Isn’t the goal of design to meet the needs of the most people possible? Today we distinguish between universal design and non-universal design which means most of the design excludes a major part of the people (silver agers, handicapped people…). It is self-understandig that design is perceived as something exclusive (it excludes).
How can design look like that is including in all senses? Design for the masses?
As part of an art project, students at the university of applied arts in Vienna, researched the life and the eating habits of 20 families, inhabitants of the settlement building “Am Schöpfwork” in Vienna. – “Hier wird nur mit Liebe gekocht!”
“Our first visits in the housing development -Am Schöpfwerk- . Winter. A view on grey housing facades and satellite dishes. Cold weather and apparent lifelessness. Still not knowing what richness of cultures and stories lies behind the front…”
The ordinary becomes luxurious. Even known designers such as Matteo Thun are designing Pre Fab homes. But is this going to change the average picture of the suburbian home with garden? Or is it just making PreFab homes attractive to wealthy clients?
Building a dream home on the web? Today’s PreFab homes are handled as any other product too. Manufacturers offer guidelines and a list of features to choose from, the collections of modelhomes contain promising names like “Fortuna”, “Magic” or “WhiteStar”.
The possibility of Prefabrication has not only reached the need for instant (decreased building time) and affordable housing, nowadays “there is a new zeitgeist in architectural circles and the spirit of the age favors the small carbon footprint of “prefab”.
“From the perspective of the amateur homemaker, designing and making the home are discursive and creative practices that are integral to the process of identity formation…” (home culture / Roni Brown)
A series of Pre-Fab houses – in this case the major part of the identity formation has been handed over to the manufacturer, where only the “customization” is left the house owner.
During the postwar reconstruction era in Europe, home and domesticity attained an unprecendeted cultural importance. For many Europeans, securing a home of one’s own signaled the real end of the threats and dangers of the war.
(Betts and Crowley 2005:215)
The self-build home is quite unlike the majority of material culture possessions: it is conzeptualized by the “end-user” (being both producer and consumer); made by them over a period of time using their own productive energies and resources; integrates fragments of autobiographical narrative content; is often a joint, if not family-made project; and reflects the social world as other homes do-
(from home culture/ Identity and narrativity in homes made by amateurs; Roni Brown)
Filed under: Food
Ingredients (from left to right): Lemonade, sparkling water, energy drinks, pickled cabbage, pickled beetroot, butter cheese, sausage, canned gulash, cream cheese, instant coffee, plum jam, long-life milk, sponge cake, butter cake, biscuits
A typical shopping cart full of sugar, coffein, white bread, meat & conservation.
Familiar for generations the box of sugar cubes; simple & timeless (Wiener Zucker – Vienna)
Filed under: Observations
Just through time the average became rare and desirable.
The question: are there enough positive characteristics of today’s products, that will make them valuable for future generations?
Images taken from O. & P. Payer “eine praktische Wohnkunde” – “a practical manual for living” 1971
For her article “What you did not know about Design, *because you never asked“, Martina Grünewald did a research in Austrias main furniture stores (Leiner, Interio, Ikea, Lutz) and questioned customers about their understanding of Design.
Statements like “something special, certainly not average, but of course it is also a matter of price…” are general answers.
Design is considered as something outstanding, not part of the average daily life, but still it represents something desirable.
Why then buy ordinary furniture in one of these stores? Just because of the price? I don’t think so.
I discovered for instance that the price for lunch menues in viennese restaurants can be pretty much the same no matter if you go to a chic restaurant in the city center or a middle-class pub at the outscirts. Nevertheless you still see the same kind of people in the same kind of places.
