By Gabrielle Kennedy
Reality Tank is a Droog Foundation research and development initiative aimed at bridging the gap between speculative design and the real world. Designers are paired with scientists and commercial partners to work on a project. The different mind-sets create massive frustrations for all involved, but also lead to some truly wonderful results as well as a better understanding for all parties on the role speculative design can make in interdisciplinary research.
Last month a symposium was held to update an audience on where some of the Reality Tank projects are at. The day started with Design Academy Eindhoven’s Creative Director Thomas Widdershoven talking about the academy’s “Self Unself” exhibition currently touring China.
Widdershoven talked about the student’s self-initiated graduation projects, pointing out that where students are positioning themselves along the self unself axis has changed. “Something is really happening,” he said. “More students are collaborating and challenging the world, even economic systems. There is a renewed connect.”
He then went on to talk about the show that recently closed in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven “Sense Nonsense”. That exhibition was born out of the harsh criticism alumnus Mossoud Hassani received for his Mine Kafon project. “Massoud and the academy have been harshly criticized for being narcissistic, dysfunctional and even dangerous,” Widdeshoven said.
In response to the criticism, Widdershoven invited the loudest critic Timo de Rijk to the academy for what turned out to be one of the best debates the school has ever hosted. “We heard arguments for and against rationality functionality, responsibility and expectations,” Widdershoven said, “but I went home dissatisfied. I realized winning the debate was not the point, the point was to work together. If the accusation is that we make nonsense, then let’s agree, and not distance ourselves from the attack because after all there is no rational path to innovation.”
After this the Reality Tank participants, including a lot of Design Academy Eindhoven alumni, presented their projects. Anne Vaandrager worked together with ECCO leather experimenting at home in her kitchen using her own urine. Vaandrager’s only obstacle was making sure her flatmates were never aware of what she was up to. She played around with the material’s consistency to work out what she could create and came up with a prototype for a pair of leather spectacle frames.
“We create a platform where there is room to break the rules,” explains ECCO’s Thomas Goøgsig. “It is important to be able to forget the commercial aspects and value work like this even if it may not show financially for a year or two.”
Back in 2011 Formafantasma presented “Botanica”, a collection of vessels that explored the potential of pre-industrial plastics. Initially the idea of working with plastic was not interesting to the duo, but when they started looking at the history and some very early research they spotted opportunities.
Now they are working with the Dutch Polymer Institute and Wageningen University to explore more about plasticity. Their focus is shellac, a polymer produced by a lac bug that colonizes trees and bois durci a 19th century material composed of wood dust and animal blood, or egg albumen. The idea is to see how these materials respond to new methods of production.
Via trial and error they have worked out how to use shellac with a 3d printer and the lost recipe of bois durci has been translated minus the blood making it more acceptable for contemporary use.
“We have a very different approach to designers,” Martin van Dord from the Dutch Polymer Institute says. “They have time to experiment. They start making things and only afterwards look at the results. We are more obliged to check everything earlier in the process like the exact impact temperature and pressure changes will have on something.”
Wim Sinke was itchy about how his company, TKI Solar Energy, was embracing the solar panel industry. Design counted for nought. “As a scientist and an engineer I started to get the feeling that we were too focussed on costs and performance when it comes to this,” he admits.
Designer Jeroen Verhoeven quickly discovered that TKI’s ugly solar panels are made up of real crystals and he became determined to help Sinke find a way to make the products look better. He started by using the crystals to make a chandelier then started testing other systems like panels that resemble creeping ivy and also modular systems that can be arranged and rearranged.
“Jeroen starts small,” says Sinke. “He started with a lamp. I come at it from the other end. I think the combination of his approach and mine can really solve a lot of problems.”
Speculative design does well at imagining potential conditions that technological, economic, political and social developments may bring. It is great to see how the practice can better interact with industry partners for real effect.