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Tuesday 18 October 2011
The story of stuff by Annie Leonardo
Annie Leonardo’s videos and books are internationally controversial being called “an anti-consumerism diatribe” and even “community college Marxism in a ponytail.” This negative critic is due to she realistically portrays our negative way of living.
This clip enlightens us on the material economy process; the extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal of consumer goods, forcing us to realise the social and environmental impacts of the way we are using this process but all so showing us the alternatives to this devastating process.
Annie Leonardo points out that “you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely”; in other words to ensure the world stays inhabitable we cannot extract natural resources at an incredible high rate to produce disposable products through a process which has a huge toxic output.
The clip enlightens us on how companies use a products obselence to influence a higher consumer consumption rate. They either use;
-those that are made to have poor durability
-those companies which readily produce new editions to the product and the consumer feels like they need the new version eg apple ipods are a perfect example of this as a new generation is brought onto the market yearly, the difference between new and old being predominantly in the aesthetics.
Leonardo further goes onto portray that the Americans unstable economy relies on this high consumption rate to stay afloat, as seen in cases such as the nine eleven bombings where people were in a state of devastation and stopped buying goods George bush told the population to SHOP. It’s a continual circle of spend money shopping- work to pay debts-spend money shopping ect this life cycle leaves the population having the smallest amount of leisure time in history. This means no down time to indulge in family and friend relationships which impacts greatly on their happiness. Besides from the social impacts of this process the environmental consequences will be fatal to our planet, for example;
· We lose 50,000 acres of trees a day globally to deforestation for the making of our paper, furniture, houses etc.
· In the U.S., each person uses 200 gallons of water on their lawns per day during the growing season.
· It takes 256 gallons of water to produce a single cotton t-shirt.
· The average gold wedding ring creates about 20 tons of hazardous waste
In conclusion she expresses her view that it is great that there are many activists focusing on a small part of the consumer goods lifecycle (e.g. fighting strip mining, hazardous waste disposal, or wasteful transportation of goods). However to make a real change Leonard believes activist in extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal areas need to come together. Although each area can stand alone; each is part of a greater system which must be carefully considered in order to maximize the design’s usability, efficiency, and sustainability.
As a designer this clip made me realize I must not only associate with people from production but all these areas; to truly make a positive impact we must come together to bring around the most successful solutions to the terrible problems our kind has created.
Monday 17 October 2011
Rationale
The use of the recycled posters (polypropylene) and the process of Flat pack packaging were the two focus points of this project, hence I wanted my final solution to utilised, and emphasized the materials key properties but also have a successful minimalistic packaging technique.
I wanted to show that this particular material is ideal to be applied to lighting, and also show that no other material could be used to make this particular light, I feel I accomplished this by goal by utilising the materials ability to hold a folded edge, its memory which allows it to spring from flat packaged form to constructed form and its white side which effectively displays shadows cast by its own structure, the white side’s Soft matt shine also picks up and reflects ambient light which is a gorgeous effect. Rigidity is another key property of this material; I wanted to play with this quality by contrasting it with the softness of cotton thread to create interest within my design.
As this material has so many great qualities I wanted to really ‘show it off’ by using a vast surface area. These large surface areas allowed the posters coloured side to be illuminated through the white side and become a dominate feature. This vast use of material also allows a glow of the posters inside colours glow out the bottom of the lamp.
I didn’t want my design to fall in to the cheap category of lighting for example the flat packet lanterns that can be found in cheap shops or markets which are relatively disposable. I wanted my lamp to be a high end product, that is kept for a long period of time becoming greatly loved and sentimental ect. From researched I found that many of these cheaper lamps were greatly based on origami folding methods and only utilised the single material. This mainstream trend pushed me toward alternate techniques such as fabric manipulation and the introduction of cotton thread as a second material. By straying from the mainstream I hope that my design, though mass produced will have unique essences which will allow my design to stand out from its competitors.
From research I identified a key problem with existing flat packaged products including lights was that they were too complicated and/or time consuming for the consumer, which lead to many consumers having to hire a tradesperson just for assembly. Another problem which I found was that many flat packaged products were near impossible to dismantle and re construct after the original construction. Hence I had a great desire to create a successful, simple packaging process that took up limited space and gave the consumer ease in constructing, deconstructing and re constructing the lamp. This desire lead to the final design being a single component design which through simple folding is easily transformed from packaged form to a constructed light and back again.
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