2015
SOCIAL DESIGN CRITIC 01
INTANGIBLE VALUE
DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN
ABSENCE OF MENTAL VALUE
We are living in the world that we can find out faster what is happening on the opposite side of the world than where is the guy living next to my apartment. We can go across the continent in only a few hours. While we’re walking on the street, the display of stores change every day and people diligently consume new creations following attractive images companies produce. It’s getting dizzy if we feel the speed of changes through our whole bodies. Civilization is developing dramatically like this and people keep moving forward. We tend to not have a problem with the basic needs related to death comparing with previous time, but we face a different matter of sphere. On comparing with external stability, individuals fail to get internal richness so they are living in the time of loss and becoming empty shell. In other words, they are accustomed to find values from outside but lost inner side of the value which take part as a center of life. The more society develop, the more these phenomenon is intensified and modern society these days can be explained as absence of mental value. When we are talking about value, there are two different kinds. First is materialistic value and the other is mental value. Materialistic value is defined as a measure of the benefit that may be gained from goods or service and it includes the meaning of pleasurable and useful of value from the material. Basically, value means satisfying our desires or emotion regardless of different kinds and it becomes pursuing a goal. It is the base of our decision and further become a standard when we distinguish between right and wrong.
03 SOCIAL DESIGN CRITIC
INTANGIBILE VALUE
W
e are living under the circumstances that we only seek for materialistic value and suffering from the lake of a medium which can satisfy our mental needs. For example, social regulation which placed strictly in the center in traditional society has been collapsed, and finally what we call value lost their power and meaning. Collapse of such an ethical value makes people lose their human dignity and satisfy their needs by material, something tangible. At last, we are facing the era we worship materialistic value and this transformation of value let people constantly consume superficial and visual images. Fredric Jameson uses the notion of ‘contrived depthless-ness’ to describe the contemporary cultural condition and its fixation with appearances, surfaces and instant impacts that have no sustain power over time. Healthy society comes from having many different kinds of standard of values and it results in the diversity of happiness. However, in reality, profit and money usually come first and it creates a uniformed phase of social life. Art, architecture and design are not the exception under the current of the times.
Mass production, Loosing diversity of happiness
“Contrived depthless-ness” SOCIAL DESIGN CRITIC 04
MULTI-SENSORY EXPERIENCE Juhani Pallasmaa said ‘We are made to live in a fabricated dream world’ in his book, The Eyes of The Skin. People continuously consume commoditized images to satisfy their spiritual emptiness and boredom coming from modern society. Pallasmaa also stated that space and architecture originally make people face existential reality and address all the senses simultaneously and fuse our image of self with our experience of the world. However, architecture these days have become a printed image shown by camera lenses. Fredric Jameson also uses this expression, ‘its fixation with appearances, surfaces and instant impacts that have no sustain power over time.’ We all remember the great joy of multi-sensory experience from the nature and mutual interaction with the object when we’re playing as a kid. It is not just the momentary image, but various sensory experience like sound, smell and tactile. We save this kind of memory as emotional information and it comes from sympathy, aura, and atmosphere from the objects. The sense of ‘aura’, the authority of presence, that Walter Benjamin as a necessary quality for an authentic piece of art, has been lost . In this sense, multi-sensory experience coming from the objects is our lost value and the solutions for satisfying our mental desires. At the same time, it is an intangible value that a designer need to deliver to the modern society. The Lovers, Rene Magritte, 1928
05 SOCIAL DESIGN CRITIC
INTANGIBILE VALUE
Sensual experience make it possible to define their existence in the infinite space, and offer a chance of speculation about their ego. We are mainly conquered by vision these days, so it’s not easy to have multi-sensory experience. In traditional society, people used to construct their environment based on the body, and they had full of circumstances which can fulfill their sensual curiosity and delight. Drinking tea is a good example. Drinking as a behavior is common multi-sensory culture which can find all over the world. Although the manner is different depending on the culture, the behavior of drinking was commonly ritual time for them to put the proper effort and time, so that they can speculate and use all of their senses. In the Book of Tea, Kakuzo Okakura describes the situation as the present and the absent,
the near and the distant, the sensed and the imagined fuse together. Drinking was not just time for personal meditation, but also expressed their courtesy to the guests and used it as a tool for socializing which can show the start of a conversation. And this meaning is proceeded by the moderns as well. I had a project to express social value in drinking behavior; one is a tea cup which can maximize our sense, so people can be closer to the behavior itself. The other is scale-shaped tea tray which visualizes the interaction between two people. Whenever they drink, a tray is moved by the action and a small metal ball slides and make sounds with the cup. Drinking tea or coffee has a huge value in a way that it is the ultimate multi-sensory experience and includes humanitarian value bringing mutual sympathy at the same time.
SLOW TEA CUP, BALANCE TEA TRAY ceramic, wood, 2014, 2015
SOCIAL DESIGN CRITIC 06
ATMOSPHERE
We can find values from human behavior, but it’s also possible to find in the space. Sensory experience in the space which can limit and identify our existence is also the intangible value we need to recover from the modern city. When we stroll in the forest, we feel the wind with our skin and hear the sound of the trees. Also, we smell their characterized smell from the nature. It is sensual experience we can have only from the silence and solitude. In the fast city, we can’t get this chance by losing flexibility and enforced stimulation. There are two architects who tried to bring ‘atmosphere’ in the space beyond the function and shape of the building. Louis Kahn and Peter Zumpthor. We can find the common feelings from their work, noble aesthetics. They tried to express architectural value rising above the taste of the times, and pursued solemn and speculative space. Also, they created a monumental mass structure so that it flows out the atmosphere. For users, they give a clue to interpret, imagine and feel the environment. Peter Zumthor stated in his book Atmospheres, “Form is not something we work on. We apply ourselves to all the other things. To sound, noises, materials, construction, anatomy, etc. The body of architecture.” The effort to create an aura and mood beyond the limitation of the shape indicates that there is something we cannot embody which is impossible to tell, see and touch.
▲ KLAUUS FELDKAPELLE, PETER ZUMTHOR
▼ SALIK INSTITUTE, LOUIS KAHN
07 SOCIAL DESIGN CRITIC
INTANGIBILE VALUE
SOCIAL DESIGN CRITIC 08
TIME AND MEMORY
Time and memory is closely related to intangible value. Human dream about eternity, but we all have equally limited life, and we leave traces of life. It is the trial of continuity of the times, and people can share the transcendental value regardless of the era. From these traces, we understand the flow of history and participate our life in the cycle of time. Of course every tangible thing disappears. Even though it has strong and rigid structure, it is eroded and collapse under the ground by the power of natural providence. What we can call eternity is the fact we exist and the memory itself. There is a small city names ‘Harburg’ in the south of Hamburg, Germany. In 1986, a huge monument which had 12 meters long was created at the corner of the street in Harburg.
This monument was a remembrance of sad history, fascism and surprisingly it is designed to sink 2 meters every year. In 1993, it was totally disappeared under the ground and now we can see the trace of a small square in that place. The sculptor, Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz tried to give a message that even we have a history and memory of resistance, we are the one who lives present and be awake. Although the shape of the monument was disappeared finally, it has a stronger impact than an actual monument by showing the small trace which shows the memory of the existence. Intangible value which is from the flow of the time bring us a power of concentration as a living being in the present.
THE HARBURG MONUMENT AGAINST FASCISM, 1986-1993 HARBURG, GERMANY JOCHEN GERZ, ESTHER SHALEV-GERZ
INTANGIBILE VALUE
We can see countless designed outcome coming out in a day. Design is considered to place very close to the people’s life, but at the same time, so many quantities of design outcomes cannot find the right position and just disappear. Someone says designers produce trash. The effort for making meaningful results appears as ‘garbage’. Under the flood of production, we need to think about the value which designers can create and touch people’s mind. At last, what we can find from intangible value is ‘humanitarian value’. The more the value of the humanity decreases, the more desire about intangible value will increase. At this point, the designer should offer a chance for the people to create their own value, and feel it. It’s not the instructive or enforced way, but in a way to perceive, imagine, and feel. So that individuals can find their meaning of existence and build a solid structure of their life.
SOCIAL DESIGN CRITIC 10