World Affairs
From paranoia to playing safe
Published 19 September 2005
Observations on America
In its first major design show in its new home, New York's Museum of Modern Art will exhibit products that deal with danger, from genocide to the paper cut. Starting next month, "Safe: design takes on risk" will show prototypes by creatives that deal with the perceived perils of modern living, including refugee shelters and alarms.
The aim, the curator Paola Antonelli says, "is to address the spectrum of human fears and worries". These range from "the dread of earthquakes and terrorist attacks to feelings of darkness and loneliness". The solution is to "provide beautiful designs to comfort people while they are under threat".
Exhibits include a "Life Saving Station" for the beach, where lifeguards can sit and watch for struggling swimmers (BBP Architects, Denmark). It's tall, comes with a ladder, and is painted in red and white stripes. We've seen something similar on Baywatch. More dramatic are the attractively designed gas masks for children and an inflatable shelter for personal use in a disaster - which looks like a colourful tent for one.
Punters keen to take something away can buy, from the MoMA shop, Kosuke Tsumura's "Final Home jacket" (only in orange or black, and just one size fits all), which is intended to "serve as a nomadic home" in the event of a disaster. It looks like a plastic mac but the selling point is the big pockets, which can be stuffed with newspapers for warmth or used to store belongings. It costs $215.
Representing Britain is the "Stop Thief ply chair", from the Design Against Crime Initiative at Central Saint Martins in London. This has a strip cut out of the wooden seat, through which a woman can string a handbag to keep it safe.
New Yorkers have never been ones to buy those $70 packs of plasters and torches intended to help in disasters, not even after the 11 September 2001 attacks, but perhaps they will like the first-aid bag designed by Frederic Ruyant, which was inspired by a Saint Bernard dog's barrel. It displays a reflective red cross and contains 39 objects, including a whistle, a life blanket, a sling, two pairs of gloves, scissors, tweezers, an elastic armband, a "life blanket", a little lamp, a mac and bandages. It looks groovy and might help a nurse, though it's not quite right for lugging around a busy city, unless you wear it round your neck.
Should designers play safe? On this evidence, it looks as if they would be better employed devising public housing, or sitting rooms in the sky, or even waterproof iPods. Certainly they should not steer clear of products that do not stop us from drowning or aim to save us in an earthquake.
But Antonelli thinks that the show and its designers are doing important work. "Fear is used as a political instrument in the US and fear here can become a dominant ingredient of your life," she says, "but good designers are the opposite of people who promote fear; they can make paranoia manageable."
"Safe: design takes on risk" is at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (tel: 00 1 212 708 9400) from 16 October to 2 January 2006
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