MONSOON

Monsoon is a paper organiser representing a rice field. The production of Monsoon reflects the intense labour and extensive byproducts required for rice field production.

Rice fields require an extensive alteration of the environment. They are notoriously beautiful and seem to provide the same sublime reaction as seeing an iceberg or mountain.

They are one of the very few mass environmental changes we have ever made that are universally seen as attractive. Rice fields are labour intensive to produce and require vast amounts of resources such as water. Its output is seemingly abundant.

A paper tray is a mundane and relatively redundant object. An object meant to store and organise paper, another seemingly abundant resource. Is the alteration to the environment justified if the resource produced is so universally used? The environment is impacted through production yet we fetishise design objects through function or beauty. An object as unnecessarily obtuse as a piece of folded metal to organise documents. The impact design objects have is not simply in their production but their interactions with the environment. Is creating objects for universal commodities validated due to its aesthetic value or does its environmental impact invalidate this? The output of a paper tray and the output of rice fields can be seen as products of abundant overproduction.

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