Beautiful and concise post from Adam G about his Citröen renovation projét:
(T)he restoration project presents some deeper issues for me, and I guess for anyone interested in design and the use of designed objects. By starting with something that, at first glance, one might readily consign to the landfill, and slowly and painstakingly regooding it, I feel like I'm swimming upstream against a profound tendency of our age ... Here, for once, I'm not talking about something shiny and new, let alone a product designed to be extensible and modular and futureproof. The process involves debriding the body of rust, sourcing manufacturers for obscure parts as quirkily proprietary as anything ever built (hydraulic spheres, anyone?), sealing the hundred occult fissures and leaks that are bound to remain latent in the corpus of anything as poorly maintained as this car. I understand this all as a deliberate process of returning beauty to the world.
Adam goes on to describe the notion of:
"unbuilding," making use of what is present rather than introducing something "novel" but unnecessary.
... which I like very much. It relates to the adaptive design idea in some respects (evolve existing products rather than destroy and rebuild; making use of the 'at hand') ... but goes beyond that, into areas of sustainability (which Matthew Simmons from Arup was reminded of by adaptive design, incidentally). Good luck Adam.
