102. Chindogu

The concept of Chindogu is not new but it is still as relevant as when it was created, back in the 80s, by Japanese inventor Kenji Kawakami, when he started collecting useless ideas, objects that existed at the edge of reason, as he put it. Although the history of patented devices is full of absurd contraptions that are, in essence, closer to a materialized joke than to an object, the Japanese term Chindogu has a more complex meaning than its literal translation of “unusual implement.” Kawakami published a book called “101 unuseless Japanese inventions” -where unuseless refers to things that are not useless in an absolute way but are not useful either. These unuseless contraptions are utterly hilarious and hopelessly ad-hoc. The type of problem-solving (or unsolving) that characterizes chindogu focuses on the insignificant moments of the everyday. Balancing humor and embarrassment, chindogu objects are one-liners, things that would respond to: get it? and after that would immediately lose their charm, fade away and quickly be forgotten. One could criticize that these objects are a waste of energy, materials and printed pages, truly post-modern. Yet, there is something powerful in the idea of recuperating silly ideas and giving them a chance, in the same way we recuperate a plastic container and find a new use for it so that it won’t be wasted. Clearly the strongest aspect of chindogu is its potential to become an instrument of social criticism, rather than a context-based trend.

101. Miniature furniture

Researching Luís Barragán´s furniture I came across a web site that sells miniature replicas of famous furniture pieces. For $450 one can get a 1:6 replica of one of Barragán´s butacas, roughly 12 x 10 x 14 cm. (4.7 x 4 x 5.5 in.). Presented as a collector’s item, the specs read that each miniature model takes an average of five hours of careful manual work. Those of us used to model making as a design tool could easily understand the value of a five-hour model making session. But using five hours to make a replica of a historic piece -even if it is a gorgeous armchair like Barragán´s- seems harder to understand. Perhaps I have become severely intolerant to non-necessary objects, not only for environmental reasons but, most importantly, for existential reasons. A replica is a promise of an object, in the same way that a good set of images is a substitute of an experience. Short of having the butaca in my living room, or sitting on it in Barragán’s house, I would be content just admiring the piece in a library book or an online catalog (without spending a dime). A 1:6 study of a furniture piece is absolutely necessary when one is creating a new object, but it becomes a bit decadent when one is recreating an object that somebody else created in 1945. Imagine if those five hours of careful manual labor would be employed in creative, forward-looking work.

10> Sister things

On the celebration of this blog’s first hundred entries (objects) I am thinking about Mexican architect Luís Barragán’s love for the things that defined his living environment, his magnificent house in Tacubaya. He called them “sister things.” This hyperbole was partly a consequence of his tendency to ascetism, partly an acknowledgement of the importance that his everyday objects had in his life. Many of them he had designed and had crafted; others were full of symbolism, or devoid of any practical functionality –like his mirror spheres. Most of them were in sync with the austere architecture of the house where he lived all his life and his personality. Barragán’s lesson is this: the importance of objects is a state of mind, not an account of value or a measure of exclusivity. When I started this blog more than two years ago, I wanted to set the boundaries for an ongoing, shared state of mind that could be expressed through a sequence of things that I considered relevant to their present not because of their “design” value but because of their ability to question established definitions of design and open up a renewed understanding of the role of objects in our lives. Each entry has been a discovery and has suggested a redefinition of what is truly essential both culturally and socially; looking back, I realize how much I like the fact that each entry became an excuse for the following one.