Functionalist Design

Objects need to have a function. Or at the very least, just one, “designated” function. This function acts as a label, and helps us find a place for the object somewhere on the giant imaginary shelf of useful things in our lives. But what if an object has more than one usage than besides the intended function? What if it happens to be very good at some function besides the intended one, does this change the way we see, relate to, and classify the thing?
My pet hates are the useless things that somehow survive in this world due to some human weakness for shiny objects, silly objects, or blatantly cute objects.
My design loves are the objects that seem to embody, or intuitively suggest their function. We use many clever words, such as “intuitive”, “form language”, “form follow function”. The richness and joy in design comes from the variety of apparently correct ways that a function can be represented in an object or tool, often this manifestation of usefulness is coupled with a proportional, emotional rise on the part of the beholder. Good design makes you happier. Bad design will make your life hell.
You could say that, and this is not my idea, that “there is no function, only form”. It is in the usage of the object that a function becomes ingrained, the human element has to be present in order for an object to perform a certain task, and culture has a great deal to do with this. I’m reminded of an account I read about a Cambodian man recounting behavior of the Khmer Rouge, who would confiscate watches and wear them in multiples of each arm. They could not read the watches and besides, there was no point, they had always told the time by watching where the sun was in the sky. The watches were just for decoration, pretty nifty wristbands.
A favorite example of mine is the phenomenon of the cigarette lighter used as a bottle opener. Some call this the “Scandinavian” way, a not-so-subtle reference to their culturally relaxed attitude towards alcohol consumption.
The method is simple. If you are right handed, hold the bottle in your left, with your hand tightly around the neck of the bottle, in such a way that the cap is level with your thumb and forefinger. With the lighter in your right hand, wedge the non business-end between the bottle cap and the beginning part of the forefinger. Using the forefinger as a fulcrum, and the lighter as a sort of lever, the soft plastic of the lighter becomes caught in the bottle cap, just enough to pull it from the bottle.
This technique appears crude and destructive, and to a degree, it is. The lighter’s base suffers from being chewed by the bottle cap, and in time will develop the appearance of having been gnawed at by rodents. But the thinking is mechanically very sound, and even possibly clever. The lighter is just soft enough to hold the bottle cap, but solid enough to act as a mechanical advantage against the finger. This form of reasoning holds very well in machining and tool making, where the sensibility for the hardness of materials relative to each other is what allows for the advantages drawn from the properties of those materials to be used to full potential. Wonderful stuff.