Form Analogs . door handles

In order to awaken latent hedonistic tendencies, I decided to design a series of handles (doors or otherwise). These handles all make the user more aware of the tactility in opening a door or drawer or cabinet. The idea of the door is deeply rooted in humanity since civilization began. Doors were a way to separate peoples and spaces. When people began to collect items, doors were used to store things away; keeping personal possessions from others. Doors have been used for defensive measures and as portals for accessibility. Doors have been used to divide space and to combine space.


With the significance of the door in mind, I sought to explore how a person’s interaction with that door can change their perception of the space around the door and of the door itself. There are several different types of typical door handles. Knobs are convenient for their compact form and small rotational wrist motion necessary to operate them. Lever handles offer a larger visual and tactile impact. Operating a lever involves much more than the wrist, but also the forearm and elbow, sometimes the shoulder. Stationary handles merely act as a handhold to open or close an unlatched door, yet can be just as tactile and sensual as a latching handle. While there are numerous other types of handles, such as thumb levers and digital, I think a rather specialized and narrow exploration is necessary for the project.


While I have specifically used only two different materials for the form analogs, I made sure that both would have a significant tactile impact while maintaining a similar aesthetic and manufacturing technique. This allowed me to focus on the human interaction with the handles. Each handle, while not specifically designed for any particular door, was made with a different tactile feel in mind. Some of the differences are obvious, and some are not, even to me. One thing that I did not want to do was waste too much time in over-designing any single handle. As an analog study, the key was to produce as many objects as possible, thus widening the scope of the study and broadening the opportunities for tactile response. The Japanese idea of wabi-sabi was instrumental in this process. Among the basic tenants of wabi-sabi is the notion of transience or the beauty of the incomplete. Even after I make the last of the handles for this series, I certainly won’t consider the exercise complete, and I hope that I never do. The process of designing a series in the style of wabi-sabi allows the continual renewal of the simple and modest, as opposed to the jarringly confusing (at least to me) iterations of parametric digital objects, many of which are lost the second they lose value to the creator. In creating a physical object, I was forced to consider all the failures as well.


This process also helped in deciding the program of my building. Before I had decided on using a metal shop as a rehabilitation tool, the program was fairly generic and uninteresting. When I realized that the process of making was therapeutic for me, it was easy to see that the same process of making could be therapeutic for others.