As an immigrant and a typical American, I’ve moved around for most of my life. Last year, however, I decided to stay. With my parents’ help, we bought a house. Since then, I’ve become very focused on what a house does, how it works, what each room does. And how furniture works.
Let’s say furniture works in two ways: first, as a product in our marketplace which requires resources both material and human to produce. Second, and more importantly, as a device to structure our leisure, our social activities and our work.
Most furniture available for purchase in the U.S. works “OK.” Not great and certainly not “insanely great.” In this way, the furniture market resembles that of the personal computer. As the Storm botnet or a recent Pew study would suggest, most consumers and their so-called personal computers are, at best, “acquaintances.”
While “power users” have exploited the tremendous potential of today’s computer systems in the personal and commercial spheres, most users have yet to do so. (This also varies greatly around the world.)
There are a few exceptions to this trend, the most significant of which is the popularity of the iPhone.
Which brings me back to the lack of affordable, well-made and well-designed furniture. Over the last year or so I’ve gotten into more than a few discussions with furniture dealers, interior designers, architects and curators on why good furniture is considered a luxury item in the U.S. Mostly, I’m told, it’s because: 1) well-made furniture is inherently expensive to produce and 2) good taste is rare.
Both of these arguments are contradicted directly by the iPhone. In the midst of a global economic crisis which has confounded economists, corporations, governments and consumers, alike, Apple sold one million units of the iPhone 3GS in its first weekend.
Tell me, now, how a piece of furniture is inherently harder to make than an iPhone? Or how consumers don’t appreciate a well-made device?
The problem, instead, is that there is no system of companies (suppliers, developers) in the furniture space as there is around Apple. Just as there is no Apple to make obvious what we so often overlook: that good design can make life easier and more pleasurable.
Lately, I’ve come to read a great deal of writing around furniture design and very, very little of it shows the self-awareness and ambition required to make an effective – indeed, a revolutionary – product.