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Object Culture

The Incredible Shrinking Man

By Aart van Bezooijen - December 3, 2010

When we heard about The Incredible Shrinking Man we thought this would reveal a little brother of The Incredible Hulk. We were almost right... Arne Hendriks, one of the crew members of our favorite Platform21, explains that The Incredible Shrinking Man is about anything but being big and strong.

"The Incredible Shrinking Man is a research into the consequences of downsizing the human species. If we decide to shrink the human species to 2 feet, this will have huge consequences for the way we will live, work and play."

Crazy or not, you can join the discussion of a future with smaller people at The Incredible Shrinking Man blog that features opportunities: "Just imagine the amount of space and resources that will become available!" - threats: "What do we do with cats and dogs?" - and compelling facts such as the picture below.

"The head size of The Incredible Shrinking Man will be around 7 x 4 cm."

Object Culture

Aart van Bezooijen

Aart van Bezooijen is a Dutch optimist and motivator for materials in design. He lives and works in Hamburg where he founded Material Stories (2005) to inspire and enable the best use of materials to make design more competitive, creative and sustainable.

2011 he explored sustainable solutions from around the world during the "It's Not Easy Being Green" project with graphic designer Paula Raché. He co-organized the Materials Café exhibitions at the Hannover Messe in Germany, the world's leading trade fair for industrial technology. Since 2012, he works as Professor for Material and Technology Transfer at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle growing a new materials library.

3 Comments

Arne Hendriks

8 years ago

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Hi James,

Actually we're not sure what the perfect size is. Sugar consumption (an increase of 2500% over the last 100 years) and overloading on proteins has made us much taller then we are supposed to be if we look at our biology. This is why more and more people are having pain in their ligaments and back problems. A 20% increase in height means a 73% increase in weight while your strength only increases by 44%. The phenomenon of island dwarfism and island gigantism might actually give some insight in our perfect size. When our natural enemies are absent we may grow to our natural height since we don't have to get bigger to be more imposing, or smaller to hide. Homo Floresiensis, lving on the island of Flores up until 12000 years ago was only about 100 centimeters.
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James

8 years ago

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Strength is proportional to the square of the cross section area. So something half the the size is four times as weak. We would not be strong enough to function. Our size is a product of the environment. we have evolved to the perfect size for life on planet Earth.
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Mr. Downer

8 years ago

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As an Architect, I am thrilled by this proposal - the paradigm shift compelled by such a formal reconsideration of human physignomy necessarily entails certain work and particular interventions: in the geography of space and time, from Corbu's Modular Man to the Cave Paintings at Lascaux, we have normative standards that must be reconstructed - think of the fees! The only thing I wonder is, as a purely practical matter, will one have some freedom in electing to maintain the present size of certain, how to say delicately, appendages? For if we are speaking of shrinkage, and relativistics (and heurestics too) then might we instead demand that certain things in fact remain as they are, even as the rest of the corporeal flesh is reduced in stature?!?! Oh Sweet Future!!!
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