Designblog

Walking into an environment filled up with design items is interesting and tough at the same time. It is interesting to see how the items communicate with their surroundings especially because they were never meant to stand next to each other. Of the many design pieces i liked there was only one which both attracted my attention as well as my imagination.

A piece that is part of the cubic structure collection from 1964 by Jan Slothouber and William Graatsma.

Because the plastic material is transparent, the colours are being mixed on the white textile. For a moment i could not recognize if the textile was dyed or not. It was a sort of visual illusion and in the meantime i asked my self why is this soft and kind material locked into a hard plastic box? Is it design or is it art?

William Graatsma together with Jan Slothouber began to work for the Dutch State Mines (DSM) in the beginning of the 1950’s. Their job was to create and develop packaging, product applications, advertisements and exhibitions, thereby establishing DSM’s corporate image.

They experimented with cubic constructions, developing them for applications in exhibition design such as the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels. They limited themselves and decided to use almost only the cube as form or starting point, thus they tried to determine the principle of cubic constructions.

Jan Slothouber was opposed to individualistic movements such as the painters of Cobra, and preferred a more ‘democratic’ artistic form, whereby the cube was the universal shape that everybody could understand and use. In fact he was an architect, he believed and practiced what Louis Sullivan [x] said in an article in 1896; “form ever follows function“.

Slothouber and Graatsma went on to found the Centre for Cubic Constructions (CCC). In 1966, CCC won the Sikkens Prize (jointly with Peter Struycken [x] and Johannes Itten [x]), for their innovative contributions to art and design. Their approach to commercial exhibition design earned for Slothouber and Graatsma an exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in 1967. Design, dimensions and experiments in colour and lettering, all in relation to the cube, were being displayed under the title ‘Four Sides: Size, Shape, Colour, Letter’ (Vierkanten: maat, vorm, kleur, letter). Three years later, they represented the Netherlands with their Cubic Constructions at the Venice Biennale in 1970 (GRA • Library).

After all this success, they were known by the public as artists instead of architects or designers. This became very visible when they were asked to design the post stamps for the former PTT in 1970. The profit from selling the stamps went to a charity for children. During that time, the PTT had a lot of critique for choosing such an “avant-garde artists”. The charity was afraid that the designs were to abstract for the bigger public and the stamps would not have been sold.

After his carreer at the DSM, in 1970, Eindhoven’s Technische Hogeschool invited Jan Slothouber to set up a Faculty of Form Theory in the new architectural engineering department. Together with his students, he developed ‘new cubic constructions’ (nieuwe kubiese konstrukties).

As professor of the new faculty he gave several lectures on a regular base. In 1971 one of his public lectures was “The form of our surroundings“, where he explains that our surrounding is built up by creatures, objects and happenings, and they are visible because of their shape. Our surrounding exist, because we see, experience, think or execute it, but everybody experiences it differently, because everybody’s awareness of the surrounding is different.

Therefor we are unable to talk about it as something common, it is only an apparent similarity because we perceive these shapes the same way, but it doesn’t mean we experience them on the same way. Sensory observations like sight is measurable, but our personal emotions change the result. Our feeling can influence our perception of the surrounding and that is why our surrounding can occur differently for everybody. The emotional perception is highly underestimated in architectural design, only invisible form aspects can be experienced. But for pleasure both (visible and invisible) form aspects are important.

Furthermore he explains the importance of the usefulness in our surrounding, whereby he mentions that the architect has to distance himself from artistic ambitions. These ambitions make the livability dissimilar for every levels of society. The best thing to do is to create an understandable form language, a base for our communication with the constructed surrounding. Human perception should be the priority of design. To achieve this, we need to cooperate with science, technology and art.

The object i have chosen was a result of a series packaging whereby he experimented with different materials inside the cube. The relation between the materials and the transparent, sometimes colored, plastic cube. His research has been shown in the Stedelijk Museum and the Venice Biennale, so what is this object? Art or design? Is it important?

Slothouber has done a lot of different things in the past so it is difficult to say where this object could be categorized. His design research has been shown on art exhibitions and his designs has been criticized as too ‘avant-garde’ art. He is erasing boundaries between design, architecture and art. The object I have chosen, the object where my all research started, is not just design, architecture or an artwork. it all comes together in that piece.

Jan Slothouber was an admired teacher, although it wasn’t always clear for his students if he was totally crazy or a genius. One of his students was John Körmeling. In his work the influence of Slothouber is highly visible. They both share the similarity of outlook on the erasure of boundaries between design, architecture and art.

video of the rotating house in Tilburg by John Kormeling

”
everything is relative,
even cubic regularity.
many things are true
and few are certain.
form is only a means,
just like cubic construction.
important is the aim
that finds expression by it.
an idea can be made visible
by the shape of a construction.
reconstruction of the idea however
is often a difficult task.
we beg your pardon
for our cloudiness.
we hope you will discover yet
the aim of cubic constructions.
”

– a cubic construction compendium, 1970

Starting Point – Ted Noten “Chew your own Brooch”

Chew your own Brooch is a project by the Dutch designer Ted Noten, who is known for his jewellery and bag designs. It was started in the late 90‘s in the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, where visitors were asked to sculpt their own brooch with a piece of chewing gum which was afterwards cast in either gold or silver.

At first I could not see the connection between the golden shapes and the chewing gum above, still wrapped in its paper. The package was designed to resemble a regular chewing gum which seems to emphasise the close relationship between design and commerciality.

Having a concept for making own designs which is accessible to a wide range of people is a valuable thing. It enables somebody to adjust and shape a product instead of making use of a pre-designed model which may not be as suitable to an individual‘s needs but is more representing a general trend.

Even though mass-designs have their perks, people have always been striving for individuality – and they still struggle to find ways of expressing their ideas. Opportunities like Ted Noten‘s Chew your own Brooch are therefore a great enrichment to the world of design.

The beauty of this concept lies in the idea of creating completely new shapes by using everyday products. If the common purpose of an object is being put aside, new ways of applying its materiality and construction can be discovered.
To me looking at everyday objects without bias becomes more and more important since I realised that too many doors are being closed by focussing too much on what something already is instead of all the things it could be.

Taking this project as a starting point I want to investigate more on “new shapes”.

Experiment – Creating New Shapes

One way of creating a new shape is to exchange an objects material and see what it does to it‘s shape.

Ceramic to Chewinggum (aprox. 60 pieces) 

In this case what hapens is, that the reproduction does not want to stay in the original shape. The softness of the chewinggum allows the cup to collaps as time passes which leads to a unfunctional, and yet new shape.

Elastic to Polyurethanium

Something very different happens if you replace a strechy material with a solid one: the reproduction breaks into sections, creating different pieces with individual shapes. It almost seems as if by changing the material, the object has been dissected and therefore can be looked at from new angles.

Plastic to Polyurethanium

The original shape is almost not visible in the reproduction which, with its massive and clumpy look, is quite the opposite of transparency and lightness.

Another way of making new shapes it to detach the process of creation from personal intentions or standardized movements that were learned before and to use the element of chance.

This has been done by many artists and also musicians (John Cage, “Number 14” and “Indeterminacy“)

Simple elements could be the use of dice or outer influences like nature or spontaneous reactions of people.

What does a new Shape bring?

Art World

There are several examples from the Art World where the replacement of an object‘s material leads to a dysfunctional reproduction. In the case of Claes Oldenburg‘s Soft Toilet creating an „anti-sculpture“ or an „anti-object“ was the aim, functionality did not play a role. Also Ted Noten changed an everyday object like a bag into something which cannot be used in the classical sense but is being used as a transmitter of a message or opinion.

Nature

Shapes constantly change in nature, everything is shifting, adapting, evolving, it is all about survival and therefore must be functional.

In colder regions of the world, animals have a different surface-to-volume ratio than animals living in a warm climate, meaning that the size of their extremities and the compactness of their body depends on external influences. Compared to a regular Fox, a Fennec has extremely big ears which enlarge his body surface in order to lose more heat. Even though both animals derive from the same family, the shapes of their bodies changed due to different needs.

New Shapes as Solutions

In the end, whether it is making a statement, forwarding a message or personal view, adapting to new circumstances or improving a present situation, it is always about a problem that requires a solution which can be found in a different shape through evolution, reflection or experimenting.