Applied Design

I recently watched a video clip from the Colbert Report featuring Paola Antonelli, the senior curator for the design and architecture department at MoMA. She discusses the future of design is going to be inspired and created through physics, known as applied design. Applied design considers more than just theoretical design, which is more the artistic side, but rather considering natural materials, physic's forces and formulas to create new, innovative designs to minimize size or increase productivity, and more practical ways to create with natural forces.

She shows examples of a vase made completely by bees just through coating a shaft with honey and the bees naturally creating a honeycomb out of the object. This is using natural occurrences and free manual labor to create objects.

The next example she goes over is a large, spherical object that has disc-like plates mounted onto bars protruding from the center called the Mine Kafon Ball. At first, you think it's just an interesting sculpture, but she explains that this object is to be propelled by the wind across mine fields and cause the mines to explode. Right now, it costs around $10,000 to take a mine out of a minefield, but the new design can be used up to 5 times without the use of anything but natural power. Ideally, it could be used by local farmers as a cheaper way to remove mines from fields, not put any lives at risk, and the damaged parts can be replaced easily. You can watch a video here about his influence from childhood toys he played with in the windy desert.

Lastly, she speaks of a desk design that will be used in areas that have a large amount of earthquakes. Since students are taught to take cover under a desk, the desk is equipped with shock absorbers and durable materials so if the roof were to fall in, the children would be safe under the desk.

I think applied design is taking design to an even more practical and noticeable level. As we know, the world is completely run by design whether it be traffic signs, icons, typography, or the design of our homes and appliances. These are easily overlooked, but these make a usual object have more purposes than just the traditional aspect or it makes people reconsider new options. To me, this a great step in a new direction that can only progressively become better with new ideas and interesting ways of using the natural occurrences that surround us in our design plans.