The world does not need new chairs – Designing new ones only takes time from REPAIRING the ones we already have. Consider this the ultimate sustainable design challenge and an opportunity to promote open design.
We have challenged the designers of the world to NOT design chairs the next year. It’s that simple!
For designers who feel they cant cope with a year of not designing new stuff we have made a tutorial on: “How NOT to Design Chairs”. It is available both as a video and on instructables:
Video “Tutorial”:
http://vimeo.com/etsaaunohtaa/no-chair-design
Instructables:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-NOT-to-Design-Chairs/
The project has been presented next to design fairs in Helsinki, the next World Design Capital. For the fair presentations we also made an invisible chair to support the cause:
Video “Invisible Chair”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7s9MJMIPAM
The campaign is a part of the Alternative Design Capital 2012 project which is hooking urban activist, open designers and artist to host a series of events which run parallel to the official WDC program.
Alternative Design Capital:
http://wiki.pixelache.ac/alt-wdc-planning/home
The idea here is to make de-growth sexy. Instead of creating innovations to solve current economical and ecological challenges we should merely select which of the cultural practices we are engaged with are worth continuing.
NCD-C Images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jukkapalmu/sets/72157627272634290/
The campaign is run by a small arts and crafts research unit by the name of Ore.e Refineries which has specialized in grassroots urban development projects like “smithing in public spaces”.
Ore.e Ref:
Smithing in public spaces:
http://oree.storijapan.net/pictorial_workshop1/
(Note the vintage look of the website is functional as it only takes some 100kb to load.)
All the best from Finland,
In behalf of Ore.e Ref.
Eero Yli-Vakkuri (Head of management and sails)