The Garage of Small Things; nanotechnology, biomimicry and design practice

What follows is a quite different edit of my article for Artek’s magazine, ‘Annex’. It explores some of the possibilities in and around advanced material research, based on a conversation between researcher Olli Ikkala, Artek design director Ville Kokkonen, and me, at Aalto University’s ‘Nanotalo’ (nano-house) in Finland.

Along the way it explores building at the molecular scale, how cellulose might resource tomorrow’s fast fashion and slow buildings; leaps from Lilliput to Finland; links electron microscopes to Thackara’s macroscopes; remains ambivalent about whether we really are on the brink of a the new industrial revolution or about to take another unsustainable misstep: connects MIT’s Building 20 and Aalto to reinforce the value of garages; sets up a prizefight of poetic qualities between Italo Calvino, Juhani Pallasmaa and biomimicry; and sketches out how research into organic polymers might inadvertently reveal a future of creative practices …

Suffice to say, it was not easy to write this article in a way that might engage a broad audience, whilst retaining the essence of these big issues about small things. For some years now, I’ve tried to explore a kind of communicable, almost conversational writing about (sometimes) complex matters — it’s far too easy to hide behind obfuscation…