In this blog I’m going to talk about Max Lamb’s work. The work of his that was shown in class really grabbed my attention because of the way that he makes his pieces. It’s tough to give a name to his work because it falls between the long discussed gray area of art and design.
First I’ll start with what it is that interests me about Lamb’s work. I love working at the shops in ID. I tend to spend 4-7 hours a day, 4-6 days a week. That’s 16-35 hours a week of shop time. Because of this love for working in the shops, I always get really excited when I see other people working with the same type of machines and materials as I do.
Max Lamb used the wood lathe to turn his concrete stools, which is one of my favorite machines in the shops. The pewter chair that Max Lamb did is also interesting to me because I am currently in the Cast Iron class.
The wood lathe, unlike the metal lathe, is a free form machine. With the metal lathe, your cutting tool is attached to the machine itself, and the cutting tool is moved by turning a series of dials. With the wood lathe, the cutting tool is in your hands. You can quickly and dramatically change the shape of the object that you are turning. It’s a very natural process. You never know what shape you are going to pull out of the material until you are done.
Once you make a piece on the lathe, it is possible to set up a pattern so that making that exact same shape is easy. To me, the concrete chairs that Lamb makes seem like a good example of limited production industrial design. They are art because the processes that is used to make them is free form and intuitive, but they are Industrial Design because they can be reproduced easily and in the same manner that they were made.
I have a much harder time counting the cast pewter chair as ID. The process of putting a plastic chair in the sand and then pouring pewter around it is an example of a one-time use mold. Once the piece has been removed from the sand, there is no way to use to same mold again. The chair that was first used is gone, destroyed in the process of casting the pewter chair.
While I think that it is interesting what people are doing with different materials, I don’t think things like Lamb’s pewter chair fall under functional industrial design. To me, this approach is more like art design. I think when someone is making one off chairs and things along this line; it becomes art rather than industrial design. I think of industrial design as something that can be mass produced.
When you cast a chair in the sand using a lose pattern, it is hard to make another one. You would either have to cast it and make a mold out of it to be used in a factory, or you would make another one using the same processes of putting a chair in the sand and casting it out of pewter. This would not make a chair that was exactly the same, and it would therefore be a similar, but different, chair.
It is hard to look at all this art/design work that is being done and say exactly what is art and what is design. I think for me the difference between one off design and art is the ability for design to be mass produced. I think that playing around with materials is a good way to find new ways the manipulate and uses materials, but I have a hard time looking at what Max Lamb and others like him are doing and see how it relates to Industrial Design. It seems more like well thought out play than design.
This being said, what excites me about Lamb's work is that when I look at it, and see him enjoying his work, I see the same things that I enjoy about my work. I think that we should learn to incorporate that play into design and most importantly into the design process. I think that when we are having fun in our work we will come up with better designs.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Termite Mounds as Models for Building Ventulation
Nature has been designing things for a lot longer than humans have. Because of this, natural selection has already figured out effective ways of dealing with things. We can learn a lot by looking at the way natural things in our world work.
The water bear as an inspiration to store vaccines for long term resistance against hearse conditions is one example of this. What I’m going to look at today is termite mounds and how they inspired a building with a heating and cooling system that uses only 10% of the energy that a similarly sized building with a conventional system would.
Termites have a symbiotic relationship with a certain type of fungus that they grow in their mounds. In order for this fungus to grow, it needs a constant temperature of 87 degrees. Outside temperatures can fluctuate between 35 degrees during the night and 104 degrees during the day.
Despite this, termites are able to keep the temperature within their mound within a few degrees of 87 using vents. Cool air comes in through holes in the bottom of the mound, which forces hot, stale air out of vents in the top. Cool air also comes up from vents within the ground. By opening and closing the vents constantly, the termites are able to precisely control the temperature without fancy tricks or expensive systems, like humans need.
When the Eastgate Shopping Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe was designed, they based the ventilation system off of the design of termite mounds. The way the system works is at the beginning of the day the building is cool. As the day goes on and the building heats up from all the machines and people with in it, the fabric of the building absorbs most of the heat. The building itself heats up a bit as the day goes on, but not by much.
Later on, when the temperature outside starts to cool, warm air inside the building is vented out the top, drawing cool air into the bottom of the building. Fans are used to help move the air more efficiently. During the night, cool air flows through the building, and cavities in the floor slabs, cooling the fabric of the building. When morning comes, the building is completely cooled for the start of the next day.
This is a simplistic version of how the building works. There are many other factors that the building had to be designed around. To learn more, check out this more in-depth Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastgate_Centre,_Harare
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/12/10/building-modelled-on-termites-eastgate-centre-in-zimbabwe/
Sunday, November 9, 2008
One Laptop Per Child
I think that one of the best ways to help people is to provide them with the ability to help themselves. When people are motivated to do something to better their lives, and they have the ability to do so, they feel empowered and in control. In developing countries, one of the best things that you can do to build a good foundation for the future is education.In this blog post I’m going to talk about change that’s not going to happen overnight. This change is going to take a while, but it is irreversible change in the right direction.
Education is expensive. It takes a lot of resources, such as different books for different subjects, materials to write and draw with, and buildings in which to house it all. These are just a few of the things that kids need in order to learn.
In order for these kids to learn as much as possible, they need access to a lot of information that traditionally wouldn’t be available to them. These kids don’t travel or watch TV. They don’t have access to all the fancy electronics that even the poor kids in first world countries have access to. How, then, are they going to learn about the rest of the world? I think that the XO laptop is one answer to this question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
This laptop has built-in wireless for easy internet access. It also has a painting program, and another art program that the child uses by programming commands into the computer. The computer takes these commands and creates complex and colorful art while the child watches. Each time the child changes a command, the artwork comes out differently.
The children can also chat with other laptop users in the area and play games with and against each other. There are educational programs and a program that tracks RSS feeds for the child. There are two music programs on the computer, one that allows the child to play music and the other for editing music.
When these kids grow up, hopefully they will know things that their parents didn’t have the chance to learn. They will have the ability to think in such a way that they are able to change the world around them for the better. It is my opinion that when it comes to education, the more someone knows, the more they can think for themselves. If you give someone the tools to learn, you also give them tools to start thinking about the world. They question things around them, and since they know what else is out there, they might be able to bring about change to their own world. Educating the children in third world countries helps them develop skills for the future.
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12-01-08
This homework was done for How to produces get there meaning?, but related to the next weeks homework, Humanitarian Designs and Real Needs.
I would like to add to this that in Humanitarian Designs and Real Needs, Dr. Bruce Becker talked about a lot of these themas. He talked about the fact that people in third world contraries need to be empowered. Becker said that one of the best ways to help people is to give them the tools they need to help themselves. It was interesting to hear that a lot of my thoughts on this are correct. I will take away from this a lesson that if you really sit down and think about things, you can come up with solutions to problems that seem too big to be solved.
I have here a real world example of someone who thought that in order to help impoverished people, we have to help their children.
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=364
This is an episode of This American Life. The first part of this show is about a man who went about changing the way that impoverished children in Harlem are taught. It is already having amazing results and is a vary moving story if you have the time to listen to it.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
When the Skirt Becomes Masculine
Skirts are an item of clothing that have been around for a very long time. They were around long before pants, as skirts are easier to make and wear. It is easier to fit a skirt to the body than pants since they only attach at the waist. A skirt can be as simple as wrapping a piece of cloth around the waist and securing it.
At one point in history, skirts were commonly worn by both men and women. Today, however, it is uncommon to find men wearing skirts. The skirt is viewed as something that is feminine. The stereotype is that no one other than women and men who are pretending to be women wear skirts.
The Utilikilt steps in to trample all over this stereotype.
The utilikilt is roughly modeled off of traditional Scottish kilts. The utility model, shown above, was designed for men doing jobs such as shop work and construction work. One thing that is not commonly thought about is that shorts and pants can restrict movement. The Utilikilt brings freedom of movement to men. I believe it also allows them to express themselves more than pants or shorts do. This is a very well designed piece of clothing that is very functional. Other than the company logo on the back pocket, there is nothing on this kilt that is strictly for aesthetic reasons.
One thing that I really like about the Utilikilt brand is that it means that skirts aren’t just for girls anymore. I think that in our culture it has become easy for girls to wear what they want to wear. While in our resent past, it was unacceptable for girls to wear pants, they were able to break out of that mold. It is now easy for a girl it walk around wearing pants and a tie if she so wants.
This is not however the case for men. Even when wearing something as functional as the Utilikilt, men can be harassed for wearing a skirt. I think that the way we as a culture think of clothing for men is very limited. I don’t think that this should be the case. I think that people should be allowed to wear whatever it is they want to wear, without any gender distinctions.
I think that the Utilikilt allows men to wear skirts. It is my belief that many of the men who wear Utilikilt would not otherwise wear skirts on a regular basis. There isn’t any other product on the market that is quite like this one.
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