WEEK 3.3.4: RESEARCH REVIEW

MAGUFFIN MAGAZINE

by Delany Boutkan and Mikaela Steby Stenfalk

Mining Above Ground MacGuffin is a design & crafts magazine featuring stories about the life of ordinary things. Each edition uncovers the personal and sometimes curious relationships with the stuff that surrounds us.

Ore Streams, a study of e-waste by Studio Formafantasma, includes a range of office furniture assembled from salvaged materials and elements that expose the complex relationship between time, industrial production and the musealization of design. Ore Streams therefore urges designers to extend the timeframe of design and production to beyond the human manipulation of semi-finished goods and to follow the timeline of the natural and unnatural forces that affect raw materials.

It makes clear that it is in the design industry’s interest to preserve ideas like the conceptual objects in museums. But to affect industry in any meaningful way, the ideas explored here need to move beyond the limit of the museum and challenge the economic and production-driven streams of large-scale industrial manufacturing. Moreover, a sensitivity to time and an expanded view of production processes must be considered when design is customized by institutions.

Studio Formafantasma, Ore Streams – Cubicle 2, iridescent car paint on CNC milled and folded aluminum and stainless steel, aluminum outer casing of a portable computer, 2017

Studio Formafantasma, Ore Streams – Table, metalized car paint on CNC milled and folded aluminum, aluminium mobile phones outer casings, gold plated mobile phones outer casings, steel microwaves

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Citation:

Mining Above Ground. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.macguffinmagazine.com/stories/macguffin-mining-above-ground