What We're About

If a toaster is “clearly” an appliance, and a refrigerator the largest one, where does that leave an elevator, electric wheelchair, cell phone, hand drill or vibrator? Are appliances in some way “female” and domestic, while "tools" are just re-labeled "masculine" appliances? If the category of appliances did begin in the 1880s as a way to domesticate the new power source of electricity, what analogies and opportunities can we draw today in our connected world? This studio is concerned with how designers can reconceptualize this product typology.

We have been asking questions like:

• What social, cultural, and historical conditions gave rise to the appliance as we think we know it?
• How can designers use this conceptual insight to redefine the parameters of their participations?
• What are goals for the "new"? To be better? Higher tech? Ecological? Stylish? Subversive? Spiritual? Instructive? Or maybe, eliminated?
• What happens when we consider behavior and context more than form? That is, when the focus shifts from designing for the appliance as a stand-alone object, to seeing it perform as an actor in a larger narrative of use? What will appliances look like when they move almost entirely from noun to verb?
• How are these insights and objectives interpreted into: expression, design approaches, materials, manufacturing, marketing and use?
• To what degree are Industrial Designers responsible for the creation and neglect of this arena.