The Found Object

Welcome

Kristina B — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:00:00 GMT

This is a research site belonging to me, Kristina Borjesson, and dedicated to the designed object and its contribution to a holistic sustainable development. The aim of the site is to present and discuss my research and related issues, starting with my vision and with focus on my PhD thesis (2006) from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, The University of the Arts London (UAL). Different research papers as well as other relevant documents will from time to time also be available here.

Thre are useful lists of references to be found in papers and articles under the heading 'Recently published papers' and - of course - in my thesis.

This site is one way for me to share my knowledge and experience, to start dialogues and to avoid that my thesis is gathering dust on a bookshelf. I hope you will find it interesting and I look forward to comments and dialogues.

Kristina

My future research

Kristina B — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:45:00 GMT

Already in my doctorial thesis, I mentioned my intention of writing a handbook facilitating understanding by mentally visualising affective sustainability.

Through a series of workshops, seminars and conferences I have had the opportunity to refine affective sustainability as a concept and further develop the characteristics of this quality and possible ways to arrive at these through design. This research is now entering its final phase with another series of workshops with practising designers and MA design students but also discussions with R&D managers in a selection of companies producing industrial designs. These discussions will focus on the number of new products introduced every year and their median life cycle in the company's range. Furthermore, if lower sale figures are compensated by lower R&D costs, where would a slimmed range but with a longer life cycle contribute to an improved business result?

The planned handbook will in itself be an example of an affectively sustainable object. The medium is the message.

I will keep you updated on this exciting project!

Until then - communicate with me!

Al the best

Kristina

Designboost 2008 and retrospective

Kristina B — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:30:00 GMT

Designboost 2008

'Long Live the City', the second version of Designboost, took place in Malmö October 15 - 17. As the name suggests, this year's event focused the city: how to promote its wellbeing and ensure a development which regards as many sustainable criteria as possible. The subheading wrote: 'A city has to first hand make use of its inherent capacity to be sustainable'. Any development mainly founded on resources claimed from elsewhere could be a showcase of 'sustaining the unsustainable'. However, there is one important exception: knowledge resources could be claimed from anywhere and contribute to 'wasted' places within a city becoming part of a positive development. 'Wasted' place are not necessarily rundown areas or deserted industrial estates (to mention a few preconceptions) but also places whose potential; mix of dwellers, location, cultural diversity, quality of buildings etc. is simply unused.

I acted as 'Sustainable Editor' for Designboost 2008. This very special title means that I had the responsibility for the factual content of all communication including the Designboost magazine, excluding signed articles, and the Boost show, the exhibition which is on another 2 weeks.

The event gathered a very professional, international crowd, with about 100 participants in the workshops and another 200 joining for the talks the following day. The media coverage was extensive and predominantly positive. Comments from participants during and after the event were with no exceptions praising. The event is already after two years regarded as very important even if with room for organisational improvements.

A first short conclusion of Designboost 2008 is attached below but one single word describes well what was emphasised in the Boostchats and talks: connectivity promotes the longevity of a city. Connectivity is not merely about physical means of connecting the different parts of a city and its surroundings but also, and probably more importantly, about connceting its future to its history, to ensure that new developments regard and connect to the existing cultural and social environment and that a city facilitates human interaction. Hard values become non-values if they are not combined with soft values.

Conclusion_Designboost_2008

Retrospective: The first version of Designboost took place on October 17 and 18, 2007.

It focused on many of the key aspects of sustainability and design through workshops (boost-meetings), lectures and panel debates (boost-duels) and an exhibition (boost-happening).

The event got excellent media coverage and was professionally regarded as a success: a step forward with regard to improved ways to 'do conferences': allowing the delegates to be active and the participants to listen to a wider variety of approaches than a conference normally permits. I took part as 'spin-doctor' and was even praised in media for critically analysing and clarifying the existing plethora of denominations. I was further quoted when saying that it is time to learn more about the influence from inside us than to focus merely on the context. Designboost is planned to become a yearly event.

Designboost takes place in Malmo, southern Sweden. Malmo has become a vibrant university town recovering from the setbacks of closing industries and profiting from being adjacent to Copenhagen, only a bridge away!

Go to http://www.designboost.se and learn more! Also check out www.designboom.com

Design & Emotion Conference 2008

Kristina B — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 11:15:00 GMT

Design_and_Emotion_paper

'Undisciplined', DRS Conference 2008

Kristina B — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:33:00 GMT

DRS_Undisciplined_paper_2

The seminar July 8 is now behind us ...

Kristina B — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:55:00 GMT

'Introducing the affective in sustainable design.'

The seminar at Central Saint Martins on July 8 is now behind us.

A full room is always inspiring for speakers as well as participants and the conference room had now empty chairs to offer. Unfortunately Mathilda Tham fell ill the day before the seminar and could not be there to inspire! However, her talk is in full part of the enclosed summary.

The seminar day developed into something of a workshop where participants felt free to ask questions and make comments: exactly the dialogue we had aimed at. The Poster exhibition was located to the actual conference room, which made references as well as dialogues around these projects an integral part of the discussions.

Kristina Borjesson

See enclosed for a detailed summary of the seminar.

Summary_of_Seminar

The poster exhibition of the seminar July 8

Kristina B — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:25:00 GMT

The poster exhibition at the seminar presented four projects:

'Fit for a kid' by Paul Blease (unfortunaely wrongly spelt - Bleg - in the programme due to an e-mail address)
'Celia. Tap and water consumption' by Alessandra de Simone
'The Other Side' by Yu Zhao
'Inane Systems' by Ryan Dunn

The projects are described in the 'impressions' part of the summary. For individual abstract of these projects, please contact me!

Kristina Börjesson

kristina@borjesson-mk.se

Cumulus Kyoto 2008, Japan

Kristina B — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:25:00 GMT

This paper will be part of the proceedings for Cumulus Kyoto 2008, March 28-31.

The confusion concerning timelessness. Does the everyday interpretation of the notion at all promote sustainable living?

Kristina Borjesson

Prologue.

This paper is mainly based on research conducted for my PhD project: The Affective Sustainability of Objects. (Borjesson 2006). Post-doctoral research including continued studies, workshops and seminars has since allowed for advanced conclusions.

Introduction.

Though widely used in design discourse among academics, practitioners as well as in commerce, timeless escapes definition, not least in application: how to design for timelessness? Osborne (1995) refers to some of the most influential philosophers of our time, mentioning among others Benjamin, Gadamer and Ricoeur when he makes a quest through the politics of time. As a result, he emphasises that time has got many interpretations: historical times, now time, new time, Modernity, Avant-garde … All these temporal concepts are made by man, while time and history flows in an ongoing process. The idea of flow is also central for Kwinter (2001), who introduces the notion of ‘affective capacity’: the characteristic of an object, which flows with time rather than is sorted in under a fixed temporal concept. Its ability to flow is a result of its continued relevance: like a tradition it lives on only as long as it contributes, provided it is not artificially kept alive, i.e. by politics. Traditions have after the trademark detraditionalisation by the modern movement regained a place on several academic agendas and are there assigned important roles as transmitters of experience rather than [irrelevant] rules (Lash 1993). The understanding of time and tradition is part of our cultural philosophy as is aesthetic judgment. What differentiates the latter from the two former is that it often seems to have has two components, the un-reflected and sensual but also the reflected and cultural (Dewey 1934, Rée 1998). I will return to this issue further on in my paper.

It is the arousal of the senses, which brings a person in an affective state. She might not show it, it is an inner feeling and sometimes she is not even aware herself, it is an unconscious, but lived experience. Another time the sensation might set her in a good mood, even is she does not know why, it just feels right. Current and ongoing developments within neuroscience explain why we act and react as we do and more often than was previously understood, out of our own control (Bastick 2003, Damasio 1994, 2000, Wilson 2002).

The knowledge of how our brain works is crucial for the understanding of affectivity and to which extend it influences our decisions. Enhanced knowledge further provides us with guidance concerning whether affectivity should be regarded as irrational and a disturbance or as completing the rational and thus an important factor in decision-making.

The initial proposal that something could be timeless or without time has thus brought the analysis all the way into the different lobes of our brain where functions, essential for our survival are performed. The struggle for survival is in a way the essence of timelessness: that what fills the purpose of facilitating not only survival but being as such, has an affective capacity. An object, and also a matter, which has this capacity could be called timeless because it serves this aim [of survival and being]. However, this is not the meaning popularly attached to the notion of timelessness, which appears to have a cultural character. Affectivity is according to Ticineto Clough (2007) basically pre-individual and pre-conscious but not pre-social, which means that culture has affective elements. This would explain why a few cultural values actually have sustained over time in the fast developing parts of the world. However, a more general approach to sustainability would necessitate a look beyond culture.

This paper will therefore thematically explore Human ways of Being and Living, Lived and Learned experience, Simplicity and Simplification, Affect and Emotion to substantiate directions for designers aiming further than the rhetoric of timelessness and the issue of physical sustainability

Human ways of Being and Living.

When Maslow 1970 revised his ‘need pyramid’ (first introduced 1954) he added esteem and self-actualisation to the basic needs of safety, love/belonging and physiological demands. He even suggested that the two later additions had a tendency to overshadow the three basic needs, which originally made up the pyramid (Maslow 1970). He thus turned the need pyramid upside down while proposing that well-being has more facets and is more complex than previously thought. Well-being arrives with the fulfilment of the basic need and is in constant dialogue with our cultural and social context, which constitutes our frame of reference. For a designer to consider human well-being when aiming at sustainability is hence a measure, which would need to be carefully analysed to differentiate between basic needs as respectively adaptable and changeable. I have chosen to express the former as Human ways of being and the latter as Human ways of living. How are these to be recognised and separated? To formulate it very simply: human ways of being have a history whilst our ways of living have not.

This instantly gives associations to counter development and prompts the question: do new ways of living not mean improvement and progress? Are they necessarily unsustainable? The answer is no, we adapt by quickly learning when objects or other improvements undoubtedly care for us but we unlearn slowly (Wilson 2002, Hill 2002). What in this process becomes part of our ways of being has at least a good chance to sustain as opposed i.e. techno-addicted or fashion-dictated lifestyles (Hill 2002). The revelation, brought to us by neuroscience, is that humans are not victims of ever changing lifestyles as long as the context does not continuously respond to them: our unconscious adapts by lived experience and gives us a chance to resist, to ponder our choices. We may not necessarily be aware of the process; sometimes we merely decide that we do not find anything, which suites our needs better than what we already have or alternatively we make choices, which comes as a slight surprise to ourselves (Borjesson 2006).

Lived and Learned Experience.

Our brain can only store a fraction of the information it is confronted with. Moreover, only part of what is stored is conscious, actively learned and able to recall on command (Ramachandran 2003). What else is stored is only activated by certain stimuli, which would mean that our lived experience is brought to use in appropriate situations. Bastick (2003) explains human intuition as lived experience and the important role of the unconscious for human behaviour is further emphasised by Damasio (1994, 2000). Though widely researched over a period of more than 15 years, there is still no common understanding concerning the link between the rational; the learned and conscious, and the irrational; the lived and unconscious in human behaviour and decision-making. We understand ourselves as basically rational, whilst there are evidences, even if to a degree disputed, that by denying the irrational we refuse to make use of our total experience.

Enhanced knowledge of how our brain works is thus essential for the trust of the irrational. To refer to intuition, often called gut feeling, is generally not regarded neither scientific nor scholarly. However, change ought to gradually come about when evidence continue to define intuition as knowledge, which is stored outside our immediate conscious (Bastick 2003) and scientific experiments show that our brain unconsciously notices i.e. the system of a game and decides accordingly before the player is aware (Damasio 1994).

Simplicity and Simplification.

Sensual experiences bypasses reflection and give immediate responses. The moment we start to discuss a sensual sensation, it is influenced from our context: the social and the cultural. Though aesthetics have been linked to intellectual values, the revival of its original Greek meaning, aesthesis; sensation or perception by the senses, has been strengthened over the course of the twenties century (Osborne 2000). To talk about aesthetical values would consequently only be relevant if a number of people independent in time and context were to make in between them similar aesthetic judgments concerning the same or resembling artefacts.

Aesthetical values are therefore not to be imposed on anyone or set as a standard [which was done by the modernist and the followers of the device; less is more]. Postrel (2004) argues that beauty is the aesthetic reflected and yet the impression of beauty is claimed to be very personal. Already in 1735, a German philosopher, Alexander Baumgarten, claimed that sensual recognition was not inferior to or to be overruled by reason. Sensuality was a complement to reason and “provides a representation of reality the same way reason does for rationalist philosophy.” (Menke 1998, p. 40) Baumgarten proposed what the neuroscientist now are about to find proof for: “ The goal of aesthetics – the enlargement of the realm of legitimate cognition, including sensual forms – required an epistemological break with the very understanding of legitimate cognition as such.” (Menke 1998, p. 40) The difference is that we now know that cognition i) is not a prerequisite for developing our experience: the unconscious is adapting and learning simultaneously to the conscious, our senses seemingly develop, which was observed and claimed already by Dewey (1934).

The aesthetical value of simplicity and absence of decorative elements as a precondition for timelessness (Droste 1990) was imposed by the modernist and is more of a rational statement linked to industrial manufacturing than to sensual experiences. On the contrary, the absence of conspicuous elements makes it difficult for humans to differentiate between objects and thereby remember them (Bastick 2003). Mugge (2007) makes observations of the same kind: product attachment is made difficult by neutral object characteristics. She further argues against the claim that attachment always develops over time and suggests that longevity is a function of presence: even a long lasting attachment might break if product and person are separated. Referring back to how our brain works, I will here make a counterclaim: attachment is initially established through visceral understanding. If this is made difficult, the object is discarded (Norman 2004). Simplicity is demanding exactly due to the lack of conspicuous elements whereas simplification is achieved by the presence of the identifiable, a kind of a visual dictionary, which explains what it is all about.

To continue with the metaphor of dictionary, only further exploration completes understanding and enhances remembrance and attachment. This would mean that the object must allow for this exploration, which explains why form, colour and material form a unity, which when changed might reverse how the object is perceived. The fact that an object invites to further exploration suggests that imperfection rather than perfection accounts for durable attachment.

Affect and Emotion.

Damasio (2000) is precise in his definition of emotions, feelings and mood. Emotions are outward, what we show, whilst feelings are inwards, what we experience. The latter are not possible for others to see or judge. Mood is what it all results in, independent of the respective proportions of emotions and feelings behind. Affect is a general state combining feelings, emotions and mood and decides or relation to a situation or an object. The more exact proportions making up an affective state is of course impossible to define. As already pointed out above, affectivity is a pre-conscious and pre-individual state, part of human ways of being. The claim by Bastick (2003) that emotion is more to be seen as a set of components, than one single component explains to which extend affect is socially/culturally dependent: emotions are made up of one affective, one motor and one cognitive component. What we show outwards is not immediate; it is reflected and to varying degrees customised to the situation dependent on how strong the affective components is.

Though a popular academic subject area, design and emotion is consequently less relevant for sustainability than often implied (Chapman 2005) and to design emotionally sustainable objects is hardly possible (Love 2002). Emotions are by definition not durable but instead through cognition in constant interaction with our context, the social and the cultural. Efforts to arrive at durable product attachment through regard to self-expression and group affiliation have for this reason proven to be difficult, which is also observed by Mugge (2007). The importance of memories for product attachment is often judged to be too personal to be considered by designers, even if collective memories do become part of cultural expressions.

The influence of pleasure [of using] must according to Jordan (2000) take into consideration also those variables beyond the merely physiological: the social, the psychological and the ideological pleasures. The designing of pleasurable products might consequently enhance product attachment and add to its longevity - but just as well also do the opposite!

Very few states are purely affective and those who are do not last very long: our reactions in a situation which poses immediate fear is primarily totally affective, which probably saves our life, but this state is quite rapidly replaced by reflection about what was about to happen, could have happened. Damasio(1994, 2000) is also very cautious to point out that humans are not ruled by the irrational but rational thought is ignited by affect, which includes emotions, and further in constant dialogue with the irrational: our intuition or lived experience.

Conclusion and directions.

Timeless and timelessness are from a designer and design point of view no descriptive notions and in addition ambiguous. They are typical examples of a terminology, which is based on a confused phenomenology. The effort to conceptualise timeless and define the quality timelessness has brought about the multidisciplinary analysis referred in this paper and shown that indiscriminate application of the notions not only has emptied them of meaning but in addition poses a risk of increasingly promote trend and fashion rather than sustainability.

Timelessness is rationally impossible, which I pointed out in the introduction to this paper. Philosophical approaches (Osborne 1995) to the notion tend instead to express an inner experience, a feeling, which with reference to the reasoning above often is difficult to originate and therefore to conceptualise. However, when these feelings result in certain repetitive human behaviour including expression of preferences, they can be identified and studied in real life. Awareness about the social and cultural context in which they appear furthermore offers opportunities to avoid certain biases.

At this stage in my research it is as a result possible to give a number of directions for designers to consider when aiming at sustainability beyond the political and the physical.

Human basic and adapted needs can be traced through object analysis as they represent the history visible beyond contemporary styling.
Authenticity is irrelevant to needs and does not when reproduced add to the object’s sustainability.
Thoughtless acts are expressions of lived experience and the way of least resistance. They are easy to study as they are everywhere and always present.
Simplification is also part of the way of least resistance, to find a way through complexity [which simplicity does not]
The ‘new’, sometimes regarded as part of human adapted needs, is easily replaceable if representing merely innovation and not development or improved care.
Intuition is our archive of lived experience and can be referred to as such, though conceptualised to avoid [as far as possible] individual biases

i) Cognition have until recently referred to a conscious brain activity, a reflection, whilst perception has referred to an unconscious, un-reflected and sensual brain activity. The advancement of neuroscience has suggested that cognition also may take place unconsciously (Ramachandran 2003).

References.

Bastick, T (2003) Intuition. Evaluating the Construct and its Impact on Creative Thinking. Kingston, Jamaica: Stoneman & Lang.
Borjesson, K. (2006) The Affective Sustainability of Objects: a search for causal connections. PhD thesis. University of the Arts London.
Chapman, J. (2005) Emotionally Durable Design. Objects, Experiences & Empathy. London: Earthscan
Damasio, A. (1994) Descartes’ Error. Revised ed. London: Vintage.
Damasio, A. (2000) The Feeling of What Happens. Body, emotion and the making of consciousness. London: Vintage.
Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience. (1980) New York: Perigee Books
Droste, M. (1990) bauhaus. bauhaus archiv. Köln: Taschen.
Fulton Suri, J. (2005) Thoughtless Acts. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Hill, G. (2002) Designing Waste. In: Birkeland, J. ed. For Sustainability: a sourcebook of integrated eco-logical solutions. London: Earthscan.
Jordan, P.W. (2000) Designing Pleasurable Products. London: Taylor & Francis.
Kwinter, S. (2001) Architectures of Time. Toward a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press
Lash, S. (1993) ‘Tradition and the Limits of Difference’. In: Heelas, P., Lash, S. & Morris, P. ed. (1996). Detraditionalization. London: Blackwell.
Love, T. (2002) Beyond Emotions in Designing and Design: Epistemological and Practical Issues. Available from < http://www.love.com.au > [Accessed 23 January 2008]
Maslow, A H. (1954/1970) Motivation and Personality. 2^nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
Menke, C. (1998) Modernity, subjectivity and aesthetic reflection. In: Osborne, P. (2000) ed. From an Aesthetic Point of view. Philosophy, Art and the Senses. London: Serpents Tail.
Mugge, R. (2007) Product Attachment. PhD thesis. Delft University of Technology.
Norman, D.A. (2004) Emotional Design. Why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York: Basic Books.
Osborne, P ed. (2000) From an Aesthetic Point of View. London: Serpents Tail.
Postrel, V. (2003) The Substance of Style. How the rise of the Aesthetic Value is remaking Commerce, Culture and Consciousness. New York: HarperCollins.
Ramachandran, V. (2003) The Emerging Mind. London: Profile books (BBC)
Rée, J. (1998) The Aesthetic Theory of the Arts. In: Osborne, P. (2000) ed. From an Aesthetic Point of view. Philosophy, Art and the Senses. London: Serpents Tail
Ticineto Clough, P. & Halley, J. (2007) The Affective Turn.. Theorizing the Social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wilson, T.D. (2002) Strangers to Ourselves. Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press.

Conclusion of Designboost 2007

Kristina B — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:20:00 GMT

Conclusions of Designboost 2007.

Applying a general view …

In discussions concerning sustainability there is always we and them. But all of us have dual roles: privately we and professionally them and of course also the reverse. To refer a question to them is actually to refer it back to ourselves Conclusion: there is no such thing as …. “we cannot do anything until they have done …..”
No company, organisation or institution – and individual for that matter – can escape their contribution to sustainable development. Conclusion: a conceptual strategy for sustainable development ought to be compulsory for every business, non-profit organisation and institution - as also every individual. This strategy must be part of everyday thinking and not reserved for special occasions.
All efforts/actions aimed at enhancing sustainable development is linked to a number of consequences. Some of these are in accordance with the core aim and others are not – or even counteracting it. Conclusion: every effort/action has to be analysed as part of a whole before being put into practice. The whole should embrace the entire organisation and its immediate sphere top-down as well as down-up, but also go as far beyond as possible.

Applying a designer view …

Designers are dependent on their clients to realise their aims but there is a lot of effort to put in before surrendering or refraining. Effort is most effective when based on awareness and knowledge. Conclusion: designers must be well informed in as many matters as possible in relation to design: human, cultural, social and economical.
A designer has to understand not only how humans live, but also how they function: this would include understanding that our decisions are only partly rational and that this may well be for the better as our thoughtless acts often are very ‘efficient’. Conclusion: important designer awareness is that human ways of living are changing fast while human ways of being are lasting even if constantly adjusting.
Many tensions between a sustainable and a capitalistic society can be overcome. Producing more does not necessarily mean overusing the earth’s resources. Producing less is not the same as forcing companies out of business. Conclusion: designers should actively contribute to producing less waste by trying to improve the balance between producing objects and designing services and by not confusing new with better, desire with need and emotions with feelings.
Designing for sustainability is a way of thinking more than a way of doing. This differentiation is important as it allows for focus to combine physical and mental aspects of sustainability. Conclusion: holistic thinking on sustainability must be integrated to the point of being intuitive. This can probably not be learnt but only achieved by lived experience.
Useful design for humans is often authentic and easily understood, devoid of clutter. Conclusion: it is important for designers to study how people act in their everyday real life.
Design that last often appeals to our imagination and invites to further exploration, signals ‘who it is’ and has a narrative, something to tell. Conclusion: the very simple object might not be the most sustainable solution.

And finally …

Legislators as well as designers should not expect humans to generally act eco-centric: to always put regard to sustainability and the environment first. Yes, we will admit to do it but No, we will subconsciously act with our own immediate well-being in mind. Experience will most likely make egocentric and eco-centric more in tune but until then lots of resources can be spared if legislators and designers make use of our egocentric characteristics for their eco-centric purposes.

Article for Designboost 2007

Kristina B — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:15:00 GMT

To aim at the affectively sustainable is to look for the hidden obvious in an object.

The limits of rational thinking?

Most designers share at least one vision: to contribute to real development rather than to design merely another. My vision as a researcher is to provide designers with new or newly combined knowledge, which have a chance to facilitate their mission. Knowledge, in my meaning of the term, is also consciousness: to put in doubt and rethink as also to look beyond the rational, to see the potential of the irrational.

Irrational problems have been the subject of much analysis. In 1973 Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber wrote a landmark article where they discussed the existence of a set of problems [of social policy] that cannot be resolved with traditional analytical approaches. They labelled such problems “Wicked Problems”.[1] Are irrational problems in general “wicked”? If this is the case, there are according to Rittel and Webber no solutions to these problems ‘in the sense of definitive and objective answers’. (p. 155) They are unsolvable.

I oppose this logic as also the overall focus on ‘problems’, which risk blurring the route to development: new ways of thinking, a change of direction of thought. Importantly, development goes further than innovation. I refuse, however, to call this type of thinking ‘a new rationality’. This expression, though often heard, risks in fact conserving rationality as the one way to think: to replace one kind of rationality with another. Given a ‘softened’ name, this reasoning can be referred to as making a difference when in fact it does not.

It is in this context the construct of ‘affective sustainability’ has to be analysed, as it immediately might appear to have connotations to something irrational. Many measures in the direction of sustainable development are halted or rendered difficult due to what are considered to be irrational causes (wicked?). Knowing that many, if not the majority, of the choices we make through life are irrational, based on feelings, the struggle for what is aimed at sustainability becomes evident as does the term itself.[2] Sustaining for the sake of it has no sense.

Research on the affective, attachment and sustainability is in its early stages. What has already become evident is that existing objects can be found again and new designs may have a chance of a longer life, if time, tradition, aesthetic and perception are rethought in the context of human ways of being rather on their ways of living.

Rationality is one important tool in designing but not the only tool. In the tension between rationality and intuition the latter must increasingly be valued as a competence based on lived experience, not merely a spiritual thought.[3] Rationality has given us the simple object, but not simplification. Simplification is not solely a measure concerning physicality. It takes into consideration the affect an object evokes: this must be positive, easily de-coded and stored and allow us to interact with the object without friction: “… the augmentation or diminution of a body’s capacity to act, to engage, and to connect, such that auto-affection is linked to the self-feeling of being alive – that is aliveness or vitality.”[4]

My wish is to further engage in research that adds to designers’ understanding of what augments these capacities of the body. It is my belief that these affective qualities [of objects] are reasonably obvious, though immediately hidden, and when found they show the way to simplification.

[1] Rittel H. & Webber M. (1973) Dilemmas in General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences. No 4, pp 155-169.

[2] Damasio, A. (1994) Descartes’ Error. Revised ed. London: Vintage

[3] Bastick, T (2003) Intuition. Evaluating the Construct and its Impact on Creative Thinking. Kingston, Jamaica: Stoneman & Lang.

[4]Ticineto Clough, P. (2007) in Ticineto Clough, P. & Halley, J. ed. The Affective Turn. Theorizing the Social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (p. 2)