Working Knowledge is the title of my thesis in Product Design at Parsons School of Design. It is a summation of acquired knowledge over the last four years of being in a Western design school. This thesis takes my philosophy of design and craft and acts as a representation of it. From how someone may interact with the chair to the historical references, bodies that I have lived next to, and my tools that are in the tradition of Eastern Asian Craft.
The chair’s material composition is maple offcuts from an Amish sawmill in Pennsylvania. Handmade knit upholstery by Emma Cali and hand-woven textile from Sou Sou, Japan. The fill of the inner cushion is made of quilted Greige good fabric, milkweed floss and post-consumer FLWRDWN TM.
knowledge of the body: ritual of care
These rituals of care come from the respect for the ecological living environment which we come from and inhabit. It allows for someone to form a ritual and respect for an object’s material consumption. A design that allows the object to be repaired for generations. The upholstery is easily removable, to be cleaned, repaired, or interchanged with different textiles that are meant to tell different stories. However, this thesis was not only intended to create function alone, rather to embark on telling the story of process, decolonizing and deindustrializing at every step of its process. From the design, material sourcing, craft, function, use, and end of life of the object.
