oscar lhermitte curates no randomness for saint-etienne design biennale

oscar lhermitte curates no randomness for saint-etienne design biennale
(above) long egg – egg slices
image © arne zacher

is a manhole cover beautiful? why should it be? who would have thought that it might conceal an invisible detail, the product of intelligent input masked by usage? have you ever wondered why packing foam is the shape and size that it is? do you know what is unique about the faceted 50 pence coin?

to the naked eye, everything is hidden. conceived as a tribute to objects camouflaged in the landscape, oscar lhermitte has curated ‘no randomness’, an exhibition that invites the publice to experience and discover the far from arbitrary reasons for why something has been created a certain way. presented at the 2015 biennale internationale design saint-étienne, the show highlights things that we use in our everyday lives, so mundane — some of them having taken on a form of self-evidence — that we have forgotten how functional and well-designed they really are.

square root of 2 – A format
image © arne zacher

deciding whether or not an object is beautiful is not a simple task: it is sometimes easier to say what we consider it ugly. to assess the relevance and coherence of a product, however, is to observe how cleverly it fits into its environment. ‘I like to understand why such and such a detail was chosen, I like to be aware that it is not accidentally part of the object. I like to discover, for example, that a curve that had hitherto escaped my attention turns out to be the decisive element in the smooth operation of that object: it was there all the time, under my nose, so quiet and yet so relevant,’ says oscar lhermitte. that is perhaps the definition of beauty: an object that has become gracefully and discreetly integrated into the world around it.

roundness – man hole cover
image © arne zacher

exposing and questioning the object is an integral part of the designer’s job. the nineteen pieces that lhermitte has selected form the starting point of a collection of creations, each of which contains an ‘invisible’ detail that enables them to fulfill their function to perfection. ‘their beauty, to my mind, lies in their simplicity, the stroke of genius from which they are created – and we celebrate that beauty every time we make use of it, without even noticing it,‘ lhermitte states. while these objects cannot be said to be perfect or irreplaceable, they all nonetheless have a remarkable point in common: they highlight a design that makes the complex simple in all modesty.

‘no randomness’ is presented within a set design conceived by lhermitte and stinsensqueeze, and is on show at the biennale internationale design saint-étienne until april 12th, 2015.

one ten-millionth the distance from the earth’s equator to the north pole
image © arne zacher