Bruno Szenk

All in progress

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Aim: reduce a known object to a state of harmlesness.

What: a collection of briefly described steps steps towards achieving that aim.

How: apply stripping strategy: analyse the object, question it, and then iterate, in managable steps, towards its complete disapearence. Search fo the point where its function is sacrificed for harmlessness and try to play around it.

Why: to extrapolate this knowledge and come a bit closer to being a harmless - and guiltfree - maker.

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Nature holds nothing redundant. Mere existence is never vain. Man made object meant to 'just exist' risks sliding into a vain abstraction, into art. It becomes proudly full of itself. Unless there is a meaningful purpose of it. What can it be? Pleasure? Symbol? Interaction? Fulfillment? Solution?

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What is the object's primal, harmless form, before it is called upon by a function? A material sample? Raw matter? Unprocessed resource?

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What is the abstraction of harmlessness in a material form? Does it have a function, or can it just exist? Is it the need that calls the object's phisical, functional existence?

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If the first state of 'never harm' is non-existence, what is the next step towards phisicality?

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The answer to the question 'can design be guilt free' will inevitably start with 'it depends on what it is, how it is, and why it is'.

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The problem begins, when a change to be made  requires me to compromise the core value (last, reincarnate, vanish, nourish) for the sake of the efficiency. When target of change lies somewhere outside, the priorities shift. Effectiveness of the change might matter more than anything else. The more urgent the problem, the harder to design a solution that respects the core value.

Let me take the open source ventilator (covid 19 patients treatment) as an example; saving human life matters to their creators more than anything, and therefore, everything else will be compromised.

Thinking to respect the core value might need room and requires planning; it deals with commodity design more than with any other kind.

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Never harm: a basic, intristic quality of a new-made object?

Designed to last, reincarnate, vanish and nourish. One solution can be redesigned and tailored to a given context and assume one of those roles, depending depending on what the context requires.

It could become a core value of a guiltless maker. It will not lend more meaning to a trivial object: it won't make a chair less of a cliché. But it will make it harmless, and thus, add it value.

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Revising relevance. What are the common strategies for designers to operate nowadays?

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Since having the thought of myself as the smallest cell of a change, starting on any particular idea has become increasingly daunting.

The 'what?' seems as bonding as a declaration. I've been working extensively on the 'how', hoping that having a rough set of generalised guidelines will help me choose one of the paths.

The 'what to channel the attention to' challenge seems even tougher when linked to the ultimately hardest of all: the 'why'.

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Gathering what I've been grinding at for the last few weeks. It feels like I'm at the edge of something meaningful, but I keep stashing all ideas and digging deeper.

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Harmless design vs guilt free design. Non-existence is the easiest; can design physically exist and still be harmless?

Is this all that can be aimed for?

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15.03

I've been asking myself so many questions.

Perhaps raising them prior to seeking solutions could be what drives guilt free design.

Perhaps thinking in useful products which are done better than others is doomed to fail, and there will always be a degree of guilt involved in making them.

Perhaps carving myself a comfortable, harmless niche outside consumer market is even more reasonable than doing so within the world of consumption.

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15.03

I'm the smallest change cell.

The decision what, how and why to do something is the smallest that can be made. The decision of what, how and what NOT to do is another one

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09.03

For guiltless maker/craftsman/service provider

0. If the concept is decided to take a phisical form, it's best that it responds to a direct need/urgency in a way that is innovative and hitherto inconceived. Another way to sit is better than low impact chair which is better than just another chair. The 'functional' value of a product is a first step to justify its existence. Sometimes its good to replace something with nothing.

1. All sources should be local or abundant and renewable. Think on waste, discarded things, things requiring mending.

2. All re/manufacturing should be local and optimised to be of minimun energy input.

3. If the concept takes phisical form, it has to be integrated within the framework of circular economy. See: below.

4. Never loose the product from sight. Ensure that you can controll or design the lifecycle of it. Only operate on a scale that allows you for this: ideally, with as few stakeholders as possible.

4. If you design but not manufacture, the remark no. 4 still applies.

5. If you work as a studio, pursue small scale in-house projects which are controllable, and apply what you've learned to collaborations for bigger projects.

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09.03

On guiltlessness of object's origin

Take half products that are somebody's waste, dont take from nature unless you can give it back or the matter is in renewable abundance.

Repurpose, remanufacture or adapt what is.

Scrap wood, scrap metal, scrap plastic, scrap textile, scrap glass, scrap objects.

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06.03

Modular system of purely recycled/upcycled/adapted parts.

Recycled modular clothing.

Disposable packaging is dumb.

Make it disappear, or make it a nutricient.