Resilient aesthetics and resilient beauty are terms that immediately sound like oxymorons, as beauty and aesthetically pleasing experiences and objects tend to connote something fleeting, transient, and/or volatile. We are used to viewing beauty as something that fades, being synonymous with newness, youth, unwrinkled faces and garments, fresh flowers, polished tables, newly painted walls, and with undented floors — all of which diminish with age, usage, and wear. We are used to aesthetics and beauty being linked to the visual impression of an object.
But resilient beauty is not smooth and spotless. It is mature and open.
Charging a design-object with resilient aesthetics is a celebration of usage, and implies creating an object that is made to be used, grow, become more beautiful or intriguing, and sense-stimulating with age as it is infused with and developed by the hands that touch it and the occasions for which it is used.
“Regardless of when the objects’ optimal state takes place, there is a sense of process applicable to all material existence, and it is generally one-directional. After the optimal state, the objects are considered “past their prime” and we get the feeling that things are “downhills from here,” and most of our effort is directed to- ward “repairing” and “restoring” the deteriorating objects and “turning back the clock.”
As professor of philosophy Yuriko Saito points out in this quote from her book Everyday Aesthetics, our linear way of looking at things often makes us praise newness and the beauty related hereto, and hence define beauty as something unblemished, flawless, smooth, and pristine. In the linear perspective there is a starting point, and a development that moves toward an end point, which is either defined by malfunctions and unrepairable or non-upgradeable elements; or by the shifting winds of fashion, and thus, perceived obsolescence.
Resilient beauty is enduring; it is open to development and even embraces the tactile qualities of unevenness, roughness, irregularity, and decay. Resilient objects are created to be used, and the traces that usage leaves must naturally be incorporated into their central concept.
A good example of an aesthetically resilient object is a vintage object. When garments, furniture, or bicycles for that matter are described as vintage, an affirmative term, it basically means that the specific object has become more beautiful and more valuable with age and with frequent use and wear. It seems as if the previous owner’s love for the object has left enhancing aesthetic traces on its surface, and so, its beauty can be described as resilient.
However, a vintage object can only be described as resilient after it has, so to speak, proven being so. But perhaps new objects can be infused with resilience from conception. The design process should then include more than considerations on how to attract consumers and convince them to buy yet another new thing. It should contain well-thought through and transparent intentions or even calculations on how to prolong the user phase to ensure a long product lifespan.
Resiliently aesthetical objects are sharable, durable, and they contain a certain heaviness. The term heaviness often connotes something dreary or gloomy, however, here it refers to meaning, substance, and stability and challenges. In order to live sustainably we must invite more heaviness into our lives; meaning, more substance, more stability as well as more significance and challenges. Resiliently aesthetic objects are charged with heaviness in relation to the undertones, associations, and feelings that they awaken in the receiver.
The sensations that are stimulated by an aesthetically resilient object are heavy in the sense that they don’t pass immediately — they linger. However, the heaviness that the aesthetically resilient object is infused with is also very hands-on in a physical, phenomenological kind of way. The hands-on heaviness that the resilient object encompasses consists of physical, material, sensuous stories; stories about the time that has been literally put into the object, which might even be discernable on the object’s surface; stories about the time that has been spent conceptualizing and constructing or shaping the object; or stories about the time that is meant to be spent using the object, which materializes in the newly designed object’s openness to usage.
By emphasizing that it is not only the “privilege” of the vintage object to be resilient—because it has with time proven to be so—but that resilient aesthetics can also be charged into a new design-object, I wish to high- light the importance of making user-phase considerations a vital part of the design process.
Furthermore, when I write “new design-object” it is important to stress that a new object could very well be upcycled, or an object made of recycled materials rather than vir- gin materials. We are at a point right now where designing new products can really only be legitimized if these are created to be extremely long-lived or in other ways improve our ability to live sustainably.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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