The world around us seems to be getting perpetually softer, more amorphous and blobular. Our objects are softer, our cars are rounder, our high-tech objects are rounder, and even our bodies are fatter. The digital age, the information society, the global village and the leisure culture all are symptoms of a changing physical world where ?Soft? defines our landscape. Soft is a metaphor for our forever-changing ever-vast organic system.
This casualisation of shape, form, material and behavior is now a movement. Designers such as myself have taken a great interest in organic form and the technology that affords us to morph, undulate, twist, torque, blend our concepts. Also new production processes and methods are contributing to this New World language. This world is data-driven fluidity. Now the landscape will flow. The only thing that prevents our architecture from becoming organic is our antiquated methods of construction. Today building is a reconfiguring of existing Cartesian modular components all based on a grid. Lack of a grid is necessary to the autonomy of hypertrophic experiences and to the accessibility of free information in our binary notation digital age.
Blobular is not just relegated to form and shape but also refers to our new material landscape where tactile surfaces give us comfortable engaging physical experiences. Polymers, such as synthetic rubbers, santoprenes, evoprenes, polyolifens, silicones, with translucencies, and transparencies contribute to this new softness of our products. Multiple materials on a singular object created by new manufacturing technologies such as dualdurometer molding or co-and triple injection enrich the interface with our bodies. We have heightened our experiences via touch. Materials can now flex, change, morph, shift color, cool and heat, etc. due to the smart plastic material movement. I have aggressively softened objects for our contemporary culture because soft means human, friendly, approachable, and comfortable. Soft is an extension of our bodies, tactile, flexible, playful, and engaging. I would like to live in one super hyper soft blobular world.
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