Yesterday I was talking to some people about how my old neighbors had an all granite top on an island in their kitchen and about how cool it was because it was like one big cutting and mixing surface. One of my friends said that that was bad for knives and I said that I didn’t think that that mattered. My friend then shrugged her shoulders in disbelief. She must have been thinking, is this the same Ryan who loves tools and despises all who abuse them and is always yelling at everyone to cover up the surface plates in the metal shop and is all obsessed with buying new cutters for the router and Bridgeport and drill press so his cuts will be wicked accurate.
Well, I have to admit; sometimes I don’t make any sense, why did I think that recklessly dulling the kitchen knives was okay? Isn’t that just like using the good Gingher scissors to cut cardboard or using a wood lathe to cut cement or any of the other stupid uses of tools that I so often rant about and despise? After a few moments of reflection I realized that the difference was that I really liked the experience of having the big granite cutting mixing board, in fact, If cutting cardboard with Gingher scissors was fun enough I might approve of it too.
This little collision was kind of like the conversation I had with Nancy about what I like and what my design process might be. After trying to get to the bottom of all my posts and then trying to boil that bottom down even farther we came to a list of things that might be what I am all about, things like Green, Local production, Small scale, Simple and efficient.
The few days between me and that talk have had me thinking about what my design process is really all about and what is it that really links all the things that I like together in some way that makes sense. Sometimes the objects that I like do not seem to fit together to make a theme and yet to me they do perfectly. If I were to list some favorite designed things from the top of my head it might go like this, Pagani Zonda supercar, Calfee Bamboo bicycle, Moulton new series commuter bike, Old Vespas, Eladio Dieste warehouse at Montevideo, most new Mac products, sandals made from chunks of car tires (homemade kind), Chartes cathedral, Festool woodworking products, most if not all Rococo artifacts (sofas, chairs, prints, etc..) Sam Maloof rocking chairs, Buckminster fuller dymaxion series (house, car world map, housing, domes), Ford T buckets with blown Keith Black big block Hemis, Starcks juice squeezer, and on and on. In this list are things that I like for the same reasons I don’t like other things, For instance, I like bicycles because they do not pollute very much and are very efficient, I also like Paggani Zondas a lot but they pollute a lot and are very inefficient. Even after writing that down I still feel fine about liking both but the reason that is possible is still a little bit of a mystery. A clue came when thinking about the granite dulling the knives. Normally people excessively dulling sharp tools for no good reason drives me crazy but I have no problem with cutting on granite because the enjoyment that I had gotten from it was more important. In the end the reason we have all of this crap around is too have a good time, right? Maybe I am a hedonistic designer?
In the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig suggests that there should be a new metaphysical construct with the term quality at its foundation. To Pirsig Quality is not an attribute but is actually a description of the process in which we see and construct values, our instant perception of good and bad, like being able to here if an orchestra is in tune or not without having musical training. Quality is the description of knowing if something fits or not, the highest quality things being those that fit in anywhere were the lowest quality things may never fit anywhere. I feel like the best way for me to understand this is through the word harmony. Something that is perfect is in harmony with the whole of existence.
I believe that my design process is based on this sense of harmony. All of the objects that I feel drawn to have this sense of harmony but do not necessarily have any other specific attributes in common. That is why I don’t usually have a good answer when people ask me about my design sense or design process. The Bamboo bicycle strives to make individual transport more enjoyable, sustainable and ecologically responsible achieving in my eyes a sense of harmony. The 1000 horsepower super dangerous ford T bucket recycles vintage auto parts and turns them into something that is so scary that it is only driven occasionally and for the delight of many, harmony again. Sometimes having a vague compass like harmony can be frustrating, sometimes it is hard to spot out of context but the objects that have these attributes can easily be spotted. They are the things that are cherished.
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