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design’s meaning depends on them, the designed properties are also important
because the product’s reliability, style and brand are crucial for how the product
is able to perform its role. Accordingly, those products that are good at facilitating
physical, spiritual or social recreation in the way that a particular household
prefers are the ones that I am calling “great designs”.
Csikzentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton use the term cultivation when they
are outlining how products become meaningful in a home (Csikszentmihalyi
& Rochberg-Halton 1981 173). However, their definition of cultivation
involves improvement and development. Unlike cultivating, curating does not
imply progress, or even change. The household does not need to change as it
curates its everyday products and, it seems, not changing is a preferred standard,
or at least a desired aim, for some households, even though the household
curates products on a daily basis. But even when curating involves change,
and the change is appreciated, the appropriation of design takes time – sometimes
years or even decades. Sometimes the designed product may wait for
years to find its proper place or, for example, be taken out of the cupboard
or emerge from under the covers. It is no wonder, then, that the households
that I interviewed voiced such an appreciation for the timelessness of design.
People know that, on the one hand, curating a home takes time and that,
on the other, some designs, the “classics”, stand waiting, without becoming
clutter. In contrast, after a ten year break, a television or a suit hardly ever
stands to be taken in use – the product may work, it may be wonderful, but,
most often, the design is visibly out of sync with contemporary taste and the
engineered design, the technology of both the television and the suit, has
become impractical, maybe dysfunctional and worn out. Consequently, it is
not that the domestication of design is different from the domestication of
technologies and media, but, rather, that designs in general stand time differently
and domesticate accordingly. The domestication of what is seen as timeless
or “classic” is very different, or at least can safely take much longer, than
the domestication of products with a faster turnover rate. It must be noted,
though, that it is always the household who defines what is timeless, irrespective
of public or professional definitions.
In fact, if we hold that complete domestication means that the product
becomes invisible and is no longer even noticed by the household, then some
products never domesticate because they will continue to elicit pleasure and
interest as a part of home’s dwelling practices. Shove and colleagues write that,
7 DOMESTIC ATION OF DESIGN
257
Moments of socio-technical closure or in Silverstone’s terms, domestication,
are illusionary in that objects continue to evolve as they are integrated into