TechnoCRAFT @ YBCA
Posted by: Rie Yamaoka
TechnoCRAFT is about the blurring boundaries between the designer and consumer; the designer no longer makes a beautiful piece of furniture and presents it to the consumer to take home and admire. Instead, there’s an invitation to use this piece of furniture to combine it in a modular system, to paint it, to drill a hole in it, etc, to make it ones own. It’s embracing the DIY culture and the hackers that make something new out of an existing piece.
The exhibit’s point is that design is a collaborative process, and nobody seems to be afraid of messing things up (as seen in the Eames chair made up to be a high chair). Overall many of the “collaborative” pieces were really ugly and some were funny, but I guess that’s the point– it’s the process that matters, not the final product.
Found chairs that were combined to make new ones. I liked the one of the bean bag filling the seat of an upright chair.
But I still preferred the prettier and practical example of the Puma sneaker line that lets you choose everything from the sole of your shoes to the pattern inside it–total customization, while the choices are still controlled somewhat by people who know about color and design.
Maybe I’m a control freak for thinking that’s the way it should be.
