Thoughts on New Materialism
On May 14th, we were invited to be part of a new design lecture series called People In Places to speak and write about our design approach in response to the concept of intimacy. As design explorers, we hold a core belief that objects are key to creating harmony between people, rituals, and space. Here, we’d like to share an in-depth essay expressing our contemplative process for and evolving process for discovering an object or material’s physical and implied meaning as a way to create deep meaningful relationships with the things we live with and make.
To the sand at Beach 92nd St, Rockaway Beach
As I sit with you, around you, and on you, I feel immersed and I begin to discover your complexities. You hug my feet, you sit on my lap clinging to me. You also run away, chased by the wind. You are indeed a collective in a phenomenon, but on close observation, each grain of you is incredibly unique - each with your own color, shape, size, and, I presume, origin story. But as a whole, you’re giant - quiet and tolerant, yet abrasive, persistent, and adaptive. You seem to be a constant but you vary greatly over time, the extent to which I really have no notion of beyond the last 30 days I’ve spent observing you as a newcomer to this beach. In that time, however, your character seems to shift greatly from day to day and I think that’s why I find you to be intriguing in a “more than meets the eye” kind of way. Perhaps you can tell me how far you’ve traveled and from how many places your tiny grains are from? Are there stories of the great boulders you used to be part of? And really, how many years ago was that? How did you get here? By way of some epic storm, a long arduous odyssey, or more mundane means?
It’s my presumption that your path from a grand boulder to a million granules leads to some conflicts from a self-identity standpoint that you have had to come to terms with. Just because you’ve broken into pieces doesn’t necessarily mean you’re any less of a thing - you’ve simply divided in a way that feels more like an expansive multiplication. As you’ve grown smaller, lighter, more nimble, and ephemeral, you’ve become sand. At some point in your adolescence, you could probably be defined as just a singular rock, but by and by you graduated to gravel, and then to the fine granules you are now - Sand! You’re no longer singular, but collectively an expansive ubiquitous noun and quite literally, by extension, the earth itself. Have you entertained the possibility that you and the grain next to you were once the same rock? Could it, therefore, stand to reason that you and I can somehow trace our roots back to some distant form of existence as simple matter? If so, it’s great to connect again after all of these years!
Did you know that some of you were once put in plastic bags and shipped to me in Paris where you temporarily led a completely different existence as an “immersive interior installation”? I pretended I knew you there, guessing what you wanted to do, could do, should do, and what you mean. My friends and I made up a narrative about your beauty, mystery, and lore. It was a naive, but referential moment musing of mirages we hadn’t seen and attempting to recreate them in a place where you normally wouldn’t belong.
At this moment here at the beach, I feel I am understanding you and appreciating you much more than before. Here and now I feel embedded in your natural habitat although I can’t be 100% sure if this is the case. What actually did plant you here to Rockaway Beach? Was it random acts of nature or a result of some planned human intention. Regardless you seem free to be yourself here and I admire that. You also seem appreciated by humans to some degree here - a rarity for us when it comes to natural resources.
I’m not sure you realize this, but you’re delivering memories to us by sensations we don’t normally feel. When it’s sunny and hot, we come to visit you and you get in our food and eyes and ears causing all sorts of mild discomfort yet your presence represents a freeness that exists only on the shore and further romanticized in our memories. In this way, you offer a special value proposition. We at once take you for granted and deeply appreciate you for being you.
I also wonder about your future. Are you destined to be dust? Or concrete? Or glass? Or a beach for eternity? Not many of us on the beach here think of you being the workhorse you are. Without you, where would we be sans concrete, glass providing structure, protection, and light? With humanity’s forceful hand, your millennia of transformation from boulder to grain is trivialized by heat and chemistry. Pulverized and molten, you take the forms we dictate. You’re an abiding servant - modern man’s best friend. What’s your feeling on this? You seem so easygoing, but how would you embrace becoming “useful” in human terms? I can only hope as I get to know you that we grow to appreciate you for who you are - in the many forms that you come.
Sincerely, Your secret admirer
New Materialism
At their basic level, the objects in our lives serve as mediators between thought and behavior in space and time. We believe that objects have the power to affect this behavior and this is why we feel the topic of human-object harmony is of critical concern in an effort to shape a better future.
Our relationship to objects is a lot like our relationship with each other. One cannot argue with the notion that surrounding yourself with positive, productive, inspiring, helpful, charismatic people will make you happier and more fulfilled. Because objects are an intermediary between these relationships, we believe we should look for much the same in a chair as we do in a friend.
As a foundation, a useful object inspires a strong relationship. Like a helpful friend with a pickup truck on moving day, a useful object will elicit appreciation, encourage productivity, and continuous use if it’s well-fitting of its function. It’s a very baseline thing, yet most people can attest to the fact that few daily objects actually do this. We’re in fact surrounded by many more “bad friend” objects than good ones. It’s important to ask ourselves why this is and how long we can continue unhappily in such toxic relationships.
Alongside utility sits the more complicated emotive side to an object place in the world. With this comes the potential of an object that taps into one’s psyche in a way that creates an emotional bond between people, the ritual, and the object. This puts an even greater responsibility and opportunity on the designer’s doorstep because anything and everything can provoke an emotional response. It just becomes a question of what type of emotion. The industry knows this and subverts it with consumption-driven objects sold on emotion rather than functionality. However, just because this is the case doesn’t mean there aren’t other models design can follow. We believe emotion and utility can align to inspire more enlightened relationships between thoughts and their behaviors - this is where a new type of materialism can emerge.
Projecting truth
Honest intentions and thoughtfulness from the creator is something that is irrevocably embedded in the character of an object. We believe that this is the calling of the designer to imbue an object with a positive thoughtful spirit that they would want more of in the world. From there, in small ways, that intention inspires similar feelings in others - slowly and surely we can take greater control over what we use and why.
Observation is an honest designer’s best tool. Before jumping to a solution, it’s imperative that we first cast aside our intentions to strip away preconceived perceptions and open ourselves to the realm of possibility. This not only means listening to what people have bought, say they want, or are willing to buy, it means absorbing your surroundings from a point of curiosity and wonderment. It means engaging all your senses. It means being patient, open, flexible. It means looking between gaps to a negative space between thinking and actions. In that space, there are often “solutions” or clues waiting to be revealed.
From there, it’s connecting dots. It’s a process of framing the truth that’s been felt through metaphor, allegory, and relationships to establish meaning. While this is the designer’s viewpoint and expression, because it comes from a place of honest observation outside of themselves, the work is a by-product of curiosity and empathy. It’s from this point that we believe a higher level of harmony can come into being. It’s a point at which the questions of how an object is made, what it's made out of, what it’s for, and why it’s great all have transparent answers. While the resolution is subjective, the statement is backed not by ego, but by a desire to share in a collective experience of ritual and balance.
Upon Observation
An object has two facets:
It’s physicality - The attributes about the object that gives it material presence. This materiality already has embedded truths about how it was made, what it used to be, and what it will become.
It’s implied meaning - this is everything we ascribe to the object’s function and value. Everything about meaning is implied by human perception - including the physical form it has been given by its builder.
We believe that in order for there to be honesty in an object, it’s physicality must be in harmony with it’s implied meaning. To facilitate this, a designer should seek to fully comprehend the material’s truth before ascribing its meaning. This requires a curious investigation.
Planes of potential
Any horizontal surface - the ground, a floor, a table, an empty shelf represents a state of silence or emptiness and horizontal plane upon which anything can be placed and any activity can play out.
Our studio’s focus is on the furniture scale. At this level, a horizontal surface represents a place to rest, work, socialize, observe. While the table and chair are objects of glory, they represent a relatively finite set of possible actions: A chair is to rest our bodies and a table is a host to our actions. Shelving, on the other hand, has a more amorphous meaning. On the surface, a shelf is a storage on which we archive things we aren’t presently using. In contrast to a closet or cabinet however, the role of open shelving is invariably emotive. An open shelf is a curio of objects that have enough value to display regardless of utility - this fact reveals a huge emotive facet to shelving’s identity in a domestic landscape.
An object on a shelf is a performer on a stage. When placed alone, it gives a monologue. On a shelf, we can interview it. There’s a reason something is put on a shelf for the first time that may be mundane, but in many cases, it’s not. There’s some connection to that object that warrants keeping it out in view on display. As designers we want to know why we feel compelled to archive the objects we do - so we listen to them when they’re on stage. As we become acquainted with each other, we realize we have common interests and values and we notice things that were previously perhaps subconscious: how an object’s smooth edges invite a touch, how sharp edges catch the light, and how a scratch or dent can be an endearing mark of character.
With several objects on a shelf, we become composers and matchmakers. Using what we’ve learned about the objects, we create stage sets, construct characters, plots - combinations of materials and forms in search of a meaningful storyline. We create these based on curiosity, imagination, and hypotheses alike. There is a directness and an informality to creating on a shelf. The shelf is a neutral ground not just formed by a horizontal plane, but a vertical backdrop that frames the objects in space and minds isolated from location, context, and function. On a shelf, a material is allowed to have its own signature voice and we are there to receive it. We listen, we feel, we mix, we turn, we modify, we have a dialog.
This dialog gives way to become new things by and by. The material combinations in the chorus eventually hit moments of harmony and resonance with us. At this moment, our voices sync and the material is ready to become a designed object. In the adoption of it, we volunteer to share its voice in a new light and new truth in hopes that others will hear it.
Our goal is that our creations can become part of new human-object harmonies that give these materials an elevated place, purpose, and meaning bolstered by function and thoughtfulness. We strive not to stifle the voice that originally spoke to us but to broadcast it over new stages - to inspire a chain of wonderment and connection. Ears, eyes, and hands who will hopefully grow to reconsider how their thoughts and actions relate to their environment at large.
Watch the recorded lecture of People in Places 003: On Intimacy
with Chiaozza and Ladies & Gentlemen Studio
INSPIRATIONAL REFERENCES
THE UNKNOWN CRAFTSMAN: A Japanese Insight into Beauty
by Soetsu Yanagi, 1972
Soetsu Yanagi 1889–1961: was a philosopher, art historian, aesthete and poet (also father of Sori Yanagi). Yanagi took noticed of the beauty in works of unknown craftsmen and became the founding father of the Japanese and Korean folk crafts movement called the Minge (民芸)Movement to protect the art from from disappearing during the Modern Industrialization era.
READ CHAPTER: Towards a Standard of Beauty
“I would like to believe that beauty is of deep importance to our modern age. Without Question, the intention of morality, philosophy, and religious belief is to bring hope, joy, peace, and freedom to mankind. But in our time religion has lost its grip. Intellectualism has undermined spiritual aspiration in most people. At this juncture, I would put the question, might not beauty, and the love of the beautiful perhaps bring peace and harmony? Could it not carry us forward to new concepts of life’s meaning? Would it not establish a fresh concept of culture? Would it not be a dove of peace between the various cultures of mankind?”
-Soetsu Yanagi
LISTENING TO STONE: THE ART AND LIFE OF ISAMU NOGUCHI
By Hayden Herrera, 2015
This biography of Isamu Noguchi, who is known as the 'sculpturing of space’ sheds an introspective perspective of his life and his philosophy in his work and view of the world as he searches his own 'essence of sculpture'
“If sculpture is the rock, it is also the space between rocks and between the rock and a man, and the communication and contemplation between.”
-Isamu Noguchi
STUFF MATTERS: Exploring the Marvelous Materials that Shapes Our Man-Made World
By Mark Miodownik, 2014
This book dives deep into looking into 10 different types of ubiquitous materials commonly found in everyday objects we all use. Miodownik dissects each material by looking at their chemical properties, historical origin and context and how each material become what we see and use today.
THE MISSING PIECE MEETS THE BIG O
by Shel Silverstein 1981
This is a classic children’s book and the sequel to the first book “The Missing Piece” where the missing piece embarks on a transformative journey discovering the world and itself.
EMERGENCE MAGAZINE
A quarterly magazine and podcast that focuses on ecology, culture, and spirituality and shares a mix of introspective essays, stories, poems and practices relating to those topics.
EVERYTHING IS ALIVE PODCAST
by Ian Chillag for Radiotopia
This is a delightfully humorous yet poetic podcast where the host, Ian Chillag interviews supposed “inanimate” objects of all sorts asking them intimate questions in regards to their existence and purpose.
Episode 7: Grain of Sand (LISTEN)
Episode 17: Plane of Glass (LISTEN)