93. Golden Porsche

A Porsche plated with 20 kg. (44 lb.) of gold, in the streets of Moscow. The antonym of urban camouflage? It is a stretch already to justify its presence in a blog about objects; yet, a customized object is an object after all, and I am not interested in the base object (Porsche), but in the treatment of that base object for it to change its meaning in a particular society. Ostentation is as ever-present in objects as it is in social interaction. It is difficult to imagine a society that does not understand ostentation as a social principle capable of establishing implicit hierarchies. The vulgarity of this particular object is beyond the point, as is the nauseating fact that in the Russia of the nouveau riche, millions still go hungry. What matters to me, for the purposes of this blog, is that this object proves that ostentation may be multilayered: are there really degrees of ostentation? This car has two: ostentation # 1 is the fact that it is the most expensive Porsche in the market; ostentation # 2 is the fact that it is covered in gold. We could imagine that ostentation # 3 might be a system of rotating lights –like police cars- for people to notice the car more readily; ostentation # 4 could be a loudspeaker that would shout: “look at me, I am the wealthiest guy in this place, look at my car...” and so on. Disturbing.

92. Urban camouflage

Mimetic protection: hide behind a vending machine costume to blend into the urbanscape and remain unnoticed by criminals and dangerous pursuers roaming the streets. Japanese fashion designer Aya Tsukioka has created a skirt that unfolds into a vending machine. Is this object a mechanism of defense? Is it a sophisticated critique to oversaturated Japanese public space? Is it performance art? There is a charming naïveté in the direct simplicity of this object; it is clear to me, just by looking at the unfolding sequence of images, that a drawing of the same sequence would be significantly more effective at conveying the idea of the thing than the photographs of the prototype. Drawings are expected to communicate, not necessarily to explain how something really works. I believe that the idea of this object is much stronger than its presence, which manages to reduce it to something banal and superfluous. The prototype of the object works against the idea of the object because the idea is sophisticated and the prototype is hopelessly crude. My favorite comic character, Mortadelo, is a master of camouflage: he has the ability to instantly disguising himself as any animate or inanimate thing to avoid being caught or to escape a dangerous situation. Mortadelo is a funny character and his ability to camouflage was always meant to make the reader laugh. But there is nothing funny about walking the streets with a contraption designed to turn you into an urban sketch.

91. Chupa Chups dispenser

The invention of the Chupa Chups (original brand name for lollipop) dates back to 1957 when Spanish entrepreneur Enric Bernat thought it would be a good idea to add a wooden stick to a ball of candy so that kids would not have to touch it and get their fingers sticky: it will be like eating candy with a fork, Bernat said when explaining his idea, and soon the demand for the product made his company an international success. In Spain, Chupa Chups have an excellent distribution system, but I had never seen a Chupa Chups dispenser until this summer. It was placed at the entrance of a cafeteria in Candás, a small coastal town in the North of Spain. The device holds 20 different flavors and it is easy to operate in a low-tech way: insert a coin; turn the transparent cylinder until the desired flavor is up front; turn the metal wheel below it and the candy will appear through the opening at the bottom. The rest of the dispenser is a little bit dated – circular metal tubes anodized in gold- but still functional in the way it is designed to roll in and out of the cafeteria during business hours. It is interesting to think about the public nature of this object, placed in the sidewalk to be in sight of young consumers so that they may, in turn, bring their guardians closer to the entrance of the cafeteria.

9> Containing

The last ten entries to this blog are about objects designed to contain other objects, to store someone’s everyday possessions. Some are static and rigid, designed as desktop or shelftop objects (boxes); some are dynamic and flexible, designed to adapt to the human body like a second skin (billum, rathak). Some represent the failure of consumerism and the quest for the cheap in our industrial civilization (plastic bag); some celebrate the traditions of ancient civilizations and the cultural benefit of making things meaningfully (parfleche flat bag). Some are about masterful craftsmanship (phingaruk); some about functional readjustment (take-out container). It is remarkable to realize the amount of different objects designed to contain other objects, and how this suggests that individuals of every civilization surround themselves with the things they need to have and the objects they want to have around them at all times. Objects designed to contain other objects are present in every human society despite geographic location, history or degree of isolation in relation to other cultures. Some of the bags and containers produced by the so called primitive societies, using natural fibers and processes, have a degree of sophistication foreign to the industrial expediency we are used to in our own societies. What is then the meaning of craft and how does it apply to our everyday needs? How does one of our mass-produced, inexpensive, overseas-manufactured tote bags –for example- compare to the complexity of a phingaruk, or a rathak?

90. Parfleche flat bag

Parfleche is a hide -usually buffalo’s hide- dried by being stretched on a frame after the hair has been removed. Plains Indian headwomen, particularly from the Cheyenne tribe, use parfleche flat bags like the ones in the image to store and carry sacred medicines. The bags are about 40 x 35 cm. (15.7 x 13.7 in.). They are decorated with complex geometric motifs and symbols designed by the headwoman and executed by skillful women artists. It is in human nature to have a fascination with bags and specialized containers –from purses to cell phone pouches we see that every day in our own society- but it is rare to find societies where bag making is such a big deal. I assume that the care put in crafting these bags is directly proportional to the importance that Indian society places in the medicines that will be contained in them: a precious content deserves a worthy container. This maxim is a design lesson and helps put things in perspective. It is interesting to reflect upon how we operate in our own society in relation to that maxim: for instance we use the cheapest possible bag (the plastic bag described in the former post) to carry what should probably be the most precious content, the food we eat. Good to see how there are still societies –unlike ours- who have their priorities straight. This object merges meaning, functionality and artistry under the ambition of permanence.

89. Plastic bag

With supermarket chains, cities and entire municipalities forbidding the use of plastic bags as grocery carriers, it occurs to me that the most interesting aspect of this omnipresent object is the ephemerality of its function. Most people discard their supermarket bags right after they place their recently bought groceries in their refrigerator. Responsible folks try to find second uses for the bags, but things rarely go further than that. Third and subsequent uses are almost unheard of, due to the fact that recycling is still voluntary, rather than mandatory, in all countries, and people will always choose convenience over moral imperative if they can get away with it. The interesting thing about plastic bags is their uncontrolled afterlife, whirling around the streets in windy days, ending up caught in tree branches, or power cables. The design of the object makes it a remarkable wind catcher, something Max Schuschny, the Austrian scientist who invented them at the beginning of the 20th century, could hardly imagine. Shouldn’t we take the wind catching capabilities of plastic bags more seriously? Perhaps that is the key, more than keeping pouring demoralizing data about what they do to the environment. Personally, I am tired of environmental whining: new times demand new methods. What if we, as designers, would really try hard to find an imaginative afterlife for plastic bags? That, combined perhaps with hefty fines to supermarket chains for decades of irresponsibly polluting the environment with their branded plastic bags.

88. Billum

Billums are traditional Papua New-Guinea string bags. The same name designates a variety of bags with different capacities, colors, shapes and carrying functions: from babies, to food, wood fire or personal possessions. Despite their formal variety, all billums are made in the same way, as a spiral of woven rows sewn together to form the bag receptacle. Each row is woven using the same fundamental technique, one that involves a simple strip that insures a homogeneous size in all the knots that make the bag. The strip used to be made of coconut leaves but now most of them are made of plastic. A medium-sized billum has between 18 and 20 woven rows, excluding the handle, which is made separately using a different-size strip. Although a natural string billum used to be made out of the inner fibers of the bark of a tree vine, most billums today are made of shredded tarp, hemp or cotton string. The versatility of this object is extraordinary, not just in terms of function but also in how it relates to the human body and the multiple different ways in which it is carried. Apart from being truly multifunctional, billums are truly wearable, unlike the majority of carrying bags we use (backpacks could be considered highly wearable but they are far less integrated with the human body than billums). Billums are fascinatingly multifunctional: the ingenuity and wisdom of other civilizations is, again, a great lesson in efficacy and beauty.

87. Drawstring backpack

Drawstring backpacks became popular among high school teens in the United States a few years ago. I noticed that virtually all of the morning students I saw in buses and subway trains had one attached to their backs almost by magic –their nylon straps were thin and hard to detect. At first I thought they were sports bags -many displayed the Nike or Adidas logo- until I realized they did not have enough capacity to fit sports equipment. The bags were used to carry personal items. They were just cool. I soon started seeing plain, unadorned, anonymous-looking drawstring backpacks made of black, navy blue or red nylon without a trace of the Nike logo. It is a fact that teenagers are a volatile group when it comes to marketing. I was convinced that high school teens favored over-the-top, attention-grabbing, trendy personal accessories. The drawstring backpack seemed too minimalist, even fragile-looking for that crowd, although I do agree it is very cool in its extreme economy of means: a simple rectangle with a continuous string that serves both as strap and closing mechanism, attached with simple knots to two grommets at the bottom of the bag. The beauty of the closing mechanism is that it uses the weight of the contents of the backpack as a way to keep the top opening closed. After students got tired of them, drawstring backpacks quickly became a favorite promotional, heavy-logoed item: corporations are always late to cool.

86. Tasufra

Tasufras are large leather sacks used by Berbers and Tuaregs in Northern Africa, specifically the Sahara desert. They were also used in the Canary Islands by herdsmen to carry objects or liquids. Although their size varies, a tasufra used by African nomads could be 1.5 m. (60 in.) long by 70 cm. (27 in.) wide. Tasufras are made from a single piece of goat, sheep of gazelle’s leather (the three bottom prongs of the bag are the remnants of the animal’s front legs and neck). The fabrication process lasts between 4 and 8 days, and is done exclusively by women. The most important part of it is the way of curing and waterproofing the leather: according to anthropologist Caro Baroja, the main ingredient is the bark of acacia trees, pressed by hand in a mortar into a fine red powder that is applied to the leather after it has been soaking in salty water for a day or two. The treatment of the leather is very complex, and includes exposure to the sunrays for drying; soaking in water; the application of an oil and tar mixture for waterproofing; and the careful removal of the animal’s hair. Tasufras are designed to carry personal objects –sometimes valuable items, food and liquids. In the desert, they are often used to store and carry milk and keep it from deteriorating during long harsh journeys. The ornament in the bag is the craftwoman’s creation and is never exactly duplicated.

85. Rathak

The Rathak is a haversack used by the Adi Gallong tribe of the region of Arunachal Pradesh, India’s easternmost region. Made from split bamboo cane, it is a rectangular pouch open at the top, with two rounded triangular pieces that, when worn, provide some basic closure so that object inside won’t fall out. The approximate size of this portable, personal storage unit is 57 cm. (23 in.) x 26 cm. (34 in.). Very much like modern backpacks, Rathaks are designed to carry a few personal items in journeys outside the tribal villages. They are used exclusively by men, in a society that is decidedly patriarchal. It is not easy to speculate about the real use of tribal objects, although it is symptomatic to infer that remote societies in India need personal carrying bags for personal stuff just like we do. The difference is the exquisite simplicity of this one, made entirely with natural bamboo splits woven into a long mat, folded in the middle with its edges stitched together by split-cane binding. There is something about the slim proportion of the object and its thin, strong shoulder straps, that suggest a society used to extreme efficiency and a perfect symbiosis with nature, a consciousness much more advanced than we will ever have in our consumerist society. In the end, what we would probably call “primitive people” are the ones who really get it. Looking closely at the masterfully design rathak is absolutely design-refreshing.