Metaform Prodesign Article

THE MAG AZI NE FOR PRO FE SSION Al 0 ESIGNERSAN 0 THE I R Cl lEN TS Official Journal of the Designers Institute of New Zealand

August / September 2003

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ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS THREE PRADEEP SHARMA REVIEWS THE METAFORM 03 COMPETITION, WHAT IT IS, WHERE IT CAME FROM AND WHY IT'S BEEN SO SUCCESSFUL. (PHOTOS: MICHAEL NG)

For those of you that haven't heard about it, the Metaform 03 competition and exhibition is at the Auckland Museum until September. It WIll then move to the Dowse and, hopefully, it maye en continue 0 erseas, showcasing ew Zealand creativity and innovation mternationally Metaform 03 was a competition to design furniture using Green eal, a uruque, ew Zealand developed, value-added material. It was about the collisIOn of two creative Ideas - the scientistS m de elopmg a value-added product, and designer's in addmg alue to a new matenal. Ant Il IS a claSSIC story of one plus one addmg up to Significantly more than two. So what was Il all about 7 On the surface, it appears to be an exhlb1ll0n of furruture design. And a yery good one It is too (see photos). But Metaform 03 IS much, much more.

Let us start with the word "Metaform". The tag line that goes WIth this utle is: "environmental transformation, material and design".

TIm Allan, of Metaform 03 organisers, consultants Locus Research, has a passion for sustainable design, and this was brought through m the philosophy of the competition. "Meta" stands for change and transformation, while the word "form" stands for object or essence.

The competition was about talong a value-added product, Green Seal, and designmg and then producing pieces of fUrniture. The furniture had to embody some of the values mherent in the matenal,

but also have an element of sustainability - an understanding of how we as humans use the furniture and also the Impact the furniture has on the environment.

CHEMICAL CREATIVITY There are two great stones here about creativity and mnovatlon. The first one is m the de elopment of Green Seal. This IS a product that starts off as Radiata pine and then through some clever processmg IS transformed into a hardwood.

The second story is about design and form makJng - making an object that has functionality, ergonomics and aesthetics, addmg value to a matenal. The competition is about addmg value to added value.

In 1985, the ew Zealand Furniture Manufacturers' Federation approached the Forestry Research Institute with a proposal and a challenge to do somethmg to the vast amount of Radiata pme grown in this country, to make it more of a useful timber for the furniture industry The milial brief was to try and make it behave more like a laminate or MDF. Dr Robert Franich was the principal scientist on the project. He started off the challenge by redefining the brief - how to make Radiata pine perform m totally different ways. He and his team started off by mvestlgating all the technologies currently available (then) to transform wood.

They studied all the techmcal literature and all the patents worldWIde. But they did not just read the mformation, they actually tned out each of the techniques. They immersed themselves in all the relevant processes to try and benchmark performance.

But nothing really worked. After two years of hard work, they went back to basics. looking at nature, they looked at the fundamental principles that constituted the strength and stiffness in wood to try and get a fundamental understandmg of cell structure. They kept coming back to cellulose as contnbutmg to the tensile strength of the material, and a cocktail of complex biomolecules as contributing to the compressive strength of the material.

This provided the inspiration for a new direction of research.

The end result, after considerable hard work and experimentation was the use of vacuum and pressure to gel. molecules through the cell walls. But "pushing" complex bio-molecules through cell walls is not easy, and so a technique of pushing small molecules through first was tried.

These small molecules do not resemble the complex bio-molecules at all, but they could be put m place far more easily Once inside, a process to initiate the condensation of these molecules to form the complex bio-molecules IS started The artificial wood material starts to bUild inside the radiata pine.

MAIN PICTURE' NEAL SMITH'S SMOOTH "PLANAR TABLE" IS CENTRE FOREGROUND; SIMON DEARSLEYS TUBE AND PLATFORM TABLE "URBAN GRAZE" CAN BE GLIMPSED AT LEFT REAR FAR LEFT: NATHAN GOLDWORTHY'S "NORDIC RHYTHMN" IS SEEN HERE IN FRONT OF NEAL SMITH'S WINNING TABLE

OVERLEAF: JAMES WHITIA'S TUBULAR "LOGGE SEAT" CAN BE SEEN HERE AT LEFT AGAINST THE WALL; NADIA MICHAELSON'S DECK路MEETS路LOUNGER "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" IS MIDDLE GROUND AT RIGHT

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In Dr R ben Fram h' \\' rd : It' hke pounng wood Into w d l ounds lmple, now at least' The net suit umber called Green ealthat IS far denser, tiffer and more re thent than common or arden Radiata. A useful addiuonal benefit IS that YOU can colour or tam the product dunng the proc so It' changed right the way through.

CREATIVE ALCHEMY ~I can t help feelmg dlSappomted about what's happenmg m furniture design now. Too much IS made that is transllory, and IS designed and made for all the wrong reasons. Adven1S1ng and magazmes are breedmg a culture of dIScontent. People are made to feel that they must have something new and different for Its own sake. ~To produce things which are merely new and not better IS really evil . Things should be made because they are better and with regard to the lunlted resources of the planet, so they should be reusable and long-lastmg But the maIn drive In magazines and on teleV1Slon - in those awful programmes about mtenor de51gn - IS for Impermanence. People often thInk that mere newness is mnovauon, but It isn't." Robin Day in the UK newspaper The Guardian, on 13 March 1999.

So, what could deSlgn add to the Green Seal technology7 The challenge to the design commuruty, students and profesSIOnals ahke, was to play With the matenal and see what forms emerged. The brief was loosely based around llems of furnllure, but thIS was open to the creative interpretatIOn of the Individual The process for the Metaform 03 competition required entrants to submit a scale model or draWing of their proposed deSign The Judges - a who's who of ew Zealand furniture. Tim Miller, Mark PennIngton, Pete Bossley, Humphrey lkm and myself - then Interrogated these, mdlvidually and then as a group Judgmg cntena was discussed "enthUSiastically" and a shortltst was made of deSlgns that should go on to the next stage and be made into full-scale prototypes ThiS IS a major step, requinng much

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commitment and a fair amount of Investment In both lime and money. Each of the 37 finahsts from the shorthst proVlded a detailed culting Itst prior to quantilles of Green Seal beIng despatched to them.

ThiS was no mean feat and you would be surprised how many people there are who have no Idea what a cuttIng list IS! LoglSllcs aside, each entrant then developed and refined their proposals, which they then submitted to the judging panel And what fun we had! The scope of Ideas, the range of manufactUring and construction technologtes used, the conceptual development, were Simply excellent.

The scientific design process that was followed m coming up With the product m the first place is very Similar to the process the deSigners would have followed. A senes of ideas turned mto concepts, expenmented with unul the insplrallon for the final design came and the protot pes made The Judges were looking for a clear articulation of an idea - a concept well thought out, well developed and then well executed The objects had to make use of the properlles of the material, yet be useful. This IS not such an easy task Yet nearly all the entnes demonstrated a strong strand of creatiVlty

IDEAS EVERYWHERE The Winner of the profeSSional designers' category was Neal Smith With an extremely elegant pie e called "Planar Table" ThIS piece explolled th properties of Green Seal really well and all wed such a slim, elegant form to be made. The e. e uti n of the model and then the full scale prototyp ~ a exqUlsnely handled Smith also demonstrated a superbly deltcate touch m hiS restrml1l m the styling There IS a scnsillvllY of form thm pr du es somethmg beaullfulto look at, yet sturdy and good to use A fine balanc .

The Winner of the student category was James Whma for hiS "Logge eat" On e agam, thIS plec was superbly presented, b th at model stage and then through to final prototype It ell.plOits the propert les of Green Seal (particularly Its stllTness) to

superb effect to produce a seat that IS dynamiC ill Its functlonahty The design's elegant form is well thought through and VISUally exclUng Choosing the winners was not an easy task and the Judges decided that It was tmportant to acknowledge the excellent standard of entnes by presentmg the followmg speaal awards Sunon Dearsley for "Urban Graze", and ad.ia Michaelson for "Under Construction" But even that was not enough We also v.anted to commend the following enmes Icholas Len for "Loose Ends", athan Goldworthy for~. ord.ic Rhythrnn"; and Stu Barr for ~Chimera" Congratulations to all the wtnners and all the finahsts! Thts is such an excellent body of work that it deserves to be taken to new aud.iences. Aud.iences around the world.

This competition and now ClI.hiblUon demonstrates, in a very expliCit manner, creau\1ty and mnovatlon at many le\'els For one thing It says that e\ Zealand has commodity products, but bo~: can we add value to them!

A collISIOn of two Ideas, producmg somethmg else that may de\'elop a hfe of Its own Well done to all those Involved The Metaforn1 03 COmpelltlOn and ubscquent exhlbillon would not have been po Ible \\1thout the con Iderable effon of L u Research, and m particular, Tun Allan Green eal donated all the matenal, while parent ompan' Caner Holt Han'c ' and PR D iG were al 0 extremel)' upportl\'e Au kland 1u eum ho ted the 路hlbltion and the laun h ee the follOWIng web ltes for further mfonnall on about the COmpetillOn, the matenal. the supporters and takeholders www.metaforn10.nz \0\ vwgreenscal.co.nz www locusre earch com www hh. om wwwagtn co nz