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THE MAG AZINE FOR PRO FE SSION Al 0ESIGNERSAN 0 THE IR Cl lEN TS
Official Journal of the Designers Institute of New Zealand
August / September 2003
$7.50
(omm8Pcial Aph5tand OQ-sign8p.
OFFICE 54 5HORTLAND STREETAUCI<J.AND
ONE PLUSONE EQUALSTHREEPRADEEP 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 about7
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 CREATIVITYThere 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·MEETS·LOUNGER "UNDER
CONSTRUCTION" IS MIDDLE GROUND AT RIGHT
PROD N047
In Dr R ben Fram h' \\' rd : It' hke pounng
wood Into w d l ounds lmple, now at least' Thenet suit umber called Green ealthat IS far
denser, tiffer and more re thent than common orarden Radiata. A useful addiuonal benefit IS that
YOU can colour or tam the product dunng theproc 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 ISmade that is transllory, and IS designed and made for
all the wrong reasons. Adven1S1ng and magazmesare 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 madebecause they are better and with regard to thelunlted resources of the planet, so they should be
reusable and long-lastmg But the maIn drive Inmagazines and on teleV1Slon - in those awfulprogrammes about mtenor de51gn - IS forImpermanence. People often thInk that merenewness 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 designcommuruty, students and profesSIOnals ahke, wasto play With the matenal and see what formsemerged. The brief was loosely based around llemsof furnllure, but thIS was open to the creativeinterpretatIOn of the Individual
The process for the Metaform 03 competitionrequired entrants to submit a scale model ordraWing of their proposed deSign The Judges - awho's who of ew Zealand furniture. Tim Miller,Mark PennIngton, Pete Bossley, Humphrey lkm andmyself - then Interrogated these, mdlvidually andthen as a group Judgmg cntena was discussed"enthUSiastically" and a shortltst was made ofdeSlgns that should go on to the next stage and be
made into full-scale prototypesThiS IS a major step, requinng much
048 PRODE&GN
commitment and a fair amount of Investment Inboth lime and money. Each of the 37 finahsts fromthe shorthst proVlded a detailed culting Itst prior toquantilles of Green Seal beIng despatched to them.ThiS was no mean feat and you would be surprisedhow 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! Thescope of Ideas, the range of manufactUring andconstruction technologtes used, the conceptualdevelopment, were Simply excellent.
The scientific design process that was followedm coming up With the product m the first place isvery Similar to the process the deSigners wouldhave followed. A senes of ideas turned mtoconcepts, expenmented with unul the insplrallonfor the final design came and the protot pes made
The Judges were looking for a clear articulationof an idea - a concept well thought out, welldeveloped and then well executed The objects hadto make use of the properlles of the material, yet beuseful. This IS not such an easy task Yet nearly allthe entnes demonstrated a strong strand ofcreatiVlty
IDEAS EVERYWHEREThe Winner of the profeSSional designers' categorywas Neal Smith With an extremely elegant pie ecalled "Planar Table" ThIS piece explolled thproperties of Green Seal really well and all wed sucha slim, elegant form to be made. The e. e uti n ofthe model and then the full scale prototyp ~ aexqUlsnely handled Smith also demonstrated asuperbly deltcate touch m hiS restrml1l m the stylingThere IS a scnsillvllY of form thm pr du essomethmg beaullfulto look at, yet sturdy and goodto use A fine balanc .
The Winner of the student category was JamesWhma for hiS "Logge eat" On e agam, thIS plecwas superbly presented, b th at model stage andthen through to final prototype It ell.plOits thepropert les of Green Seal (particularly Its stllTness) to
superb effect to produce a seat that IS dynamiC ill Itsfunctlonahty The design's elegant form is wellthought through and VISUally exclUng
Choosing the winners was not an easy task andthe Judges decided that It was tmportant toacknowledge the excellent standard of entnes by
presentmg the followmg speaal awards SunonDearsley for "Urban Graze", and ad.ia Michaelsonfor "Under Construction"
But even that was not enough We also v.antedto commend the following enmes Icholas Len for"Loose Ends", athan Goldworthy for~. ord.icRhythrnn"; and Stu Barr for ~Chimera"
Congratulations to all the wtnners and all thefinahsts! Thts is such an excellent body of work thatit 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\1tyand mnovatlon at many le\'els For one thing It saysthat 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 ubscquentexhlbillon would not have been po Ible \\1thoutthe con Iderable effon of L u Research, and mparticular, Tun Allan Green eal donated all thematenal, while parent ompan' Caner Holt Han'c 'and PR D iG were al 0 extremel)' upportl\'eAu kland 1u eum ho ted the ·hlbltion and thelaun h
ee the follOWIng web ltes for further mfonnallon
about the COmpetillOn, the matenal. the supporters
and takeholderswww.metaforn10.nz\0\ vwgreenscal.co.nzwww locusre earch comwww hh. omwwwagtn co nz