House Held: Sustaining Narratives

Abstract

The project is centered around designing for the emerging urban middle class households of Pakistan and the "supernormal objects" that they possess in terms of durable domestic products. The average consumer has grown attuned to these objects. Additionally, the products have ingratiated themselves in the lives of the users so seamlessly, that they generally go unnoticed. The aim of this research paper is to play on the strengths of this bricolage of supernormal products and the developed systems around them. This is to be done firstly in terms of interactions; to determine product affordances by analyzing activity thresholds around the household and embodying them within the products themselves as methods of tangible interfaces with the products. Secondly, by attempting to come up with a systematic solution to intervene with a possible design change that influences the existing life cycle of these products, and therefore, the production, assembly, distribution, retailing, use, repair and - finally - the restoration. This is done while taking into account that already a lot of these systems informally do exist, thus what the data will also cater to is monitoring them. Majorly the third fold to this research is to determine how might it be possible to make a design influence within this particular setting of household of consumer adaptation while still remaining sensitive to the cultural and emotional stature that these products already have