Turn a How-not-to into a How-to

Finnish material specialists, Ore. E. Refineries, recently caught our attention with their post on the how-to website Instructables entitled, How Not To: Design a Chair. A title guaranteed to pique our interest because we think hard before we design a chair. The post is a challenge to designers to refrain from designing chairs in 2012.

The guys as at Ore. E. Refineries raise some great points, namely that there are a lot of chairs in the world. They ask us to rethink the meaning of sustainable design and suggest repairing old chairs. So why did they create a how-not-to? Wouldn’t a call to action be more powerful that a call to non-action? Engage designer to use their talents to creating “new” chairs from old chairs, or perhaps a how-to on repairing old chairs would have been useful. Positive challenges will lead to positive outcomes.

Do you agree?