In any design project, many questions need to get asked before results can be achieved. The types of questions designers and their clients are asking each other are constantly in flux. How is the usability of any object, from a free standing building to a piece of furniture, determined over the course of its life? What is more important: the integration of sustainable practices before a product is made or after it has reached the end of its usable life? Eric Chan has been asking tough questions like those, and many others, for a long time. His company, ECCO Design, has found a middle path between planning for the future and dealing with the past. ECCO was formed in 1989 with a distinct mission of bringing a meta-culture philosophy to the highest level of manufacturing and consulting through product identity and development. The Greek word “meta” originally meant “beside” or “after” but now is generally associated with the possibility of change or transformation.
Known in the contract interiors industry for his compelling designs for Herman Miller and Geiger, his company specializes in product design. Mr. Chan’s solutions impact not only workplace design, but his practice also address issues ranging from transportation improvement to humanizing technology. To answer one of the questions posed above, Mr. Chan argues that the best way for something to be sustainable is while it is being used.
Using is more important than owning
“The systems we all use now are very inefficient. If you don’t like something, you throw it out; disposability for the sake of human convenience is outmoded thinking,” said Mr. Chan. “Some things never change, we just see mutations. Seating, for example, has not changed since the Stone Age. A typical seat height has remained eighteen inches off the floor.” The question is what does eighteen inches above the floor mean to human behavior now? “If we are only concerned with the physical world in front of us, it will be diminished. If design doesn’t connect with culture, you lose out on a higher order.” Mr. Chan continued, “Think about all the things we use each day that we don’t own – from public transportation to content on television or the internet. How much of it do we need physically in front of us in order to benefit from it?” Eric Chan is making a case, not for a reduction in manufacturing or infrastructure, but an increase in design intelligence. “It doesn’t matter how cheap, fast or big a product is; all that means nothing without content.” That content usually boils down to something that is, at its essence, primarily cultural.
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