- Designers, creators, companies and all that the planet has in mind Géo Trouvetou have mobilized their creativity in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
- Individual bubbles, grabbers or a lamp to sterilize… Designers competed in ingenuity during the crisis.
- Will these objects become embedded in our daily lives? Will the pandemic change the world of design?
Man is never as inventive as during a crisis! Who could have imagined that the aptly named "Easybreath" snorkeling mask would save lives? The idea of adapting this Decathlon product as an emergency ventilator in saturated hospitals arose from the collaboration between an Italian doctor from Brescia, Renato Favero, and the Lombard company Isinnova, specialized in digital printing. Designers, creators, companies and all that the planet has in mind Géo Trouvetou have mobilized their creativity in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. What will happen tomorrow in the post-containment world? Will the pandemic upset the design world?
At the peak of the pandemic in Europe, in Italy, the epicenter of world design, three journalists specialized in the discipline founded #DesignResistenza, a site that brings together designers' projects in times of crisis and the solutions they can bring to the day day.
Italian architects Carlo Ratti and Italo Rota have teamed up with Jacobs engineering studio and Squint / Opera digital studio to imagine the CURA intensive care capsule in containers to relieve saturated hospitals.
The Spanish studio Nagami Design, specialized in 3D printing, associated with the British Ross Lovegrove, has stopped producing furniture to produce visors. "It is by far the most important project on which we have ever worked, but also the one we wish we never had to start ...", lament the founders of the studio in the columns of Ideat magazine.
An object to open the handles with the elbow
Since April 2 on Instagram, the Swiss furniture brand Vitra has been organizing a series of live talks to discuss design in times of crisis. In France, Cédric Vasseur launched Beepmaster: “What is the role of new technologies in containment? The deconfinement? What will happen tomorrow? "Wonders the lecturer specializing in Artificial Intelligence. The designer Geoffrey Dorne lists on his blog interesting initiatives like this object which is used to open the handles with his elbow, developed by the Belgians of 3D Materialize.
Door handles, switches, digital locks ... The coronavirus has highlighted the number of objects that are touched daily. "If we have to go into a hygienic logic, applications will develop to control the light or the opening of doors via our smartphone," says Michael Malapert, interior designer.
An ultraviolet lamp to sterilize
In Taiwan, Lai Hsien-yung, anesthesiologist at the Mennonite Christian Hospital in Hualien, designed an acrylic cube that drastically limits the risk of contamination during endotracheal intubation of patients.
And in China, where the coronavirus appeared, Frank Chou and Pino Wang invented a liquid soap that changes color after thirty seconds. "We believe that the coronavirus will soon be eliminated, however, as humans, we will face more health problems in the near future," said Frank Chou, in the columns of Ideat magazine .
A soap from the "Create Cures" project which also offers a handkerchief that turns into a mask or an ultraviolet lamp which sterilizes your smartphone, your keys or your wallet. "As a designer, we have to redefine what design is, what we can do as a designer and what we can give," added the Chinese designer.
Towards a more sustainable design?
During the confinement, the designers also imagined the "next world". "Design is today at a crossroads today: does it accompany classic forms of consumption or does it contribute to changing consumption practices towards more frugality, more sustainability and more empowering practices? "Explains Thierry Mandon, managing director of the Cité du design in Saint-Etienne.
Some slow design designers have already started this reflection in recent years. "This crisis will work as an accelerator of awareness in the design community and designers of the role of design for the coming years," says Thierry Mandon.
Less is more? In a recent interview for Dezeen , industrial designer Hella Jongerius calls for "putting an end to unnecessary products, commercial hypes and empty rhetoric in the design process". During the confinement, the designers Max Enrich and Garance Vallée imagined design objects with the means at hand. Charlotte Kidger took on the challenge of creating a collection of vases with materials found within a kilometer around her home. "We need to put more sustainability into the consumption processes and question our practices more deeply," adds Thierry Mandon.
The primary function of the designer in the coming years is to "question the mastery of hyperconsumption". “The designers must be those who, first of all, question the purposes of the objects on which they are asked: real utility, durability, recycling, waste or not of natural resources. And then they develop their know-how, but they have this mission. If they are placed there, they have a real social and economic utility, based on their social utility ”, analyzes Thierry Mandon.
Our interiors are likely to change due to the widespread use of telework. “It is obvious that teleworking will help to redesign the apartments. How, when you have little space, compose an interior that is as much an interior for relaxation, rest and leisure as for work? All this is fascinating, ”says the expert.
Grabbers, makeshift respirators and other protective bubbles will likely disappear with the virus. "We must not confuse agility and speed of adaptation, and what a responsible and sustainable design would organize", underlines the director of the Cité du design. "There are ad hoc needs that appear, which may stem from underlying trends, and things which arise from a kind of sanitary hysteria," he warns, like this picnic blanket which allows respect the distancing imagined by London designer Paul Cocksedge, this Carlo Ratti clothes disinfector, these bubbles for the restoration of Christophe Gernigon or even these individual bubbles imagined by Libero Rutilo and Ekaterina Shchetina from the Designlibero firm.
He insisted: "Social distancing may be a health need at the moment, but it cannot be a project for designers. It's the opposite ! Designers will instead have to think about "how to recreate the bond". “When you stay locked up in front of the Internet without ever seeing anyone, you are not likely to be contaminated by others. It remains to be seen whether it is a viable and desirable life? "Concludes the Director General of the Cité du design.
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