Designers in search of super normal things, the banal and the archetypal of elementary objects.
Two designers, Briton Jasper Morrison and Japan’s Naoto Fukasawa, are known for looking for “super normal” things across the world. Both were interested in everything related to the experience of extreme simplicity: elemental, functional objects that are impossible to define in terms of place of origin, time of creation, tradition or technology used in the process of production. Where does man’s wish to have as few things as possible and reduce the everyday to the limit derive from? In 2010, Vitra Design Museum curators opened the exhibition The Essence of Thing stracing the notion of simplicity as reflected in design spanning several centuries, which proposed a novel approach to our perception of simple objects. What meanings do simple things articulate today? Who, among contemporary designers, is really able to come to the point? What kind of authors are preoccupied with the search of “super normal” things, and what do the banal and the archetypal of elementary objects reveal? What does the most regular automobile, chair, soapbox, or teapot look like? The lecture will provide examples of some of these creations, including both twentieth-century objects and present-day designs.
