image archive 2018

Branko Lukic

Preface, Speculative Everything, Dunne and Raby (2014)

In Apple Computer's 1987 vision of the future (approximately 2011), industrial design has not changed for over two decades, we stand around drinking coffee while a computer-generated guy in a bow tie encourages passive-aggressive family avoidance tactics. They should have called it Knowledge Aggravator.

“Too short? Sit on a telephone book. Too tall? Slouch. Too handicapped? Too bad.” The Athenian table is reconfigurable to accommodate multiple abilities and heights. Nonobject focuses on designing products with “What if” prompts. This allows Lukic to explore the speculative realm while working still under many existing conventions of product design. This produces absurd, sensitive, and beautiful projects.

Lucian Bernhard

“Blinds, or nature hides, are often helpful in the pursuit of and observation of wild animals. But what blind is right for the contemporary zoologist? [...] The Blind works on the principal that an object vanishes from sight if light rays striking it are not reflected as usual, but forced to flow around it and carry on, as if it was not there.”

“Desired traits such as volume, timbre and harmony are acquired through selective breeding techniques.”

2. Publi-Voice Device

Dunne & Raby make these robots inviting and unassuming by fitting them into the aesthetics of here + now.

Attributing human-like features such as sexuality or consciousness to non-human designs

This spa capsule is almost identical to Roger and Martin Dean’s Retreat Pod (see previous page, image 17). If a nod to the past, why? 

As I look at more images related to designers’ views on the future, the Y2K movement is becoming a point of interest. Designs from this era embody many of the same ideals of streamlining and pop art / design. Y2K utilizes emerging technologies as inspiration while portraying an underlying anxiety about the future.

The only thing that gives away the function of this object is its lens. Really more blob than object