Rehumanizing our interactions through objects and space
i. product commerce = community exchange
ii. designing products and systems that enforce collaborative use
iii. designing things that leave room for imagination and discussion
iv. designing things that slow people down enough to relate
v. designing spaces that bring people together
vi. why Fair Trade Design achieves these goals
I look forward to the moment my shoes become worn, because I can then carry their tattered fragments and broken heels to Tony’s shoe repair. There he laughs that I have destroyed yet another pair of heels, gives me a warm handshake and a smile that could melt away the blues. He asks me about school, and I about his family. On one occasion he wouldn’t let me pay more than $5 for several pairs of shoes. So instead I brought him two small pumpkins for his crowded shop. In a similar manner, belonging to a community means you know where to get a haircut, where your favorite boutique owner will suggest the perfect shoes for an important occasion, or everyone’s name at your local hardware store. You understand who makes the best blankets, or where to get rid of your old lampshade. Being part of a community means that the everyday exchange of commercial goods – objects we use in our lives – is connected to the people that supply them to us. Objects connect people.
The objects we design, produce, sell, buy and trade largely define our social experience of this world. The interchange of goods creates not only the economy that defines us but the scope of our social experience. Furthermore, the way we use the objects exchanged affects how we interact with others. Having someone fit me for a pair of shoes is a personal experience in which I befriend my neighbor, ordering them online and having them delivered is not. Give two children a virtual reality video game and they will play in two separate worlds, but install a seesaw in your backyard and you will find them playing together and imagining an adventure. In a world today inundated by Netflix, facebook text messages, video games, and highly impersonal “conveniences” vocal/physical human connection is becoming scarcer. The faster we consume and file hundreds of emails on our blackberries, the less present we our in our current moment – the more detached from the human beings around us.
My mission is to use design to counterbalance our society’s depersonalizing technological trends by creating objects and spaces that encourage genuine social interaction. Bicycles that must be operated with another person, products made by hand which carry stories about their creator, things that are wood, toys that require imagination to come alive, and venues which bring people together in physical space – are the sorts of things I plan on designing.
With these principals in mind, I am aiming to help the Chol Chol Foundation and the Mapuche artisans of Southern Chile create innovative product forms with their hand-woven textiles. I also plan to aid them in a marketing campaign of those products that tell their stories and develop new vendor relationships with boutiques to expand their business.
This project is about learning how to use design to create systems of merchandise exchange that righteously compensate a community of artisans for their labors and makes possible their existence. It is about protecting hand-made goods and indigenous traditions by making the manufacturing model of their production financially liable. By making the fair trade products profitable amidst a market saturated by mass-production, hand-made products will continue to exist and be exchanged. Indigenous knowledge of the crafting process will continue to be passed down from parent to child. The products will continue to carry stories around the world as they are traded about the artists and culture they come from. Crafted objects continue to be meaningful to the person making or receiving it, because it represents a relationship that sustains that person’s life and aesthetically contains a cultural experience.
If objects are still made to tell stories and carry meaning, and if buying a handmade object from this community rather than a plastic extrusion means you are positively enabling – participating – in the international community, we can restore human connection through the objects we use.
