Parallel Universe

Having recently returned from a trip to Peru, I have been captivated with the history and material culture of the Incas.

The Inca civilization developed without any contact with the world outside South  America. They built magnificent and earthquake-proof  structures and fortifications, but their builders did not know how to make an arch. They connected their vast empire with a network of roads and bridges, but they did not invent a wheel (it had almost no use in the mountainous regions of the Andes). Most importantly, they had no writing; their records and history largely depended on an oral tradition.

If the Spanish conquest of the 1530s did not take place, it is likely that the Inca Empire would continue on without these essential (from our Western point of view) cultural accomplishments.  As conquerors of every continent,  we perceive our Western civilization as the only possible alternative to the course of human development. Yet have there been any other alternatives, along the way? What could have possibly happened differently?

I recall the little book of Japanese essayist Junichiro Tanizaki In Praise of Shadows, where he imagined a speculative world evolved from the Japanese point of view:

“Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art – would they not have suited our national temper better than they do? … The Orient quite conceivably could have opened up the world of technology entirely its own.”

Indeed, contemplating the alternative possibilities for our material universe should be a fascinating subject matter for designers and design students alike. Conceptual speculations of this sort are guaranteed to yield many new discoveries and inventions.

Designer Robinson Crusoe

After about 50 years, I decided to re-read the book Robinson Crusoe, driven by a suggestion of architect Daniel Libeskind, of all people. Talking about our primary need for furniture, Libeskind mentioned how Robinson Crusoe, barely having settled on his island, had an overwhelming desire to have a chair and a table:

“I began to apply my self to make such necessary things as I found I most wanted, as particularly a chair and a table, for without these I was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the world, I could not write, or eat, or do several things with so much pleasure without a table.”

Only when Crusoe fashions these items–with great expense of time and labor– he is able to sit down and start his Journal, which continues for the next hundred pages of the book.  Daniel Defoe’s book has a strange double life. In simplified abridged form it became a timeless bestseller, an adventure book for children of all ages and all nations. The original version, however, is a more complex existential narrative, full of doubts and reflections, an example of one of the first psychological novels in history of literature.

Still, what attracted me – and probably Daniel Libeskind as well – was the fact that Robinson Crusoe had been also a first book about design. The material culture of things, processes, and making is the most important part of the narrative. The list of items that Crusoe salvaged from the wrecked ship takes many pages, and it makes a surprisingly fascinating reading.

What follows is even more captivating. Defoe provides detailed descriptions of how his hero conceived, planned, and made things that fulfilled his daily needs for a relatively comfortable life in the wilderness.  All in all, Crusoe’s method is not very different from the approach of today’s environmentally conscious designers, for example:

– Recycling, re-purposing of materials and resources, both natural and man-made.

It turns out that almost anything could be procured or made from the limited supply of available materials and tools.

–Slow design. It takes him weeks, and sometimes months, to make relatively straightforward items, yet the results are infinitely satisfying.

– Desire for beauty and perfection. Crusoe is not satisfied with mere functional aspect of the items he made. Not without a sense of humor, he constantly comments on awkwardness and ugliness of things he was able to make, due to his lack of skills and proper tools. His first fired claypots functionally served him well, but they looked “as the children make dirt-pies”. After subsequent experiments with self-made potter wheel, Crusoe proudly notes:

”I arrived at an unexpected perfection in my earthen ware and contrived well enough to make them with a wheel, which I found infinitely easyer and better; because I made things round and shapable which before were filthy things indeed to look on.”

If anything, this is an essence of design. “Robinson Crusoe studio” could be a great assignment in today’s design college. When students spend a semester reinventing everyday things with limited supplies and minimal tools, they would reassess the abundance of our material culture, which we too often take for granted.

Post No Bills

Everyone in New York sees them every day.

As long as the city’s real estate boom goes on, new construction sites are popping in every neighborhood, surrounded by rough plywood fences painted blue or dark green. On these walls, every dozen feet or so, there is the inevitable sign: POST NO BILLS. In my own neighborhood, the Lower East Side, hundreds of these stenciled messages appeared seemingly overnight, as construction of the mega-project on Essex Street picked up steam. Finally, I paid attention.

Curiously, this everyday insignia is perhaps the last piece of history remaining on redeveloped city sites. The language itself says it all: to most people today, “bills” mean electrical or phone bills, not advertisements. “Posting” means writing something on one’s blog, not affixing anything on the wall. Where does this expression come from? I spent some time on the Internet, but failed to determine the origin of the sign. One thing is clear: it is old. There was a short silent film, made in 1896, called Post No Bills, where two street urchins squabble over pasting their bills over a wall, only to be chased by a policeman – a quite contemporary situation.

What interests me most, however, is the “design” of the stencil. There are variations, but they mostly follow the same arrangement: three words stacked up in a roughly square format. There must be someone, generations ago, who came up with this layout, which continues today all around the Unites States with little or no change. The stencils for making these signs are offered for sale by several manufacturers online (at a steep $40-$50 apiece). Surely, no royalties are paid to anyone. One unknown designer, like Milton Glazer of a bygone era, remains responsible for an icon that handily outlived his own time.

Everything that has been designed, could be re-designed. I keep wondering when some stencil-making company commissions Stefan Sagmeister – or even Pentagram – to come up with an alternative POST NO BILLS look, the one they’d consider more fitting for upscale neighborhoods of Chelsea or Upper East Side.