side roads, away from the main drag, and look for a new pathway, one that perhaps hasn’t been explored before. For me, this is the most exciting thing – to discover new continents, new perspectives.
Katz: “There are two ways to think about the new. The first, the iPad for example, introduced a new category of objects that wasn’t there before. What Branko is trying to do is something else: to take a look at existing objects and categories, and do something new with them. The bicycle hasn’t been reinvented, but reconsidered. The same goes for the tablespoon and the dining table. I think that part of his motivation, and what attracts me, is that we are bored to tears by the things we use every day, and when this happens, we lose our attachment to them with all the complexity, the imagination and the pleasure that comes with it. What we want to do in this book is to reawaken the pleasure of the world around us. It’s another way to think about the new.”
Speaking of pleasure, I can feel it right in my mouth – the tablespoon made out of a hundred tiny teaspoons.
Lukic: “The moment of imagining is the most exciting moment; this is the realm we were trying to play with and remain in the whole time. When you buy a new car, the moment before it arrives is the best one. Two, three months afterwards, it’s something else again.”
Katz, smiling: “Over the past few months, we have seen citizens rising up and demanding their right for responsible leadership. We want the citizens of the world to rise up and demand responsible products. Go ahead and lead the call for the tablespoon, so people will have access to NONOBJECTs that will excite their imaginations and awaken their senses.” [/one_half}
