Rafał Ziembiński — Between idea and realisation
Has design today stood at a crossroads?
Expectedly, computer software has begun to play a central role in the design process. Both as a tool in the final demonstration of design, supporting the creation of design documentation, hyper-realistic visualisations, virtual 'walkthroughs', but also as an element of creative creation moving away from analytical and polemical thinking. The hybridisation of the use of supporting software has led to a situation of duplication of design methods and approaches. The use of libraries (object-oriented, material-oriented, stopping at the stage of visual hyperrealism) in many cases results in schematisation, the effect of similarities and repetition in the proposed solutions visible in the presentation of the project. In my opinion, the natural thought process has started to disappear, the essence of design originality and authorial individualism has been lost. Interiors began to be the effect of marketing fashion for so-called 'styles'. It is safe to say that there are very few timeless solutions that go "past" the mainstream, mass-produced designs. It is certainly not about disenfranchising the user, the context, the accelerating development of technology in modern finishing materials or environmental and ecological changes. Nor is it about interior architects creating non-functional comfortless monuments to their creative egos.
Combining reflection with (reasonably objective) external factors is the way forward for a contemporary discourse on welcoming space in general.
Design is an experiment
For years I have been experimenting with space in my own individual way. These experiments are series of drawings showing my imaginary inner horizons. My private and personal architecture. A world that exists without physical constraints: gravity, acting forces, stresses. It exists only in the boundlessness of space and imagination, living, as it were, its life of independence. Liberated from the compulsion to 'become' the matter of reality.
Experiments prove that a thought process is awakened, provoking surprising discoveries, authorial creative emotionality, inner reflection - stopping and discovering one's own creative identity.
Design is a search
It is a study of phenomena occurring in space, such as tension, contrast, interaction with other forms, plans for the arrangement of forms (background, foreground) in space.
The structure of space consists of different layers, overlapping each other. They form a multi-sensory peculiar inner landscape. The user, but above all the designer.
Where does it come from, how is it created? Where does its strength lie?
Design is observation
. But also, what we perceive has its own form, shape, and structure.
Sometimes also a function. Every observation can be noted, documented, the emotions and feelings that accompany it recorded. Maintaining a permanent state of curiosity and discovery encourages, as it did in my case, to go into different directions of intellectual games with space.
At the same time, I conduct spatial experiments that involve focusing on the macro- and micro-scale of the environment (context). They are captured in the form of sketches, photographic notes, collage, digital processing. Their aim is to raise awareness of the role and habit of perceiving, observing, and experiencing space as an essential part of the design process.
Design is the art of space
Initially, the notated images appeared as drawings or photographs, finding loose ideas combining the mood and structure of the planned design intent. I cannot call them design sketches because they were created far from the concrete space of the project. To discover new meanings is to learn and develop sensitivity, to have the opportunity for self-reflection, self-verification and to build conviction in the decisions made. Starting with the basics, which for me are drawing, model sketches that explore issues relevant to a problem in an abstract way. The question arises: how can a drawing on a flat sheet of paper be spatial if it does not represent a realistically seen space, recreated from reality?
Design is a process
For my research on space, I created the term 'Mental Base of Experience'. We create it throughout our lives and most often do not fully realise it. As the number of experiences, experiences and accompanying emotions increases, the Base grows but also changes. It is also certainly discontinuous. In my opinion, the access points to the Base are created spontaneously during a particular emotional concentration. So how do we activate them? How to make fully conscious use of the abundance of experience? I think they are triggered by a problem that gets in the way of us designers. Gradually, as we face the next design task or problem, the Access Points to our own experiences are opened up. I think that such a moment, such moments are related to the artist's personal sensitivity.
Sensitivity to every detail of the environment, every flash of emotion registered in our consciousness. Our external environment can become a source of inexhaustible experience. Gradually, it makes us more and more sensitive to the reality around us. Then, the essence of design (Diagnosis - identification of the problem, analysis; Exploration - maturation of thoughts; Idea - finding a solution and its verification) becomes a process that can be partly passed on spontaneously, by mental shortcuts and intuitively.
