ManuScript

Abstract

What do hotel categories, file formats, RAL colour tables, Spaghetti Bolognese, indoor plants, oval construction manuals, loos, concrete and Cuban cigars have in common? They are all objects from the perceptual hemisphere of the designer — a category that includes designers, interior designers, architects and a wide range of artists. This species of human being creates on the basis of the acute observation of its surroundings. It is a seismograph for subtle or groundbreaking caesuras, and from these it distils questions about questions. At the same time, it collects the answers formulated by kindred spirits — often without knowing the questions lying behind them, let alone the context from which they have emerged. A paradox that it also not one, for all this brooding sooner or later leads back to the discourse of the fundamental, the existential, of rules and their manifold interpretations. Designers absorb their world not only with their eyes and ears; they prefer to observe with a pencil in their hand with which to sketch, note and pictorially interpret. They turn things within their minds, observing them from all sides, even if these things have still found no expression in reality. Designers archive ideas and the fleeting kisses of the Muses, and they produce adrenaline when thinking of the moment in which these take on form ..