Hi there –
I’m Brandon from the United States and like many people I find myself thinking about this comic more and more. The amusing (tragic, depressing, etc) thing is, this feeling can relate to different aspects of modern society, the environment, places of work, governments, or all-around daily life. While this is a humorous take, meant to be a logo or visual representation of our collective dread, I discovered that I was thinking about this comic more and more; like I was on some kind of ride to a place I didn’t want to go. It was this realization that snapped me out of my post-pandemic stupor and got me to begin evaluating the path my life (and career) were on.
Living and working in New York City is more than just going about your daily life in a set location. The City impacts everything you do; it informs how you structure your day and it can simultaneously energize you and wear you out. It can seem a bit abusive at times but The City never hides its true self and it’s an attribute that I personally love because you always know where you stand.
The post-pandemic years saw people and money come flowing back to New York City like a dam had burst. It was easy to get carried away with this new influx of “energy” and the demand for products and services reached an all-time high. A hard thing to make sense of is watching catastrophic events unfold around the world while you’re debating the merits of Calcutta Gold marble – it’s beautiful but it’s not saving lives. Luckily for me, enough of these conversations had that “awakening” effect that I mentioned in the first paragraph and I found myself actively planning the path for the second half of my career.
I love to fabricate and I believe it goes hand-in-hand with being a good designer. I don’t exactly know if my post-university career will involve fabrication or if it will be resigned to hobby status but I do know that I want to make sustainability a tenet of my practice. Further to fabrication, I find materials and bio-driven new materials really fascinating. While “zero waste”, recycled, up-cycled, etc are all worthy goals, for me, environmental design is about using nature as a jumping off point. In my perfect future, there would be no waste or need for recycling as the organic nature of my designs would decompose at the end of their life-cycle.
This is my vision for an ideal future in the abstract but I did once splice an orchid with a small LED and managed to keep the orchid alive for some time so perhaps it’s possible. Whatever path I move toward I know sustainability will be a driving force and hopefully I’ll have a chance to make something in this world “fine”.
