Karina Han
Havena.
Prompt: As technology advances, we’ve become increasingly reliant on social media for communication, leaving face-to-face interaction in the background. This reality has become more pronounced in our daily lives. In this final project, students will work in groups of three or four to create a set of physical objects that will enhance social interaction. Each group will select a SOCIAL, POLITICAL, HUMANITARIAN, ARTISTIC, or ECOLOGICAL EVENT/MOVEMENT from the 20th or 21st century or even a previous one as inspiration.
For our community we decided to choose minimalism. Minimalism is a lifestyle and design philosophy that emphasizes simplicity and functionality. It challenges the idea that more is better, advocating instead for focusing on what truly adds value and meaning to our lives. By encouraging the removal of clutter, minimalism creates room for what matters most. Minimalism is reflected in the work of many artists such as Studio Swine, Maarten Baas, and The Memphis Group who all focus on simplicity and functionality while incorporating meaning and sustainability. Studio Swine creates pieces from upcycled materials such as their Sea Chair, made from ocean plastic waste, which highlights how a minimalist design can also be environmentally conscious. Maarten Baas on the other hand takes a more playful approach to minimalism, using simple forms in his furniture designs such as Baas in Time, suggesting that simplicity doesn’t have to be boring. Similarly, The Memphis Group used bold and bright colors with a variety of shapes to break away from the functional aesthetic of modernism. For this project we wanted to create a piece of furniture that can be used for multiple purposes. At first we thought of a few chairs but then we wanted to create a table that can hold multiple chairs within it. For the overall structure we thought of a round coffee table and then it slides open to reveal three stackable chairs.