tuomas markunpoika tolvanen: engineering temporality

‘engineering temporality’ by tuomas markunpoika tolvanen

design academy eindhoven graduate tuomas markunpoika tolvanen has sent designboom his thesis, a tribute to human fragility, entitled ‘engineering temporality’. the project is a collection of furniture, a cabinet and chair, that evolved from tolvanen’s personal experience with his grandmother’s declining health due to alzheimers:

‘her alzheimer’s disease is unravelling the fabric of her life, knot by knot, and vaporising the very core of her personality and life, her memories, and turning her into a shell of a human being.’

through this new understanding he developed a design to amplify the active engagement in the caring process towards objects, he created furnishings  that are interlaced with the notion of ephemeral fragility through physical and psychological elements that reflect temporality.

tolvanen used tubular steel as the main ingredient, informed by what he regarded as being a ubiquitous structural material within the furniture industry. he cut the tubes into small rings then joined them back together to form a semi-covering layer over an existing object. he then burnt these detailed sculptural piece, meticulously built from the hundreds of halos to then symbolically reveal the idea of memory and vanishing.

tolvanen describes his philosophy:

‘my pursuit was to give an object a memory, create tension and stage a play between the perfect, anonymous mass produced structural material and the imperfect of human being. the shell that is left caresses the vanished object, the memory of it, referring to the past.’