Recombinant Architecture:

‘All that is solid melts in air.’

With the networked age, tangible attributes of interaction and connectedness are getting replaced by the fluid nature of bits and information. It is interesting to explore how this has shifted the idea of accessibility. For example, the accessibility of a service is no longer tied to its physical location or spatial parameters but on how easy it is to access the website, giving a new meaning to prime location on an urban landscape. Now prime location is the domain name where the website is hosted. So the ‘physical site’ is replaced by ‘website’, that means the site of the place on web.

The case where BMW refused to sell the domain name ‘alphabet.com’ to google is an example of this transition. link.

The Electronic as Post-Optimal object:

‘Design research should explore a new role of the electronic object, one that facilitates more poetic modes of habitation’

Considering our dependence on ‘the electronic objects’ on an everyday basis, would we really want a specific aesthetic meaning associated with each of these objects? For example, amazon dash button, is an attempt to explore the materiality of the button with the product sticker, placed in context and can be used as actual tags that attempt to make re-ordering of the subscribed product easy. If for a moment, the low aesthetic value it possess can be ignored, does the material existence of the button add any value for the user?

‘Designers have not exploited the aesthetic dimension of new materials with the same energy that engineers have exploited their functional possibilities. Dunne also mentions that design is used as package for technology in electronic objects.’

Technology is seen as a savior for complex problems, and focuses highly on efficiency and performance. Thus the object that embody technology also suffer a focus on efficiency and usability over meaning and semiotics or language of the form. When ’Smart’ has become a lazy term to describe better technology, explorations in design of these objects follow the same route by becoming better packages like smart watch, smart television and smart cities.

It is interesting to explore what could be the new conceptual models of objects with evolving technology and what process of design could be followed for the same?