The evolution on products

This week i have been in two very unusual and interesting places, two museum of contemporary products, Mercedes Museum and Vitra Museum.

The big diference between those museum and the regular ones (like history, Natural history, or an Antropology Museum) is that in this ones you can see a sample of a particular product an also you can see the path that leeds him to that point and the later development. In a historical museum in were the object exposed are a unique sample that comes to describe an specific cultural moment, you can only infer the amount of work and the creativity weigth of that single piece of craftmanship and, in the same way, you also have to infer the value of that object had for the people that in first place possessed it. Like the value of an spear for a hunter. But what happend when you step in front of a complete chain of development in the same object? you can see the value of craftmanship because you see the process behind every detail of that product, and how that solution connects with the cultural situation.

So, what it's the relevance of this museum? it's not the recolection of precious objects but the visualization of the cultural situation and value system through crafts.

What it is important about this is the understanding that the products didn't born in their optimal stage -if that even exist- but they evolve to fit the cultural expectations. Because of that we can't expect the perfect product, but more important than that is that we can project the future step in the evolution of a single product based in the understanding of this cultural expectations upon that product.

Then we can say that the main feature of this kind of excibition is the craft, but the craft understood as the apply understandind of cultural expectations into the phisical tansformation of the matter.
The craft as the act of visualize and therefore create…
…from my point of view, Design.

For more information on the product evolution watch this video