Lataa ilmaiseksi

art, as outlined by Paul Bloom (Bloom 2010). Bloom argues that art as a source
of pleasure is based on the human ability to appreciate the skill with which
an artist organises materials and concepts. Great works of art are rewarding
intellectual puzzles and audiences of art enjoy solving them (ibid.). Within the
context of dwelling with design, people can be seen as solving design problems.
Common examples include solving the puzzle of what design might fit in a
particular space, where to find the specific item and, for example, figuring out
how the product is put together. Similarly, clever solutions to design problems
are widely appreciated, both in terms of how the products are created and
manufactured and in terms of the ways in which the interior decoration of the
home is put together. Engaging in interior decoration through the appropriation
of design can be pleasing and even amusing, especially if a person or the
household has invested in learning about design processes and the designed
properties of products. The more one knows about design, the more entertaining
it can be to play with the possibilities that design offers. In addition,
putting the interior decoration together can resemble playing a game. Sometimes
the game can be rather aggressive; an apartment can be seen much like a
battlefield where the battles take place between humans and the apartment in
need of change. Some even referred to such apartments as a “bomb-site” (literally,
“a bomb” in Finnish). On the other hand, the game can be closer to that
of social media, where the main activity is to make friends with and coexist in
a shared space.
Putting together a home based on cleverly mixed designs is a pastime that
some households come back to time and again; others try to achieve a splendid
result that would withstand the challenges of dwelling for a long time without
much further change. Nevertheless, I think we can also say that even for
those households that do find considerable pleasure in appropriating design,
the process still usually matters comparatively little. It can be argued that only
when the choice to appropriate and dwell with design is part of one’s identity
as a member of an aesthetic tribe or as a lifestyle, does design become so
important that life is organised from the point of facilitating first and foremost
dwelling with design (Vejlgaard 2010). Such a passionate connection with
design describes well some households in my sample – there were a couple of
households that were collecting design and whose life more or less consisted of
dealing with design – but most approached design in a lot more of a matterof-fact
manner.
On the other hand, I wonder whether it could be said that history is an
“identity giver” (ibid. 56) for some households in the sample. Some sort of
nostalgia, in any case, is hovering over nearly the whole sample. In part, this
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