Escape From the Tyranny of Things: An Argument for Heirloom Consumption (or Keeping Stuff for a Very Long Time)

Several months ago, I was asked by a journalist to comment on the excessive consumption of technology by designers. She wanted to know if there ought to be rules dictating how long a person should be required to keep electronics and computer equipment. It occurred to me then that even though Americans consider themselves to be fiercely independent, most of us love to be told what to do. It’s easy to think that we are one certification or set of regulations away from reversing the negative impact that humans are having on the environment.  The reality is both more complicated and nuanced. If a designer needs new equipment to complete a motion graphics piece about the destruction of natural habitat, and the piece results in large tracts of land being set aside for sustainable agriculture, then who would argue that the replacement of the computer hardware was unwarranted? The right balance of consumption and use of resources is more the stuff of personal responsibility and individual circumstance than it is appropriate fodder for regulatory authorities. That being said, there is no doubt that those of us residing in the developed world are consuming more than our fair share of resources, largely at the cost of those living in the developing world. The question remains, what to do about it?

In Toothpicks and Logos: Design in Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2003), John Heskett argues that a postmodern interest in ideas and meaning has been covertly appropriated as a means of creating and selling consumers useless, expensive and exclusive goods that rarely fulfill an actual need. Luxury and our desire for it is nothing new, but what luxury means has been redefined and is now primarily about name-association and branding as opposed to fine materials and higher quality construction. After World War II, a burgeoning middle class meant not only more disposable income but also an explosion of aspirational consumption. Products became badges of social status and economic achievement regardless of how well they were produced. In her 2005 book, The Uncommon Life of Common Objects, Akiko Busch writes about seemingly ordinary products including cereal boxes, a snowboard, a desk, and an Adirondack chair all of which carry cultural significance. Busch’s objects take on a dreamy, reverent place in our psyches and this gives them value and in some cases staying power.

That objects are richly embedded with meaning is certain. What is less sure is whether greater acknowledgement of this relationship might help us to become better owners and, therefore, better consumers. This is not a small point because objects have, for decades, been made to have finite lives. Manufacturers are terrified of what might happen if products were so ecologically and functionally well made that consumers wouldn’t need to replace them. The question of how to keep a viable economy going while using less weighs heavily on the mind of inventor and renewable energy innovator Saul Griffith.

Griffith, from whom the term heirloom consumption was borrowed, is an energy junky. He states the job of the designer simply. “It is to make us use less, allow the developing world to use more, while increasing everyone’s quality of life.” Griffith believes that it will be necessary to reduce the embodied energy in objects if we want to keep the earth at a temperature that can sustain human life. In practical terms this will require designers to be more efficient, and to make things either very lightweight or last ten times as long. Certainly our conception of products will have to change if we are expected to spend decades with them. Some companies and designers have already begun to explore what a new terrain for objects might look like. Inax Corporation, a manufacturer of tiling, building materials and sanitary fixtures based in Japan, uses the technique of backcasting to imagine future products that have a subtly different relationship to their owners. A bath that fills with warm foam bubbles gives comfort without wasting precious water and the company’s concept kitchen provides not only the usual surfaces and fixtures but also includes built-in waste disposal and recycling systems and an area for growing fresh produce.

Work shown as part of the exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind at the Museum of Modern Art in New York skirted the edge of what might be considered marketable products. Noam Toran, a Professor in the Interactions Department at the Royal College of Art, created products to alleviate men’s loneliness by providing traces of their missing companions. Accessories for Lonely Men (2001) included a Sheet Thief, a pair of Cold Feet, and a Heavy Breather. Toran’s models suggest that designers can be tasked with providing comfort and by doing so may help to alleviate our compulsion to constantly acquire more stuff.  Michiko Nitta, a student in the same department, explored both our obsession with objects and our desire for physical closeness with loved ones by creating wearable products made using vitro-cultured meat production technologies.  Her concept would allow consumers to grow selected parts of their partners on their own bodies. The replica of an original nipple or patch of living hair is designed to foster memory and human connection and provides psychological rather than physical sustenance.

The Danish poet, designer, and mathematician Pet Hein writes of being possessed by objects in his poem The Tyranny of Things. Hein suggests that if one has more than eight objects, one ends up being owned by rather than owning the things in one’s life. The interchangeable use of the terms want and need has lead people to think that it is their god-given right to buy the products that they desire. In the U.S. we work harder and longer than many of our neighbors in other industrialized countries and yet we are no happier with the life that our riches have afforded.

After visiting the homes of several European designers I began to wonder whether they were on to something that the rest of us had missed.  First I will say that these people are connected by the fact that they work in design and little else. They come from different countries, speak different languages, are from different generations and yet they obviously had something in common. First, they didn’t have very many things; and second, the objects that they did own were well designed, usually beautiful, and almost always supremely functional. My hosts all had a near obsession with the possessions that they lived with. They knew the story of the designer, they could tell you why one teakettle was functionally superior to its competitors and they unabashedly reveled in the beauty of objects. And I began to think, “This is what I want” …an escape from the tyranny of things. All of which was convenient since I live in New York City, a place where having less is often dictated more by the skimpy size of apartments than by any concern over excessive consumption. I have found that the best objects are not necessarily the most expensive, and that knowing you will keep what you have purchased tends to mean that you will buy less. I thought that sustainable consumption would primarily be achieved by denying oneself the pleasure of having things. Instead, I have found that smarter choices and a greater appreciation for real rather than perceived value can make me a happier consumer and also a less wasteful one.

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References:

Aldersey-Williams, Hugh, Hall, Peter, Sargent, Ted and Antonelli, Paola. 2008
Busch, Akiko. The Uncommon Life of Common Objects 2005
Griffith, Saul. Comostmodern 09 2009
Haskett, John. Toothpicks & Logos: Design in Everyday Life 2002

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Aaris Sherin
Assistant Professor Graphic Design
Department of Fine Arts
St. Johns University New York

Links:

SustainAble: A Handbook of Materials and Applications for Graphic Designers and Their Clients (Design Field Guide)