We live in an era flooded by information, written or visual, you name it. This river of information has layers: natural history, human history, human needs, curiosity, knowledge, scientific knowledge, anthropological knowledge. And then, the horsepower of this era, CONSUMERISM.
The term can now be taken at face value, as in modern, or rather contemporary, society. A remark worth making here on the word “modern”: as Adolf Loos wrote in Spoken into the Void, Modern refers to a precise historical era, not to what people commonly confuse it with, which is the contemporary. Two very different things, and the confusion is telling in itself.
So we live in this era of Capitalism, advanced edition. Produce to consume, consume more to produce more. A mental path where all resources seem limitless, existing for the sole function and purpose of the production-consume binome. This logic of consumption has fed the river of visual overflow we are all swimming in. Every instant, every digital and physical medium is in an urge to offer the freshest product, satisfying our need for visual consumption first, which then cascades into something more physical, more sensorial.
And this brings us to the question at the heart of this first Blueprint. It is an existential one, and it touches the design world directly, furniture and objects of everyday human life in particular. We want a new design every day, but do we, really? Or do we in fact need a cycle in design, as in everything in life? A right cycle, not too frequent, not too distant, just the “time has come” one.
Because if not, if we genuinely believe we can design infinitely new products with no repetition, is that truly possible? Is there an endless river of creation? Nature would suggest otherwise. Everything in the natural world moves in cycles, seasons, tides, growth and decay. There is no reason to think that human creativity, and design in particular, escapes this logic. What we call new is often what has simply waited long enough to feel that way again.
This is what Blueprint intends to explore, one question at a time.
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