July 27, 2008
excerpt from “Plastics in the ’80s”
Despite the growing sophistication of plastics designs, knowledge about the materials themselves and the education given to designers and engineers is badly out of proportion to the amount of plastics that surround us. Everyone knows that wood grows on trees but how many can say where plastics come from? Or describe the basic processes? By the end of the 1980s ideally each of us should have an understanding of the simplicity and beauty of the concept of countless identical groups of molecules that link up to form the enormous chains known as ‘polymers’ which in turn, modified by various additives according to a particular recipe, are moulded into ‘plastics.’ How sad that such an apparently mundane word should describe a magic organic process. The metamorphosis of primeval sludge from beneath the earth into shining multi-coloured objects symbolises Man’s power to control the atoms and shape the molecules from which both he and his planet is made.
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Wood grows in its own natural way. Ceramics and metals periodically make technological leaps. The intriguing fact about plastics is that they are in a constant state of evolution, replacing, and improving on, their own species. Did someone say that we had entered the ‘Plastics Age?’ Why, we’ve only just started the journey.
“Plastics in the ’80s,” Sylvia Katz from The Plastics Age: From Bakelite to Beanbags and Beyond, ed. Penny Sparke
Filed by allison schuette-hoffman at 4:41 pm under Uncategorized
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