CRUMPLE
Dinnerware and a performance. What if falling apart is what makes us stronger? What if instead of clinging to the versions of us we use to be, we could be an active agent in the purposeful deconstruction to create the functions that serve us most moving forward?
Design Opportunity
A small batch production system of everyday slip-cast ceramic objects where the artifacts and processes express the power of human resilience to overcome trauma with the critical decisions we make to shape our function, mental health and outlook.
Design Challenge
Create uniquely functional items from a singular mold.
Optimize paper as a force-bearing material through geometric consideration.
Background
Why paper? I remember sitting in my grade 7 classroom when Ms. Piperni held up a pristine white piece of paper and crumpled it violently, she declared each person subjected to bullying is like a piece of paper; no matter how much time or effort is invested to smooth out the creases, still they remain.
Looking around me at the sea of white faces, I was perpetually the immigrant, my eyes, my food, and my clothes were never quite right and my parents weren’t like the others. Pulling at the corners of my school uniform I remembered the day I went home from the pool to google a slur. Still, turning her words over in my mind something defiant rose inside.
Today I know the kindest people often are those who have lived through tragedy and bitter disappointment. Rumi famously said, “the wound is the place where the light gets in”. The very awareness of your pain is your opportunity to let the light in. Jane Austen said, “We do not suffer by accident”. Historically it’s true that those on the fringes often suffered deep prejudice, but for every “wound” there is an opportunity to take deliberate action based around these “creases” to form structure and to create utility and function from their experience - not to erase pain not to glorify it but simply keep choosing what serves us, and releasing that which does not.
The aesthetic, production process and final outcome of “Crumple” reflect the resilient nature of the human spirit. Critical to the success of the project was preserving the fragility of paper and the intimacy of human touch (capable of a gentle caress and terrible destruction). There are many ways to create flawless geometric forms through robotic, automated means, but this project was guided by the need to use paper folded by hand to celebrate the transformative power born from strategic choices and deliberate folds.
Ideation
A hollow paper shape was designed and filled with plaster to produce a solid object, which was then used to create a 2-part mold for slip-casting. Initial experimentation quickly revealed which kinds of folds produced force bearing forms and seams and which did not.
Initial prototypes revealed:
where the shape tends to bear the most stress
the approximate parameter of shapes that could be constructed, given the setting time and exothermic nature of the casting material
Exhibition
Crumple was part of “Piece of Mind”, an group exhibition and a public initiative of the BC Psychological Association intended to foster dialogue about mental health, mental illness and psychological treatment and recovery.
Crumple garnered the third place prize from the judging panel.
The range of utility from this collection is an important part of the creation process as the narrative of human resilience is the ability to rise and rise again; power through repetitive iteration. I also thought it was important to have various outcomes from the same mold, as in our human lives it is with purpose and intention we determine our journey.