Exploring the Expressive Potential of Function

Abstract

Niedderer’s chapter builds on her previous research, which was concerned with transforming the current understanding of function in design from a factor of constraint into a factor that can enable creativity, and applies it to contemporary craft practice. Niedderer argues that the crafts are particularly suited to explore the proposed new understanding of function. It benefits from doing so because this new idea of function transcends the visual, allowing for meaning to accrue through haptic and somatic (physical) experience of the object resulting in a concept of ‘expressive function’ which is itself arrived at through convivial human interaction rather than through solitary analysis.