Materialien für Designer The Magic of Materials - Creative Industries ...

Lefteri schreibt: in „Making it“
(Laurenc e King Publishing, 2007)
über Herstellungsmethoden und
immer wieder über spannende
Mate rialien wie etwa Airglass
(link e Seite), das zu 99,8 Prozent
aus Luft besteht, somit das leichteste
Festmaterial der Welt ist
und wunderbar isoliert.
Lefteri writes: in Making it (Laurence
King Publishing, 2007) about production
methods, and about materials
such as Airglass (left page) which
is 99.8% air, and thus the lightest
solid material in the world and
an excellent insulating material.
Glauben Sie, dass in 100 Jahren viele Produkte aufgrund
neuer Materialien völlig anders aussehen
werden als heute?
Wenn man versucht, solche Dinge vorauszusagen,
läuft man Gefahr, völlig danebenz liegen, also lass e
ich das lieber. In den nächsten 100 Jahren könnte es
potenziell um das Verschwinden von Produkten gehen
und darum, dass das, was wir unter dem Begriff
„Produkt“ verstehen, etwas weit weniger Greifbares
sein wird als heute. Im Augenblick ist unsere Beziehung
zu Produkten und Objekten größtenteils von
emotionalen Aspekten geprägt und nicht so sehr
von der Erfüllung von Funktionen, wie es vor ungefähr
100 Jahren der Fall war. Was Materialien angeht,
glaube ich, dass Werkstoffe wie Kunststoff,
Holz und Metall obsolet werden und dass die einzigen
Dinge, die aus diesen Werkstoffen gefertigt
sein werden, Antiquitäten aus unserem Jahrhundert
sind. Als ziemlich sichere Vorhersage könnte man
festhalten, dass diese Materialfamilien sich so weit
entwickelt haben werden, dass es Hybride und neue
Biomaterialien geben wird, die durch Mischung verschiedener
Rohmaterialien hergestellt wurden. Außerdem
habe ich immer geglaubt, dass die Zukunft
einem bestimmten Material gehören wird, das sich
jeder beliebigen Anwendung anpassen kann, ein
Material, das bei der Weiterverarbeitung in Produkte
nur minimale Energie verbraucht.
Mr. Lefteri, you have so far published seven books on
materials. You work as a consultant, you blog about
material s, give talks and have staged a number of exhibitions
on the topic. What started your interest in materials
in the first place?
The same reason that I got into design, which was simply
that I was curious to find out about stuff. It’s like that
moment as a child when you stumble upon something,
either natural or man-made, and you want to find out
what it is, where it came from and what it’s made of.
This curiosity has never abated, and when I had the
opportunit y to write a book, it was like being invited to
produce something that would get across what I knew,
like having an excuse to find out about what I didn’t
know. This first book was, in many ways, an experiment
into how I could find interesting ways of telling stories
about these materials that were relevant to design. The
more I played about with the ideas for images and layouts,
the more I realized that there was something quite
important about the way designers use materials that
was missing at that point.
What inspires you?
One of the main points of inspiration comes from food.
For example, I was recently asked to write a book on that
topic, but approached it like a design project. I believed
that if I could talk about materials and engage readers in
a way that transmitted a very strong emotional connection
with materials through text and images, then I would
be able to get to the heart of this topic, and bridge the
gap that exists when you don’t actually have a sample
in your hands to feel, test, smell and all the other things
we designers do when we play with materials. I always
wanted to get away from the dry technical language of
the traditional approach to materials that comes from
engineering and science. So I would use very sensorial
words, like “finger skinny” to describe a thin-skinned
material or “steamy shower” to describe a sort of translucency.
Again I wanted to evoke in the reader a snapshot
of the material that would make them want to embrace
it in the same way that cookery books make us
want to cook and eat.
That sounds tasty! Why do you think the issue of materials
has become so important in design lately?
It’s a whole range of issues coming together at the same
time. From one direction there is the focus on all areas
of design that has become much more experiencebased.
This means that designers need to have more
design tools available so that they can create these experiences.
This also feeds into branding and communication,
and materials clearly have a very strong role to
play in these areas. We also have this strong growth of
interest in the environment, and clearly the types, sourcing
and processing of products and interiors and their
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