No Randomness

Exhibition-IN

Curator
Oscar Lhermitte
Scenography
Oscar Lhermitte
Site
Cité du design
3 rue Javelin Pagnon
Date
From 12/03/2015
To 12/04/2015
Hours
every day
10am to 7pm
late opening every
friday until 9pm
Share

No Randomness
La cohérence des formes

Have you ever wondered why manhole covers are round? Why a metre measures a metre? Or why an A4 sheet of paper measures 210 mm by 297 mm? A ratio to determine the size of an image, an octagon to represent a pictogram, a smell to materialise the intangible... These ideas are not new, there is nothing original about them, noone knows or can remember the name of the person who thought of them, these are ideas for mass consumption ... but heavens, are they beautiful! The modern world is full of objects that we interact with on a daily basis; we are so used to their presence that some of them have taken on a form of selfevidence. We forget just how functional and well-designed they really are. The No Randomness exhibition highlights the beauty and the qualities of the standards, systems and industrial products whose presence and use in our environment are of such great importance. From the specific shape of a road sign to the pattern on a Cornish fisherman's jacket, the collection presents a series of products that share one common attribute: their shape could not be more functional. These objects, apparently banal, nondesign, even invisible, are actually true heroes of design: they fulfil their function perfectly, sometimes so well that they become universal. Their hidden beauty is in the detail (a particular curve, a particular dimension, a particular colour): their essential raison d'être. The intention of this exhibition is to show that design becomes beautiful when it is thought out and developed as a whole, within the framework of a system connected to other systems. This collection arouses the public's curiosity about their immediate environment and leads them to understand that nothing is random. In other words, design is never as beautiful as when it is invisible. The objects on show in this exhibition will be everyday objects: paper, long eggs, a metric system, an orange safety vest, a STOP sign and a tyre tread.