Spooning...

So many spoons! these are the work of british designer Max Lamb. This is but one example of Lamb's work that shows his passion and desire for the handmade item, and also the quest to find a range of manufacturing processes to achieve it (by himself).

This shows that any individual has the potential to make their own everyday items, however this does not take into question said individual's craftsmanship skills or even their desire to achieve something similar...

But, the potential is there, leave the rest to me! With a little bit of help and instruction, we could all be making our own spoons for breakfast, or lunch!

The previous post, showcasing the jar tops and the screw-on watering spout, are both examples leaning towards the commercial design end of reuse.

A book I have been reading recently is further at the other end of the scale. "Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts" by Vladimir Arkhipov is a book showcasing everyday objects made by Russian individuals during the perestroika period in the late 1980's.
The items range from flickknives and screwdrivers made in prison, shuttlecocks made from plastic bottles, a television aerial made from old forks and a doormat made from a merry night's worth of beer bottle tops.


All the individuals in the book show a great amount of ingenuity towards crafting solutions to everyday problems, however the individuals comment on their objects so matter-of-factly that we sense they do not think their creations are special in anyway. Of course they think they are functional, and many of them are very proud of both the object in question and of their own skills to craft these items, but special? No. Useful? Yes.

Some of the objects in the book are similar to ones that I have seen my father and grandfather make, I have also fashioned some similar objects, however much less that previous generations. My father and grandfather, and the individuals in the book simply state that there was no money to buy the things that they made instead.


Now that many everyday objects can be bought very cheaply and are distributed across the country, are we as a society losing some of the skills required to make and fix our objects? Some skills are passed down from parent to child, but if objects are so accessible, so cheap and so easy to buy, why would I spend time making a version which probably doesnt function aswell as the bought one?

Pride - I like making my own things, especially if it is something that I could buy in a supermarket. I feel a great satisfaction that I built 'this', 'this' is here because I took the time and effort to build it, rather than take the easy option and purchase it.

Individuality - A homemade object will always look less 'perfect' and finished than a commercial version, but because I have made it myself, and a stronger emotional bond was formed during that process, I appreciate the incomplete aesthetic. Also, no one else has a brush like 'this'.

just one more function, please

The jar tops project by Jorre van Ast is a great example of how design can put just one more (positive) obstacle between the consumer and the waste cycle. The application of the different jar tops with ranging functions creates several functional consumer objects from existing ones that would have been put in the bin, or recycled (individuals may keep some jars for storage, but the good intention can end up with you overun by jars!).

Do other objects have the potential for second-life purposes? If so, what type of objects? High tech or low tech? Are these objects found in the street or are they used by the individual?

Take glass jars for example, my grandparents generation would keep jars because of their storage functions. However, this was in a society and culture that had to reuse and repair because there simply wasnt the money to buy everything new. Times have changed.

But projects and products like jar tops act as a statement about the difference between the reusing habits of my generation and those previous, and are also very useful!

Plastic bottles are viewed in a similar way as glass jars today - the individual is buying the contents of the container (bottle or jar) rather than the container aswell as the contents. Therefore, when the contents have been emptied, the individual sees the container as simply a by-product of the soft drink or sauce, making it much easier to either litter, or bin or recycle the object.

The latter is a positive but even better and more energy efficient that recycling is to gain another function from the object, and then recycle it.

Jar tops and also the screw-on watering spout by Nicolas Le Moigne are examples of this.

just one more

high tech needs dissassembly - a learned skill

low tech needs recycling - a simple action of placing a bottle in the correct bin

is there an inbetween stage between the use, and the the disposal of a low tech item?

is there another task that can be achieved? another function that can be met?

Design for dissassembly

Many of the second-life examples I have looked at have been low-tech objects, usually in the form of furniture pieces.

Is there a reason for this?

Is there a reason why there is not more electronic objects used in second-life designs?

To find the reason, if there is one, I have started to dismantle certain pieces of electronic equipment. Hopefully this breakdown of objects will lead to insights about their manufacture and assembly. Below are some photos showing stages in the dissassembling of a printer.


Item: Lecturer's printer
Fault: Broken fan




- Snap fittings, need a long flat screwdriver to unclip them. Do this too often and with too much force, the plastic will bend quite drastically and can break.



- Slide the side panels off, can take a few minutes to work out how. These are very form and function specific: several clasps located in the corrolating places on the main structure. Can they be used for any other function? Maybe, but almost certainly not another electronic object - different components, even as little as a few millimetre apart, would not fit together.



- Most of the larger components dissassembled, the motor, print cartridges, ect. It didn't take too long to get to this stage, but only after taking the casing apart.

Laying out the skeleton of the object like this can be quite daunting if one were to re-assemble the item, unless instructions were to hand or one had prior knowlegde about the assembly of similar objects.

All these components have been designed to fit together perfectly and so intricately. If one piece is missing, the printer will not work. If one piece breaks it is understandable why an individual may throw the item away rather than undertaking this task, especially as it is likely that a replacement component cannot be sourced, the manufacturers are foreign, and it is cheaper and easier to buy a new printer instead of repairing the broken one.



- All these smaller circuit board components have been soldered on, what am I to do with this? Recycle it? ... on your bike!

Is there a system that will allow the semi-precious metals, if any, to be harvested from this electronic waste? Apart from unethical eastern "chop-shops"? The WEEE initiative should give me an answer...



- This is the component that houses all the other smaller ones. This has been formed, punched, bent, etc so much that there is very little else that this could be used for, especially for electronic functions. The raw material could be recycled, but it is very tricky to dismantle an object down to this level, and this component is not even fully dismantled! If one were to pursue to this stage, recycling would prove difficult because identifying all the components and their materials would take a long time and would also require some knowledge of material identifications.



Insights: It seems that the main reason that some faulty electrical items are put to landfill rather than being repaired is due to the unfamiliarity of electronic components. Individuals are in contact with the outside casing of the objects, the shiny and pleasing veneers, never the 'guts' of an object like a computer or printer. This results in a barrier between consumer and object - one that is rarely broken to see whats on the other (in)side.

Design for dissassembly must be considered if the above is to change. Making products simpler to dismantle will potentially make it easier for individuals to dissassemble their faulty objects, if however they are that way inclined. Fixing a broken printer is much too daunting for any individual to try: what part is broken? how do I find it? what's that? do I need that screw? why are there no instructions? oh crap how do I put this thing back togther? ... where did that screw go??

The skill of fixing an electronic object such as a computer or printer is a taught and very specific skill, one which individuals do not usually possess. So maybe the answer is to ensure that individuals take the faulty item to a repair shop to get it fixed.

I and members of my family have taken our computer equipment to repair shops on several occasions, sometimes these trips have proved successful. However on other occasions and with other types of electrical objects, the trips have not been so fruitful. The answer from the repair man on the latter tends to be: "they don't make that component anymore" or "it'll be practically cheaper to buy a new videocamera", etc.

From experience of Design for Manufacturing, I understand how the costs of products and their components are calculated, along with related figures such as shipment of these items to their destined countries. Manufacturers are able to achieve lower production costs by increasing the production of components from a mould, making each one slightly cheaper in total. To buy a single component and have it shipped from the manufacturers and then have the repairman replace the faulty component with the new one can be very expensive, not to mention time consuming.

How do we ensure individuals are more knowledgeable about the components within their objects? See-through casings? Videos on dismantling? The internet?

waste definition

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD): Wastes are materials that are not prime products (that is products produced for the market) for which the generator has no further use in terms of his/her own purposes of production, transformation or consumption, and of which he/she wants to dispose. Wastes may be generated during the extraction of raw materials, the processing of raw materials into intermediate and final products, the consumption of final products, and other human activities. Residuals recycled or reused at the place of generation are excluded.

I wanted to reiterate the point of the defintion of waste as it seems that people were as confused about the meaning of it as I was, so much so that the United Nations had to create a definitive description.

I wanted to highlight a key line: "materials that are not prime products (...not produced for the market) for which the generator has no further use in terms of his/her own purposes of production"

This extract highlights the point that just because waste is generated in one area of manufacture, it could not be used in another area: "One man's rubbish is another man's treasure".

Refering to the post about the councils system for collecting food waste, the waste that is collected is used for local compost used in gardening. This is a perfect example of how other people or businesses, etc can use what is considered waste by a collection of people for something useful.

Relating to my project further is the skateboard I found in a skip destined for landfill - an individual felt that he/she could gain no further enjoyment or use from the skateboard an decided to throw it away. I salvaged it and not only does it speak as a metaphor my project and my developing personal philosophy about our consumer society, but it also gives me a chance to restore it to its original function and use it or pass it on as a gift!

Waste generated where?

After researching and documenting the use of waste by designers, Boontje and Hein Eek, im intrigued as to where the waste is coming from, who wastes more: manufacture or consumer?

Eliminating this waste from the manufacture process is not detrimental to the above designers, as they were providing a use for waste that already existed. It is also highly unlikely that all the waste produced during the manufacture process would be able to be preveted as it is generally a by-product of the process to achieving a finished desirable consumer object.

A more important and potentially fruitful approach to the waste cycle issue is to make sure that all of it is either put back into the manufacture cycle in the form of recycling, or that every time designers like Boontje and Hein Eek create a piece of furniture such as a table, other consumer manufacturers produce one less unit of their table.

It is important that designers do not just litter an already flooded marketplace with extremely intuitive pieces of design but ones that the normal individual focused on the finished, perfect aesthetic will not appreciate in their home.



INSIGHT: The fight is not to reduce our consumption levels, but to reduce the wrong kind of consumption - irresponsible and harmful to the planet's resources. Designers such as Boontje and Hein Eek are an extremely important part of this fight as they lead by example and can change the consumption behaviours of many others, but if the global manufacturers keep spitting out the ever increasing levels of finished desirable objects, then there is simply more waste than before.

We, and I, must focus on both where the waste ends up and what use it can be put to, but maybe more importantly where the waste comes from and if there are any ways to prevent the amount of needless waste produced.