Our lives are a veritable bricolage of objects, some inherited, some bought, some found, others gifted. Surrounded by them, stored away or lovingly displayed, they define and shape us. Objects move, and they move us; they hurtle us through time and space, both past and of the future. And, they endure, gathering stories and impressions, of generations of hands.
Yet, we mistakenly equate value with money, not memories. We look at the artwork hanging on our walls, and skip past that chipped, faded bowl picked up by our grandmother sitting on the kitchen shelf. We revel in the new, and push back the old, the mundane. Binaries such as these are created, not necessarily lived.
How do we, especially designers, celebrate the ordinary? How do we understand its affective power? How do we recover our personal and collective histories? How do we embrace material culture? How do we make place memories, and make place for them?
