#no randomness

[chzblocnotes]

06.07.2017 | À Oxford, le dépaysement au ras du sol. J'ai appris le désavantage des plaques carrées en visitant l’exposition No Randomness. La diagonale étant plus longue que le côté, le risque existe, quand on les manipule, de les faire tomber dans le trou qu’elles doivent recouvrir. Le problème est réglé avec les plaques circulaires. Elle peuvent vous échapper, cela ne porte pas à conséquence, hormis ce genre de surprise. Cette plaque-ci à un sens. 

[paulinekorp]

Oscar Lhermitte is a French multidisciplinary designer based in London. He graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2009 in Product Design and from the Royal COllege of Arts

During the Tallinn’s Design Night Week I had the pleasure to listen to a lecture held by Oscar Lhermitte, a French (product) designer based in London. In addition I had a chance to visit his exhibition “No Randomness”. Both of them were focused to the functionality and design of what an ordinary person would call “random” things. From this exhibition/lecture you would for example find out, why the sewerege hole is round, why the pint glasses are shaped like they are, why the stop sign is hectacular and etc. His lecture was extremely inspiring as it influences you to ask a very important question: why? And not only with things that fascinate us, but also with things that don’t fascinate us yet, but would if we would ask the right questions. He also talked about, how designing is fixing and every time a designer makes something, he is actually not in the position of a designer, an artist, but a fixer. He urged the people to ask before every project: what is it that I am fixing here? What is it that I am trying to improve and make better? Which, for me, made also so much sense and I try and imply these questions to everything that I do now. I admire Oscar Lhermitte for his unstoppable curiosity and need of answers and I think it is indeed extremely important to know how things work, why they work and why are they designed that way. With our everyday items and essentials we tend to forget that actually someone once has designed this. Therefore, we forget to ask ourselves – why did that person design this object this way and not another?