ID History

Only overwhelming silence reigned in the room. Everybody fixed eyes on me with a stern look, saying nothing.
“You shall do it if you are so anxious to. But I am still quite uneasy about you.” Father broke the taciturnity after a spell and mother was looking toward me wearing a worried look.
“Thank you, dad. I’ll do it well.” It was the only reply I could say. In the family council on a night early in 2006, I got consent to study industrial design abroad.

After receiving master degree in chemical engineering, I worked for global companies in their research labs. Developing various new materials like high performance plastics and metals was my job. Special materials and products invented for solar panels, nuclear power plants, flat panel displays and military are still in use worldwide besides the flame retardant materials being supplied in subways in New Zealand, Canada and commuter rail in Boston. However the new technology had limitations in applications despite of excellent features and innovative functions. Popularization or propagation of the inventions was rather impudent because even the existence of them was known to very few professionals only. How can I utilize the novelties to spread the benefits for more people? It was the threshold of my journey.

Smoke alarm, satellite broadcasting, water purifier, UV-blocking sunglasses, underwire brassiere, ear thermometer and air-cushioned shoes - You are probably using some of them and can you put your finger on any commonness from the items? All of the devices are scions of the technology NASA created for the space developing projects. [1] What was the motive power moving the complex and costly science in the moon to the earth for our daily life? It was design. The marriage of design and technology has presented us convenience and pleasure, improved humankind’s quality of life and changed the world dramatically.

Study of industrial design in RISD has inspired me to combine my engineering background and design knowledge organically. Interdisciplinary culture and liberal atmosphere in the campus encouraged diverse experiments and audacious challenges. The unique curriculum also stimulated learning manipulation technique from the traditional apprentice courses as well as cultivating systematic thinking ability. The experiences were fresh spurs to me once accustomed to memorizing scientific facts without any critical process.

Especially the history class in this semester has offered very beneficial opportunities for understanding the stream of design evolution from the timelines and discovering hidden potentials from the latest trends. The weekly writing enabled me to set up goals and plans with clear gestalts by organizing and representing my ideas. It was a precious training process which accelerated my internal growth and progress in the design path.

Sir Isaac Newton said, “I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.” As a designer, I am a mere toddler just finding my feet. However I believe that making endeavors and attempts to step toward the ocean of industrial design will move me closer to the truth, though the journey would never be serene and simple. Let’s walk now!

* Click on picture to enlarge it.

1. This Is Your Paper Shredder

Manifesto
What kind of paper shredder do you use? How many paper shredders have you seen?
Most of them look alike. No specialty, no difference and no fun, of course.
It’s time to design a novel, special, precious, funny, proud and smart shredder.
Do you think you are too great to be mediocre? Then you deserve to use it.
What you use says who you are.

How to Boast
Hang it on the wall in your office and take a close look at it. Keep majestic posture.
Flat panel screen displays latest news and economic indices. Think globally.
You may put your own pictures or messages like articles about your success in it.

You have a visitor and let them see the new gadget, but not verbally. Nobody can notice that it’s a paper shredder.
Walk close to it and put your document in the slot at the top. Behave naturally.
Don’t put more than 10 sheets. It’s your secretary’s job, not yours.
Message panel on the top greets you saying “Hello! Keep off fingers.”
It starts working and the front screen shows mosaic implying its shredding performance.
Don’t worry about jam. It is fully automatic. Enjoy the visitors’ envious glances.
Forget emptying the bin. You hired maids for the chores.
She puts a bucket aside then touches the button on the top. That’s it.
It dumps sidewise and closes when it’s done.

How is it? Isn’t it so cool?

2. Tape Dispenser

During my years in the industry, one of my inventions was a tape dispenser designed for workers in a solar panel factory. The overall process was very similar to glazing. Once a glass-covered solar panel was prepared, workers enclosed its girth with aluminum frames for the sake of protection and installation.

Double-sided tape was sandwiched manually between the panel and the frames. Taping 176 inches of the girth on the thin border, relying only on extreme concentration and care, looked very painful and inefficient.

To help them, the dispenser was equipped with many features like gradually grooved rollers and lightweight materials for easy taping.

The dispenser enabled 40x faster taping speed and higher accuracy even with one hand. It became very popular and now most solar panel makers in Korea are using the dispenser.

3. Safe Subway

A half decade ago, there was a subway catastrophe in Daegu, Korea caused by an insane incendiary. The desperate arsonist poured a gallon of kerosene in the car and threw burning matches to the floor. Just after he escaped from the chaos, electricity was cut off, sprinklers spouted out, toxic gases asphyxiated 340 people, and nothing left in the total blackness. The accident was an intense motivation for me to develop a super-high flame retardant material.

When heated, nanocomposites in the material release water and form rigid covers to extinguish fire effectively.

Now interior panels and cables made out of the materials is globally used. Feel the safety in subways and trains in US (MBTA Commuter Rail), Canada, New Zealand, Turkey and Korea.

Please refer my patents and papers for detailed technical information.

- US 7407995 / EU 1753819 / Japan 2008-500423 / China 1969012 / Korea 10-0622602
- J. Ok and K. Matyjaszewski, Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials, 16, 2, 129 (2006)
- J. Ok and M. Ahn, IUPAC Macro (2004)

The research was performed in Carnegie Mellon University with supports from National Science Foundation and Korea Research Foundation.

4. Way Out

Fire causes enormous loss of property and life. Since inhalation of toxic gases and suffocation leads to most victims, apparatus for efficient breathing is necessary to save people in emergency. Introducing exits and escape way is another requisite for the apparatus.

“Way Out” consists of fire alarm, beam light, exit indicator and flashlights holding masks to help people escape faster and more efficiently.

5. Thesis Project

It was early spring of the following year after finishing sophomore when I was trained in an army training camp for recruits. Since two-year military service has been mandatory for all Korean men, learning shooting, bayonet skill and taekwondo in troops replaced grappling with textbooks in library for the period.

The military is a very unique organization. The special group formed based on our basic necessity restricts the members’ freedom in time and space as well as forces clothes, actions, hairstyles and even thinking and speech from them. In addition to that, ideas and communication should be expressed in numerical values like quantity, deadline and efficiency and personal factors like idiosyncrasy or individuality were eliminated intentionally. The interesting fact was that I felt comfortable like a born soldier a few months later adapting myself to the suffocating environment.

However everything was changed when I came back to university as a junior after discharge from military service. As a counteraction against the extremely practical experience, I indulged in “inefficient” activities like volunteer service in national museum and unpaid research assistant in UNDP (United Nations Development Plan). It was just fresh and precious enough to compensate me for spending the time as a passive pragmatist.

Let’s think about history. Understanding users’ cravings and creating products satisfying them, industrial design has been flourishing from the seeds - separation of conception and manufacturing process - and the fertilizer - industrial revolution. Moreover, ID has maximized profits of both producers and consumers and propagated the benefit throughout the world, enabling mass production at astonishingly low cost. In consequence, we finally achieved abundance and opulence and Apple’s iPod might be one of the trophies. However, the mass production is Janus-faced: equalization and dehumanization. Have you counted the number of people wearing the white earphones you encountered a day?

It is obvious and even natural that our greed shifts to higher level when something gratified basic desire. Most of us may consider that heading for gallery is more elegant activity than crossing the threshold of restaurant. Design has developed into a means of fulfilling aesthetic desire and individuality as the society becomes affluent and the problems lessen. While Philippe Starck has created designs evincing unique identity based on the values of industrialization, recent remarkable designers display supercritical objects having obscure border with fine art.

Shiro Kuramata designed several pieces of furnitur for Memphis in 1980s. “How High the Moon” is a light and transparent chair made of nickel-plated expanded metal and sheet metal slotted and stretched into a lattice.

Maarten Baas’s “Smoke” furniture pieces are literally burned, after which they are preserved in a clear epoxy coating.

Thorunn Arnadottir’ “Clock” consits of lots of beads. Each bead represents five minutes with a red bead every hour, a gold bead for noon and a silver one for midnight.

The new movement shows a counteraction toward more personal and aesthetic factors, breaking with major elements of the overwhelmed industrialization era - uniformity, dehumanization and mass production. Designers in the wave focus on the investigation of possibility for communication and their preferences rather than on the approaches to users’ desires and problem solving. Genealogically they have inherited philosophical legacies from Humanists revolted against monistic ideology and also their notion is similar in context to the school of Philip Johnson, Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry. That could be a reason why their designs sometimes are categorized into the fine art.

It may sound paradoxical, but fine art and design have many points of similarity in terms of expression. As poets, novelists and copywriters use writing, the artists and designers utilize objects as language exhibiting their manifestoes and intentions to the world. Now the humanistic designers claim that it is the age of polycentrism at last.

One of my school days events impressed still on memory is wastepaper gathering. Once a month every student brought a bagful of newspaper, magazines or flyers. The monthly event was obligatory throughout the country so I groaned under the heavy load in my hands on the way to the school. However more books in the school library and new jungle gym in the playground, prepared by the periodic fundraising, erased the toil for the manual paper conveyance. Most of us probably have the experience of barter as a means of getting candies or soda, giving collected bottles or cans. Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet, anyway.

Roughly speaking, the shocking scene in the documentary “Manufactured Landscape” which Chinese rustics shatter electronic parts to pick out “something”, squatting in front of the techno-garbage mountain, is a slice of recycling. Since those printed circuit boards and semiconductors contain valuable elements like rhodium and palladium as well as gold and silver, the extracted precious metals would be reused in our high-tech gadgets and appliances through a series of complex process. [1][2]

Do you know your tatters are also recyclable, not as industrial rags but as fashionable windbreakers? Patagonia, founded by a rock climber and surfer Yvon Chouinard, made him a successful garments businessman, being popular for its outdoor sportswear. The company is renowned as not only stylish and pragmatic products but also eco-responsible policies so the founder got another title of an environmentalist. Patagonia began using 100% organic cotton in 1996 and launched “new” outerwear made out of recycled PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) in 2005 as “Common Threads Garment Recycling Program”. [3][4][5]

PET, being widely used for beverage bottles, is also a star player material in textile industry thanks to its intrinsic excellent processability and superior physical properties like strength and abrasion resistance. In the PET production, DMT (Dimethyl terephthalate) is synthesized as a precursor and researchers of Patagonia and Teijin, a leading Japanese textile company, found that adding a portion of recycled PET reduced the energy consumption and CO₂ release drastically.

As depicted below, the LCA (Life cycle assessment) analysis of the amounts of consumed energy and discharged carbon dioxide in the synthesis process of 62,000 tons of DMT per year was carried out to compare conventional method using virgin petrochemical monomers only to the new technology adopting recycled PET and the results show 84% (72,422 to 11,962 tons of energy) and 77% (4.183 to 0.978 tons of CO₂) of reductions were achieved, respectively. [6]

Adding to the marvelous progress, Patagonia recently kicked off collaborative research “season 2” with Toray, a famous Japanese chemical company, on the advanced synthesis process of Nylon, a traditional performance textile, using recycled materials. They assumed the new technology could suppress the amounts of the two items up to 70%, compared to current method. [7]

Resources given to us are quite limited and accessible energy is metamorphosed into unavailable forms constantly, quoting the second law of thermodynamics. Faced with the stringent reality, the world expects designers to do “something”. Let’s start doing. Life is short.

Have you seen the movie ‘Cast Away’? Then let’s call you Chuck Norland, that is, Tom Hanks. If you have already forgotten the synopsis of the eight-year-old movie or never even heard of the name yet, suppose you are Robinson Crusoe. Here are very open-ended questions.

Q1. You were just washed ashore on a desert island with the remains of a wreck, swept away by the waves. What is the most essential thing for your survival?

Q2. A week in the island has passed. Now what are you going to do? 

Time’s up. Get back to the real world with your answer sheet.

A designer is not a monk. We are beings pursuing communication for relations and participation rather than meditation for introspection and spiritual awakening. Therefore creating meaningful things is our duty for the purpose, whomever they are made for: sovereigns, billionaires or refugees. However we may not be able to rub them the right way with our creatures or even do them the wrong way; or go so far as to knock up a nuisance though we are serious about the vocational consciousness.

If there is no bread, the noblesse probably has brioche or pâté instead but the proletariat does not have any substitutes. It is a vital matter for them. So what should we consider and practice for preparing sincere and effective relief, especially using our design? How can we bake tasty bread for the people in extreme difficulty?

Emotional Acceptability

The OLPC (One Laptop per Child) Project, proposed and founded by Nicholas Negroponte, one of the most prominent professors in MIT, set the goal at designing and supplying low-cost personal notebook computers for the kids in developing countries through their governments, to break down the barriers of information, economics, class, geography, race and language in the world eventually. Creating a global sensation and raising stupendous supports, the project has released that the sales of the XO laptop are still far behind the expectation. To make matters worse, some core founders have resigned from the foundation and Negroponte recently showed his intent to step down.

There could be various reasons for the disappointing situations but the indication that adoption of unequal (means shrunken) performance to “our” ordinary laptops, excessively distinctive (stigmatic) design from “ours” and Linux-based (incompatible to “ours”) software, as a strategy to meet $100 of the target price, brought about the lamentable records has obtained a general agreement. Disbursing the national budget to purchase the products “discriminatively made for underdeveloped countries only” in bulk might be a humiliating and dishonorable self-wrong from the viewpoint of the “beneficiary” governments. Spreading the emotional repulsions totally unexpected in the design process to many countries, pledged purchases have been shelved or annulled. The future of the good-will based project is still uncertain though the foundation announced the inclusion of Microsoft’s Windows XP as a secondary operating system recently even taking back the manifesto. 

The launch of the XO laptop and its trajectory testify that consideration for beneficiary’s emotional aspects and further chain reactions should be concomitant with a noble aim and ample backings for a successful relief design project.

Cradle-to-Grave

The survival rate of premature babies in advanced countries is pretty high benefited by medical technology, while over 3 million normal infants die within a month of birth in some other parts of the earth. Even adults living in the area with limited medical service are under the double torture – Being exposed to much more dangers of disease and disorder, much less opportunities of medical checkup and treatment are given to them. It is noteworthy that a number of philanthropic doctors have participated in the campaigns sending new or used medical equipments to developing countries to help the people.

However the reality is more cruel than expected; many of the hearty gifts are not being utilized in large numbers of hospitals in those countries due to unreliable power situation and lack of spare parts. Such amphibious – trivial in somewhere and insurmountable in elsewhere – obstacles made the equipments castoffs or bulky trash. Even a great design prevalent in affluent regions can be confronted with horrifying censures like a sequel to Nestlé’s free milk, if its usability deteriorates in relatively scanty ones. Guess how long your lovely iPod may warble to delight and cheer you in the Grand Canyon hiking.

To keep away from the latent dangers, concepts of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and local sustainability with geographic indigenity can be valuable tools for our design approach. Ceramic water filters and low-cost incubators are good examples showing the designers’ insights into the whole process from the initiation to the termination. Seriously it is much more beneficial to the suffering people to provide consistent and coherent design objects rather than ones like soft drinks popping transitory refreshment.

Self-Help

67 Dollars of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita, 51 years of average life expectancy, 50/1000 of infant mortality rate, the highest rate of inflation in the world and the rigors under colonial rule and a long internal war. Do you picture any African country? Until the early 1960s, Korea was one of the poorest nations in the world. Last year its GDP was ranked 13th in the world, though not joined the columns of advanced countries yet.

Reconstruction and rehabilitation were supported mainly by foreign aids and even provision of food and clothing depended crucially on charities of the West in the postwar era. They were great boons for the country. However what to be observed carefully is a considerable amount of the support was expended on preposterous projects like expanding educational facilities, specifying standard house design, building steelworks and highways and training technicians. The provocative decisions aroused strong public dissension but the value of those social design policies was demonstrated a few decades later.

When we help people improve living environment and quality of life through design projects, it is important to consider following respects; encouraging them to participate in the process and planting the seeds of self-development to make them future helpers eventually. The idea is coincident with the principle of self-determination advocated by President Woodrow Wilson and it also offers a theoretical basis to decrease the number of people suffering absolute poverty.

Again, in the movie, Chuck endeavored to get his daily bread, and moreover, he groped for escape utilizing materials and tools found in the island and his wits, not to spend the rest of life as an islander. And he did it!

There are legions of people awaiting instant help and suddenly we could be some of them – Remember Hurricane Katrina. As designers destined to communicate, we are able to assist them. However, our prescription should not be an anodyne deadening symptoms temporarily but a cure stamping out the root of the disease, recuperating the patient and stimulating self-healing power. Of course it is no simple matter. It is a narrow gate accompanied by our exertion, deliberation and sacrifice.

As Peter realized, fishers of fish solve a meal while fishers of men change the world. What shall we catch?

If you are an incumbent designer, or at least interested in design, you may have heard of the assertion that design is a language. Reiterated too much, the proposition is no more than platitude, though Bang & Olufsen proclaimed it one of their philosophical commandments. Since a language is a means of mutual communication based on the consensus of the users, design might adopt the tacit agreement as its prerequisite, if the truth of the hackneyed sentence is acknowledged. In this case, any designed objects would be assigned to the vehicle for the communication, responding to the necessities and desires.

Either deliberately or not, many designers claim to be more intellectual, superior and more advanced beings than the general public, as a group of potential users. Taking the phenomenon which the terms like “designers’ social responsibility” or “design for better world” are widely being used into account, their self-consciousness could be socially acceptable. It is not deniable that such cocksure attitude acted as motivations to delight people, educate society and change the world. However, too much water drowns the miller. Like a mom standing by her sick daughter and explaining to a pediatrician symptoms like “She has a sore throat and a runny nose.” instead of the kid, we have seen too many designers who styled themselves omniscience and omnipotence conservators. There are a considerable number of designers daring to perform experiments to the users, especially to women, regarding them as an inferior species like guinea pig.

Once they take the initiative in trend, there is no more design as a language. Having lost the fundamental function for reciprocal communication, design is degenerated into a one-way and violent tool like orders spit out by a commander with a menacing look.

It is not absolutely necessary to mention the chastity belt, appeared in a Konrad Kyeser’s treatise “Bellifortis”, to show a historic evidence. The neck rings, elongating Padaung tribe women’s necks, were originally created and fettered to gratify men’s lust and aesthetic pleasure. It is a sad irony that the rings are now the major source of their income. The sequentially taken x-rays show how the oppressive convention brings about an irreversible deformity to a woman’s skeletal structure.

Thanks to the Dow Corning’s material technology, Pamela Anderson became an irresistible in the Baywatch and even in the movie Borat recently. The silicone bag which was tremendously popular for mammary prosthesis once looked like a perfect solution for the women craving for something to satisfy the aesthetic criterion set by men one-sidedly. After the critical harm caused by pleural effusion of the chemical was revealed, brine bag is now being inserted as a substituent.

After the ancient matrilineal society was over, as hunting and battles became crucial for survival, the leadership in the family and the society was transferred to man. In spite of considerable ameliorations owing to restless efforts the male sex still has much more power in most fields in our society. The prevalent inequalities created an ideal paragon of woman - meek, obedient and beautiful - and it was widespread and succeeded as a tradition by education in home and society. Though there were brave female pioneers, the fact that more than 40,000 women were burned at the stake as “witches” during the period between 15th and 18th century testifies that the progressive attempts were considered as revolts against the androcentric system. The despotic atmosphere restricted even woman’s freedom of expression so that the discriminative view of woman prevailed. It is obvious that objects devised by hegemonic designers played an important part to turn the viewpoint into social conventions and then solidify them.

The early vibrators were enthusiastically marketed even a few decades before the astonishing Kinsey Reports. Did the designers perform thorough research and enough surveys about the users? Did they really understand and sympathize with women? Without sufficient anthropometric and podiatric studies on women pedes, how did the designers decide to promote the stiletto heel without hesitation? Did women realize the elevation in their social status on the raised heels?

Design, regardless of its temporary popularity, without mutual communication between the designer and the users, is merely a new edition of the Procrustean bed.

People say that I have a very strange background and it may be true. Chemical engineering was my major for six years in undergraduate and graduate and then I worked in the field for six more years. Design ideology meant nothing to me until I came to RISD. However I have become familiar with design history at in this school, especially mainly thanks to this course. After class discussions and self-study, recently I realized that I was once a bone-deep functionalist and it was astonishing.

During my years in the industry, one of my inventions was a tape dispenser designed for workers in a solar panel factory. The overall process was very similar to glazing. Once a glass-covered solar panel was prepared, workers enclosed its girth with aluminum frames for the sake of protection and installation. Double-sided tape was sandwiched manually between the panel and the frames. Taping 176 inches of the girth on the thin border, relying only on extreme concentration and care, looked very painful and inefficient. To help them, the dispenser was equipped with many features like gradually grooved rollers and lightweight materials for easy taping. As all of the features were focused solely on efficiency and finality, the dispenser did not have any “nonfunctional” parts, though it became very popular with most companies in the industry later.

Following my surprising self-discovery, it seemed natural to pose the following questions: Why had I unconsciously become a functionalist without having any design education or instruction? How has this course influenced or changed my design? In addition, the classes prompted me to ask more questions: What led us to be absorbed in functionalism? What are the elements of functionalism? I am going to deal with these topics in this essay.

Scene 1

One day in my childhood, I visited a museum with my mom. Looking at the old artifacts was a very amazing experience. Among the archeologically precious objects, Paleolithic earthenware grabbed me. Some relatively “new” vessels were decorated with zigzag grooves while old ones were unstriated.

Scene 2

Nobody is able to deny that the internet has revolutionized our lives. Nowadays numerous websites boast of eye-popping graphics and jaw-dropping technologies. However, revisiting their shabby past archived on a sneaky website would might be comparable to voyeurism or a peep at celebrities’ school days pictures.

The holy bible says, “Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be (Job 8:7).” Once a technology is born, it attracts people’s attentions and gets in them. Since there are not enough references and precedents, utilization of the technology is limited and simple in the early stage. The design and products based on the technology are humble and coarse. As it gets popular, accumulated researches and experiments begin to expedite the process, and the results flourish. Thanks to the progress, development of commodities adopts the technology seriously to be in full swing. However, the law of diminishing marginal utility comes next making the advances less effective. Affected by the inevitable rule, the mature technology becomes prevalent and somewhat stale so new products attempt to attract people by different means – variations of “appearances”.

In human history, everything created by humans has been evolved by humans. Especially in the late 19th and early 20th century, revolutionary inventions and innovations have been created to make the period the industrialization era. The machine civilization changed our way of thinking as well as way of living. Slow, old and manual tools were kicked out from factories, farms and even homes. Instead, fast, new and automated machines were placed. New technologies were fascinating enough to attract popular attention. Scientists, scholars, designers and engineers all rushed into the boom.

It is not going too far to say that the last 100 years were dedicated to functionalism. It has dominated not only designers and architects but also virtually everybody in our society. Rebelling at fogeyish handicraft manufacturing and tedious manipulations, early machines were adopted aggressively into industry for mass production. Since the new tide was unprecedented, radical and even overwhelming, the change was prompt and complete, though the level of the technology was still basic. Words like efficiency, economy and yield were regarded as new social standards toward a perfect future. It is no wonder that the functionalism was born under the atmosphere, or rather, the times knocked it up as an appropriate ideology. Here I assert that functionalism was the zeitgeist which was formed from the molds of incipient technology and circumstantial environments. It should be pertinent that this background gave functionalism validity, presenting it as a perfect answer for those who were seeking a new way of thinking.

As an advocate of the ideology, Louis Sullivan said, “Form follows function.” In fact, before the appearance of machinery, terms such as “functions” or “forms” were almost meaningless because most of the products and tools were manufactured under the traditional apprentice system allowing a few variants within limited extent. Moreover, there was no leeway allowed to consider ornamental elements seriously in his times. That is, understanding new technologies and introducing them into production were laborious enough. Frankly speaking, I am sure that it was too early to investigate about aesthetic factors in design, utilizing the technologies. It can be a great justification for the pragmatic movements which were the mainstream in the period. Bauhaus and its renowned designers are representative models. The two examples regarding the Stone Age relics and web design shown above give another proof of the statement.

It was also interesting that functionalism enjoyed longevity even after the technology got mature and I avouch that it was caused by World Wars. The aftermath of the wars continued until the midst of 20th century, disturbing improvements in the quality of life and constraining the freedom of thinking, even in advanced countries. Trauma of the cruel warfare and lessons from the indigence forced the designers to shut themselves in a room named simplicity and restraint. Again, functionalism was a circumstantial trend which occurred under the peculiar environment.

Since functionalism had a situational background, it should be temporary. It means that we need to find or make a new and opportune way of thinking. Recently, there have been many attempts to overcome the ideology which suppressed various “forms”. In architecture, Peter Eisenman’s manifesto “I don’t do function.” and Frank Gehry’s design are a part of the movement. The new trend might be interpreted as diminishment in marginal utility of technology. Gushing diverse desire induced the designers to pursue personalization and customization in industrial design. Utensils from Alessi can be good examples for the proposition. The designers left the essential function of a product unchanged; they focused on the visual and psychological factors such as joy, humor and uniqueness as their own language to the users instead. That is a transition of criteria from physical values to metaphysical ones.

The chairs discussed in the classes are also representative of the trend. Most of the sensational seating tools were not created by intensive research on human postures or new finding in anthropometry. They were generated by designers’ passion and volition toward nonverbal communication through various shapes and colors. The diversity shows that our current position on the coordinates is certainly beyond the functionalism.

Based on the ideas I have developed so far, I analyzed myself. When I designed the tape dispenser, time and resources for the design were extremely deficient but it was reality. All of my concerns were how to make “good” products to help the workers. Since there were no previous examples or similar products, I started with measuring the workers’ individual hand sizes and arm forces. And then experiments were repeated to test usability and performance using lots of wheels and other materials for two weeks. Fortunately I got an inspiration from in-line skates crossing the roads so fast and it was a motif for the “form.” But that was all. I could not devote any more attention to make it more attractive and sleeker. Under the limited condition, I focused on the rather fundamental aspects of the object such as smoother rollers and softer grip. Consequently, the final product was quite practical and I realized that I stepped onto the path of functionalism.

From what I learned at RISD, I understood the importance of design practice to extend diversity and tried to make experiments released from intrinsic functionalism. Last semester, as a part of a course, I redesigned a paper shredder which was very normal and pragmatic. It had perfect features and shape for office use. Though there were many possibilities, I eliminated functional improvements because related technologies are already saturated. Instead, intensifying the mutual communication between the user and the object through aesthetic novelty was set as my goal. Saying goodbye to something once familiar was awkward and even scary a little like getting into a zero-gravity zone. However, the procedure seeing an object from significantly different angles and constituting a new one through a totally fresh method was an amazing experience. As a result, a paper shredder consisted of uncommon design and communicative interface was created and finally I unleashed myself from the functionalism.

Now we are passing the turning point in history – the end of functionalism. Though it once absorbed people’s attention and acted as an absolute rule for design, it was a circumstantial trend. I think it is worthwhile to anticipate what could come next. After technological progress has reached the utmost point, it is now the time for multiform changes in design and that is a challenging opportunity for us.

In this semester, I am taking 18 credits and Metal II is one of the classes. The experience making beautiful objects out of the rigid material gives me joy of manipulation and it lasts a whole day on Fridays. The last workday of every week, after the class is over, I stand by the doors, almost exhausted, waiting the elevator seemingly never comes.

There are two large-sized frames on the wall, showing numbers of thumbnails of amazing or sensational chairs in design history. They are very fascinating and beautiful. The uncommon seating objects get my attention and stimulate a creative instinct lurking inside of my ego. But frankly speaking, anything I can sit on may be more earnest, regareldss of its shape, at least for me who drags tired legs to the slow elevator.

Design for seating objects, as a part of furniture design, is anemoscope showing changes and new directions in styles and ideologies. Especially chairs in 20th century reflect the important changes caused by advance of technology and manufacturing, and preferences and ardent desire of the times. Many of the famous chair designers, having another business card as architects, were enthusiastic about daring unprecedented experiments to investigate way of expression through the adoptions of state-of-the-art morphology and materials. The following five representative seating pieces deal with Functionalism, Minimalism, Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Deco, Modernism and Postmodernism.

1859

No. 14 Chair

Michael Thonet’s No. 14 Chair was based on the techniques which were prevalent among beer barrel and boat makers to bend beechwood strips with less labor. Thin wood pieces were clamped and dried in a tin frame for extreme bending. After making the first layered wooden chair in 1836, Michael acquired the patent about bentwood process. Influenced by the exhibition in London Expo in 1851, the No. 14 chair was devised mainly focused on export. Consisted of four simple parts, the chair enabled compact packing to occupy less space in the cargo boat and easy assembly even at home. The “do-it-yourself” concept has something in common with IKEA’s way but the No. 14 Chair was one of the rare furniture endorsed by Le Corbusier who had sought for perfect items coincident with his notion (see third chair below). The chair with low price backed by mass-production was recognized by modernism designers in the 20th century.

1918

Red & Blue Armchair

The intensity of visual shock hit by Gerrit Rietveld’s Red and Blue Armchair can be referred by a number of books dealing with design history in 20th century. Gerrit, who had a strong background in traditional arts and crafts under his father, was a linchpin of De Stijl, which was the most powerful and aggregate group advocating modernization movement in the era so the armchair was a symbol of modernization. The participation in De Stijl had changed his design drastically so that new elements such as vivid colors, basic geometric shapes, abstract forms were streamed into his design process of the chair. Especially Piet Mondrian’s paintings were eloquent of those constituents and Gerrit materialized the inspiration into the chair, as a 3-d object of the abstract art piece.

1928

Fauteuil, Modèle Petit Confort

Le Corbusier, who promoted the architecture idology proclaiming “space of continuum flowing through without clogging in”, designed a series of furniture by himself to fit it in his structures. The chairs as “machine for seating” became a part of the houses as “machine for dwelling”, like sculptures, to help synergetically create the “flowing space.” The Fauteuil, Modèle Petit Confort was a “seating equipment” designed to be an element of his architecture to integrate the house into a whole being. The original models had diversity in size cushioned with feathers in and sustained by soared metal legs.

1932

Stacking Stool “L” Leg

The transcendental design of the Stacking Stool rises above the period and time. The aesthetic consciouness of architecture which Alvar Aalto had originally was totally succeeded to his furniture design. The plywood chair was once recognized as a sculpture for the interior. The intrinsic modernity has inspired many designers and even furniture giants such as IKEA. The natural materials and simple curves reflect his interests in organic forms, humanism and humanitarian aesthetics. The core ideologies - functionalism and modernism - implied in the chair were incarnated as the commercial products from Artek and their splendid results proved that the public had sufficient acceptability to the ideas .

1965

4867 Chair

The premature death highlighted the reputation for Cesare Columbo’s innovative and creative work. Upon the architectural and art education, he adopted new technology and materials into his design vigorously and the 4867 chair was at the zenith. It was the first plastic chair manufactured by injection molding process so that it had a unified seating and backing part unlike conventional chairs with separated ones. Cesare patented it and created fresh and various forms made of plastic which was the up-to-date material in the period. Now plastic chairs are spread all over the world and they are nothing more than cheap and light seating objects. However all of them have some essence of the 4867 chair which became a sensational precursor.

Sitting on an object is expression of human instinct toward more comfortable posture. However, the simple device gets embodied and symbolized when it is assigned as a mediacy. Under the uncommon situations, the objects for the basic relaxation were entangled in social upheaval or salient events. Historically the tools provoked and represented privilege, safety, equality and even death.

1890

Electric Chair for Electrocution

An American dentist Alfred P. Southwick developed the idea of electric execution. The first person who was executed via the electric chair was William Kemmler in New York’s Auburn Prison in 1890. Thanks to the discovery and supply of electricity, the electrocution was adopted by many eastern states and soon became the prevalent method of execution in the U.S., replacing hanging. It remained so until the mid-1980s, when lethal injection became widely accepted as an easier and more humane method for conducting judicial executions.

1932

Wooden Wheelchair in 1930’s

The first clear proof of a wheelchair is from a Chinese image engraved in 525. In 1595, an artist drew a sketch of the Philip II of Spain, seated in a chair which had small wheels mounted at the end of each leg. In 1932, a Los Angeles engineer named Harry Jennings designed and built a folding wheelchair for his friend, Herbert Everest. The two men immediately saw the potential for this invention and established a company to mass-produce the new portable chairs.

1955

Rosa Parks and The Bus

In 1955, a seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a bus in downtown Montgomery. When the white bus driver asked the black people who were sitting in the segregated part to move to accommodate more whites, everyone complied except for Parks. Minutes later she was arrested and sent to a Montgomery jail. After the arrest of Parks, black community decided a boycott of the bus system and it resulted in the U.S. civil rights movement.

1963

Bertil Aldman and His Child Safety Seat

The impetus for modern child safety in the car was born in Sweden 1963. The first rear-facing child safety seat was designed by Bertil Aldman of Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. He believed that this principle could be applied to protect a child in the event of a head-on collision. A Swedish automaker Volvo accepted Professor Aldman’s notion, later advertising that ‘children are best protected during the first three years of life’ by facing rearward in the car seat.

1976

The Concorde and Its Seats

The Concorde, which had operated service from 1976 to 2003, was the original premium class airline. It was more expensive and much faster than conventional aircraft so the first supersonic aircraft didn’t make economic sense for commercial airlines to buy. The seats were set in 2×2 configuration and there was little room for carry-on luggage as well. Ticket prices ensured exclusivity to business people and the super rich.

A half decade ago, there was a subway catastrophe in Daegu, Korea caused by an insane incendiary. The desperate arsonist poured a gallon of kerosene in the car and threw burning matches to the floor. Just after he escaped from the chaos, electricity was cut off, sprinklers spouted out, toxic gases asphyxiated 340 people, and nothing left in the total blackness.

Now there are gas masks, oxygen tanks and lots of flashlights at every corner of subway stations. However, getting instruction costed the society enormous sacrifices and losses.

Darkness arouses instinctive horror in us so our ancient ancestors utilized fire to expel the black atmosphere from their surroundings and the tradition from time immemorial is still here as a form of bonfire. By the way, it was necessary to carry the fire with them because humankind is an animal spicies. Necessity is the mother of invention; The desire enabled the creation of portable lighting.

However, fire’s intrinsic amphibious character did not change at all. Where there is light, there is heat. It did not allow humankind to separate light from heat until the invention of electric bulbs.

In this post, I focused on the evolution of portable lighting in terms of design, materials, light sources and values which the lighting objects delivered to the users. The background which urged the inventions was also elucidated for thorough research.

BC 30

Red pottery oil lamp, Herodian period

An oil lamp is a simple vessel used to produce light continuously for a period of time from a fuel source. The use of oil lamps extends from prehistory to even the present day. Various materials like pottery, metal and stone have been used to make the oil lamps and a typical oil lamp consists of pouring hole, wick hole and discus. In the Bible, lamps appear as “lighting” the way for the righteous, the wise, and for love.

AD 350

Reading under fireflies in silk bag, China

Pursuit of self-powered lighting has a long history. A poor Chinese scholar collected fireflies and put them in a silk bag to get light for reading. He used the bag for study even at a cemetery to pass a civil service exam. Recently there is another approach for the spontaneous lighting using photoluminescent or radioactive materials. One of the examples is sealed gaseous tritium now being used for permanently illuminating key chains or watch faces.

1800

Kerosene/Candle Lanterns, US

In the aspect of design of the lamps, there have been made little changes for 2,000 years. The fuel for the lamps were diverse regionally. Olive oil continued in wide use in countries around the Mediterranean Sea while whale oil and paraffin candles were more popular in Europe and US. Vegetable oils extracted from rapeseed or flaxseed were used in limited areas with abundant crops. Oil lamps today are popular for mood lighting.

1903

Patented first Eveready flashlight, US

The invention of electricity revolutionized lighting. Although a flashlight is a relatively simple device, its invention did not occur until the late 19th century because it depended upon the earlier invention of the electric battery and electric light. Conrad Hubert, who founded Ever-ready Battery Company later, received a US patent in 1903 for a flashlight with an on/off switch in a cylindrical casing holding lamp and batteries in. The original cylindrical design and its basic structure are still prevalent among most flashlights.

2007

Gatlight Titanium LED light, US

High end flashlights, equipped with super long-lasting batteries, adjustable brightness knobs, special materials such as titanum or silver and waterproof ratings, are very advanced and bright. With significantly unique designs using cylindrical frames for Gatlight flashlights, Lumencraft became one of the most renowned manufacturers creating designs that cater more toward users seeking for super-rare items adequate for their elegant tasts in technology and aesthetic.