There’s a habit in the world of product design to only concentrate on the object, its design, the supposed environment in which it would be used (think ikea catalogues where the occasional good looking Swedish person will show up to pick up a spoon from a drawer) and not really on it’s use… For example the Cima ladder, featured in my Core 77 feeds today…
Ok it’s a ladder that looks pretty… and it basically forces you to climb… but holy shit i would be scared senseless to try to change a light-bulb with this, forget trying to paint a wall, i can’t steady my feet on the same level. Perception of stability when doing vertically challenging activities is more important than esthetics… so this ladder reduces any possibility of doing anything that’s independent of a wall… which is why I would need a ladder in the first place no? … as for coming “out of the closet and stand proudly in the salon of the house.”, i don’t have that much space to spare.
So when we’re talking about sustainable product design, and using smart materials, etc… can we also perhaps expect designers to come up with designs that are smart and have the potential to be used in more ways than one? In this case provide the same function as the original product and not less. A “No one-liner” policy would be a great start, otherwise we will keep cultivating the egos of aesthetic and material-based designs with poorer functions and uses…