[ 2024-05 ]
{Originally published as part of my RISD thesis project One of One of a Kind}
A source of tension I’ve noticed as this project has gone on — and not so much spoken, but easily read on peoples’ faces — is why variety of form in our daily objects is something worth caring about. Sure, generative systems may be able to bring back variety that we’ve lost with industrial processes, but why does that even matter in the first place? Here are five thoughts on social and cultural implications of variety, and why I think variety as a design intention in itself is worth pursuing.
Most things in the designed and fabricated world are straight, flat, square, parallel, hard, and smooth. There was a time in human history when these features were incredibly rare, and therefore highly sought after, but that time has now gone. Now, in a sea of perfect, identical products, perhaps the kind of variety present in nature is what we should be seeking out.
The global, universalist vision of modernism has proved to be problematic in many ways. No two human persons are the same, and so their objects, particularly the ones in their home, should reflect their individuality and unique point of view. Millions of people having identical products inhibits their ability to express their preferences, and therefore creates a kind of social friction because it hides visual evidence of each person’s uniqueness.
Recent writing from Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh (Beauty, 2018), Elaine Scarry (On Beauty & Being Just, 2001), and Byung-Chul Han (Saving Beauty, 2017) hint at a growing re-emphasis of a very old idea — that the experience of beauty has profound personal, social, and cultural implications. It prompts us to contemplate, it puts us in touch with our creative faculties, it simultaneously humbles and empowers us. Variety is a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition for beauty, and so more variety means more potential opportunities for the experience of beauty.
Most manufactured objects aesthetically prioritize one scale. Modern buildings, for example, are often quite sculptural from afar, but from a few feet away appear as large, featureless expanses. Old buildings are visually interesting at many different scales because they were built up organically from human-scale components. Digital design and fabrication has the potential to bring this kind of multi-scalar visual variety into a digitized and automated design and making process.
The idea that the designer is the arbiter of taste seems to be fading away. Rather than aiming to develop a least-common-denominator product with mass appeal, the designer now has the tools to put many potential ideas out into the world early in the process, allowing patrons to collectively curate and help shape the work alongside them.
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context — a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” — Eliel Saarinen
“If a renascence comes […] The house will be painted not to match the street, but to match the householder, even if it is painted green with pink spots. […] A man ought to clothe himself with a house and a garden, as he clothes himself with a hat and a coat. As it is, a new house is built by a total stranger, who then looks round to find a man to fit it.” — G. K. Chesterton