Birgit Severin

Department: Contextual Design
Website: www.birgitseverin.com

Designing Chance and Fate

Design strives for a utopian idealism by creating symbols of a perfect life. My aim was to challenge this basic assumption. Rather than removing negative aspects of life, design should recognise and incorporate them into its processes. Such design can offer a more balanced view of our existence and appreciation of our place in the world. A design that celebrates life despite all its negative aspects.

Mathematical beauty has long been admired, and simple geometrical considerations, such as symmetry and repetition have been extensively used. Traditionally patterns are uniform and rigid. Used in a looser way they express concepts about transformation, which challenge the assumption that impermanence and uncertainty are negative aspects. Disrupting the ideal order of mathematical patterns in this way, ‘humanizing’ them, reveals in their breakdown the beauty of the human condition.