Yoo-Kyung Han (Korina) Korina’s Design Thinking

Walk into pretty much any hip design store and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s a New York thing, mostly, popularized by places like Areaware and Citizen: Citizen.

“Speaking from the museum point of view, it’s very easy to look at the world in a vacuum, but there are always market forces in how things are produced. The fact that recasting is an easy process is probably driving this trend.”

“In the early 19th century,” he says, “when designers were recasting ancient Greece, it was because of an ideology, the ideology of the Classical world. Or in the ’70s and ’80s, it was this backlash against corporate modernism. But casting and gilding as ways of creating an object are very easy. Manufacturers love it because it’s low-cost. Speaking from the museum point of view, it’s very easy to look at the world in a vacuum, but there are always market forces in how things are produced. The fact that recasting is an easy process is probably driving this trend.”

But in an odd way, these utilitarian, market-driven concerns are an ideology in and of themselves: today’s recasting has its roots in the Church of the Undesigned. Sam Hecht and Industrial Facility recently launched Under a Fiver, a show at London’s Design Museum that gathers up artifacts from around the world defined by their simplicity.

The gum is nostalgic for a childhood of chewing, but also, in a way, for recasting itself. That little piece of pink-painted metal is the death knell of classic historicism: “I’m fed up with the whole idea, and now it’s time to laugh about it. Here you go society. Chew on that.”