Imagine that you’re walking down the street and look into a shop window and you see this:
The unfinished pressboard edges face toward the street so that those inside the shop get the good, finished melamine side. I don’t like this. The cubby-shelf-thing is gross. There is no good side. It is that it passes itself off unironically as furniture that makes it so unacceptable to me.
I’m living in a furnished rental. There are a couple of chests–awful pieces, made of poor material and tape.
These anecdotes have provided me inspiration for an installation of concept art, which I shall not execute, but I have pondered it: furniture made out of the Zip System.
A green high boy with taped seams. Beautiful. I could make substantially better furniture out of the Zip System than the chests that furnish my rental and what a commentary it would be on modern material, its application, and what’s more, its acceptance.
I could make some genuinely nice stuff out of the Zip System, museum-quality.
Oliver Liu 