Thinking through Making

 

At Brimstones & Treacle, we take time to look at materials, processes and technologies to understand why and how they are harnessed in particular ways by designers, but more importantly to understand the values that we place on them, not only in their visual and tactile properties but also the cultural associations they hold. An icon of this approach is the theoretician Enzo Mari who came to design via the world of art as a fervent critic of Consumerism. As an ideological contributor to the debates surrounding design for the last fifty years he has become renowned for his mantra, “Good design for everybody at affordable prices’.

Central to Mari’s beliefs is that design, rather than simply being an expression of others values should develop its own ideology. Much of his work can be considered from this viewpoint, as a sort of critical design exercise where understanding is reached through experiment that can be best described as ‘Thinking through Making’.

You are a Nomad

We know ‘change’ is a paradox, as it is the one thing of which we can be truly certain. As change happens everyday in all our surroundings we endure by continuously adapting ourselves, and our belongings to our situation. In nature species rely on dynamic modification in form and size in order to reproduce, feed or protect themselves. The capacity to adapt is essential to continued survival. And so it is in our ‘man made’ artificial world. As practical experience shows us, many organisations that fail to adjust to ever changing business environments tend to disappear.

Back in 1973, Victor Papanek and James Henessey had already prophesised the necessity for greater movement of people, suggesting that through our changing lifestyles we are all becoming nomadic. At Brimstones and Treacle we delight in their book ‘Nomadic Furniture’ in which they have attempted to fill a void by designing furniture that can be built yourself, bought or adapted by being easily constructed, but which also folds, stacks, inflates or knocks down, or else is disposable whilst being ecologically responsible.

Reclaiming simplicity, thrift, and utility.

We found a copy  “Box Furniture” by Louise Brigham, an American early 20th century designer/teacher who was a pioneering champion of the use of recycled materials in furniture design.

 

The book published in 1909 contains plans of her designs for building furniture entirely out of packing crates, a how-to manual for a target audience of modestly skilled working-class householders.