>1 Linkages (Objects 1-10)

One of the most counterproductive habits of design is its obstinacy in singling out objects. Designed objects, the ones we see in magazines or trade shows, are always presented in isolation, as if they did not have to deal with the mundane reality of being in a context occupying a position within a larger frame of reference. The main tenet of (commercial) design is to underline how objects are different from other objects –what is described in a simplistic way as unique. This blog started precisely from the opposite premise: that all objects are linked to other objects and there is no such thing as a really independent object. It started with an anonymous urban artifact –I called it the shoe-polishing station- and it keeps going under the general rule that every entry is linked to the preceding one in one way or another: the human-pulled rickshaw was the result of thinking about how the shoe-polishing station makes its way through the city of Coyoacan, and what is the importance of personal urban mobility; Restless Ball, an object I have known well for years, was suggested by the form of Velotaxi, the notion of participatory mobility and today's fascination with the culture of the 60s and 70s, etc. The objects around us could be classified in many different ways. It has been an interest of mine to think about those ways of taxonomizing the things we know –or don’t really know even if we think we do- and finding ways of linking them. Some of these first ten objects I have chosen for this blog are related to personal mobility. Their outstanding feature is their scale: they are not small, hand-held things; they are not furniture; they are not decorative props; they cannot be transported; they are designed to transport. They belong to the next scale up, the scale that allows users to get in and operate them. It is a different type of interaction than the one we have with a coffee mug, or a briefcase.