Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration by Scott Doorley & Scott Witthoft
In both Make Space and the Abstract: The Art of Design episode about interior designer, Isle Crawford, the idea of transforming the ordinary is mentioned as a fundamental part of the design process. This idea isn’t something new in the art and design world. It’s applications are seen to be used in several early art movements. Arts and Crafts used this idea to rebel against the Industrial Revolution. Surrealists used it to to challenge rational thinking. Andy Warhol even transformed the Campbell’s soup can into a symbol of high art.
Side Chair (1897) Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Why this is so important in design is because to design is to transform. Turning the everyday object or space into something more is all about improving the human experience. Upon my Google searching more into the importance of transforming the ordinary. I started to wonder, what is ordinary in design terms? Does ordinary always equal boring or bad?
The new rabbit hole of question led me to the concept of Super Normal. Super Normal is a concept fathers by Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa. Together they created this design approach that “rejects design as a spectacle, proposing instead a form of silent typological perfection…The best objects are not those that catch the eye, but those that become natural through use.”
Naoto Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison
This idea led to the designers to create the Super Normal exhibition. The show exhibited objects that are widely considered mundane, but used in people’s everyday lives. The items were curated by the designers to celebrate the unchanging designs that make these objects almost invisible within their environments. Designers at their core need to understand that observation is the key part of what they are creating. Observing how a space or object functions to figure out what can be improved. As well as observing what works and why it works naturally.
Leave a Reply