The kitsch object needs oxygen

The extravagantly ugly object need not be banned from designed living spaces if it is allowed enough oxygen by generous use of neutral ground. Like the plants to which their forms allude, the kitsch table stand and bedhead could thrive better without the presence of a printed fabric cushion and ceramic figurine. You can do your subtractive analysis with two fingers: the design is immediately clarified and the presence of the more worthy kitsch objects strengthened.

What understatement is and is not

Another interior design scheme by Chelsea Hing. The linked site celebrates Hing's work as 'understated'. 

The designer's obsession with understatement produces a dullness which is not relieved, but merely disturbed by linear, stippled and striped motifs on the fabrics. Figure-and-ground relations are violated by the clashing motifs. A migraine-inducing restlessness pervades these sleeping quarters.

The marble wall covering the western side of the entrance to the Australian National Gallery demonstrates the meaningful use of subtlety in design. As in the Hing nightmare above, there is little of the bold or the colourful in this interior treatment. However, the variegated colours of the marble are inherent to the mineral's structure, and the natural richness of this material obliterates any hint of the mean. The marble sheets are translucent and so their colour changes depending on the amount and type of natural light that falls on them. They cannot be monotonous. The sheets are not subjected to competition from other pronounced monochrome patterns in the entrance space. Finally, the positioning of the marble wall is functionally convergent: it protects the interior thermally and serenely diffuses the light from harsh western sun found at Canberra's altitude.

An analysis of kitsch

‘Kitsch is the corpse that is left when anger leaves art.’

– Terence Conran*

So much the worse for kitsch that thinks it is art; the problem is that a great deal of kitsch thinks it is design. However, we might have good reason to keep emotional shittiness out of the living spaces of daily life, as opposed to our ideological spaces, where to welcome anger is probably healthful, producing an avant-garde.

Kitsch objects are for many people soothing; they can be understood as an attempt to 'spoil' oneself in the anthropological sense Peter Sloterdijk uses the term: for Sloterdijk the human domain of language, machines, protracted immaturity, artificial shelter and climate control is a 'space where you get spoiled' fortuitously. Culture spoils the ape and produces the human.

The response to objects that alienate us can go two ways: to imaginary or real solutions. It is better to ask of the disturbing material, ‘What is deficient in its materials and form?’ rather than: ‘What imaginary scenes can I plaster over it?’ To see the shower curtain itself as a design problem would be more constructive, ie, to examine the actual purpose, materials and form of the shower curtain and by redesigning it make it intrinsically more homely, rather than to plaster it with decals and impose an imaginary solution to our discomfort.

Award-winning interior design for Royal Childrens Hospital, Melbourne

Syringes proposed to ‘revolutionise the child-syringe experience’ (designer’s brief)

Finally, a question in my mind lingers over the proper design of the properly nightmarish, ie, the extent to which any amount of kitsch can domesticate kinds of object or building that are inherently alienating. Some examples are hospitals, prisons, syringes, scalpels and x-ray equipment. Will children in the grip of physical illness and injury be soothed by the use of colourful plant and animal motifs on medical equipment? Kitsch is always a lie, but what if it is, in effect, a betrayal? Butterflies ought not sting like bees; any that do belong in a nightmare.

One reasonable conclusion to draw from the examples above is that the presence of the kitsch façade in object design should always be by informed consent of the user or owner.

*The Conran Shop is full of kitsch objects.

A minimal design lexicon

A minimal design lexicon of my pet terms, which may or may not be part of orthodox design training. Examples are given where helpful. Most of these terms have examples already in previous posts on this blog.

Chimaera
An object that does not successfully combine functions with a natural affinity.


Coherent colour scheme
Any use of colour that follows the logic of the colour wheel is coherent, although it may also be ugly in some eyes. Generally the use of contrasting colours – those colours that oppose one another on the colour wheel – results in a coherent scheme. Another way to achieve a coherent colour scheme is to establish a relationship in the object between a figure and a ground.

Coherence by contrasting colours

Coherence by figure on ground

Conceptual design
Design according to the idea of something rather than how something is used by, and how it directly affects, human beings. Examples are the best explainers of the concept.

Cue
A design element that gives instruction, help or suggestions for how the designed object ought to be thought about and used. It need not, and perhaps preferably should not, be verbal. The most effective cues are those inherent to form, colour and function.

Designed hyperspace
Parts of manufactured objects that do not correspond to the natural contours of their functioning components constitute designed hyperspace.

Empty space in the amplifier enclosure is designed hyperspace

Evident structure
Objects that allow the user to see what makes them work as they do, have evident structure.

Fetish
A designer may make a fetish, or irrational favourite, of materials in the same way that he or she has obsessions about certain gestures. A fetish may not have a negative impact on an object’s design integrity, depending on the degree of convergence in the fetish material to its intended use.


Fixing the unbroken / Unnecessary fix
A design that capriciously or egotistically overrules an existing successful design is an unnecessary fix.


Functional convergence
Objects that successfully combine functions that display a natural affinity in use, have functional convergence. An object that does its job well has functional convergence.


Gesticulation
Design choices resulting in forms that freely escape from any fitness to purpose while remaining ugly. Senseless, empty forms. A cardinal design error. 


Integrity
A word for any designed object that has a coherent colour scheme, functional convergence, evident structure and beauty in the eyes of the user.


Interesting for one minute
Describes any gesture in a design that tries to induce surprise, amusement, shock or titillation, which quickly wear off.


Kitsch facadism
The deliberate use of motifs, forms and gestures in designed objects that are completely divorced from their natural habitat. A cardinal design error.

Mean
Generally, deliberate design decisions that make an object cheaper, flimsier, more painful, uglier, and less robust, are mean.

Modishness
Capricious obeisance to aesthetic fads and fashions, in form, colour scheme or function.


Non-conventional cues
The urge to escape from convention is a mysterious but universal one in the discipline of design. Perhaps this is because the human body and its natural needs scarcely change, but ideology is in continual flux. Non-conventional cues are any features of the designed object that seem to be the result of a deliberate refusal of the features best fitted to an object’s use by human beings, or a refusal to allow human beings to interact with the object at all.

It's a radio

Tricky
Generally, deliberate design decisions that make an object misleading functionally, surprisingly bad value for money, confusing and un-straightforward to use, are tricky.