Engineering Temporality by Tuomas Markunpoika Tolvanen

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Appreciation towards Tuomas Markunpoika Tolvanen for providing the following description:

设计师将管状钢片焊接覆盖在木质家具的表面，然后一把大火烧掉里面的木制家具，留下附在表面的焊接钢片。

这个设计的主题由设计师祖母的病情催生。设计师的祖母是一个热情勇敢的人，如今生病的她却昏迷在床上，仿佛过往的一切生活，个性还有记忆都与她无关。设计师希望用设计联系人类的情感和价值观，用物质表达意识。

很多物品被继承和流传，他们不仅仅是财产，更是不可替代的宝贵记忆。物质的材料或许会在时间的流逝之中变得脆弱和容易损坏，而这样更凸显物品的宝贵性，让人意识到在时间长河中我们所拥有的竟是如此短暂。

哲学家马丁海德格尔在定义时间性的时候提到若是能将时间的现在和未来达到统一那将是时间的狂欢。这样的哲学让设计师深刻的去认识和思考人类自身。此外，人类的生命也因其的脆弱，短暂，不尽完美而在整个自然环境中显得珍贵和美丽。

大火摧毁了过往的脆弱物品，但是此物质的内在在烈焰中得到另外一种升华，最后的结果是曾经的物质消失但包含的过往通过新层而体现。在这样的作品中，实现了将时间的曾经，现在，未来的统一。

 

Tribute to Human Fragility and Material Culture

The topic for my thesis spawned out from a personal agony withing my family, my grandmothers declining health. Once a strong and bold woman, now only a fainting image of her past. Her Alzheimer’s disease is unravelling the fabric of her life, knot by knot, and vaporising the very core of her personality and life, her memories, and turning her into a shell of a human being.

I felt the urge to connect design to the human emotional sphere and to values that reflect how we are as human beings, by trying to create a bridge between the metaphysical and the material world using design as medium of expression.

Material Culture

The use of language in Western contemporary culture implies that memories are often conceived as possessions: we ‘keep’ memories alive or ‘preserve’ them, as if our memories were materialised objects. These objects become mementos and our personal possessions of which we are responsible for. When objects impregnated with memories are created, they become precious and irreplaceable because of the transference of memories into that object.

Fragility

We have a tendency to facilitate the notion of fragility into objects that have special meaning to us, which enhances our ability to care for them; this can be expressed psychologically, metaphysically or through material fragility. Nevertheless, fragility tends to transform objects more valuable, more precious and beautiful by their virtue of expressing the transience of life and our temporal nature. Temporality, Care and Dasein

According to philosopher Martin Heidegger temporality is what defines us as human beings Dasein (meaning ‘Being-there’) is a temporal mode of being. Casein unifies the past, the present and the future and Heidegger refers to them as the ecstasies of temporality. Our existence as a being (as Dasein) reveals itself as authentic care. My interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy is that through care we define more profoundly who we are as human beings.

Beauty

In the same way as human life is fragile, transient, and flawed, design should reflect these same values thus bringing more care into our surroundings, revealing Casein. The notion of beauty migrates into objects when we consider them symbolically comparable to us.

Design

To enhance the active engagement in the caring process towards objects, I created objects that are enmeshed in the notion of fragility through physical and psychological virtues that reflect temporality.

The selection of the material for my final objects was done according to what I regard as being an common structural material in furniture industry; tubular steel. I manipulated the tubular steel by cutting it into small rings. Connecting the rings back together to form a semi covering layer over an existing object was a method of capturing the physical space the object occupied.

The vanishing of the original objects is done with fire; a primordial force used as a method for recreating the original object. The object goes through a horrific physical transformation and a metaphysical bond between the object and memories is forged into existence.

My pursuit was to give an object a memory, create tension and stage a play between the perfect, anonymous mass produced structural material and the imperfect of human being. The shell that is left caresses the vanished object, the memory of it, referring to the past.

The intentions of my thesis are to translate human fragility into a design object and introduce humanistic, more profound values into the field of design where functionality, aesthetics and mass produced perfectness are the paramount. This has been my aspiration — make design a metaphysical experience that overlooks functionality. This is not to say that functionality in objects, or in design, should be disregarded. For me it’s about elevating the tedious functionality of everyday objects. “Temporality reveals itself as the meaning of authentic care. The primordial unity of the structure of care lies in temporality.” -Martin Heidegger

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