The Transport Machine System
What would you like to change being a designer?
I would really like to make plans, like an urbanist, big plans of how things could be.
There was this Slovenian\ Italian Art Noveau architect, called Max Fabiani, who was thinking about Milan and how quickly it is growing into a hot concrete city. So his plan was to make an air conditioning system for the entire city, where he planed to put huge pipes going from the mountains to the city, to enhance the exchange of hot and cold air.
I would like to be able to think that big, and not to make air conditioning boxes that everyone places outside their window.
What’s wrong with the world?
If there are some objective, really intelligent people, without personal interests living underground, trying to resolve the world problems then the world is fine. We can wait for some new rules to apply to our everyday lives and in between worry about our weight.
What do we see?
This is a scenario about a future transport system, where the transport machine is an extension of the house. When you travel somewhere with the machine, you take a part of your living space with you. Its like travelling with the garage, and when you come back home, your house becomes bigger.
And then, like in a science fiction scenario, you wonder:
How does a work place look like if you have the possibility to travel with your room? Are there any buildings left, or is the landscape a green space when everyday there’s a different positioning of elements? Can we reduce a workweek to 4 days because there’s no traveling time? How does the interaction with strangers\family change? What elements of the street, or of the city we loose because of the new system?
Why did you make this and how?
I made this because I find the car the oldest still in use. It was working when there were four cars in the city that rarely met, but now things changed, there are traffic jams and cars are super fast, so the car is not the right transport machine anymore.
On the other hand I found the today’s transport system very interesting in a social way, where every day everyone trusts total strangers unquestionably. Maybe this is the only so large a system, where everyone after a certain age and after a short training time is allowed to join as an equal member.
What did you want to explore specially?
I am exploring my drawings as a language of design or as the design itself. I always wanted to build something, a real thing, an object. But then I went to an Ettore Sottsas exhibition in Ljubljana and there were some objects and some drawings. And the drawings were so much more powerful, they were really beautiful pieces, touching I would say. So I decided that I must draw more, more science fiction scenarios, so the drawing is the final piece before the future. But then, before the future, the collection of drawings is the thought, the manifesto, like words, but more clear for me. They are like rules that you follow when you build something.
Nina Mrsnik, an interview for Creatie
Date: December 2008
Location: Ljubljana
