How Are ReCombinant Designs Made?
As the renowned designer Charles Eames said, “Design depends largely on constraints.”
Charles, with his brilliant wife and design partner Ray, embraced and valued the positive impact of constraints. That describes my process. I have limited technical skills, tools, budget, and pain tolerance — so “simple and easy” are my design constraints. The parts I use come, a piece at a time, from thrift shops, flea markets, and non-profit re-use centers like Urban Ore in Berkeley.
My “raw materials” are commonly available everywhere in the country. I choose them with no pre-conceptions for their use but because of interesting structure, shape, and “receptivity” to joining with other things. When I play around in cool parts I’ve found, a synapse sparks, a marriage becomes evident, an idea becomes an experiment — and then an entire range of possibilities. Wandering in search of a path, trial and error, process of elimination: ReCombinant Design is low-cost puzzle-making — without the box to look at.
Like a meditation, it’s problem-solving: addressing structural and aesthetic questions of balance, composition, stability, function, and resonance. Pliers, electric drill, small saws, screwdrivers — if it needs more than that then I’m forced — constrained — to find a better solution. What you see is as simple as I can get it to be. My love of Euclid and the Bay Area come out in the architecture — and I have to toast Buckminster Fuller every time I solve a structural problem using triangles and dynamic tension.
– CB
