Guillaume Delvigne, Chapeaux Pour Vases Photo: Ilvio Gallo 2004
Every year in April, the fashionably grey city of Milan undergoes a dramatic change. Italy’s industrial mecca temporarily shifts from a heads-down working metropolis into a visual soapbox for product and furniture design, The Salone di Mobile. As Northern Italy has the highest concentration of independent furniture manufactures in the world it is an appropriate location for such an event. International companies and independent designers come to exhibit their latest pieces. This event is located at the Fiera di Milano, designed by the architect Mario Bellini, who is also responsible for the most recent renovations at The National Gallery of Victoria. While The Salone is promoted as a selection of the worlds most innovative furnishings and objects, much of the furniture fair is resolutely main stream and aimed at the mass market. The work at the Fiera is often over polished, over-halogenated and overly influenced by previous iconic designs.
Coinciding with the furniture fair, smaller, less hyped up exhibitions are sprinkled around Milan. These satellite events take place in showrooms, parks, warehouses and public spaces; they inject life to the commercialised event.
In Dust We Trust, 2004 Photo: Ionna Vautrin
One of these such exhibitions was In Dust We Trust. From the premise ‘freedom from industrial or production constraints with regards to form’, came a curated exhibition in which 20 globally based designers made an object from rapid prototyping. Quietly tucked away in a ramshackle warehouse several stone throws and a tram ride from the main show, In Dust We Trust had humble surroundings. On first impression the space looked like a solo ceramic exhibition. A dimmed room housed a long thin table covered in floor length red felt. This was surrounded by a gentle white curtain of thread. Silhouettes of glowing low lying objects sat like a banquet spread over the table. Peeking through the curtain revealed incredibly detailed vessels, their shadows revealing the fine detail and precision of the objects. Identical in sandy material and porous texture; the pieces sat as if old friends dining together.
From lighting to jewellery to piggy banks, the exhibition encompassed a range of solutions for the dusty polymer composite. Adelaide based designer, Jim Hannon-Tan played with the idea of global design in his Antarctica dish. He asked the viewer to ‘imagine planet earth as a 1 metre globe, then subtract all of the continents and oceans except for the one at the bottom. You are left with Antarctica, as a dish, at scale 1:12,756,320’. Antarctica’s circumference and natural curve lent itself to the resulting display platter. To accommodate obsessive flower arrangers, Giullaume Devigne devised a series of vase accessories which allowed freedom and movement for our multi-petalled friends. Wil Carey embraced the evening ritual of reading in bed with his Reading Lamp. An integrated book shelf allowed the user to activate the light by picking up a book; then when the reader is ready to sleep, returning the book to the shelf shuts off the light. Some designs were purposely unsuitable, Giordano Redaelli’s ‘once only packaging’ [retailing at 160 Euros] enclosed a flower like shell around small jewellery. The purchaser breaks the flower’s leaves unearths the object inside. Empty wine bottles were adapted into one-flower-vases through the inventive use of Cristiana Giopato’s Hula hoops. Centrally holed round disks were stacked over a bottle, transforming glass recycling into organic home wares.
The use of rapid prototyping within design is not an usual concept. However, this process is normally used by industrial designers for 1:1 scale modelling to test the size and shape of a product. Traditionally the industrial designer fabricated a model of the object from paper, wood or foam. Recently this time-consuming process has been superceded by rapid prototyping. With this method the designer is relieved from the laborious process of scaling, sanding and finishing a model. By using software drawing programs such as Solid Works, Rhino, CAD or Pro Engineer, the shape can be actualized without the designer physically making the object. This process works using a digital arm to build the form from the data file using a laser and photosensitive resins. The result is a replica of the computer generated design, but with a uniform colour and connected parts. There are a variety of different polymers and powders suitable for rapid prototyping, one of the most popular combinations gives an opaque sandy claylike finish. Rapid prototyped objects do not have the strength and aesthetic qualities normally associated with a mass manufactured product.
The Milanese rapid prototyping company, One-Off, decided to embrace these ‘unappealing aesthetics’ and called for designers to work on a series of one-off objects which would reveal the beauty in the dusty off-white prototyping material. They
curated an exhibition utilizing this process, attempting to shift the identity of a rapid-prototyped object as ‘the practice’ to instead, ‘the finished’. One-Off shared their concept with a local industrial design firm who they had previously worked with, George J. Sowden. This company then corresponded with other designers around the world to attract interest in the project. The selected designers came from a variety of backgrounds. Ranging from shoe design to architecture to interaction design, the common factor for all was their role as a creative link between design and manufacturing.
One of the contributors, Dunja Weber, revealed in an interview that the majority of product design decisions for the European market are based on budget and sales potential rather than innovation. Industrial designers are often forced to make compromises within the design of objects due to high production numbers and marketing limitations. ‘Being the creatives’ sometimes translates to ‘being the compromisers’. Safe and stagnant designs are implemented by companies financially dependant on ranges which sell.
As a reaction to this situation, the designers involved were enthusiastic for the opportunity to design objects independent of numbers. This collaboration combined the investigation of a new material with the freedom from contemporary industrial design constraints.
The catalogue for the show was compiled in a newspaper style format, reminiscent of an activist street publication. On the cover a black and white photo captured the designers holding handmade signs in a mock protest. The posters read ‘In Dust We Trust’ and ‘Liberte D’Expression’. This method of choice linked sentiments from the designers’ anti-industrial cause with historical political rebellion.
Synergizing craft and industrial design, the designers played with a new material, but with a computer drawing program; tested the boundaries of the material, but with engineering software; sketched design and form possibilities, but with a rendering program. Many designers did not see their finished work until they flew in for the opening. This removal from the physicality of the making was evident in the exhibition. All of the works were indeed ‘finished’. No samples of form development were present, these unnecessaries surely stored on an undisclosed hard drive on an undisclosed continent. Only the files for the final exhibition achieved the recognition of physical actualisation. What about the altered sketches, the samples, the tests? Are designing, making and problem solving less valid when realised in a digital form? In comparison with the conceptual themes from the Salone di Mobile, [aesthetic and budget based] involvement in this discourse is a luxury.
The attendees of the Salone di Mobile should stand content with In Dust We Trust, it existed solely and strongly as an exhibition of designers hungry for a different approach.
Notes
Giuliani Corti , In Dust We Trust, 2004
Quoted from an interview with the author at Politecnico di Milano on 5 April, 2004
