Stephanie Munson and and Bruce Tharp of Materious have created a provocative version of Phillipe Starck's Ghost Chair. They've transformed the iconic chair into a solar still to illustrate the "product fetishization endemic of unsustainable, first-world consumer culture" and the expense it has on environmental resources essential to survival, like potable water. This has us thinking about what it means for our love of design, sustainable and otherwise.
More pictures below the jump...
The classic form of the chair is disrupted by the waste water flowing through it, but it's "redeemed," so to speak, and turned into a vital environmental tool through the use of its clear polycarbonate plastic. Once a purely aesthetic choice, the clear plastic now enables the waste water to be exposed to the sun and the resulting pure vapor to be collected and removed.
As a design blog, we're certainly guilty as charged for promoting products and furniture, many of which may not be particularly noteworthy for their sustainable or environmentally-friendly production. And while we'd like to think there's a higher purpose for every product we talk about, the simple reason is that we often just think it's beautiful, or cool, and that having it might make your home a better place. This is still a valuable reason, in our opinion, and one that cannot be ignored.
On Re-nest we try to strike a healthy balance between consumption and conservation — there is a time to buy and a time to save, a time for feasting and a time for fasting. This is especially true in our current economic climate. We think this is the perfect time to stop and reflect on what we do, what we purchase, how we spend our time, what we're doing to ourselves and for others (or conversely, and probably more likely, what we're doing for ourselves and thus to others).
To conclude, reading about this Ghost Still got us doing precisely what it intended to do: thinking.
So tell us, what do you think about the Ghost Still?
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
i wish there was a top-view picture!
.. why does the water appear to be brown in the chair?
view ellehudson's profile
"Once a purely aesthetic choice, the clear plastic now enables the waste water to be exposed to the sun and the resulting pure vapor to be collected and removed."
I'm really turned off by this (but then that is probably the idea) - its my favorite chair!
view Heather C's profile
Ah, geez. Give me a break.
ALL chairs are detrimental to the evironment. Get it? Even if you have a flotsam wood chair with hemp rope, you're still changing the evironment.
Guess what the most environmentally clean material is? STEEL. yes. infinitely recyclable, durable for generations, and capable of being shaped to any form. Even wood is more dirty than steel considering what it takes to keep it in good condition for even a few years (stain, glue, etc). Even when steel rusts, on the other hand, this rust is generally good for the soil, being high in iron and oxygen.
In the end it's far better to buy a chair that you'll keep than one that will wear out. You can complain about how awful one of those eames LCMs is to the environment, but you can bet that for every used one on Craigslist, there's one less cheap pine chair being sold.
view AlexanderB's profile
AlexanderB, you make some excellent points.
view CambriaNYAT's profile
ellehudson and AlexanderB,
Thanks for your comments--we are the designers and will try and explain a little more as the project is somewhat complex and meant to be an example of "discursive design" (where the primary intent is to have a voice and raise an issue for discussion or debate). See http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/the_4_fields_of_industrial_design_no_not_furniture_trans_consumer_electronics_toys_by_bruce_m_tharp_and_stephanie_m_tharp__12232.asp
The subtitle of the work is "Water distillation kit for Kartell's Louis Ghost chair", which was not in the post. The idea is that in a dystopic future you would use this kit to turn your previously purchased Louis Ghost into a solar still because of clean water issues.
The user puts dirty water into the basin (which is why it is brownish in the photo) and it uses the sun to clean the water, which collects into a container beneath the chair.
Overall the idea is to raise the water issue, imagining a future when such a kit might exist on the market.
We are happy to elaborate further if you like. You can also check out it in 'original' form on our site:
http://materious.com/projects/ghoststill_detailed.html
-bruce
view bruce m. tharp's profile
Love it, even if it is more art than substance. I also love that it looks like the chair is peeing.
view whytephoenix's profile