Elisabeth Seidel

For my in-situ re­search on en­trance sit­u­a­tions, I chose a variety of bars in south Cologne late on in the evening. The at­mos­phere there fas­ci­nated me and I re­alised they all had the same kind of out-of-fo­cus light sce­nario.

Red and blue pre­dom­i­nated. I sought out doors pro­vided with light­ing and that led me to the emer­gency exits. There were a few types of emer­gency exits amongst them in which I was par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested, those on air­craft for in­stance. These often entail a con­tra­dic­tory set of re­quire­ments. They have to be capable of being in­tu­itively opened in stress sit­u­a­tions and yet the opening mech­a­nism is so complex that not every­one will be able to operate it.

The opening process occurs in two stages: first open the cover, then lift and release the handle. My in­ter­est was ad­di­tion­ally aroused by emer­gency exits in build­ings, of which there a number of dif­fer­ent kinds: emer­gency exit devices for private dwellings and class­rooms in schools, and the anti-panic doors in­stalled in hos­pi­tals and public au­thor­ity build­ings. It must be pos­si­ble in the process for every such door and device to be opened unim­peded by people of the most dif­fer­ing of heights.

How does that work? The doors have a lock and a fitting. Both of them are re­quired to release the door as soon as the cross­bar on the inside face is de­pressed.

I worked with 3D images for my first pro­to­type. My aim was to develop a handle that cap­tures the blurred at­mos­phere, a bit like watch­ing a 3D movie without 3D spec­ta­cles. I repli­cated this shape in three dif­fer­ent colours and placed them in a slightly offset con­fig­u­ra­tion. The human eye is no longer able to get a pur­chase on them as a result.

The cri­te­ria the first ma­te­ri­als needed to fulfil were: translu­cency, stack­a­bil­ity, chro­matic vari­ance and af­ford­abil­ity. I opted for hobby glass and foil for the first two trials. Fol­low­ing several 2D ex­per­i­ments, I created a suc­ces­sion of layers in build­ing my first handle. I used acrylic glass for the final pro­to­type. It needed to be round so I bent the ma­te­r­ial with the aid of the heat from a kiln. I started on a number of fun­da­men­tal tests: the ma­te­r­ial was ground, bonded to­gether and edge-milled.

I bought flu­o­res­cent plex­i­glass in pink and blue for my first final spec­i­men. I formed it into a circle by first drilling it with an edge drilling machine and then grind­ing the edge glue with a plane. This caused it to become not only round but also smooth. I then ground and pol­ished it with 240-, 400- and 600-grit emery paper.

It tran­spired that neon plex­i­glass ceases to be neon-coloured once its edges have been removed. I there­fore used a greater amount of neon-coloured plex­i­glass and less of an opaque pink and blue colour for my second and final version. The edges were cut at an angle of 45 degrees, then ground and pol­ished. Both pro­to­types were sub­se­quently heated in the kiln and bent into the right shape with the aid of a die. This had to be done quickly as the handle could no longer be de­formed within three seconds of leaving the kiln.

Whereas Otl Aicher adopted a very func­tional ap­proach and looked upon a func­tional, util­ity-dri­ven form stripped of any un­nec­es­sary ballast as the sine qua non, I would like to provide some­thing very con­trast­ing with my blue­print. Sever­ity and as­ceti­cism do not figure in my work.